# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S7
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1894. 7

one God. Whoever denies the Trinity, therefore, abolishes the essence of Holy Scripture, despite Bible, pulpit, altar and professorial chair.

The second false basic tendency is the one which does not abolish the essence of the divine Word, but allows the acknowledgment of the triune God and of Scripture as supernatural revelation to stand; yet it puts the same to a false use and thereby impairs the efficacy of the Word in the severest way. That is the basic tendency of word-mixing, or the confusion of the Word, when the basic teachings of the Word, Law and Gospel, are mixed together, as Pietism has done and still does.

The third false basic tendency is the one which likewise does not abolish the essence of the divine Word, at least mostly not in so many words; but nevertheless robs men of the blessed efficacy of the Word in the most terrible manner, in that it really does not put the Word to legitimate use at all and, in doing so, expects what the Word is to accomplish from something other than the Word. This false basic tendency is spiritual fanaticism, or enthusiasm (*Schwarmgeisterei*). The first and second false basic tendencies have often been treated, no doubt also ex professo, in our circles, but not so the last. And yet it is surely well done to dissect the corpse of the third false basic tendency for once, and to take it apart into its components.

Thesis 1.
Enthusiasm is demonstrably an evil common to all times of the Church, against which the Church, too, may never think herself secure until the end of the days.

1. What enthusiasm is in its basic nature.

If we look at the basic nature of enthusiasm, it is historically demonstrable that it was an evil common to all past times of the Church. There has not been one sharply defined phenomenon, recurring always in the character once stamped upon it, which was ever called enthusiasm, or was designated, of course, by entirely equivalent words, for example in the Church of the East and West in ancient times. Enthusiasm is a genus and species that recurs in many individual phenomena; it is a mother with many daughters who, often quite unlike at first glance, are nevertheless all alike in the basic character of the mother. There is a basic nature of enthusiasm which recurs in manifold forms, named with all sorts of names. And in this sense we say: Enthusiasm is demonstrably an evil common to all times of the Church — an ever-living plague and pestilence, —