# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1898_S26
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

26 Proceedings of the seventeenth convention

wish to make blessed, for God himself does not want that; he wants to make blessed whom he makes blessed through the Gospel and not otherwise.

But this applies not only to the administration of the Lord's Supper but also to the other official acts of the preachers of Christian congregations, for which likewise the whole congregation whose preacher is officiating is responsible. The church of God is, according to God's will, to be an orthodox church. God has never wanted any other church than an orthodox one. It is not true, what one often reads nowadays, that the differences in doctrine are a wise dispensation and ordering of God, in that the various churches are thereby spurred on to examine and research their doctrine ever anew, and to bring the doctrine ever anew into a clear light, and the like. It is not true that according to God's will different churches with different confessions exist on different foundations of doctrine. God wills that the church be orthodox. So the church of Christ stepped before the world on Pentecost as an orthodox church, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the cornerstone. So the first Christian congregation at Jerusalem presented itself as one in which they continued with one accord in the apostles' doctrine, as in the breaking of bread, in fellowship and in prayer. The apostles' doctrine and nothing else counted in the first Christian congregation. And in the letters of the apostles it is repeated again and again that we are to walk according to one rule, that no one is to presume to change anything in the doctrine. Yes, the Apostle Paul does not hesitate to threaten the angel at the throne of majesty with his curse, should he dare to preach another gospel than Paul. And so God the LORD too wants only orthodox preachers. For this, says Paul, let a man account of us, namely as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. As servants of Christ the preachers have only to carry out Christ's will, not their own wisdom, but to follow the word of their Master. They are servants of Christ; what they do is Christ's work, what they say is to be Christ's word. No preacher is a servant of Christ insofar as he teaches otherwise than Christ teaches. The erring churches too are churches in reality only insofar, and their preachers really such as stand in the churchly office, as they still have the truth unto salvation; insofar as they do not have it, but error, they are not churches but the synagogue of the devil. Therefore we also quite rightly bind our preachers at their ordination and installation to the Holy Scripture, and indeed the whole Holy Scripture, as the revealed Word of God, and to the symbols [Confessions] of the orthodox Lutheran church as the correct interpretation of Holy Scripture. In this we express that, where we recognize a preacher, we recognize him only as a preacher of the church of Christ insofar as he preaches Christ's doctrine, Christ's truth and Word, and in his congregation to the