# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1876_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 27 —

congregations many do not rightly understand this matter (of the removal of preachers). For as someone who hires a servant has power to dismiss him whenever he wishes: so some think that they too have power to dismiss a preacher, even if they have no just cause. . . . But since God alone reserves to himself properly the right to call, even when the calling takes place through means, it is also properly God's affair to remove someone from the office or to dismiss him. As long as God therefore tolerates in the office his servant who teaches rightly and lives blamelessly, the Church has no power to remove the servant, who is another's. But when he no longer edifies the Church, neither by doctrine nor by life, but destroys it, then God himself removes him. Hos. 4:6: 'You reject God's Word, therefore I will also reject you, that you shall not be my priest.' 1 Sam. 2:30. There are therefore two reasons for which God deposes unfaithful servants from their office: first with regard to doctrine, if they teach falsely, Mal. 2:7; if he himself casts away the pure doctrine, then he in turn will be rejected by God; second with regard to life, if they act so that God's name is blasphemed. . . . And then the Church can, and should, also depose such a one from the office. For as God calls, so he also deposes through means; but as the calling takes place according to the instruction of the LORD of the harvest, so the congregation too, if someone is to be removed from the office, must be able to prove with certainty that this is the judgment and that this is the will of God. And as the calling, so the removal concerns the whole Church in a certain order." (Loc. theol. De eccles. Tom. III, p. 331.)

H. Kromayer writes: "The preaching office cannot be conferred by him who calls after the manner of a contract for certain years or with the reservation of the freedom to dismiss the freely called person again, because the one who calls has nowhere from God the power to make a contract, nor is it granted or permitted him; therefore neither the one who calls nor the one to be called can hold such a vocation and dimission to be divine." (Theol. posit. P. II, p. 530.)

Note it well: whoever is not divinely called is not called at all. Therefore it says in Acts 13:2 that the congregation should separate Barnabas and Paul, for God had called them to it. Who is to be a preacher in this or that congregation is already chosen and called by God from eternity. The congregation has now only to pray that God show it the right man. God then knows ways and means that he who is to serve a congregation in Minnesota does not stay in China. Often, of course, God in his wrath gives a frivolous congregation a false prophet or a man of offensive life. These are then apostles of wrath, messengers whom he gives the Christians out of his wrath, to whom it is all one whether they go to heaven or to hell.