# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S54
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

54 Proceedings of the fifteenth convention

We may not put forward as derived from Scripture the definition of a doctrine if we have taken into it a member that God has not placed there through the foundational and proof passages (*sedes classicae*) of this doctrine, or if we give to a piece of the definition, which may occur in another doctrine, a position after the manner of the other doctrine, while God himself does not do so in the foundational passages of the doctrine concerned. It should hardly be necessary at this point to mention that when Scripture interprets itself, it presupposes among us above all the endowment with the Holy Spirit, but then also the equipment with the necessary grammatical knowledge of the original language. No one, therefore, may say that Scripture has given him an interpretation in an article of faith if this interpretation contains an obvious violation of the rules of language.

Illicit and objectionable, finally, are such inferences as produce statements of doctrine by reasoning from one side to the other, for example from an affirmation to an opposite negation, and conversely, for example from the doctrine of Scripture on conversion and the converted to the doctrine on hardening and the hardened, and conversely. The doctrine of conversion is just as much a doctrine established in Scripture by its particular doctrinal passages or *sedes* as is that of hardening by its particular doctrinal passages or *sedes*. How wrong one could go here is shown by the very example cited. Scripture says that God converts; if someone were to infer from this that God therefore does not do the opposite, namely harden, he would be running straight against Scripture, Rom. 9:17-20.

Scripture alone is to give us doctrine; to make doctrine by inferences therefore means to arrogate to oneself what Scripture alone is to do. To make doctrine by inferences, however, also means to practice fanaticism. And this kind of fanaticism is found in abundance. We give some examples of it.

It is well known how the Romanists want to prove their robbing of the cup by consequence or inference. In the Lord's Supper, they say, there is the true body of Christ, for it says: "This is my body." But a true body is not without blood. Therefore, if the laity are given the true body of Christ, then with this body they already receive the blood of Christ. Therefore it cannot be wrong to withhold the cup from the laity. This fanaticism of consequence or inference Luther meets, however, in this way against the Bishop of Meissen (1528): "Hereupon now strikes in the concomitances, that is, the consequence. Since Christ's body is not without blood, it follows that his blood is not without soul; from that it follows that his soul is not without the Godhead; from that it follows that his Godhead is not without the Father and Holy Spirit; from that it follows that in the Sacrament, even under one form, the soul of Christ, the Holy Trinity