# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1857_S294
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

294   From a Country Pastor.

outward constitution which is necessary for spatial togetherness and must be arranged according to existing circumstances, the true spiritually coherent articulation of the body of Christ is clearly to be distinguished. The whole, and therefore also every part, is called to gather; but the particular gift and the particular calling of individuals has come about for this end: that the body may grow to its own edification, that all may attain to one and the same faith and knowledge of the Son of God and become a perfect man; and the service rendered in this provisional organization often reaches far beyond the outward congregational union.

Thus far I have spoken only of the church — and in truth there is only one — which is called the invisible church, and that for this single reason, that membership in her depends on the necessary condition of faith, which is not visible, and whose existence in others is by each member himself only believed. Since now in the outward association of Christians and in the use of the means of grace those also take part who do not stand in true faith — which, because of the invisibility of faith, cannot be prevented — a distinction becomes necessary between the true and proper church and all those who make use of the outward marks of the church. In our days men have treated the concept of the church like a thing which one would gladly come to know and which displays to the beholder so marvelous a chameleon nature, shifting according to his character and state of mind, that men have persuaded themselves that it was reserved to the enlightenment of our day to see through this nature. But the concept points only to an object lying outside itself, which one must come to know in order to understand the concept. Now the following in particular are designated by the name of the Christian church: believers — if the concept points to them, then it is taken in its proper and original sense, for without them there would be no Christian church —; those who stand in the fellowship of the marks of the church; those who belong to a particular confession, and so forth — here the word church has a derived, tropical meaning. Quum figurate dictum sic accipitur, tamquam proprie dictum sit, carnaliter sapitur. Augustinus. He to whom the objects themselves have become clear will easily recognize the particular content of the word church in Holy Scripture, in the symbols, in the writings of genuine theologians, and so forth, from the context or from the modifiers and predicates.

But I turn now to your explanation of what the church is. You confess yourself to Grabau's definition: The true church of Christ is an assembly about the Word of God and the sacraments. Its constituent parts are teachers and hearers. The unity consists in the complete concord between teacher and hearer (more precisely: in the unconditional obedience of the hearers toward the spiritual lord).

Accordingly the believer who, in prison or on the ways of his calling, stands far from the visible assembly is no longer a fellow citizen with the saints, but a