# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1888_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1888. 27

Luther also impresses most forcefully that one may not, in the name of love, demand a letting-go of God's Word. He writes: "We are truly ready and willing to show them peace and love, provided they leave us the doctrine of faith unimpaired and unfalsified. Where we cannot obtain this from them, it is in vain that they praise Christian love so highly. Cursed be the love into the abyss of hell that is maintained at the cost and detriment of the doctrine of faith, to which everything ought justly to yield. . . . Therefore, by regarding the matter as so slight and easy, they give us to understand sufficiently what they think of the majesty and glory of the divine Word. . . . If they earnestly and from the heart believed that it was God's Word, they would not jest and play with it so frivolously, but would hold it in highest honor and believe without any doubt and disputation what it tells and sets before them; they would also know that one Word of God is all, and again all God's Word is one; they would know that all articles of our Christian faith are one, and again that one is all, and that if one lets one go, certainly the others all together will in time fall after it one by one, for they all hang together and belong together. . . . I have said this with many words to make our people firm and to teach the others, who may perhaps be offended at our steadfastness and think that we are otherwise so stiff and obstinate and had no weighty cause for it. Therefore it shall not trouble us at all, however gladly they would preserve love and unity between us and them, and however heartily it grieves them that it is to be torn apart. For whoever does not love and honor God and his Word is not helped, let him love otherwise what he will. Therefore St. Paul with this saying admonishes both teachers and hearers not to think that the doctrine of faith is so slight and easy a matter that we might play and amuse ourselves with it at our pleasure; it is a sunbeam that comes down from heaven and enlightens, kindles and rules us. Just as the whole world with all its wisdom and power cannot steer the sunbeam that goes straight down from heaven to earth, so one can neither take from nor add to the doctrine of faith, unless one will utterly pervert it." (On Gal. 5:9.)

Thesis IV.

The necessary outward testimony to unity in faith consists in this, that those who stand in unity of faith acknowledge one another as brethren in the faith.

The unity in faith that exists between individual congregations and larger church bodies can, under circumstances, find expression in many ways. Thus, e.g., by the fact that those