# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

18 Proceedings of the eleventh convention

gospel. The Church has no testimony of Christ apart from the Word. Where the written Word does not speak, she is to be silent, and she does so. As the bride of Christ she avoids everything that the written Word does not say.

That this view of the more recent theologians haunts even here in America we see from an example within the so-called New York Ministerium. When one man came forward and said: "Faith flows from election," another came forward and said: "Show me a single passage for it." The first replied: "Have you not read Acts 13:48: 'And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed'?" The other answered: Oh, that is just Luke writing, that is Luke's opinion! — There is evidently something of the newer theology in this man. —

One can regard these statements of the newer men as a de facto declaration of bankruptcy. For whoever stands so has, according to his teaching, no Bible any more with which anything can be begun toward laying the foundation of a Christian faith. And yet there are still supposed to be people who believe. So something else must be given as the foundation of faith. And so

Kahnis concludes the first volume of his Dogmatics, in which he treats inspiration at length, with these words: "Not on the inspiration and authenticity of Scripture, not on dogmatic concepts, not on scholarly mediation, but on the vital fact of his real communion with God through Christ does the true Christian base his Christianity." (Luth. Dogm. I, p. 674 ult. [last page].)

What does that mean: "The vital fact of his real communion with God through Christ"? That means, if it means anything, "his Christianity." That, then, is the hard-won result at which Kahnis arrives, that the true Christian bases his Christianity on — his Christianity.

An approach to the view that the Christians' faith is grounded on the oral testimony of the Church was formerly taken also by Philippi, who indeed allowed Scripture to count as the sole norm but not also as the sole source, and placed alongside it also the voice of Christendom. But in later editions of his Dogmatics he abandoned this position and says: As Scripture is norm, so too it must be the source of the Christian faith; the Church has no other voice than the Scripture.

In a recent work Prof. Kübel in Tübingen deals with the difference between the positive and the liberal theologians and lets both have their say. As the liberal he cites Lipsius, who speaks thus: "Holy Scripture is neither as a whole nor in any particular part immediately itself God's Word, but only the