# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S1
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Jahrgang I.               January 1855.               No. 1.

On the Doctrine of the Holy Office of the Ministry.

By Pastor O. Fürbringer.

The question of church and office is unquestionably a question of the times. It moves not only the Lutheran church but also communions standing outside her. The result of this contest will nevertheless be none other than that the evangelical doctrine will be recognized anew as justified from God's Word by all who earnestly seek the truth. The true church long ago settled this point of contention. What kind of church would it be, after all, if for eighteen centuries it had not been clear in its own mind what it itself was, and what its office was! (Matt. 28:20. 1 Tim. 8:15. John 16:13.) It depends only on rightly sifting out again and again the gold of the pure doctrine, and in this way letting oneself grow ever deeper in awareness of it. Because of the intimate and inseparable connection of the articles of church and office with the chief article, that of justification by grace in Christ Jesus through faith, it could not be otherwise than that the whole struggle of the Reformation was directed chiefly, next to that article, at this one. What our fathers have left us as an inheritance, let us take up ever more clearly into the understanding and ever more livingly into the heart—not in blind charcoal-burner's faith, but out of one's own certainty through the Holy Spirit, grounded upon the testimonies of His Word in the Bible.

The worthy German pastor Johann Friedrich Wucherer, too, has published a little book on the office of the ministry. He promises thereby "a thorough demonstration from Scripture and the Symbols that the evangelical-Lutheran pastoral office is the apostolic office of shepherding and teaching and is therefore a divine institution." This is also self-evident to us from the outset. The public office of the ministry in the church of God, unto the last day, is a divine institution and not essentially different from the holy office of the apostles. The view of the late Dr. Höfling, against which Wucherer's writing is directed above all, is not the strictly Lutheran one. But in that Wucherer