# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1855_S38
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

38 On the Doctrine of the Holy Preaching Office.

To give ministers of the Church, to endow them, and to preserve them in His Word”) makes this itself impossible unless it recognizes the laborers sent and given by Him, just as, in answer to His prayer, He recognized the Twelve given to Him by the Father, and, following His example, which He has likewise left us here for imitation, chooses and calls them to such work and labor in the harvest of the New Testament.) But this apostolic mandate by no means includes the authority to establish as jus divinum arrangements, provisions, and institutions that God Himself has not ordained, even though they originated with men. Here Wucherer errs, for the words of Christ say nothing about this; 1 Corinthians 3:21 ff. and Galatians 5:1 also quite plainly oppose it; likewise, 1 Timothy 2:7—3:15; 2:1:1 ff.—2:8 ff.; Titus 1:1—5; Acts 13:1—3, 4; 20:28 prove neither hereditary transmission nor this, because nowhere here is there any mention of transferring divine right to human ordinances. He is correct only in ascribing divine institution to the Church’s public preaching office; but because he does not at the same time attribute this office to believers as originally and directly bestowed upon them, he must, of course, go back to the Romanists and borrow from them the dogma of succession in order to secure and vindicate a divine origin for the presbyterate—which would otherwise be a purely human creation—and to elevate it into an express institution from heaven rather than from earth, with the dangerous opinion that apostolic, and therefore human, ordinances—even if not perverse—which are not contained in the law of Christ are to be regarded as equal to the divine commandments. A remarkable contradiction: with the well-meaning and honorable intention of maintaining the pastoral office as a divine institution, one would rather make what is human into God’s command than receive God’s gift from human hands; one would rather invent divinely ordained traditions than grasp from the Gospel what can be known only by faith! Why are people so afraid of the expression “indirectly,” as though this kind of transmission could not be just as divine as the primary one? And why do they mutilate the Gospel and rob it of its fullness, when it has once and for all been entrusted simply and without diminution to faith as a deposit, without which neither a church nor an office nor its transmission to persons who administer it can be conceived (2 Timothy 2:2)? If there were no faith on earth to take hold of the blessings of Christ’s spiritual kingdom, then the Word, the Office of the Keys, the Sacrament, and everything that follows from them would likewise not be found, but would long ago have been withdrawn by God.

Wucherer rightly says on pp. 14 f. that the presbyterial office is contained within the apostolic office; that it is precisely that part of the apostolic office in general which must be regarded as continuing—the permanent office charged with feeding Christ’s flock and going before it as an example; and that from the very beginning it was enclosed within the apostolic office and exercised in and with it, just as the diaconate was. He rightly writes on p. 17.