# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1856_S294
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Distinction of Estates in the Church.                    294

are no representatives of the will of a mob; for that produces disunity;
but rather the representatives of truth and of right, and the guardians of
obedience to God's Word.*) That produces unity."

So far Mr. Pastor Grabau.

We cannot forbear earnestly warning against these principles concerning
the constitution, order, and government of the Church. They are as
false, unbiblical, and un-Lutheran as they are dangerous; all the more
dangerous in that Mr. Pastor Grabau intends, on the basis of these principles,
to propose here as well a "general ecclesiastical court," which is
to seek "a strong support, a final authority from God" in the civil magistracy
here, and to draw the same "into the service of the Church," and
into which the heads of households are to be admitted not as Christians
and their representatives, but as persons of estate entitled by virtue of
their particular estate.

It is, to be sure, quite good and fine that Mr. Pastor Grabau concedes
that a right government of the Church should be composed not of persons
of one estate only, but of all estates. All faithful Lutherans, from
Luther onward, have continually borne witness to this; namely in the
article on the election and calling of preachers, and on the ecclesiastical
courts (in matters of the ban, in synodal matters, and the like). But in
conceding this, Mr. P. Grabau's agreement with our old orthodox theologians
is only apparent. They wanted men from all estates, so that in
matters which concern all, all might also be represented, because, according
to God's Word, the highest judgment does not lie with individual
privileged persons, but with the whole — with the Church or congregation.
Matt. 18:15–20; 1 Cor. 5:4; 2 Cor. 2:6; Acts 15:22; 21:22. But
Mr. Pastor Grabau builds everything on "estate." Of the various estates
— of the nourishing and defending estate as well as of the teaching estate
— he says not only that they are in the Church (which is quite correct),
but that they also belong to the Church as such estates, that as such they
constitute it, and that as such they have the privilege of being ecclesiastical
judges. Thereby the Word of God is contradicted, which says: "There
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither
male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Gal. 3:28, cf.
1 Cor. 12:13. "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of
this world, my servants would fight for it." John 18:36, cf. Luke 22:25–26.
Indeed

*) It appears that Mr. P. G. has diligently studied the Tridentine Council. For whenever
it wishes to condemn a truth, it every time mixes something false into the true proposition,
and then condemns the whole. So Mr. P. G. does here as well. He wishes to condemn
the truth that every rightful ecclesiastical court is a representation of the whole Christian
congregation; and in order to be able to do this with some semblance of justification, he
says that the judges should not be representatives "of the will of a mob." This maxim
recurs again and again in Mr. P. G.'s polemics, whether he wishes to rid himself of the
pure doctrine of the Church, or of the [preaching] office, or of some other doctrine.
                    L. u. W.