# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S55
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1894. 55

eaten and drunk, together with his body and blood; from that it follows that a mass-priest in every mass sacrifices and sells the Holy Trinity twice; from that it follows, since the Godhead is not without the creature, that heaven and earth must also be in the Sacrament; from that it follows that the devils and hell are also in the Sacrament; from that it follows that whoever eats the Sacrament (even in one form) devours the Bishop of Meissen with his mandate and note; from that it follows that a priest of Meissen devours and swills his bishop twice in every mass; from that it follows that the Bishop of Meissen must have a bigger body than heaven and earth: and who will ever tell all the consequences? But in the end it also follows from this that all such consequence-drawers are asses, fools, blind, mad, senseless, raving, foolish, and frenzied: this consequence is certain."

The preaching office in the abstract is Word and Sacrament; only through these is the Holy Spirit given. The preaching office in the concrete is the pastoral office, the office of the persons who are appointed to it by call to apply the means of grace. By unauthorized inferences from the preaching office in the abstract and in the concrete, the doctrine has been developed that the means of grace are, by the order of things, effective only when they are administered by regularly called administrators of the preaching office. This, however, is fanaticism, even when it wraps itself in the garment of the sternest and strictest churchliness.

The means of grace are something outwardly visible and perceptible; that is certain and undoubted according to Scripture. Further, it is certain according to Scripture that the essence of the holy Christian Church cannot exist without the means of grace, for it is born of them and lives from them. It is also quite right according to Scripture that one can recognize by the means of grace where the Church is, that Word and Sacraments are the marks of the Church. From these truths of Scripture the doctrine of the Church has been produced by inferences, that the Church has a visible and an invisible side. That is fanaticism.

In the Lutheran Church, synergism emerged as something won by inferences. Melanchthon in his dogmatics made the following inference: If all human beings by nature lie in the same corruption, and all human beings are included in the same way in God's counsel of grace, then it follows of necessity that there is a difference in us, why one is saved while another is lost. This must, alongside the Word and the Holy Spirit, lie in the consenting human will. So it is the anti-divine making of inferences that is to blame that a third cause of conversion has been set up, namely the will of man, whereas the Word of God and the Lutheran Confession know only two causes, namely the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. Precisely so do our present-day synergists proceed. They assert against God: If God's counsel of grace and means of grace