# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S6
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

6 Proceedings of the fifteenth convention

Doctrinal Proceedings.

By Professor A. Hönecke there were

Two Theses on Enthusiasm
presented and expounded.

(*Schwarmgeisterei*: the "enthusiasm" or spiritual fanaticism of the sects.)

Introduction.

Time and again Christendom has been stained and disfigured by false doctrine. Where is there an article of faith against which false doctrine has not arisen? False doctrines were always harmful, are so still, and will remain so until the end of the days. The harmfulness does not always depend on the significant place an article of faith holds in the structure of doctrine. The doctrine of the angels is not to be described as a central doctrine. And yet by disputing the right doctrine of the angels the door was, as it were, opened to rationalism. The father of German rationalism, Dr. Semler, began his teaching office with a treatise against the pure doctrine of the evil angels. The doctrine of the evil angels is commonly not counted among the fundamental doctrines. And yet the denial of this doctrine was the beginning of the assault with which rationalism drove the whole Scripture out of Christendom.

In general, however, the rule holds that an error, a false doctrine, is the more destructive the more it concerns an article of special importance; the closer the denied article of faith stands to the core of the doctrine that saves; the more, then, it is a basic error, a fundamental error, an error that violates or abolishes some fundamental article.

More dangerous than the basic errors just described, the fundamental heresies, is what has been called false basic tendencies. Without using the expression, Father Luther at Marburg in the year 1529 rightly accused the Zwinglians of a false basic tendency in the words: "You have a different spirit than we." It will be justified to set up three such false basic tendencies.

The first abolishes the essence of Holy Scripture, or of the Word generally. With this basic tendency the party concerned no longer has any claim to the name of Christendom. It is no longer Christendom, since there is no Word of God among them. This basic tendency is any and every tendency that in fact denies the doctrine of the Trinity, hence all anti-Trinitarianism. The essence of Holy Scripture is divine truth, and above all the divine truth of the Trin-