# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1930_S24
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

24 Proceedings of the thirty-second convention

and bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds."

On these and other passages of Scripture we base ourselves when our thesis says: "Every departure from a doctrine clearly revealed in Scripture contains possibilities of church division and, if the departing party persists in the error, must lead to a dissolution of the bonds of brotherhood." The Scripture proof has not only just been given, but is also in part already contained in the preceding thesis. For if Scripture is the pure Word of God, then all its parts are to be accepted as truth; then naturally all parts also have validity as Scripture doctrine, and the only exceptions are the sections whose direct application God himself has restricted, partly because the ceremonial law has been abolished, partly because as believers of the New Covenant we have the fulfilment of the prophecies as the ground of our hope of faith. Whoever therefore, beyond the limits set by God, wishes either to advocate and carry out a union, or even merely to maintain one, serves thereby not the unity in the Spirit, but only aggravates, in great measure, the inner disruption and disorder of outward Christendom. Therefore Luther writes in his conversation with Dr. Georg Major (XVII, 1179 f.): "You make yourselves suspect by silence and by cloaking; but if you believe as you say before me, then say so also in the Church, in lectionibus, concionibus et privatis colloquiis [in lectures, sermons and private conversations], and strengthen your brethren and help those who err back onto the right way and speak against the wilful spirits; otherwise your confession is only a mask and good for nothing. Whoever holds his doctrine, faith and confession to be true, right and certain cannot stand in one stall with others who lead false doctrine or are devoted to it, nor forever give good words to the devil and his crew. A teacher who keeps still and silent about errors and yet wishes to be a true teacher is worse than an open fanatic, . . . or he is wholly uncertain in himself and not worthy to be called a pupil, to say nothing of a teacher, and wishes to anger no one, nor to speak Christ's Word, nor to hurt the devil and the world."

We cannot refrain here from quoting several sections from Luther's work, the so-called Great Commentary on Galatians (IX, 642 ff.). He writes especially with reference to Gal. 5:9: "Therefore this saying is to be diligently noted against their argument, by which they wrongly impute to us that we tear apart love and unity in Christendom, to the great harm and detriment of the holy Church. We are truly ready and willing to show peace and love to them, provided they leave the doctrine of faith to us unimpaired and unfalsified. Where we cannot obtain this from them, it is in vain that they so highly extol Christian love. Accursed be the love into the abyss of hell that is maintained with harm and detriment to the doctrine of faith, to which everything should justly yield all together, be it love, apostle, angel from heaven, or whatever it may be. Therefore by regarding this matter so lightly and as of so little account they give sufficiently to understand what they think of the majesty and glory of the divine Word, etc. If they earnestly and from the heart believed that it was God's Word, they would not jest and play with it so frivolously, but would hold it in the highest honor and believe, without any doubt and disputation, what it tells and sets before them; they would also know,