LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1971, Page 233

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PRESIDENT’S REPORT 238

ogy; as we view it, it is merely a daughter of Rationalism
appearing in Christian dress, a sister of Romanism hiding
behind a Protestant mask, and a fruitful mother of large
families of heresies. With respect to the Rationalists it is
well known that they were the first to describe dogmas not
as the unchangeable, divine, fundamental truths of Christi-
anity but as doctrinal opinions which had arisen in a scien-
tific process or which had been elevated by the various
denominations to the position of ecclesiastical teaching and
were considered authoritative in the respective age. For this
reason they strictly distinguished between doctrines of the
Church and of the Bible; the former they looked upon as
a presentation of beliefs of the Church which come and go
and are subject to constant change, the latter as a presenta-
tion of the eternal Christian doctrine, having validity for all
time, although, of course, they identified these eternal doc-
trines with the thin, watery soup cooked in the kitchen of
their own common sense. One of the chief representatives of
this crass Rationalism, Bretschneider, writes, for instance:
“We must distinguish between Christian theology” (which
in the mind of Bretschneider is Rationalism) “and dogmatic,
a distinction based on the name itself, for d56yya means
placitum, opinion, and that correctly describes dogmatic. It
represents the subjective view of individual parties or teach-
ers. As soon as these subjective views were fixed by some
public authority, public dogmatic arose, which, using the
word in the wider sense, might be called a presentation of
the teachings submitted in the various confessions. This
process started in the third century and was carried on
through the Christian councils and the confessions, or sym-
bols, which they sanctioned. Dogmatic was enlarged when
various churches and parties arose which publicly stated
their opinion concerning Christian teaching.” In the following
Bretschneider, however, admits that after the Reformation
dogmatic was regarded in our Church as identical with
Christian or Biblical theology. (Handbuch der Dogm. der
ev.-luth. K. von Bretschneider. Reutlingen, 1823. 1:24 f.)
Essentially Schleiermacher did not change this rationalistic
view when he began his dogmatic with these words: “Dog-
matic theology is the science pertaining to the relation of the
various doctrines obtaining at a certain time in a Christian
denomination.” He then proceeds: “Every presentation of
dectrine, regardless of its comprehensiveness and perfection,
in the course of time loses its original significance and retains
merely a historical importance. For unnoticeable changes
take place all the time wherever there is a lively exchange
of thought; changes depend on various factors making for
development.” (Der christl. Glaube. Reutlingen, 1828. I:11,
12.) In calling the theory of a successive development of
doctrine as taught by modern theologians a daughter of
Rationalism coming in a Christian dress, we, of course, do
not intend to impute to these men the view that the dogmas
of the Church are nothing but temporary opinions having
the sanction of church-bodies. What we wish to maintain is
merely that the view prevailing at present, holding doctrines
to be merely the results of historical movements, is of ra-
tionalistic origin. No proof is needed to show that Roman
Catholics also teach the gradual rise of dogma; but a few
years ago we beheld the spectacle of the present Pope’s
declaring the teaching of the Virgin Mary’s immaculate con-
ception, which before had been considered an open question,
to be a dogma and now binding for all “believers,” and just
now, according to reports, the alleged heir of Peter’s epis-
copal throne is preparing to enrich his Church again through
a new dogma by decreeing his own infallibility. While mod-
ern Lutheran theologians are far removed from the position
which would vindicate the right of the Roman Church or
even the Pope to create new articles of faith, their theory
that dogmas come into existence gradually, that on certain
peints a “unanimous consensus” arises, or that the Church
has finally “pronounced” and “decided” with respect to such
matters, is nothing but a sister of Romanism, having put
on a Protestant mask.

There are especially two reasons why an orthodox Chris-
tian cannot adopt but must decidedly reject this theory. In
the first place, this theory opposes the clear teaching of the
Word of God that the Church at all times is one, and one
only. Clearly and definitely Christ says: “Other sheep I have
which are not of this fold. Them also I must bring, and they
shall hear My voice; and there shall be one fold and one
Shepherd,” John 10:16. This unitas ecclesiae which all

Christendom confesses in the Nicene Creed is before every-
thing else a unity in the doctrine of faith. In this point
substantially even the Church of the Old Testament is one
with that of the New Testament. Peter says at the first
apostolic council: “We believe that through the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved even as they,” Acts 15:
11, and Paul testifies before Agrippa: “I continue unto this
day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other
things than those which the prophets and Moses did say
should come,” Acts 26:22; cf. 13:32,33. How otherwise could
Christ and the apostles have justly appealed to the Old Tes-
tament with respect to all teachings they proclaimed and
have asked their hearers to examine according to this norm
everything that they preached (John 5:39, 45-47; Acts 17:11)
if they had set forth a new doctrine of faith not yet revealed
to the Jewish Church in the writings of the Old Covenant?
If we accordingly have to believe that even the Old and
New Testament churches in their teachings are one, how
much more is this true of the Church of the New Testament
in its various periods of existence! Paul states clearly that
the Church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and
prophets,” Eph. 2:20. This foundation of the apostles and
prophets, however, is nothing else than the total number of
articles of faith taught by the apostles and prophets. Clear,
furthermore, is the expression of the apostle in which he
terms the Church the mother of all believers, Gal. 4:26. This
position, however, the Church holds because it possesses,
preserves, and uses that doctrine through which men are
brought to the knowledge of the true saving faith and are
kept in it, and because in this manner the Church constantly
perpetuates itself. Referring to the faith of the Church in
general, the Scriptures speak of “one faith,” Eph. 4:5; they
furthermore do not point to it as something which the
Church would have to seek, to discover, and to acquire
through a struggle, but they refer to it as the faith which
was once delivered unto the saints and for which the Church
would have to contend, Jude 3. While in the Word of God
the true disciples of Christ, or the true members of the
Church, are represented as the people that know the truth,
John 8:32, it is merely the hypocrites, outwardly joined to
the Church, who are described as people that are “ever
learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the
truth,” 2 Tim. 3:7. The modern theory, however, which holds
that dogmas are formed gradually, makes the Church a
philosophical school, whose task it is eternally to be looking
for the truth, while according to the Word of God the
Church is the mistress (“Hausehre”) to whom the truth has
been entrusted as her most precious treasure, as the good
thing which has been committed unto her to keep it by the
Holy Ghost, 2 Tim. 1:13, 14; 1 Tim. 6:20. Through this theory
the Church is made to resemble the human being who after
his birth is still unconscious, gradually, however, as the years
progress, becomes conscious of his environments, gathers
knowledge, and by and by arrives at the state of maturity,
while according to the testimony of the apostle the Corin-
thian Church, for instance, was already in the apostolic age
enriched “in all utterance and in all knowledge,” so that the
Corinthian Christians “did not come behind in any gift,
waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” 1 Cor. 1:5, 7.
It is true that the Word of God prophesies, and the history
of the Church confirms, that the Church does not always
stand before us in the same brilliant light of pure public
preaching, that it rather, to use the figure of the ancients,
in this respect decreases and increases like the moon, that it
experiences times of special gracious visitation and then
again declines. But it is an error to say that the Church from
century to century accumulates an ever-growing fund of
divine teachings and according to the law of historical devel-
opment arrives at constantly enhanced depths and riches of
knowledge. We admit that the Church all the time, through
“men that arise in its midst and who speak perverse things
to draw away disciples after them,” Acts 20:30, is compelled
to formulate with increasing precision the pure doctrine which
it possesses in order that the fraudulent errorists may be un-
masked and false teachings be kept from creeping into it
through ambiguous phraseology; but this does not imply that
the number of its dogmas grows; they are through this activ-
ity merely safeguarded ever more carefully against the danger
cf becoming perverted. That Christ is ds0otcws with the Fa-
ther, that the union of the divine and human nature in Christ
took place dovyyitws, drotams, dbiaigétos, dxwgiotws, that