# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S25
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1886. 25

whole, and then you will eat of the tree with confidence. That is also the motto of the newer theologians: "Yea, hath God said?" But our motto is: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but the words of Jesus shall not pass away."

Oh, let us thank God that he has led us into this free land and has let the old Lutheran Church be founded, grow, and be strengthened here. Oh, let us hold fast now what God has given us by grace! God has entrusted great things to us, for ourselves and for the whole of Christendom. Yes, yes, for the whole of Christendom too! For over there people used to look down upon us, as on people who are not competent at all to have a say in such highly learned matters, and about whose judgment no sensible person asks. But now it is different. Our simple testimony of faith, we may well say to the glory of God, has penetrated through the whole of Christendom. Oh, therefore let us be faithful in confession, then an ever greater blessing will go out from our fresh, joyful, and brave testimony. For one must not look here only at the damage the devil does, in that doubt of the divinity of Holy Scripture finds new nourishment through the newer theologians, but one must also consider what great benefit arises when we remain firmly with the Word of God. Even those who themselves do not accept our doctrine of the divinity of Scripture must confess that on this point we do have a firm standpoint, which would first have to be taken from us before we would become accessible to certain attacks of the philosophers. As once a professor of philosophy, in a dispute over a passage of Scripture, said to his believing opponent: From your standpoint you are quite right.

If one of the theologians quoted verbatim above has stated the proposition that not a single noted theologian in Germany now still acknowledges the old Lutheran doctrine of the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture as his own, one will unfortunately have to let this proposition stand. If anyone over there dared to overthrow this proposition, he would hardly be allowed to speak. For even a Philippi, who is no longer among the living, though he stood the best of all, is not to be excepted here.

In proof, a few more samples from noted theologians of the most recent time may follow here.

R. F. Grau writes: "The theologians of the 17th century taught a divine nature and character of Holy Scripture which, as it does not agree with its human and historical reality, also by no means proves itself to be a truly divine character. The divine in Jesus Christ proves itself truly divine precisely in that it enters wholly into human reality, in birth, human growth and development, yes, suffering and dying, even if it also