# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S57
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1886. 57

speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father that speaks through you. This
agrees also with the description of how such holy writings came into being.
Jer. 1:9 says: "Then the LORD put forth his hand, and touched
my mouth, and said unto me: Behold, I have put my words in
thy mouth." God does not say here, then: I will put my thoughts into
your mind, my will into your heart, but: The organ
of your body, your mouth, I will myself take into my service and
give you the words which you shall utter. So also Jer. 30:2:
"Thus speaketh the LORD, the God of Israel: Write thee all the words in a
book that I have spoken unto thee." So the commission to write came to John,
and what he wrote is to be inviolable; there shall be no word
too many or too few, so that a terrible threat is pronounced upon those who add a word or
take one away, Rev. 22:18-19:
"For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this
book: If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues
that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from
the words (ἀπὸ τῶν λόγων) of the book of this prophecy, God shall
take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and
from the things which are written in this book."

A chief passage from which it follows that the expression also in
Scripture is of divine origin is 2 Tim. 3:16: "All
Scripture is given by inspiration of God (πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος), and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." Here
it is said of Scripture, first of all of all Scripture of the Old Testament,
that it is inspired by God. It is not said: all
truths are inspired by God, but all Scripture. Here, then,
the discussion is of a Scripture divinely inspired. If one were to say, for example,
of a melody that God himself had inspired it in the composer,
everyone would understand by it that God inspired the individual notes;
for a melody consists of notes. But if you say that
he did not inspire the notes but did inspire the melody, that is nonsense.
For then God might at most have inspired some motif for the melody,
but not the melody itself. So also, if God had
inspired a painter with a picture, we should have to assume that
God inspired the painter also with the individual lines of the picture.
Whoever denied that could not say that the picture was inspired, but
at most that God had given an occasion for it or a general sketch.
So it is here with Scripture. Let us ask: of what does a
writing consist? It comes into being by sounds being represented by written characters
and so one word being joined to another. Paul therefore teaches
this: When these sounds of the Old Testament were represented by these written characters,
word set to word and sentence to sentence, that happened
by the Holy Spirit. Only then was Scripture really inspired.