# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1857_S295
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

By a Country Pastor.   295

a member hewn off from the body of Christ. The hypocritical scoundrel, on the other hand, who succeeds in getting himself incorporated into the visible assembly as teacher or hearer, is a building-stone in God's holy temple. How and by what means does a man become a member of the holy congregation of Jesus? Perhaps through the Holy Spirit, the Word, the Sacrament of God, faith? God forbid! The one through the praiseworthy resolution to belong to such an assembly for the sake of the Word and the Sacraments, out of obedience to God's command, and so through a good work; another for custom's sake; a third through compulsion by the government; a fourth on account of a marriage; a fifth, to find his daily bread more easily; a sixth does not himself know how he came to it, and so on. What becomes of the unity of the church? That is left to the Old Believers. And what of the spiritual unity of the church, of which the Apology says that without it neither faith in the heart nor righteousness before God can exist? It is enough if teacher and hearers get along well together; indeed, everything depends precisely on that, on it hangs the whole existence of the church. — The eye of Christian knowledge must be close to going blind where one can no longer discern whether this description of the true church of Christ was plucked from the vine or from the thornbush. Whoever can read this out of the Apology as Lutheran doctrine is capable of reading the command to murder out of the Fifth Commandment. Only one question in closing. Have you never yet been astonished at the peculiar conclusions that come to the Apology's hand in the doctrine of the church? For example, this one: that which does not make men righteous before God, that men also do not need in order to be the church of Christ. Do you mean to teach: joining together in a visible congregational association makes men righteous before God? And if not, what will you do with the bold Missourian Apology?

That Grabau needs this definition of the church is easy to see. You, however, seem not yet to have grasped at all the core of his quarrel with the Missourians. I must help you onto the trail. For years Grabau has sought to establish himself in the Christian church with claims that can be compared only with those of an arrogant conqueror. He demands to give orders in the church and to see unconditional obedience rendered. This presumed right, which mocks the whole holy essence of the church, he grounds in the following way: the preacher is a person of rank in the church (Inform. 1, 73), and so a baron or prince. The power of the church is merely an official title of the pastor (Inform. 1, 85), and so to him belongs the title: wielder of power in the church of Jesus Christ. The laity, or, to use an expression he himself employs, the rabble (Inform. 5, 188), are the serfs of the noble lord. They are bound to fidelity toward him and to obedience in all things that are not against God's Word, that is, sinful (Hirtenb. 14). A lord cannot demand more of his slave. Grabau, however, demands more, for a spiritual lord is more than a temporal one. The