# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S2
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

2                    On the Doctrine of the Holy Office of the Ministry.

But in that Wucherer endeavors to combat, as unlutheran, that view according to which the office of a preacher or pastor rests upon the moral law of order and ecclesiastical institution, he himself does not stand by Luther's teaching, and wishes to find his own view — which likewise runs contrary to the latter — in Scripture, and even to read it out of the symbolical writings of the Lutherans. This obliges us to add a few remarks to the otherwise highly estimable writing of this upright man, which also breathes a spirit of polemic quite different from what one has, alas, been able to observe in America.

At the very outset of his work Wucherer states the status controversiae. The manner of expression he employs for this purpose is somewhat striking to Lutherans; yet it can be explained from its own antitheses. Even the words of Höfling cited on p. 3 do not hit the point of difference with sufficient precision: "That the apostles had a special calling proper to their station is not in dispute; but the question is who is the more immediate heir of the apostolic mandate of office and of the apostolic promise of office, insofar as the apostolic office must be regarded as continuing at all — the fellowship of those who believe in the Lord through the apostles' word (John 17:20), or a calling instituted once for all in the apostles and through the apostles within the church." This, now, is precisely what Wucherer first sets out to prove: that the presbyter's or bishop's office is the heir of the apostolic mandate of office (and thus also of the apostolic promise of office), but that the congregation is by no means such. He maintains, with many of his opponents, that the passages Eph. 4:11, 1 Cor. 12:28, Acts 20:28, John 20:21ff., Mark 16:15f., Matt. 28:19f., which have been cited for the immediate inheritance of the apostolic mandate of office etc., say nothing to the point. We do not think so, and with these and a few other passages we intend rather to lay the ground from Scripture for this: that the believing congregation contains within itself the apostolic calling proper to that station, as the containing contains the contained, and that she, the saints, is heir of everything, everything whatsoever that Christ can give in heaven and on earth. Wucherer says on p. 34 that the contrary — namely, that the congregation is that heir of the command given to the apostles (and of the promise accompanying it) — likewise cannot be proven from any clear passage of Scripture. We say: Christ has bestowed upon his bride, chosen by him, the same dignity, honor, riches, and power that he himself possesses, raising her to a share in rank, might, and all his majesty, as happens in earthly relations — only that she can, may, and should make use of this good, inherited from the heavenly Father, only so far as he dispenses it to her out of the treasury through his Spirit, since he has reserved the governance to himself. The estate of Christians is to hover above everything and all things, as the heaven above the earth; the apostolate, too, is rooted in