# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1851_S172
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 172 —

on the possession and the exercise of spiritual powers.

A proper distinction must be made between the possession and the
exercise of spiritual powers. It is one thing to ask who actually holds
and possesses the power, and another to ask who exercises it. The person
who exercises some spiritual power in the church is not, for that
reason, its actual and sole possessor. The true and actual possessor of
all spiritual rights and powers is only the congregation, to which the
keys have been given directly; but the administration and exercise of
them is entrusted to individuals according to the gifts required for it.
Thus, for example, the right to call [a pastor] is a right of the
congregation; but the exercise of it involves particular tasks, which
are fittingly distributed among the members of the congregation. To the
laity is allotted the choosing; to the pastors, as the most experienced,
the examination and ordination; to the civil authority (where it is a
member of the church) the confirmation. Not as though this distribution
of tasks had its basis in an exclusive right of this or that estate —
for the right is indivisibly the whole Church's — but in an order
pleasing to God and suited to the nature of the matter.

With regard to ordination, the question arose whether a pastor, when out
of office, can nevertheless administer its functions in the same manner
as if he were still a bearer of the holy office. The answer given was
that a distinction must be made: whether the pastor was driven from his
office against his will, for God's sake and the truth's — in which case
he still remains, before God, the rightful bishop of the congregation
that drove him out; or whether he voluntarily laid down his office, in
which case he has lost all official authority. When the call to the
congregation to which the pastor was called ceases, his official
authority likewise ceases, since there is no universal call for the
whole Church — that the apostles alone possessed.

To another question, whether ordination must be repeated when a pastor
again enters office, the answer given was that there is exactly as
little reason to consider a repetition of ordination necessary as there
is to regard it as improper, since it is in any case not commanded.
Meanwhile, installation or induction into office is, in essence, nothing
other than ordination — that is, the church's confirmation of the call
[Vocation].

Alongside these and other discussions, an important one also arose
concerning

The Effect of Holy Baptism.

The question had namely been raised whether someone who has not yet
been baptized can be born again. The answer given was: whoever has
received the gospel, as the seed of regeneration, into his heart in
faith and kept it there must also have regeneration itself, even though
the bath of regeneration is still lacking to him. One may not, however,
conclude from this either that baptism is therefore unnecessary — for it
is God's command, and contempt for it would be a manifest sign that one
is not regenerate — nor that baptism is without effect on those who have
already, before receiving it, been born again through faith in the Word.
For the divine means of grace retain their power and effect under all
circumstances, but according to the varying condition