# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1855_S47
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Holy Office of the Ministry. 47

...possesses) "it follows now" (all the more), "that in those sayings Peter represents the whole company of the apostles" (and is not meant alone; for if the apostles received the keys not even as apostles, but as believers of the kingdom of heaven — as is clear from what immediately precedes — how much less could Peter alone have had to hand them over to the pope;) "therefore no prerogative, no precedence, or lordship of Peter can be founded upon them. But that

gracious presence, heaven reconciled with earth, and a tabernacle of God is set up among men. (Cf. "Lutheraner," vol. IX, supplement to no. 12, p. 18f.) The second and third commandments enjoin upon us to let his word dwell richly among us in all wisdom, etc. But those who gather together for this purpose, and in general for any such purpose by which the honor of Jesus and the salvation of those for whose sake he became man are advanced, can indeed do this only in faith; for without faith they gather together in their own sinful name — indeed, in the devil's name. Thus here too, once again, the whole promise is given to faith; for where Christ is personally present in the midst of his believers, as the true God who is man, there is the fullness of his power and gifts, there is the eternal church, which he gathers to himself out of the human race and builds upon himself, letting it be his household; there is all the glory of the goods of the New Testament in the Holy Spirit, and thus also (the keys of the kingdom of heaven and) the office through which they are distributed in Word and sacraments; for whoever believes in him, as Scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water (John 7:38), in a measure that could not fall to the lot of the godly of the Old Testament, who possessed the knowledge of the eternal Word made flesh only in dark types and prophecies (cf. John 16:21, 26). — Thus it follows irrefutably from the words of Christ, and the symbolical books understand it no differently: the office of the keys is given first of all to the church, to the believers. Hence in the old Lutheran service books, as for example in "A Form of Christian Mass, How It Is Held, by the Reverend Herr Johann Bugenhagen of Pomerania, Pastor at Wittenberg, 1524," it reads thus: "May almighty, merciful God forgive you your sin, and I, by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the place of the holy church, declare you free, loosed, and released of all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen." See Löhe's Formulare, etc., pp. 37, 38. Cf. the same author's "Prüfungstafel," 2nd ed., 1841, pp. 63–65 (by Melissander — found again unchanged in the newest edition;) p. 83 (by Wolfgang Volprecht — in the newest edition with an alteration of the closing formula belonging here, which stands in the Nuremberg church book and is said probably to have been the general absolution over which a dispute arose among the Nuremberg pastors in Luther's time. And Chemnitz, in his Harmonia, says on Matt. 18:18: Ut ergo publicum ministerium ecclesiae ordinarie tantum pertinet ad personas ab ecclesia legitime vocatas, qui nomine Dei et ecclesiae, potestatem ligandi et solvendi habent erga suos auditores: ita in casu necessitatis eadem potestas recidit ad proximum Christianum quemvis. Potestas enim ligandi et solvendi ut Matth. 16, 19 promissa est Petro et Joh. 20, 23 tradita est omnibus apostolis: sic h. l. traditur a Christo ecclesiae, quae hanc potestatem ordinarie deferre potest personis legitime ad id vocatis; extraordinarie autem et in casu necessitatis unumquodlibet verum ecclesiae membrum idem jus habet eoque ad gloriam Dei et proximi salutem uti potest. And the co-author of the Formula of Concord doubtless understood well, and taught accordingly, the sense and the true, proper meaning of Luther in the Smalcald Articles, to which the former again subscribes; otherwise he would certainly have met with the most decided opposition.