# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S58
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 58 —

[thin]k: Then one must also absolve all openly wicked men, even people like the Ape-Vogt [*Affen⸗Vogt*]; but against that stands Christ's order: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine." Ape-Vogt too would indeed truly be absolved if he heard the Gospel; but he would make a jest of it and trample the good thing underfoot, as the sow does a precious pearl. Because we know this beforehand of the known unbelievers, we therefore do not absolve them, but not because we believed that they were not redeemed. Ah, if the unbelievers knew and considered this, they would not regard us as parsonish, puffed-up people who do not mean well by them. They suppose, namely, that we absolve in the sense that we are ordained gentlemen, to whom in ordination, as by an electric current, the power has been given to forgive sins, so that when we say: I forgive you your sins, these are forgiven by virtue of our absolution. But thus teach not we, but the papists; they bind the power of absolution to the shaven priesthood. We, however, say: It is no art to absolve anyone; any ordinary Christian can do that, any woman, any child too, if only it can relate that the LORD Jesus died for all and that whoever believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins. For absolution rests not in the quality of the speaker but in the Word of the Gospel concerning the reconciliation that has taken place. Therefore it also stands in the Apology that whoever rejects absolution does not know what the Gospel is; and Luther says he holds so firmly to absolution in order that people may recognize the Gospel. The Gospel, however, is the message which is to be brought to the lost world, that it is redeemed — a message not as we convey some other news, but as expressly sent from the great God in heaven. To this end He makes His messengers confident and says: Preach it only with confidence; I shall be no liar, but shall make true the word which I put into your mouth. Therefore Luther says: "A preacher cannot open his mouth without pronouncing an absolution," for as soon as he only mentions the LORD Christ, it is pure absolution. Therefore it is no presumption when a Lutheran pastor says that he can absolve, for he does not mean thereby that the power for it was imparted to him through ordination to the office as something special, but that the power is that of the Word, which the office entrusted to him entitles him to preach. Through the relating and proclaiming, however, dear God wants to distribute everything, and our absolving in confession is only a particular expression, a short sum of what is proclaimed in the sermon, with the difference that one now turns to the individual. By virtue of the office means here by virtue of the Gospel, which I am called to preach; so that Luther says that with the words: Whose soever sins ye remit etc. "is not instituted the authority of him who speaks, but of those who believe." (XI, 1002.) Therefore one should not say to the