# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1886. 35

bus viris, vel etiam inter nos ipsos [about this article we can deal with learned and prudent men, or even among ourselves]. But what matters is that the unshakably certain fact, presupposed by both theories as essentially the same, which they wish to explain, remain standing, the fact namely that the canonical Scripture from beginning to end is an infallible revelation of God to humanity given by the Spirit of God, or the veritable Word of God itself, and remain so. The natural world is and remains God's creation, quite apart from the correctness of the Ptolemaic or Copernican world system, and the Bible as the complex of the supernatural world of revelation remains a miracle of God, quite apart from the correctness of the old-dogmatic or of any new theory of inspiration." (Kirchl. Glaubenslehre. I, p. 330 f.)

We, on the other hand, say: Where two theories about Holy Scripture are set up that contradict each other, they cannot both be true. Either both are false, or at least one certainly. If our old-Lutheran (if I may say so) theory of the inspiration of Holy Scripture were false, we would reject it. Yet it is gratifying how Philippi, who earlier admitted the possibility of an error in Holy Scripture, later in the third edition of his Dogmatics departed entirely from it. Earlier he had written: "In this one must not from the outset resist acknowledging the possibility that some subordinate differences are actually present and therefore remain unresolved. For there is here indeed a realm of insignificant contingency, as the likeness of a portrait is not conditioned by the exactly corresponding length of the nails and hair. How far inspiration has here too completely overcome human weakness seems to us determinable only in a historical way, not dogmatically. We should therefore at least not say a priori with Calov: Nullos error, vel in leviculis, nullus memoriae lapsus, . . . ullum locum habere potest in universa Scriptura sacra (No error, even in trifling matters, no lapse of memory, . . . can have place in the whole of Holy Scripture). Julius Africanus already expressed himself similarly with regard to historical-chronological difficulties in the New Testament: τὸ μέντοι εὐαγγέλιον πάντως ἀληθεύει (The Gospel indeed speaks the truth throughout)." (Kirchl. Glaubenslehre. Stuttgart 1854. I, 208 f.)

In the last edition of his Dogmatics, however, Philippi wrote: "I now myself concede that according to my own theory of inspiration also the possibility of errors in Scripture in minor matters and insignificant contingencies is to be denied a priori." (Kirchl. Glaubenslehre. Supplement to the third edition, I, p. 279.)

If one asks oneself now: What did Philippi understand by word and words inspiration? one tries to work it out presumably thus. Of a