# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1888_S9
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1888. 9

to these designations, which are so offensive to our age? Because it is convinced: it is God's earnest will and command that his whole Word be accepted in the church and be in force. Where that is the case, the church has the form that it ought to have according to God's will. Such a church therefore rightly bears the name "orthodox" church. Where that is not the case, there is a great defect, a grievous sin, and a communion in which this defect, this sin, is present is rightly called a heterodox or corrupt church, or a sect. The position taken toward God's Word decides the character of an ecclesiastical communion. The church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, that is, upon God's revealed Word. Now when a communion has wholly abandoned this foundation peculiar to the church, [so that] it no longer confesses essential parts of the Word of God, and it stands so that in this communion, according to its confession, saving faith in Christ can no longer be worked, then this communion is a body standing outside the church. Thus the Apology, for example, says that those who no longer confess the Holy Trinity are outside the church of Christ. (Müller, p. 77.) A communion that still holds fast the chief articles of Christian doctrine, but rejects this or that clearly revealed article of doctrine, is a sect. A communion, on the other hand, that accepts and confesses all parts of the divine doctrine is an orthodox communion, a communion as it ought to be.

With our description of unity in faith we turn first against those who give up this or that article of Christian doctrine as not necessary for true church unity. This unionistic disposition spreads itself everywhere in the church; indeed one may say that, like a broad, devastating stream, it has flooded almost everything. The Union, as it exists in Prussia and other lands of Germany, is built on this principle, that agreement in the articles that are in dispute between Lutherans and Reformed is not essential to unity in faith. But the unionistic disposition reaches far beyond the Union of church government. The whole of modern theology is unionistic. It declares it an overstretching of doctrinal uniformity if agreement in all articles is demanded. The Reformed sects in this country speak of "orthodox" teachers and communions and understand by this those that hold fast certain chief doctrines, e.g., the doctrine of inspiration, of the deity of Christ, of the necessity of conversion. Other clear doctrines of the Word of God they give up without scruple. The well-known "Evangelical Alliance," which was founded in London in 1846, is built on the same ground. It demands of its members not agree-