# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S37
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1886. 37

of those two factors, the divine and the human. Accordingly it is divine and human. . . . If, however, the Bible is a work of God composed by men (!), then there follows from it its relative capacity for error." (In wie weit ist der Bibel Irrthumslosigkeit zuzuschreiben? [To What Extent Is Inerrancy to Be Ascribed to the Bible?] p. 14.) By this only this can be meant: The Holy Spirit ruled in the holy writers as in the history of the Church generally. God does indeed rule in the Church, but that does not exclude that the members of the Church do much that is perverse and sin. So the Bible is indeed from the Holy Spirit, but that does not exclude the error of the holy writers. With that, however, the concept of inspiration is completely given up.

When the newer theologians keep speaking of errors in Scripture, someone may ask: What kind of errors are these? To this the answer is: By them they understand, among other things, that in Scripture the correct year is not always given. When they see, namely, in some human book, for instance in Herodotus or some other historian, a different year given, they do not say, perhaps: What stands in the Bible is from the Holy Spirit and therefore always the truth, but then they say: That is not correct, for Herodotus gives a different year. Thus they prefer the old blind heathen to Holy Scripture. Or when in the Bible it stands: "Sun, stand thou still!", they say: That is false, for Copernicus has asserted that the sun stands still. So it is supposed to be a false report that at the time of Christ's birth Cyrenius was governor in Syria, because that does not agree with other research. But precisely in recent times it has again been shown that Cyrenius was indeed proconsul in Syria just at this time.

These are the sort of things that are held to be errors, although the gentlemen take great care always to cite the errors. They demand rather that one should first concede that errors may possibly be found in Scripture. The searching for the errors comes afterward. And what is then the result? — That Scripture too swarms with errors of doctrine.

To the question what is to be thought of it when many teachers in the schools try to teach the children the Copernican system, the answer was given: That such teachers do not dare to stay with the old, namely with the word of Scripture, comes from the fear that they might not be regarded as a pastor or teacher standing on the height of the times. Added to this is that of a hundred thousand hardly one has even made an attempt to calculate it himself; one simply follows blindly the men of so-called science. Who is thereby preferred, then, God, or not rather the men of science? What a faith in authority! Guard yourself therefore against this, when your reason says No in reading Holy Scripture, that you build anything upon it