# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1888_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

18 Proceedings of the twelfth convention

Christian truth is supposed to be distributed among the various communions: one has more, another less of it; but none may boast of possessing the whole, full truth. Indeed, doubt about the truth, the heathen seeking after truth, has become fashionable and wants to pass itself off as a Christian virtue. It even happens that people, in associations that bear the name "Lutheran," mock at "pure doctrine" [printed in English in the German text]. We are also accused of an inclination toward the papistic doctrine of infallibility when we assert that we have the truth in all articles of Christian doctrine and thus stand in complete unity of faith. But this reproach can rest only on great ignorance or malice. The Pope claims that he for his own person is infallible apart from, beside, indeed against God's Word. We admit that we personally can err, indeed that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, in spiritual matters we can only err. But in doctrine we do not err, but are infallible, in so far and because we stand on God's Word as it reads. We speak as God's Word speaks. In all doctrines we need only repeat what God's Word so plainly dictates to us; that is our whole art. The Lutheran church claims to be in possession of the certain whole truth only for the reason that it accepts the certain whole Word of God as it reads.

The truth that the sinful flesh still clings to us is no objection. Although we are still sinners, our doctrine is nevertheless right and divine truth. Our teaching consists precisely in repeating what God dictates to us. What is revealed in Scripture does not pass through us in such a way that we would have to add something of our own, so that what is taught by us would be, as it were, half divine and half human, half true and half false; rather the preachers, when by God's grace it is well with them, are only the mouth of God. They do not set forth their own thoughts but the thoughts of God clearly revealed in Scripture. A preacher ought to be able to say: "What I have told you is divine truth." Luther reminds us that whoever cannot speak so should leave preaching alone. We must therefore not confuse fallibility in life with fallibility in doctrine. The latter does not follow from the former, because by reason of the plainness of Holy Scripture the doctrine has been taken out of our hands. All uncertainty and all straying in matters of Christian doctrine comes only from this, that one leaves God's clear Word aside and will not repeat what God's Word says. One follows the traditions of the church or human reason or one's own preconceived opinion and lets oneself be turned by them away from the divine revelation of Scripture. It is a great self-deception when one says: "From Scripture one cannot, after all, derive with certainty all articles of Christian doctrine