# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S61
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1886. 61

be done." Luke 16:17: "And it is easier for heaven and earth to
pass, than for one tittle of the law to fail."

It is said wrongly that the Lutheran Church has not declared itself for
verbal inspiration (Wortinspiration); for such a doctrine, it is said, one cannot claim
the Lutheran Confession. For in the Apology
it says, among other things: "Do they think that the Holy Spirit does not set his Word with certainty
and deliberation, or does not know what he says?" In the Latin
form: "Num arbitrantur excidisse Spiritui sancto non auimadvertenti
has voces = these words or expressions?"

What harm the newer theology does with its saying:
It is not every word, every expression in Holy Scripture that is
inspired by God! It teaches people not to believe the word, the expression.
And precisely for this reason Christ rebuked his disciples so earnestly,
struck them as with a club in the face, when he said to them:
"O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the
prophets have spoken." Luke 24:25. Were even one single word of
Scripture from men, he could not have scolded them so. But
the disciples had long been in his school, had always
seen what high value their LORD and Master set on Scripture; they
knew how Christ himself, even on the cross, was concerned that even
the last prophecy concerning him should be fulfilled. For when it was near
the time that he was to die, "that the Scripture might be fulfilled," he cried from
his cross: "It is finished!" And yet the apostles were
so slow to believe. If someone had come on top of that and had
said to them: It is not the case that every word in Scripture is from God, what
would have become of these poor disciples! Now think of
our time with the shameful doctrine of the newer theologians about
Holy Scripture. Truly, in whoever follows them all spiritual
life must be extinguished. What Paul says in Gal. 1:8 therefore applies also to the newer theologians:
"But though we, or an angel from
heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached
unto you, let him be accursed." This Gospel of Paul is set down in the
writings of the New Testament, and teaches at the same time of itself that
it is set down in words of divine inspiration; whoever therefore preaches otherwise
than the New Testament is accursed. Therefore we should and must
curse the new theology and trample it under foot.

We are not afraid to confess, either, that the astronomical
and geological remarks in Holy Scripture also are divine truths.
To be sure, the newer theologians say: So you make the Bible into
a textbook of the natural sciences. Volck, for example, also comes to
that when he says: "The opinion emerges again and again . . . that
it (Holy Scripture) is a book which gives information about all possible
things worth knowing. Here one thinks, for example, that it wants to teach nature-