# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1855_S39
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Holy Ministry of Preaching. 39

It was present in the apostles; it was present everywhere there were congregations. And Dr. Höfling, with his undeniably incisive attacks, would easily be able to accomplish nothing if Wucherer made it the foundation and starting point of his defense that all the authority of the former was first vested in them as the believing Church. For whatever Christ has instituted and confers in the Gospel, and has conferred separately, is and remains divine, whether it comes to those who exercise it with or without the mediation of the Christian people. But instead, he wants an office that runs alongside it without arising together with it and from it; and for such an office one indeed finds in Scripture—notwithstanding that this would necessarily be required in order to evade the opponent’s weapons aimed at this exposed weakness—not a single statement, not one word of the Holy Spirit, from which it could be directly proved that the apostles, to the exclusion of all others, were charged with entrusting the authority to preach and administer the sacraments to men chosen by them. Where is the locus proving that Christ intended the presbyterate as such to proceed from the apostolate? Matthew 28:19–20 says the opposite. Titus 1:5, like Acts 14:23 and 2 Timothy 2:2, uses verbs that find their explanation in 2 Timothy 1:6; 1:4, 14; 1:18, where a ceremony is spoken of that is by no means divinely ordained but only ecclesiastically ordained. By its meaning, this ceremony never takes place without a call, whether that call is mediated or not, although the latter can take place without the ceremony. And Acts 13:1–4 and 20:28 indicate the higher authority in the call and confirm the human character of the ceremony. If the command in Matthew 28 applies to the apostles together with the preachers but not to the nations, then the word poreuthentes would also apply to every pastor, to which Mark adds eis ton kosmon hapanta; yet it cannot apply to the nations of the world themselves. If by this command the authority of the preachers was not first vested in the apostles as the believing Church, but rather in them as bearers of the office, then the visible Church is the antecedent and the invisible Church is secondary, for the office is first, not faith. But how can anything be visible unless its invisible essence underlies it? Only the invisible can become visible and enter into appearance. *) What, then, is

*) Note. To arrive at the biblical concept of the Church, one must begin not with its visibility but with its invisibility. A German Lutheran diocesan synod in Berlin has recently erred in this respect as well. The Church is the assembly of believers, Matthew 18:20; Ephesians 5:25 ff.; 2:19 ff.; 4:4 ff., etc. But how could this assembly ever become visible, 2 Timothy 2:20 f., etc., unless it were grounded in the invisible congregation of the true saints—the fellowship and unity in the Spirit that is a necessary effect of faith—just as this invisible congregation, through Word and Sacrament, which faith alone possesses, having received them directly from Christ, reveals itself in the confession of the mouth and of life and thereby brings about visible fellowship? Surely the very first question must be: Who, according to the Third Article of our holy Christian faith, is the founder and creative author of the Church? The Holy Spirit. How and in what manner? Through the Word, he brings about in the hearts he has chosen (faith and) the kingdom of God. Only from this do preachers then arise who gather a visible Church. Thus, in accordance with the organic