# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S34
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

34 Proceedings of the eleventh convention

But unfortunately Philippi himself now actually comes into conflict with this statement when he writes: "While we defend the inspiration of the Word of Holy Scripture, we do not thereby wish to advocate any inspiration of mere words. Not the individual letters, syllables and words, even when detached from content and context, are to be regarded as immediately given or as dictated from outside; for Scripture does not contain words of God, and divine providence would then not have had to permit that in the course of time these hallowed words came down to posterity in various readings." (Kirchl. Glaubenslehre. I, p. 251 ff.) According to this, then, the holy writers after all would ultimately not be the pen that wrote after the Spirit gave them utterance.

This conception of the word of Holy Scripture has also not remained without harmful influence on the theological practice of the highly gifted Philippi. Thus in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, on Rom. 9:22, he makes the remark: "As regards the point that Paul wrote κατηρτισμένα and not, corresponding to ἃ προητοίμασεν in v. 23, ἃ προκατήρτισεν, the predestinarian exegete could still explain this as a coincidence proving nothing by itself." (Comment. über den Brief an die Römer [Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans]. 3rd ed. p. 453.)

Against this we say: Nothing in Holy Scripture may be declared a coincidence; to no one do we grant the right to do so. It is with purpose that it does not say: "which he hath prepared." And that treatment of the passage is rejected with great emphasis by our whole Lutheran Church when the Formula of Concord (*Concordienformel*) says: "So the Apostle distinguishes with special care the work of God, who alone makes vessels of honor, and the work of the devil and of man, who by the devil's instigation, and not God's, has made himself a vessel of dishonor. For so it stands written Rom. 9: God endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he hath prepared unto glory. Where then the Apostle says plainly that God endured the vessels of wrath with much longsuffering, and does not say that he made them vessels of wrath; for if it had been his will, he would have needed no great longsuffering for it. That they are, however, prepared for destruction, the devil and the men themselves, not God, are to blame for it." (Sol. Decl. XI. Müller, p. 721.)

It is noteworthy that with all these propositions Philippi does not knowingly set up a doctrine that alone is right and must be valid, but he himself designates his opinion as a scholarly speculation or theory. Thus he writes: "We repeat: whether the old-dogmatic theory of inspiration or ours prevails is essentially not what matters, for here it is really only a matter of theory. De hoc articulo agere poterimus cum doctis et prudenti-