# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

52 Proceedings of the eleventh convention

"Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?"
and 1 Cor. 15:1: "Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you."
We find the same in St. Peter, when he writes in 2 Pet. 3:1 f.: "This second
epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up and remind
your pure minds, that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before
by the holy prophets, and of our commandment, who are apostles
of the LORD and Savior." Here the holy apostle takes everything together:
his oral preaching, his first epistle, the writings of the prophets,
and this his second letter; indeed, before its close he
takes in also the letters of his fellow apostle and dear brother Paul and
the other writings, and all of this he hands to Christians, that they
may bear it in a pure mind and faithful memory as their God's
precious Word.

Thus our thesis stands firmly and deeply grounded in Holy Scripture, Old and New
Testament.

Admittedly it is true: we know in part the outward occasions
which moved the apostles to write their letters, but they
wrote nonetheless driven by the Holy Spirit. The moderns
say it is dreadful when we say the holy writers were
nothing but God's writing instruments. In that, they say, we make them into
machines. But should God not understand the art of writing through men,
just as he has spoken through men, without these
becoming machines? When the apostles stood before princes and kings
and spoke what God gave them to say, they did not stand there as
machines, but it was Peter, Paul, John, etc., who stood
there. If they did not become machines in this case, then neither
in writing. The children of God, too, insofar
as they are spiritual, are wholly driven by the Spirit of God, but they
do not thereby become machines! But we will also grant that the
holy writers were God's machines, provided one keeps in view the
point of comparison. As that which moves a machine
is a man or a force that is added to the machine, so that which
moved the apostles to write was God himself. They wrote not a word
of all this without God's having driven them. The apostles
were God's writing instruments, as the psalmist too calls himself
the pen of a good writer; as the Holy Spirit drove them,
so they had to write. Balaam wanted to curse the children of Israel;
he would have done it, but then the Spirit of God seized him, and he had to
bless, he could not do otherwise. In the moment when he blessed, he also wanted
to bless; afterward, however, he was his old self again. How the apostles were driven by the
Holy Spirit is a mystery that we cannot
comprehend. But who can comprehend how the spirit of man