# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1912_S9
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1912. 9

teaching in the Christian Church the principle: "If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God," 1 Pet. 4:11. The unity of the Christian Church, in spite of all differences of circumstances, times, peoples and tongues, consists in its adherence to the Word of Christ, and its disunion in departure from this Word. To preserve this unity and to prevent division, the Apostle Paul therefore, wherever he was, sends to the congregations and to their teachers the message and admonition by no means to "teach otherwise," but to hold unwaveringly to the pattern of the sound words that they have learned from Christ's apostles. From Athens he writes to Thessalonica: "Hold fast the ordinances which you have been taught, whether by our word or epistle," 2 Thess. 2:15. Timothy he left at Ephesus, to charge certain persons that they "teach no other doctrine," 1 Tim. 1:3. From Corinth he writes to Rome: "Avoid those who teach otherwise!" Rom. 16:17. From Rome he writes to Galatia and rebukes the Galatians for having let themselves be turned away to another gospel, though there is no other, Gal. 1:6 ff. And when he travels back from Europe to Jerusalem, he summons the elders of the congregation of Ephesus to Miletus and warns them against people who would arise from their own midst and speak perverse things to draw the disciples after them, Acts 20:29 f.
From this it is now quite clear on whom, where doctrine is concerned, the guilt of division in the Christian Church falls: namely not on those who hold unwaveringly to the doctrine of the apostles, but always on those who depart from it and teach otherwise. We Lutherans of the Synodical Conference are now certain of this, and have proved it before the Church, that our doctrine, especially also in the points drawn into dispute, is not our own word but God's Word. We could and can in all points lay our finger on God's Word and say: "It is written." It is a complete inversion of the biblical use of language when it is asserted that by our insistence on the pure, unadulterated doctrine of the Word of God we cause and perpetuate division in the Church. People lay claim, especially in our time, to "freedom of doctrine" [*Lehrfreiheit*]. There is freedom of doctrine in the state, because it is not the business of the state to teach and govern the Christian Church. But there is no freedom of doctrine in the Christian Church, because in the Christian Church, by God's command and order, everyone who appears as a teacher is to speak God's Word. Whoever in the Christian Church claims freedom of doctrine for himself thereby claims the right to cause division in the Christian Church and to set himself up beside Christ and against Christ as a head and ruler in the Church.
With this we have already come to the second point on which we wished to be instructed by the Apostle Paul, namely, how division is to be judged.