# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S21
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1902. 21

From the Debate.

To the question whether all those are to be regarded as unbelievers for whom it is not settled from the outset that there can be no contradictions in the Bible, the following answer was given:

When it is said that the truth of Holy Scripture is settled from the outset for a Christian, that does not mean: Whoever does not hold this fast from the outset is no Christian. Even a Christian, when he reads Scripture or the pronouncements of its opponents, has doubts here and there as to how the matter may stand. We even say: It is possible for someone to be a true child of God without even knowing that there is a Bible. Through the preaching of a missionary the Law of God can crush hearts and the Gospel comfort them again. Thus a heathen comes to faith and has still not learned that there is a Holy Scripture, much less has he heard lectures to the effect that there are no contradictions in Scripture. It is also not necessary that the true nature of Scripture be known to him at once. But when someone has become a Christian through faith and has entered, as a child of God, into the house of God, the Christian Church, and when the unique Book now confronts him here, which is God's Word and presents itself as God's Word, then the child of God too recognizes this Book as God's Word, as the household book of the Christian Church. He who is of God recognizes precisely the speech of God as God's Word. For that reason the saying holds as self-evident for a Christian: The Scripture cannot be broken. For that reason a child of God also accepts Scripture as inviolable truth. If a Christian were to say: Scripture is not God's Word, that would be just as unnatural as if a child in the house were to say: I do not know my father's voice. For that reason our fathers have said that questions by which the divinity of Scripture is called into doubt should really not arise at all in the Church. But Christians are not purely children of God: they still have the old nature about them, and insofar as they have flesh about them, doubts also arise in them about the fact that Scripture is God's Word. Insofar as they doubt the origin and authority of the Word of God, they too are to be treated like unbelievers. According to the flesh, apologetics serves them as it does unbelievers, namely so that the flesh may thereby be held somewhat in check outwardly. At the same time it stands firm that no one comes to faith through apologetics. Let us suppose that someone found no contradictions at all in Scripture any more with respect to chronology and the like, that all apparent contradictions were completely resolved for him, but that there were nothing more in him than this human belief in the truthfulness of Scripture: he would still be wholly a non-Christian and would stand outside the kingdom of God. So little can one