# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1856_S259
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Reply Letter from the Editor to a dear Friend etc. 259

—buildings, whose worth we too know how to appreciate, because they too belong to the visible manifestation of the church.

Allow me, dearest friend, to set down in closing a few further propositions, of which I hope that they might perhaps help bring us together in our view of the church; for I believe that at bottom we agree more than might appear at first glance.

1. I have stated in No. 3 of this year's Kirchenblatt, which you attacked, and earlier already in the preface to the volume of 1854 (p. 6, note), that the designation of the truly believing within the church of Christ by the expression "invisible church" is inconvenient, since it runs contrary to correct usage to designate a part of the whole by the same name given to the whole. In our confessional writings the expression "invisible church" does not occur; — I do not in the least contend for this expression, and am very willing to have some other expression chosen to express the matter meant. — Meanwhile, however, I must note that, as is well known, our old teachers of the faith who employ this expression seek, being conscious that it is not entirely suited to the matter, to guard it against misunderstanding, by saying that the doctrine of the invisible church is not to be understood as though what they call the invisible church stood outwardly over against the visible church as a second church, and by constantly teaching that the members of the invisible church are not to be sought outside the bounds of the visible church. With these safeguards, the use of the expression "invisible church," though inconvenient, is nevertheless not objectionable — just as, on account of the insufficiency of our power of speech, we are often compelled to make use of designations not entirely adequate, in which case we then also come to the aid of the deficiency and potential for misunderstanding in the expression by means of explanatory and qualifying additions.

2. It never occurred to the Reformers, through their definition of the church, to wish to deny the name "church" to the mass of the called and baptized Christians; just as little as they hesitated to call the baptized, as such, simply "Christians." In saying: the church, properly speaking, is the assembly of believers and saints, they expressly concede that the designation "church," in the wider sense, belongs to the whole mass to which believers and saints in this world, according to outward fellowship, belong as members. Likewise our old dogmaticians, in distinguishing invisible and visible church, call the congregation or assembly of the called "the church of Christ on earth." And I, for my part, am far from wishing to speak otherwise, or to deny that all baptized Christians stand in a different relationship to Christ than unbaptized people, inasmuch as grace