# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S21
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1886. 21

history, how you will manage without them to produce a pragmatic explanation of the sequence of historical events that stand firm as factual, for which we others possess the key in the miracles. I for my part do not accept the miracles out of dogmatic cupidity, but in the historical interest, because in the case of certain indubitable historical facts I cannot do without them as historical explanatory grounds, — not because they perforate history for me, but precisely in order to get across the gaping rifts in it. Therefore, notwithstanding my decided belief in miracles, I sincerely join in Weisse's warning that one should by no means wish to alienate the generation of our day altogether from the Christian faith by demanding the acknowledgment of the biblical miracles. It is indeed so, as he writes: 'Among the, thank God, not so very small number of contemporaries in whom warm and truly Christian piety still lives, the great majority has an instinctive aversion to the miracles, which is indeed comprehensible enough as a consequence of the course of development that spiritual culture among us has taken during the last century.'" (In Philippi I, p. 328 f.)

Here we see openly and plainly stated what is wanted when one exempts this or that in Holy Scripture as not belonging to the things a Christian must accept, and thereby impairs the divinity of Holy Scripture. One wants to make concessions to human reason, to the generation of our day eaten through with unbelief, but does not consider that by such concessions at the expense of truth no true gain has ever been achieved, but that unbelief rather demands one piece after another, destroys one scriptural truth after another, until finally no concession can be made any more because nothing is left. Rothe too does not accept the miracles of the Bible because they stand in the Scripture, but because he "cannot do without them as historical explanatory grounds." But that with the surrender of any part of Holy Scripture, with the concession that the holy writers erred on any point, the divinity of the whole Scripture is given up, Schenkel acknowledges quite unreservedly when he writes, loc. cit. p. 14: "If even the smallest error in the evangelical writings is conceded, the presupposition of their infallibility immediately collapses on itself. The evasion that the Holy Spirit may well have slipped into an error on less significant points, and that it suffices if this is not the case on more important ones, is as unfortunate as it is unworthy. It disregards that, if error is admitted at one point, it is admissible everywhere, and that he who is not faithful in little has also no right to demand faith in his faithfulness in much."