LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1971, Page 234

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

234 PRESIDENT’S REPORT

Mary was Deotdzos, that “in, with, and under” the bread and
wine of the Lord’s Supper Christ’s body and blood are actu-
ally present, are given, and are orally received by worthy and
unworthy communicants, — these are, it is true, dogmatic
expressions which were not found in the orthodox Church
till the days of Arius, Nestorius, Eutyches, and Zwingli; but
they are not new dogmas. Furthermore, we do not deny
that through continued searching of the Scriptures by the
Church some things are by and by cleared up which before,
through imperfect acquaintance with the languages and his-
tory, had been unknown; we admit that in this manner the

which it had not noticed before. It must not be forgotten
that it is by agreement with the Church of all ages in matters
of doctrine, that is, by the so-called successio doctrinalis,
that the Church of any given period must prove itself not to
be a new, a false Church, but a part of the Church universal,

That our Church never entertained the idea of a gradual
formation of dogmas but that this notion arose in the period

expressly appeals not only to its agreement with Holy Scrip-
ture, but with “the Church catholic” (ecclesia catholica),
yes, even with the old “Roman” Church “as known from its
writers.” Hence the authors declare [in the German version]

that the Church of the Reformation has remained loyal to
the old Church and its teachings, that contrariwise the
papistic Church has defected from the old Church and its

God as the Church possessed it; for this reason we with it

Church, true likeness and complete unity with the latter.”
(XVII, 1659.) In another passage Luther writes: “The Chris-
tian Church is dispersed throughout the whole world; it
believes as I believe, and I believe as it believes; we have
no collision or discrepancy in our faith.” (Comments on John
7:40; VII, 2347.) For this reason Luther Says expressly: “We

Eckhart, for instance, in the title of his patristic compendium,
characterizes this work as one “in which the agreement of
pious antiquity with the confession of our churches is dem-
onstrated in every article of theological instruction, and the
clamor of the opponents alleging newness of doctrine on our
part is proved false.” (Compendium Theol. Patrum, ete.
Jenae, 1606.) To give another example, J. W. Baier, in the
foreword of his excellent History of Dogma, defines this
branch of theological study thus: “It is historical theology
which reports the doctrine of religion and the treatment

preservation of the true doctrine and of the succession of
the true Church.” (Compend. Theol. Historicae. Vinariae,
1699.)

The attitude of our Church toward the modern theory of
dogmatic evolution may furthermore be gathered from the
attributes with which our Church invests articles of faith.
H. Kromayer, for instance, writes: “We promise, 1. that the
articles which one must know to be saved are articles be-

not by which one believes, faith in the objective sense, that
is, the doctrine which is to be accepted by faith, is meant,
and not subjective faith, which apprehends the merits of
Christ and is differentiated from the objects to which it is
directed”). (Theol. Positivo-Polem. Lips., 1677, p.1.) Calo-
vius ascribes seven attributes to the articles of faith: 1. truth
and certainty; 2. sublimity, the quality of transcending the
powers of apprehension of human reason; 3. incapability of
being proved scientifically [Inevidenz}; 4. necessity; 5. con-
nection with the way of salvation; 6. mutual relationship;
7. harmony. With respect to number 4 he states: “The articles
of faith have to be believed, and hence they are unchangeable
and always have the same quality, as far as that which is to
be believed is concerned. ... This necessity, however, is of
various kinds.” (System. I, 771 sq.)

Again, our orthodox theologians definitely reject the view
that there is a gradual formation of articles of faith. With

of faith increase, Musaeus, for instance, states: “It does not
matter that the view is expressed that the fundamental
articles of faith in the Church cannot increase. This we by
no means deny; on the contrary, we all confess with one
mouth that everything that one must believe to be saved was
already taught orally by the apostles and that it was received
into the Holy Scriptures and thus handed down in written

grow. .. . The truth contained in each article of faith is
one and simple. The error, however, through which it may,
directly or indirectly, be shaken or subverted is of various
kinds and complex. The primitive Church merely taught and
expounded the truth in words that were sufficiently clear,
without regard to foreign and subtle, at that time neither
existent nor known, interpretations, which in the course of
time the impiety of men has invented for the perversion of

guard the true sense of the Scriptures against the fictitious
interpretations of the human mind.” (Tractatus de Ecclesia.
Jenae, 1671. II, 317 sq.) J. Adam Scherzer, a Leipzig theolo-
gian, writes thus: “The schoolmen say that the articles of
faith grew with respect to conscious apprehension (quoad
cognitionem explicitam); this is the secret and arcanum for
the progress of scholastic theology.” (System. Theol. Lips.,
1704, p.8.) This applies likewise to modern theology in the
Lutheran Church. The assumption that dogmas are formed

only gradually is its moving principle. As long as this as~

of innovations and the process of dissolution, and the return
to the one old, immutable, everlasting truth of the Church
universal is effectually blocked.

and, furthermore, its power to generate faith in those articles,
Scripture possesses 1) perfection or sufficiency, i.e., the at-
tribute of containing and presenting in clear and convincing
words all the dogmas which one must know and believe in
order to be saved; and 2) canonical, normative authority,

is truly Christian or not. Scripture, in short, is the only cri-
terion for determining the Christian religion and theology,