# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S25
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1902. 25

[the closer one stays within it, the more exactly can] one see what is said in it, and can recognize in its right order what appears from high above under a false and distorted angle of view.

Finally, however, there are also quite good Lutheran Christians, pastors and laymen, to whom, in spite of their heart's conviction that Holy Scripture cannot contradict itself, it nevertheless often seems as though it did contradict itself. At times this has its ground in the fact that the readers have no command, or only an insufficient one, of the Hebrew and Greek languages, and are not sufficiently acquainted with the customs and usages that are presupposed in Scripture. At times it has its ground in the fact that they have not paid enough attention to what goes before and what follows. Whoever reads superficially at the end of the Commandments: I visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and overlooks that the children spoken of are those "that hate me," must indeed find a contradiction here with the words: "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father." Very often, however, the cause of one's thinking one sees contradictions is this: that one does not really know, and has not become clear about, what an actual, real contradiction is. If in a book it stands on one page: The temple of the body of Jesus was broken on Good Friday, and three pages further on it said: The temple of the body of Jesus was not broken on Good Friday, this seems to be an unconditional and irresolvable contradiction. And yet it need not be. If the first time the meaning of the passage is: Jesus was killed on Good Friday, his body, if one wishes to compare it with a temple, was as it were torn down, broken down, then this truth remains wholly and completely in force alongside the other, that on the occasion of his death his legs were no more broken than a bone of the Passover lamb might be broken in the Old Testament. It is then simply that the first time the breaking of the body of Christ is spoken of figuratively, the other time literally. As is well known, this apparent contradiction is found in Scripture, but, as we know, it dissolves into nothing, indeed into harmony. If I read in one case: On 3 March 1861 Czar Alexander II by an imperial edict abolished serfdom in Russia, and in another book: On 19 February 1861 the abolition of serfdom in Russia was decreed by an imperial edict, this seems to be quite a contradiction, for 3 March and 19 February are after all quite different dates. And yet there is no contradiction; for the one book gives the day according to the Gregorian calendar, which we also use, the other book designates the day according to the old calendar. 3 March 1861 is simply no other day than 19 February Old Style. So it also seems wholly to contradict itself when we read in Mark: "It was the third hour" (that is, nine o'clock in the morning), "and they crucified him," whereupon he goes on to