# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1908_S7
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1908. 7

age, earthly possessions and education. Among them there are man and woman, old and children, poor and rich, educated and uneducated. They differ by race: there are white, black, yellow, copper-colored, etc., Christians. They are separated by the place where they live: they live in the desert and on the sea, in the forests and on the prairies, in the cities and in the country. They are separated from one another by oceans and high mountains. They live under quite different civil conditions: they live in republics and monarchies; they are princes and subjects, employers and workers; they are Democrats and Republicans, etc. But among them there is a mighty, wonderful unity in spite of all outward difference: they have one faith.

And what kind of faith is that? It is not the faith by which one is convinced that there is a God. The heathen have that faith too. Nor is it the faith of the old and new Rationalists, of the Unitarians, etc., who still speak of Christ but deny Christ's divinity and vicarious satisfaction and therefore place the essence of Christianity in morality or ethics. Nor is it the faith of the Romanists, who confess Christ as God and man, but who want to be saved not by faith in God's grace in Christ alone, but also by so-called infused grace, that is, by their own works. Nor is it the faith of the Arminian sectarians and the synergistic Lutherans, who indeed confess Christ's divinity, His work as God-man, and in part also faith in Christ as the only means of obtaining salvation, but who then again make faith itself partly a human work, and make the works of the Law, good conduct, a lesser guilt, etc., part of the ground of salvation. Nor is it the head-faith of those who are outwardly within the orthodox church and can speak correctly about faith, without the heart grasping or embracing Christ, the Savior of sinners (fides acquisita).

No, the faith that makes the inner, invisible unity of the Christian Church is the faith in Christ wrought by the Spirit; the faith that has as its object, for the obtaining of righteousness and salvation, only Christ in His vicarious satisfaction; the faith that grasps the Christ outside of us in the promise of the Gospel; the faith that trusts solely in God's mercy in Christ. In other words: it is faith in the Christian doctrine of justification, which the Apostle describes in the words: "Therefore we hold that a man is justified without the works of the Law, by faith alone," Rom. 3:28. Only this faith, which is produced in the heart by the Holy Spirit alone, without human cooperation, makes a person a member of the Christian Church, as it says in Acts 5:14: "And believers were the more added" (that is, to the congregation or Church), "who believed in the Lord" (πιστεύοντες τῷ κυρίῳ).