# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1906_S37
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1906. 37

matters drag on, the worse they become, and the more the hearts are estranged from one another.

The main emphasis is to be laid on patience and forbearance in love. When the peace has been disturbed, we should practice patience and not think that we must conduct the strife. That is not the right disposition. When we practice patience we can be quite calm about it and need not become nervous over it. Even if one party has been injured, he should not say at once: Very well, then let us part! The unity in the Spirit within the Synodical Conference [Synodalkonferenz] has served to keep the purity of doctrine preserved among us. The fact that we stand together in the Synodical Conference has not been without effect in that we have remained with the truth in the controversies of the last 25 years. Even in the case, then, that someone had been taken advantage of in a dispute, he should bear it in patience, if he can bear it according to God's Word.

In the agreements of the Synodical Conference attention is called to the fact that in individual cases it may be the right thing to leave certain matters to themselves, without having to fear then the reproach that one is not acting exactly according to God's Word. As an example may serve the case that two congregations after long years of dispute come to make earnest peace. It is then not at all necessary to go back to the very first beginnings in order to measure everything exactly by the right. It is quite sufficient that one confesses open offenses and promises not to let them occur again; one need not settle all the details. Then, however, there are also cases in which settlement must always be insisted upon, namely when a ban has been imposed in a synod, and the person affected then wants to be received into another synod and complains that he was banned unjustly. Such a case must always be examined and brought to a decision. When someone in a synod has been put under the ban, the banning congregation and later also the synod have broken off fellowship with the banned person. If now another synod wanted to enter into church fellowship with the banned person and thus not recognize the ban as legitimate, a dissension would at once arise. In all such cases an exact investigation must take place, and we have also always kept in mind how easy it is to agree in regard to such cases. On account of such occurrences we have agreed on three points: 1. It must be established exactly whether the person concerned has really committed the sin of which he is accused; 2. it must be investigated whether the sin is a mortal sin, that is, one in which faith cannot continue to exist, or whether it is perhaps only a frailty such as can cling also to a believing Christian; 3. it must be investigated whether the person concerned was properly admonished according to Matt. 18. When