# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1888_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20 Proceedings of the twelfth convention

The answers to these objections are already contained in the presenter's paper. In the passage 1 Cor. 13:9 ff. Paul has in view our knowledge in this present time in comparison with that in eternity, not the contrast between having the truth and not having it. — And even if in the first congregation different views were found about certain matters, we do not hear that they said: "It does no harm; outward union is the main thing after all; we shall never all agree anyway." No, they came together and took counsel until they had become one.

Thesis III.

This unity in faith is willed by God, because God both commands the believing acceptance of his whole revelation and strictly forbids every departure from it.

There is no lack of those who flatly assert that it is not in accord with God's will to press for complete unity in faith. Even within the Lutheran church it has been represented as something good, namely as a sign of lively spiritual life, if people are in dispute over some doctrines and are not quite so thoroughly agreed. Nowadays the view is quite general that different tendencies in the church are legitimate. So a periodical published within the General Council ("Kelle und Schwert" [Trowel and Sword]) expressed itself only recently. It said, among other things: "We fight against no other denomination as such." And: "In the existence of different churches on earth we recognize the unfathomable wisdom, but also the condescending kindness of the God who, like the personal peculiarities of individuals, so also takes into account the national characteristics of whole peoples and takes them up into the plan of his education, into the counsel of his redemption, into the work of his offering of salvation." That alongside the Lutherans there are also Reformed and papists — for these latter too are expressly named among the "other denominations" —, that people are thus in disagreement in doctrine, or rather that the Reformed and papists deviate from the truth in many points, this is to be ascribed to the "unfathomable wisdom of God"!

If we look at Christendom, we likewise see little effort to establish unity in faith. One need only read, e.g., reports of German church assemblies. It is admitted that there is no agreement in doctrine. But no one works now with all earnestness toward the goal of becoming one in doctrine. At the conferences people deal mostly with external matters, seldom with doctrine. And then not in the sense that one must become wholly one in doctrine and that all doctrine contrary to God's Word must be done away with.