# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1930_S28
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

28 Proceedings of the thirty-second convention

esting writings of the great Reformer is the treatise "Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen" [On the Freedom of a Christian] of the year 1520, in which he sets forth two points: "1. A Christian man is a free lord over all things and subject to no one; 2. a Christian man is a dutiful servant of all things and subject to everyone." (XIX, 986 ff.) In this sense and spirit the work of the Church is to proceed.

We say accordingly that churchly ceremonies have a definite confessional value and the Church must therefore at all times proceed with great caution in the observance of such customs and ceremonies. This is shown already by the history of liturgics, which can also in this respect be our teacher. It is a fact that more false doctrines have come into the people through the constant presentation in the services of Sundays and festivals than through all papal decrees, through all resolutions of the councils and through all writings of the Scholastics. The post-Nicene Church did not simply invent the doctrines of the invocation of the saints and of purgatory, but these developed in the course of time out of ceremonies that appeared quite innocent. It was thus: The first Christians were so much oriented toward the world beyond that they took together and regarded the congregation on this side of the grave and on the other side of it as one great church, a conception that was not in itself wrong. Therefore, according to the first liturgies, the prayers in the great church prayer were made for all, whether they were still here on earth or already belonged to the blessed perfected. But it did not last long before these prayers were altered by small additions and transformed into prayers for the departed. In consequence it soon came about that the departed brethren were no longer regarded as dead whose lot was already decided, but as brethren who were merely in another place and whose situation and future fate were not yet fully determined. From this there then developed the actual prayer for the dead. — It was similar with the doctrine of purgatory. Beginning with Origen and Cyprian, one can trace the false idea through individual statements of a Chrysostom and an Augustine, until finally Gregory the Great, who already found the prayers in this sense and then built them out further, gained the courage to put forth the doctrine of purgatory even publicly. — In quite the same way the idea of sacrifice developed in connection with the Holy Supper. While the Fathers before the Council of Nicaea on the whole still stood right in the question of the real presence of the body and blood in the Sacrament, we nevertheless soon after find passages that indicate a gradual deviation. And here too the development of the liturgy kept pace with the false thoughts, so that people departed from the doctrine of the true presence of the body and blood of Christ in, with and under the bread and wine, then taught a local, physical presence, and finally asserted that the earthly elements in the Sacrament were transformed into the heavenly goods of the body and blood of Christ. But these ideas found entry among the people through the regular presentation of the erroneous opinions in the Sunday and festival services.

Also in the age of the Reformation this matter made difficulties. We know indeed that Carlstadt and the iconoclasts had attempted to abolish all churchly ceremonies by force, while Luther, through patient, friendly instruction about what was essentially wrong in the customs of worship, paved the way for a purified, truly Christian order of worship, which he in the