# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Dezember 1856_S373
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

An Explanation Concerning the Doctrine of the Church. 373

...whether, or on the other hand, the visible church, including all who belong to its outward fellowship, is the body of Christ — I formerly held to the latter view. This opinion had formed in me in my very earliest days, in which I came, out of the disjointed unionistic condition, only gradually to the knowledge of Lutheran doctrine; the occasion for it was, so far as I recall, the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord's Supper, that even the unworthy and unbelieving truly receive the body and blood of the Lord in the sacrament. This reception by the unworthy I then conceived in a purely mechanical way and according to human understanding: if the unworthy receive the body of the Lord, then it does indeed enter into them, uniting itself in some way with their person, and from this there arose for me the notion of a union of the unworthy with the body of Christ that was indeed real (actual), yet not saving — that is, not living, but, so to speak, dead. I carried the same notion over consistently to baptism as well. And so there grew out of this my picture of the church: the visible church is the actual body of Christ, which is like a tree on which some branches are green and fresh, some dry and withered, yet still truly on the tree, while other branches have already fallen entirely away from the tree, or have been cut off from it (by the tree) and are thus no longer joined to the tree. — I now confess, with heartfelt contrition, that I erred; but I did so unknowingly and in honest conviction: on the one hand, it truly never occurred to me that my opinion offended against the regula fidei (rule of faith), since I did not think I was saying anything other than what the church has always maintained concerning the reception by the unworthy in the holy Supper; on the other hand, I believed myself bound by the simple, literal understanding of a few scriptural sayings, Gal. 3:27 and 1 Cor. 10:17 together with 12:13, which I applied without qualification to all the baptized and communicants. I do not know how many of those brethren who hold the visible church to be the body of Christ came to their error in the same way I did. Only this much seems clear to me: the whole point in dispute turns solely on the doctrine of the power and effect of the sacraments; were the resolution of the dispute sought more here, one would come to clarity more easily and quickly, and in any case one could not remain in doubt as to what is Lutheran doctrine and what is not. If the visible church, including all the baptized, even the unconverted, is the body of Christ, then it follows infallibly from this that the outward reception of the holy sacraments must have such an effect upon the unbelieving and dead members of the church that they thereby become actual, if dead, members of the body of Christ. Thus the simple point in dispute is this:

do the sacraments, even apart from the faith of the recipients, have such an effect that these recipients are thereby brought into a real, actual membership in the body of Christ — or not?