LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1971, Page 239

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PRESIDENT’S REPORT 239

the fall of those angels” (p.96); and since he believes that
the angels possessed bodies (p.80), the giants in Gen. 6:4
must be the offspring of these fallen angels who married
daughters of men. (History of the Old Covenant, pp. 44—46.)
But finally, in yonder world, he “exalts” the faithful of the
New Testament “above the angels, just as the human nature
of Christ is exalted above the angels.” (Bible and Astronomy,
p. 136.)

According to the hypothesis of the neo-theologians the
Lutheran Church must permit her servants to present all
doctrines that have not yet been fixed symbolically according
to their own caprice, without being able to disown them as
teachers who are unfaithful to our Confessions; for in view
of “the ever-widening circle in which the Church must tes-
tify, divergent opinions and convictions (according to Dorpat)
are not only unavoidable but also justifiable and permissible.
Even relative errors that cannot be avoided under these
circumstances can be borne by the Church without en-
dangering her unity in doctrine; and she must needs follow
this course because in this case she as a Church is not yet
in a position to reject the error as error.” O poor Lutheran
Church! According to this theory the Book of Concord, and
wherever only the Augustana has been officially accepted
as the Symbol of the Church, only this latter document, is
your Bible. Then you are nothing more than a miserable
sect, possessing only a brief excerpt of Biblical doctrines.
Whatever is not contained in these selections is none of your
concern as a Church; at least it is not your doctrine. Your
duty is to work out, and add, doctrines as the circumstances
of coming eras shall demand. Now, is it not more than
remarkable to realize that the very men who espouse this
theory which actually makes the Symbols the Bible of the
Church constantly accuse those who accept the doctrines of
the Symbols without reservation of placing the Confessions
on the same level with the Bible?

However, let us proceed. The assumption that a doctrine
becomes a dogma of the Lutheran Church after it has found
a place in our Symbols but is only an open question before
this step has been taken, militates finally against the fact
that our Church in her Symbols accepts not only those
doctrines which she was driven by certain circumstances to
mention expressly in those documents but the entire Bible,
all the doctrines which God has therein revealed. Whenever,
therefore, any controversy arose in our Church regarding
any doctrine, the very first question put was always: What
does the Bible say? Down to our day it has been absolutely
without precedent in our Church in a controversy to appeal
to the silence of the Confessions and to say that, if the
Church has not yet rendered a decision on that particular
point, a Lutheran must have the liberty to believe as he
sees fit. For even if every true Biblical doctrine is not
clearly defined in the Lutheran Symbols, yet every truly
Biblical doctrine belongs to the doctrines of the Lutheran
Church. In regard to a heterodox Church that has set up
a false principle and does not accept the Word of God as it
reads but insists on interpreting the Word either according
to reason or according to tradition, the following statement
cannot be upheld: “For her every doctrine of the Bible is
a doctrine of the Church.” But this statement can be made
of every truly orthodox Church and hence also of our dear
Evangelical Lutheran Church. At any rate, this was the
attitude of those faithful men through whose instrumentality
our Church drew up her precious Confessions. Thus we read
in Article IV of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession:
Peter “cites the agreement of all the prophets. This is truly
to cite the authority of the Church. For when all the holy
prophets bear witness, that is certainly a glorious, great,
excellent, powerful decretal and testimony.” (Trigl., p. 145.)
In Article XX of the same Confession we read again: “Peter
says, Acts 10:45: ‘To Him give all the prophets witness that
through His name, whosoever believeth on Him, shall receive
remission of sins.’ This strong testimony of all the holy
prophets may duly be called a decree of the catholic Chris-
tian Church. For even a single prophet is very highly
esteemed by God and a treasure worth the whole world.
To this Church of the prophets we would rather assent than
to these abandoned writers of the Confutation.” (Trigl.,
p. 339.) Finally, in Article XII we find these sentences:
“I verily think that, if all the holy prophets are unanimously
agreed in a declaration, it would also be a decree, a declara-
tion, and a unanimous strong conclusion of the universal,

catholic, Christian, holy Church and would be justly re-
garded as such. We concede neither to the Pope nor to the
Church the power to make decrees against this consensus
of the prophets.” (Trigl., p. 271.)

It ought to be quite clear now that our fathers connected
ideas with the “decision” and the “concensus of the Church”
which are altogether different from those current today.
Wherever Scripture had spoken, they believed the true
Church had “spoken.” For them the voice of Scripture was
at the same time the “voice of the Church.” And every
unanimous testimony of the prophets and apostles was for
them the correct “consensus,” a right “decree,” and a truly
“decisive” “conclusion” of the Church. (This unanimous
conclusion of the Church, of course, cannot be seen. Its exis-
tence, however, just like that of the Church, must be be-
lieved.) We readily see that a doctrine is defined in the
Symbols; but this fact does not constitute the unanimous
“conclusion” of the Church. The unanimous “conclusion” of
the Church we can gather alone through faith in the inspired
Word. On all sides our eye sees nothing and our ear hears
of nothing but discord and disunion in doctrine. In spite
of this fact our faith confidently sings every Sunday: “Who
the Christian Church doth ever Keep in unity of spirit.”
Or it confesses with Luther in his Large Catechism: “I be-
lieve that there is upon earth a little holy group and con-
gregation of pure saints, under one head, even Christ, called
together by the Holy Ghost, in one faith, one mind, and
understanding, with manifold gifts, yet agreeing in love,
without sects or schisms.” (Trigl., p.691.) That which truly
belongs to the Church is always Biblical, and that which
is truly Biblical always belongs to the Church. Our Church
does not want to be a “different” Church, with a “different”
faith; she does desire to be part of the Church of the apostles
and prophets, a part of the Bible Church. She has indeed
written Confessions and defined doctrines, not because they
should contain her whole body of doctrine nor because she
had reached a decision only on those doctrines found in her
Symbols, but because false churches and false teachers
forced her to make clear-cut statements on certain doctrines.
Up to the present time she has seen no necessity for writing
special Symbols on other doctrines. All that she believes
therefore is not found in her Symbols, but only in the Bible.
Her Symbols are not so much “the landmarks of her spiritual
development” as the boundary-line separating her from cer-
tain falsehoods. Hence Biblical and Lutheran are identical
terms for her. When, therefore, in 1528, Duke George, Lu-
ther’s bitter and fanatic enemy, demanded that the Lutherans
give an account of their Lutheranism, Luther advised them
to say: “They intended to remain with the holy Gospel.
Luther himself intended to be Lutheran only in so far as
he purely taught the Holy Scriptures.” (Walch, XXI, 234.)

Perhaps some one will interpose at this point and say:
“It may be true that the doctrines of Scripture and of the
Lutheran Church are identical. But can one not be a con-
sistent Lutheran if he as pastor or layman believes and
confesses everything that the Lutheran Church confesses as
her faith in her Symbols? Is not the acceptance of all the
doctrines defined in the Symbols sufficient to bind all Lu-
therans together in one body?” Quite right, without a doubt!
But we must always bear in mind that he who accepts the
Symbols cannot at the same time believe and confess articles
which will contradict and nullify the articles of the Symbols.
When, therefore, the syncretists of a previous era raised this
same objection against the Apostolic Creed, the venerable
Dannhauer gave them this answer: “If no other questions
had arisen besides those answered in the Apostolic Creed,
if one could assume that schismatics would hold nothing
contrary to this Creed nor try to induce others to accept
their contrary belief, the Apostolic Creed could indeed serve
as the norm for Christian unity and close friendship in the
Lord. If that were the case, our forefathers would not have
been forced to draw certain bounds for the endless private
and public expositions which from time to time led men into
controversy and to make those bounds the distinctive marks
of the orthodox Church in those doctrines which erring men
were undermining. ‘I readily admit,’ Huelsemann writes,
‘that men may be saved who believe nothing further than
that which every reader draws out of the words of the
Apostolic Creed. Yet I emphatically deny that there is a lay-
man who, in regard to those points in which some think
agreement could easily be reached in our day, believes