# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1888_S8
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

8 Proceedings of the twelfth convention

with pure understanding the Gospel is preached and the holy Sacraments are administered in accordance with the Gospel." It confesses in the 10th Article of the Formula of Concord (Müller, p. 553): "We believe, teach and confess also that no church should condemn another because one has less or more of external ceremonies not commanded by God than the other, if otherwise in doctrine and in all its articles, as also in the right use of the holy Sacraments, they keep unity with one another." Here our church declares that by right unity it understands agreement "in doctrine and in all its articles," not merely in some of them. At the close of the 11th Article of the Formula of Concord (Müller, p. 724 f.) our church affirms that it has hearty desire and love for unity and strives to promote it, but that it must be such a unity "by which God's honor remains unimpaired, nothing is surrendered of the divine truth of the holy Gospel, and not the least room is granted to the smallest error."

These declarations about true Christian unity were also repeated by the Synodical Conference in the "Denkschrift" [Memorial] of the year 1871. On page 26 of this "Denkschrift" the words of the 10th Article of the Formula of Concord are cited as a description of right unity.

To prove that the Lutheran church understands by the unity that God wills agreement in all articles of Christian doctrine, the following may also be pointed out. Although the Lutheran church grants that true Christians are also to be found among the heterodox, it has nevertheless always refused to practice church fellowship with the heterodox, so as not to lend support to a false concept of church unity, namely the notion that agreement in all points is not necessary, in other words: that it is not necessary to accept the whole Word of God.

That this understanding of unity holds in the Lutheran church also appears from the way in which it treats those who err and the weak in its own communion. It does not throw them overboard; that would be an abomination; but neither does it say: "It does not matter whether someone errs in this or that doctrine," but it does for the weak what the Apostle Paul did for the Thessalonians according to 1 Thess. 3:10: it seeks, by instruction from God's Word, with all patience and love, to supply what is lacking in their faith. It thus always keeps in view that the unity God wills consists in agreement in all articles of Christian doctrine.

Finally, the Lutheran church also distinguishes precisely between heterodox and orthodox churches. Churches that do not teach in all articles of Christian doctrine according to God's Word it calls corrupt or heterodox churches; but churches that maintain the right doctrine in all articles it calls orthodox. Why does it hold