# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1930_S11
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1930. 11

saints according to the will of God." We may therefore say with confidence that the real, innermost faith of the heart always means the unconditional acceptance of the divine truth. Even if doubts and false opinions and conceptions are found in a Christian's consciousness (as all Christians experience again and again), this nevertheless does not impair real, inward faith. For this faith has grasped Christ as the essential Word, as the content of the Gospel. Holy Scripture is the Word that reveals Christ; Christ is the real content of Scripture. Faith in Christ and faith in the Gospel, in the Word, is identical. By virtue of this faith the Holy Spirit therefore gives every Christian, as it were in the innermost heart, a knowledge of the truth that doubts no point of the Word or misunderstands it in its context.

To put it another way: saving faith can well coexist with ignorance and misunderstanding of fundamental doctrines and of whole portions of Scripture, but not with express denial of any part of Scripture. Church fellowship, on the other hand, can exist only where there is complete agreement in all doctrines of Scripture, as we shall see later. This is set forth in Dr. Pieper's "Christliche Dogmatik" [Christian Dogmatics] (II, 506) as follows: "It must be maintained that the *fides iustificans* and *salvans* [justifying and saving faith] can be present also in those who do not know Scripture in all its parts, indeed also in those who err out of weakness in certain points of the revealed doctrine, as Scripture abundantly attests. Orthodoxy and the state of faith do not coincide. There is indeed no orthodoxy without saving faith; whoever does not believe the Gospel believes no part of the Christian doctrine with faith wrought by the Holy Spirit. But there is saving faith without orthodoxy being present with respect to all parts of Christian doctrine. This truth is confessed by Luther, the Lutheran Confessions and the dogmaticians, although they concede to no man the power to dispense from the acceptance of even a single part of Christian doctrine."

What is set forth in these statements on the basis of the Word of God is also attested in our Confessions. In the Apology, in Articles VII and VIII, "Of the Church," it says: "The Christian Church does not consist only in fellowship of outward signs, but consists chiefly in fellowship of eternal goods inwardly in the heart, such as the Holy Spirit, faith, the fear and love of God. . . . For the true kingdom of Christ, the true company of Christ, are and remain at all times those whom God's Spirit has enlightened, strengthens and governs, even though it is not yet revealed before the world but hidden under the cross, just as there is and remains at all times one Christ, who was crucified at that time and now rules and reigns in eternal glory in heaven. . . . We are not speaking of a fictitious church that is to be found nowhere, but we say and know for certain that this Church, in which saints live, truly is and remains on earth, namely, that some children of God are here and there in all the world, in all kinds of kingdoms, islands, lands, cities, from the rising of the sun to its going down, who have rightly known Christ and the Gospel." (*Conc. Trigl.*, 226 ff., § 5, 19, 21.)

This extract serves at the same time as a transition to the next point of our thesis, namely that the whole of Christendom on earth, the Church in the proper sense of the word, possesses this essential attribute of unity in the Spirit. This follows, among other things, from