# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S9
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1902. 9

[it takes away from] the laity the Bible out of their hands, if it should have come into them, and forbids them to read. Pope Innocent III once said that just as the people were not permitted to approach Mount Sinai, on which God was to give his law, so little is access to Holy Scripture open to the laity; and as the people, if they nevertheless approached, were to die the death, so the laity deserve it too who read the Scripture contrary to the prohibition. Indeed, if within the Roman Church the urge to read Holy Scripture arises in some limited circle, then the Roman Church itself is quite capable of adducing, as a reason why this is not permissible, that laymen are not in a position to resolve the contradictions that are found in Holy Scripture, although the same Roman Church at other times and on other occasions finds it fitting to say that Scripture does not contradict itself, only that one must always hold fast, in reading it, to the interpretation of the infallible teaching office of the Church, and not believe that one can help oneself there and perhaps seek counsel from Scripture itself.

It was not always so, however. In the first centuries of the Christian Church, the reading of the Holy Scriptures and occupation with them was nothing unusual for Christians, however much harder it was then than today to possess the Holy Scriptures, and above all the whole Bible. At that time Christians who were diligent Bible readers, whether they were preachers or hearers of the divine Word, had the same experience as today, that it sometimes seemed to them as if not everything that Scripture says could well be reconciled. And when they did not make this experience themselves, they were made aware of such alleged contradictions by the enemies of the Church. Hence even in that time many a book arose in which precisely the question was treated whether there are contradictions in the Bible. I will call attention to only one work, that of Augustine of the year 400 after Christ: "De Consensu Evangelistarum", that is: On the Harmony of the Evangelists. It stands in the fourth volume of the Venice Benedictine edition of Augustine's writings and is divided into four books. In the first book Augustine turns against those who took offense that Christ did not write himself, against those who alleged that the apostles had ascribed to their LORD a greater dignity than he ascribed to himself, in that they called him God; they had also taught something different from what they had learned from Jesus. In the second and third books he then shows, using the Gospel of Matthew as a guiding thread, that the Gospels agree beautifully with one another and contain no contradictions. In the fourth book he then offers treatments of individual important, especially disputed sections of the Gospels. This work has been very highly esteemed by Luther, Chemnitz and others, and quite deservedly. For besides the