# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1855_S380
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

380 Theses on the Church etc.

that of Luther's in the Large Catechism: "'I believe that there is upon earth a holy little flock and congregation of pure saints, under one head, Christ, called together by the Holy Spirit, in one faith, mind, and understanding, with manifold gifts, yet agreeing in love, without sects or divisions!'"

"The definition given leads, in its collateral aspects, over to the theme that is to occupy us especially here, namely the marks of distinction between the invisible and the visible Church. Allow me here, in a few words, to perform the office of an anatomist who seeks to lay bare the object from its covering, in order to arrive at a simple judgment. When the invisible Church is spoken of here, it goes without saying that the insertions and reinterpretations of more recent theology cannot come into consideration. There is no talk here of the distinction between that ideal and real Church, as it drags itself along from generation to generation in the dogmatic textbooks, notwithstanding that it is contrary to the sense and word of the Confessions; nor of the distinction between divine and human powers in the Church, and so forth. The invisible Church is the mysterious communion of believers in the Holy Spirit under Christ their head, which is not an idea but a fact. Even though our Symbols do not have the word, it can nonetheless not be doubted that they have the thing itself. That this concept was an invention born of the Reformers' need, in order to gain a subject for the predicates una, sancta, apostolica, catholica, may — despite the standing which the chief proponent of this opinion, Rothe, enjoys among the more recent theologians — be reckoned among the discredited claims. It can, as among the older theologians especially Gerhard in his confessio catholica, and among the more recent Münchmeyer, have sufficiently established, not be doubted that the concept of the invisible Church has been expressed by the most recognized teachers of the Church of all ages, and that it became known to Luther at a time when embarrassment, the alleged mother of this concept, did not yet exist for him. What has now been objected to this concept in old and new times is twofold: first, that it involves a logical contradiction; second, that it cannot be proved from Scripture. The examination of these objections, which will probably not lack advocates here, is a matter for the conference.

The contradiction which the doctrine of the invisible Church has met with among otherwise faithful adherents of our confession has its ground, at least in part, in the abuse which pectoral theology has in recent times made of this concept, in that it believes it has found in it the legal title for its indifference toward confession, doctrine, constitution, and cult. Precisely those theologians who thoroughly feel through the necessary connection between the body and the soul of the Church, who have deeply experienced what significance the organic