# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1857_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded and Raised Up? 35

-ment, but that in it Christ alone, through his Word, wishes to rule —
nor was it a right which the various church-local con-
gregations of their civil territories (to each individual one of which, according to Christ's own
word and according to the evangelical doctrine of Matthew 18:17, the
power of self-government is entrusted just as fully and completely as to the whole church) had
transferred to them.

What, then, is the so-called "historical right" of the territorial princes to
govern the Lutheran church of their lands as supreme bishops, other than a kind of
perpetuation of that emergency without any emergency, in that simply what was needful was
not done — namely, to train and raise up the congregations to the knowledge and use of the
New Testament rights acquired for them by Christ and distributed in the Gospel,
for self-government, and to let that earlier, compelled-by-necessity
guardianship gradually fall away?

But let us ask what, then, is the cause that this supposed "his-
torical right," of which the doctrine of our church knows nothing, is now so emphatically
asserted and stressed by the constitution-mongering
theologians? The answer to that is threefold.

First, then, it is beyond all doubt that the scripturally grounded and
symbol-faithful view of the nature of the church has perhaps, among most
Lutheran theologians and writers, been all but lost;
for they do not view it, essentially and properly, either in each individual
congregation or in their totality, as an assembly of the be-
lieving and a congregation of the saints, who by the Holy Spirit, through the one baptism,
in the one faith, are united and joined into the one spiritual body of Christ, of the one
Lord and Savior, and as such are known and visible only to the Triune
God, but who nevertheless outwardly display, recognizably, the faith and
the new spiritual and heavenly nature in which they already live hidden with
Christ, as a pillar and foundation of
saving truth in the pure and unadulterated preaching of the Gospel
and in the administration of the Holy Sacraments conformed to it — in short, in the con-
fession of the mouth, and then also further, out into the works of
Christian love, in the invocation and praise of the Triune God,
and in the patience of the cross; for this same church is one holy Christian church,
whose walk, through the Holy Spirit and faith, is already now hidden in heaven
with Christ in God, and, like its Head, is invisible to the eyes of
men, yet which nevertheless, in the aforementioned manner, comes into appearance
in space and time, and does not merely, as an undefiled virgin, at
home and above enjoy the love of her heavenly Bridegroom, but
also, from the imperishable seed of the preached Gospel, bears
Him, as a fruitful mother, many children, like the dew from the
dawn.

This evangelical view, then, of the nature of the church, from which
naturally all further determinations concerning it — including those concerning its relationship to the