# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S62
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

62 Proceedings of the eleventh convention

science. . . . The Bible nowhere wants to give scientific
information. It is not a textbook of cosmology, anthropology,
psychology." ("To what extent is the inerrancy of the Bible to be ascribed to it?"
p. 7.) But that is a distortion of the standpoint. We
do not say at all that the Bible is a textbook for the natural sciences,
but we say: It is the book in which God shows us the way to blessedness,
as it is written in John 20:31: "But these are written,
that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might
have life through his name." And 2 Tim. 3:15
says that Scripture can make wise unto salvation through faith
in Jesus Christ. But, we add, also what is said in
Scripture incidentally about other things is inspired by God,
as to content and expression.

Nor do we let ourselves be led astray by people drawing a distinction between
the significant and the less important in Scripture.
We too say: Not everything in Scripture is of the same
importance. A man can be ignorant of something that is in Scripture
and yet be saved. But that is not at all the point here, whether something
in Scripture is essential or inessential, in near or only in remote
relation to salvation. Here the question is whether Scripture
throughout, in the smallest and the greatest, is reliable, that is, wholly
inspired by the Holy Spirit, as it itself asserts. It is a childish
objection to say that if one assumes that even the scientific
in the Bible is inspired, one does not understand how to distinguish
between the spiritual and the worldly. This objection is made by Harnack,
who thinks that if no errors in scientific and
historical matters occurred in Holy Scripture, that would even
cast suspicion on inspiration. For the complete avoidance of
errors in these matters "would reveal the Holy Spirit as one
to whom . . . the spiritual and the natural were all one."
(Op. cit. p. 28.)

And when these gentlemen make the distinction between the essential
and the inessential in Scripture, consider how much of the content
of Holy Scripture would then fall away that would not be certain divine
truth. How many there have been who knew very little of Scripture,
and yet they have been saved! So everything that is not absolutely necessary for salvation
would have to be counted among the inessential, which
would not be inspired by God. And that is where Satan
now wants to bring Christendom. He wants to take from Christendom now this, now
that component, until finally nothing of it is left. Such
dreadful accusations of course raise a great tumult. But we take comfort
with Luther, who somewhere writes: "Cease to lament, cease to
counsel. Such a tumult is begun by God and will also be