# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1856_S249
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Reply Letter from the Editor to a dear Friend etc. 249

as standing outside the church of Christ, because they did not belong to its particular ecclesiastical fellowship (for since they had to acknowledge them as members under the Head, Christ, and as being in Christ — how could they deny them the standing of being members of the church of Christ on earth?); and so they had of necessity to arrive at seeing the true church of Christ, as the body of Christ on earth, in the truly believing Christians, whatever outward church fellowship they might belong to.

And this doctrine the Reformers expressed in the confessional writings of our church.

But against this, dearest friend, you raise objection. — So that this objection of yours, as you have grounded it, may lie before us, I set down here in full the relevant passage of your letter. You write: "Article 7 (of the Augsburg Confession) had defined the church as congregatio sanctorum (in German: the assembly of all believers). That the opponents would raise objection to this, our confessors knew in advance, for the church does not appear, and thus appears nowhere on earth. Therefore they immediately added: this definition speaks of what the church proprie (in German: properly) is, that is, of what the church among us ought to be, always is before God, and will be in eternity. That is, in brief, my interpretation of the proprie (the word: properly). It thus does not occur to our confessors to break through the church, insofar as it is an externa societas signorum ecclesiae, h.e. verbi, professionis et sacramentorum, *) but rather they wish to portray the church in its holy calling, in its appearance before God, and in its appearance on the day of consummation."

Allow me, dearest friend, now to examine these words of yours. You concede that the church is described in Article 7 as being an assembly of believers. You also say that the Reformers knew that their opponents would raise objection to this definition of theirs. Accordingly you were conscious of having given a different definition of the church than the traditional one. The traditional one, however, was that the church is an outward state, like Venice and France. This traditional definition the Reformers reject with full consciousness; and, without wishing to deny that the church also appears outwardly, they teach that the church, properly speaking, is an assembly of believers. What else can that mean than: although the church also appears outwardly, yet according to its invisible essence it is an assembly of the truly believing (vere credentium). You, dear —

*) These words, taken from the Apology, p. 144, are not reproduced here exactly. The sentence from which they are taken reads: We concede that hypocrites and the ungodly are mixed in with the church in this life, and that they are members of the church insofar as they stand in the outward fellowship of the marks of the church (secundum externam societatem cet.), namely of the Word, of the confession, and of the sacraments.