# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

18 Proceedings of the nineteenth convention

the revelation of what they could not know — something other than these two, I say, is inspiration, which, with regard to the content, to the material they had to write, consisted in this: that the Holy Spirit moved them, for the particular and special purpose for which they were to write, to select this and precisely this from what they knew and what had been revealed to them, and nothing else, and that he then preserved them completely, in the writing down, from all error, from all lapses of memory, and from all that clings to human historiography by way of weakness.

I will make this somewhat clearer by an example from ordinary life. Suppose our Mr. Chairman said to all of us who have studied theology: Sit down and each of you write on a piece of paper the twelve most important facts of church history since the general Council of Nicaea in 325. What would happen? We all know not merely twelve but ten times twelve and more facts from church history; we should therefore have to exercise criticism, and would do so, one this way, another that, according to how his knowledge of church history or his judgment is constituted. Then we would probably all write: 1. The appearance of Athanasius; 2. of Augustine; 3. Gregory VII pushes the claims of the papacy to the extreme; 4. Hus; 5. Luther; 6. The completion and introduction of the Book of Concord; 7. — well, what now? Let us rather say at once: 12. God gives the Lutheran Church of America in Dr. Walther a mighty and faithful witness. That we would probably all write; but those are only seven points that we had in common, and the Chairman has asked for twelve. The other five we would probably not all have alike; one would insert some dates before, another after the Reformation. But further: if the President [Präſes] now said to one group of us: You write down from church history the twelve most important dates that have had influence on the spread of the Gospel in the world, and to the other group: You the twelve most important doctrinal controversies; to a third group: You the names of the most prominent church writers — then we should all indeed have to report on the same period, but in quite different directions. Many a name and many an event would then be found in more than one series, but always in a different light and in a different connection. The difference would probably be still more noticeable than in the first case, and there would be no lack of lapses of memory and errors of judgment either. Now, to stay with the four evangelists: they all wrote about one period, about the same life of Jesus up to his resurrection from the dead, but each had at the same time received from God his particular task, and the Holy Spirit so guided them in it that they described, faithful to the truth and without any error, precisely what served the goal set before them, so that without, through the fault of their lack of