# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1855_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

52 On the Doctrine of the Holy Preaching Office

contained in what has been written upon the heart and conscience of man—for although the ethical law requires the use of the Word of God within the order of teaching and hearing, it does not, beyond the communal right, determine more precisely the mode by which the Christian teaching office is to be conferred upon the person called (Höfling stops at that communal right, whereas we by no means do so, but recognize the promise given through Christ as authorizing the appointed preacher on God’s behalf); nor is it contained in the Gospel, for the Gospel knows nothing of commands and ordinances. What, consequently, remains? By means of an apostolic mandate of office, a ceremonial law is established in the New Testament. All the declarations and admonitions in the First Epistle to the Corinthians from chapter 5 onward would have to be regarded as merely human counsels and regulations (Wucherer, pp. 97ff.) if they are not comprehended within the universal natural law. The binding key is a handing over into the wrath of God revealed by that law; in the case of the incestuous Corinthian, this was joined with a gradual destruction of the flesh with which he had sinned, leading to an extraordinary death through Paul’s miraculous power. The nature of the matters treated in chapter 7 entailed that they required partly a command, partly a concession or an opinion. Nevertheless, the holy man wrote these latter things in a manner fully in accordance with the mind of the Lord, who at this point wished only an opinion to be given. Here too he did not act without divine inspiration; at times he did indeed have a special revelation and instruction; cf. chapter 14:37; 1 Thessalonians 4:15. The rest, however, he drew from the treasure of the Spirit of God and from the store of faithfulness that had arisen in him through his experience of God’s mercy; cf. chapter 7:25, 40. The command was issued imperatively; the opinions declared something advisable, though in a milder or stricter form; cf. verses 26, 12. The concession, which consisted in counsel adapted to another person’s condition and disposition, bore a resemblance to this; cf. verse 6; 2 Corinthians 8:10, 8. Both took into account what was beneficial to one’s neighbor. For the sake of avoiding offenses and of the salvation of souls, to relinquish one’s freedom, chapters 8ff., belongs to the commandment of love. Chapter 11:2–16 is a commendable ecclesiastical-apostolic order, and yet not without reference to nature; what follows is clearly moral in content, even if in part the application to practices of ecclesiastical propriety is left more to free Christian discernment. But if the order of teaching and hearing likewise belongs to the moral law, chapter 14:40, and yet the manner in which the heavenly gift of the oral message of salvation is imparted to transgressors cannot be derived from this source, then, if it is not given in the Gospel, it must bear the character of the Old Covenant. But how does that accord with the gift of the eternal testament? Truly, if anyone does not wish to acknowledge it, let him not acknowledge it—at his own peril!

But is this peril really present under such a theory, and will the