# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1886. 29

of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." 1 Cor. 2:14. Now the little letter to Philemon is supposed to be even a humorous book!

Kahnis: "Is a doctrine of inspiration really worthy of the Holy Spirit which ascribes to the Holy Spirit all the solecisms and barbarisms of the apostolic writings, all the faulty constructions of Paul, all inexact citations, differences in presentation (and indeed in points where the wording matters, as with the Ten Commandments [what blindness Kahnis shows here!], the Lord's Prayer, the words of institution of the Lord's Supper), borrowings from other writings, purely personal judgments and expressions, etc.? . . . If we had to assume a human coefficient in prophets and apostles even in the reception of the revelation, then we could think of the conceptual working-through and presentation only with the cooperation of human individuality, and were entitled simply to point to quite unmistakable facts. This human side emerges still more decidedly in poets, lyric and didactic, and in historians. Is one to assume that what David felt in his heart the Holy Spirit dictated in the form of a psalm?" (Does not every Christian himself have thoughts wrought in him by the Holy Spirit, which afterward stream from him in prayer? And yet the Holy Spirit is supposed to be unable to have moved David to write down such thoughts given him in the form of a psalm?)

Kahnis continues: "If the Evangelist Luke only wrote down what the Spirit dictated to him: why does he appeal to tradition and research?" A ridiculous objection! — As if it were not a matter of the highest importance for the hearer when the one who declares that he speaks by the Spirit can also appeal to the fact that he speaks as an eye- and ear-witness and as one who has investigated everything exactly! Thus when another was to be chosen apostle in Judas' place, Peter said: "Wherefore of these men which have companied with us, all the time . . . must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." Acts 1:21–22. Is it then pointless, when an inspired man proves that what he reports is already humanly credible? Is it not rather to be thanked God that he has so arranged it that the holy writers could also say: I have seen and heard it myself, what I write to you? Without doubt Luke also questioned the Virgin Mary in particular, who knew the most. The Holy Spirit could well have revealed everything to Luke alone, just as he gave the Apostle Paul an exact report of the institution of the Holy Supper. But is it not all the more glorious that God has taken care also for human credibility? In presenting the truth of Holy Scripture the chief questions are these: 1. Could the