# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1858_S54
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

54 On Lay Elders, or Congregational Overseers.

...treatise on good works, in the exposition of the First Epistle of Peter, where he plainly says that all Christians are priests, and have full power to preach; but that some nevertheless administer the office is done for the sake of order and fitness. Likewise, in the book on the Abuse of the Mass, he treats this matter clearly, that all Christians may preach and teach. Nearly all of Dr. Martin's books are full of such testimonies."

"From which testimonies of Luther's it is quite clear that all Christian people are priests, and indeed have power and calling from God to teach the Word of God, especially those who are fit for it; but that some are chosen for the office is for the reason that not all are fit, nor do all have constant time and hearers for teaching, and so that a useful order may exist and be maintained in the Church of God." So far Flacius.

W. Präger.

On Lay Elders, or Congregational Overseers.

Little by little, the notion has become almost dominant in the Lutheran Church that the institution of the so-called lay elders (the presbyteri laici, seniores plebis) is a shibboleth of the Reformed Church and its doctrine of ministry and church polity, and is, by contrast, foreign and repugnant to the spirit and doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Dr. Rudelbach already contradicted this delusion several years ago, with as much right as decisiveness. This great historian writes, namely, among other things, in a treatise on "State Church and Religious Freedom" (published in the year 1850 in the Rudelbach-Guericke journal): "It was entirely evident to Luther as to Melanchthon that the synodal constitution, together with the free congregational organs which it presupposes, would most readily require, alongside it, a permanent governing organism (which carries the essential significance of the bishops) — and that this would have to be both the most expedient and the distinctive constitution of the evangelical (Lutheran) Church. We must emphasize this sharply here already, because in recent times a view has forced itself forward, as though the presbyterial element were simply not Lutheran at all, but rather peculiarly, essentially Reformed — a claim that is refuted just as much by the Reformers' own clear testimonies as by the nature of the matter itself; for it is impossible for an organic synodal constitution to form without presbyteries standing alongside it . . . It is, moreover, well known that (on the part of Luther and Melanchthon), in order to safeguard the interests of the Church as a collective body, synods were not merely wished for, but loudly demanded, and that by these was meant by no means (as has been falsely asserted recently by Stahl and others) mere assemblies of clergy