# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S10
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

10 Proceedings of the nineteenth convention

[besides the] holy reverence for God's Word and for every letter of it, this work displays an acuteness that shuns no difficulty but for the most part resolves it happily, and a humility and self-restraint that really come to a halt where human wisdom ends.

When in the Middle Ages the Bible lay under a cloud, wholly so among the people, almost wholly so among the priesthood too, no book of this kind and importance was written any more. The few scraps that fell, in the second seven hundred years after Christ, to those who turned over in their hearts the question whether contradictions are to be found in Scripture are so meager and scanty that they hardly deserve mention here.

But it became quite different again when, by God's grace, in the Reformation of the Church, Luther drew the Bible out again from under the bench and accustomed the Christian people once more to learn from it what Christian faith and Christian life are; when he translated Holy Scripture clearly and plainly into German; when the pastors again investigated diligently whether things were so, as Luther, the prophet of the Germans, taught; when many thousands upon thousands of laymen took up Luther's New Testament and then his whole Bible; when the readers of the Bible became so many that the Roman priests saw themselves deeply shamed and defeated by laymen who were far better read in Scripture than they: then in the souls of those who read Scripture diligently the question also came alive again, more than once, how one is to reconcile the various passages of Scripture that seem to contradict one another.

Thus as early as the year 1535 the Lutheran theologian Andreas Althamer, a friend of Brenz, Veit Dietrich and also of Luther, wrote a splendid book: "Vergleichung von 200 Schriftſtellen, die ſich dem Anſchein nach widerſprechen" [Comparison of 200 Passages of Scripture that Seem to Contradict One Another]. I cannot refrain from communicating a few things from this excellent book. From the choice of passages alone one can see what kind of man Althamer was. How, he asks, do such passages reconcile: "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father," with: "I will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children"; — "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance" [lit. "may not repent him"], with: "It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king"; — "I will not be angry for ever," and: "They shall go into everlasting pain"; — "God has mercy upon all his works," and: "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy"; — "No man hath seen God at any time," and the word of Israel: "I have seen God face to face, and my soul is preserved"; — Christ's word: "I judge no man," and: "The Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son"; — "Whom he called, them he also justified," and: "Many are called, but few are chosen"; — "Of that day and hour knoweth no man," and: "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth"; — Christ's word: "I seek not mine own glory," and: "I am the light of the world"; — "God has his