# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S26
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

26 Proceedings of the eleventh convention

had to divest itself of divine appearance and glory. So also Holy Scripture, in order to be a comprehensive and unerring source of truth for the Church and its whole development, did not come into being in the purely divine manner, that the Holy Spirit, as sole author, dictated both content and words to the human authors as mere scribes or instruments. On the basis of that, the high and divine attributes, such as perfection and sufficiency, clarity, etc., were attributed to Holy Scripture. That is indeed the doctrine of inspiration of the 17th century."

Note here the trick, that the newer theologians speak as of a generally recognized fact that the doctrine of inspiration of our dogmaticians arose only in the 17th century, while Luther had a much freer view. They confuse, namely, what Luther says about the difference between the canonical books of the New Testament of the first and those of the second rank (the so-called deuterocanonical books). Thus they cite, for example, what Luther judges about the Epistle of James, that he namely does not believe that the epistle was written by the Apostle James. But this question does not belong here at all. For it is quite another question whether a book was written by an apostle, and another whether what an apostle has written contains error. Luther always remained with this: every letter of the prophetic and apostolic writings is God's very own Word.

Note from Grau's quotation also this, that the newer theologians no longer admit even the perfection, sufficiency, and clarity of Holy Scripture.

Grau now continues: "We can only say, against this, with the greatest Scripture scholar of our time" (this is namely v. Hofmann, who however is the greatest Scripture-spoiler): " 'Neither the questions arising from the condition of the text, nor those from the condition of the language, nor the literary peculiarities of the authors, nor the immediate purposes and the particularities deriving from them in the individual writings, nor the manifoldness of the modes of teaching, nor the diversity of the historical reports could be done justice to without coming into conflict with that dogmatic statement as to what the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture is: it was compatible, as far as the New Testament Scripture is concerned, only with a harmony of the Gospels, but not with the Gospels, and only with a collection of proof-texts, but not with the apostolic epistles. A conception of Scripture formed according to it would have only a distant resemblance to the reality of it.' "

This is just the misery now: when the gentlemen read in the Bible and get the impression that what is read betrays human origin, they are not alarmed at their unbelieving heart, but follow the