# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1930_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

18 Proceedings of the thirty-second convention

some words, even the words of our LORD Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing." Heb. 13:9: "Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines; for it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace." 2 John 9, 10: "Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed."

All this is to be done on the basis of Eph. 4:3, in order to preserve the true unity of the Spirit. It is not permissible to try here to distinguish between fundamental and non-fundamental doctrines, as has been shown especially by Rudelbach (*Reformation, Luthertum und Union* [Reformation, Lutheranism and Union], chap. 12). The words of Jesus, "Teaching them to observe all things," and those of the Apostle, "If any man teach otherwise, he is proud, knowing nothing," stand too powerfully there. A union in the truth can exist only where the unity in the Spirit, which is a fact among the members of the invisible Church with one another, comes forth and exercises itself in the full confession of the truth, in the full standing up for it. "For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth," writes the Apostle Paul, 2 Cor. 13:8, and he speaks of God's sentence of condemnation upon those who did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. "For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth," 2 Thess. 2:11, 12. Where one cannot operate with this presupposition of full standing up for the truth, there can be no question of real unity in the Spirit at all.

What the orthodox Church confesses in unity of faith is laid down especially in all the Confessional Writings of the Lutheran Church, in the Book of Concord of the year 1580. On the basis of the Word of God and these Confessional Writings, and taking recent historical developments into account, it might be summarized somewhat as follows:

We believe that the whole Scripture, that is, all the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, is inspired by God, that by virtue of inspiration the Holy Spirit moved certain persons at certain times to write down and proclaim certain historical facts as well as absolute revelations of his saving will, especially the word of reconciliation through Christ. In this inspiration the Holy Spirit did indeed make use of the natural gifts, the acquired abilities and the human knowledge of the holy writers, but above all he made known to them the mystery of redemption through Christ, and indeed in such a manner that no error was found in the original documents, neither in the divine doctrine and saving truth nor in the communications in the field of history nor in any other point of divine or human knowledge (geology, geography, astronomy, psychology, pedagogy, biology, etc.). The Bible, as the Scripture inspired by God, is wholly without error down to the individual words and letters, namely insofar as these form words, so that one distinguishes not only between singular and plural, but must even attend to the smallest letter and to the tittle, Matt. 5:18. The possibility of any error is excluded.