Collection › LCMS Convention Proceedings (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1959 · 44th Convention, San Francisco › Page 24
LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1959, Page 24

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

24 DOCTRINAL ESSAY

involved, We can engage in so much Scriptural research that we
no longer hear God’s voice in Scripture. We can do so much Bib-
lical research that we no longer search the Scriptures to find in
them Christ and eternal life. Scripture is God’s book given by Him
to the church. In it God speaks and teaches to make men wise
unto salvation; and this Scripture is useful also for instruction, for
reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness (2 Tim.
3:16). Thus God’s concern for the truth and doctrine of His Word
in Scripture must continue to be also the most basic concern of the
church. It must, therefore, continue to be the deepest concern of
our Synod.
Holy Scripture is the book given by God the Holy Spirit to
His Church. From this book the Church learns what the
Church is, what the Church must do, what the Church must
suffer, where the Church should abide (bleiben). Where this
book ceases, there the Church ceases. For He (Jesus) says:

His Church will not listen to the voice of strangers. (Martin
Luther, Erlangen ed., 26, 100, 101)

If. The Source of Divine Doctrine

“Take heed unto the doctrine!” So Paul writes to Timothy.
What was the source of the doctrine to which Timothy was to
give attention and which Paul had committed to Timothy as a
sacred trust? Was it the doctrine of the Pharisees, in which Paul
had been instructed when he sat at the feet of Gamaliel? Was it
the product of Paul’s own fertile mind and imagination? Was it
the doctrine which Paul had discovered in philosophical systems
of thought, such as Stoicism and Epicureanism, currents of philo-
sophic speculation with which Paul had come in contact in the
larger cities where his missionary zeal had taken him? Was it
some Oriental cult stemming from Egypt or Persia or even India
which formed the basis of Paul’s doctrinal orientation? Was it an
adaptation of first-century Gnosticism with which Paul had to
contend as we note in some of his epistles? Or was his doctrine
no more than a Hellenized form of a Jewish myth?

It was none of these. Paul could rather refer directly to two
sources of his doctrine, which were, however, closely interrelated.
It is these which he wishes Timothy to remember and to which
Timothy was to cling. One of these sources was the Old Testament.
This was for Paul God’s authoritative Word. From it he frequently
quotes in his epistles. In reference to this source he can say
“according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3,4). The other source is
the Gospel which Paul had proclaimed and taught. Of this he
declares: “But I would have you know, brethren, that the Gospel
which was preached by me is not man’s Gospel, for I neither
received it of man neither was I taught it, but by the revelation