# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1896_S25
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1896. 25

same holds of church discipline. What the Savior says in Matt. 18 is not said to Peter alone, is not said to the apostle Peter, but it is said to the confessing Peter, to the Peter who had answered a question which did not run: "Who do you say that I am?" but: "Who do you [plural] say that I am?" He speaks here in the name of all, for whom he has taken the word, and so the Savior addresses him again, and indeed in a context where He has just before, as we have already heard in Thesis II, given His direction with regard to the treatment of those brethren who have sinned and whom it is the duty of the Christian congregation to bring back, and where it is stated in what manner it is to carry out this duty. And as certainly as the Church of all times has the keys of the kingdom of heaven, as certainly as we rightly maintain that we Lutheran congregations have the keys of the kingdom of heaven which the Savior there gave and granted to His congregation, so certainly should we also know that in the use of these keys we have to conform to the instruction which was given, when the keys were handed over, to those who were to use them. If we wanted to say that this instruction no longer holds for us, that it held only for the Christian congregations of the first time, we would thereby renounce the keys of the kingdom of heaven; for we cannot have the one without the other. If we are those who, on the basis of that word, believe that we have the keys, so we are also such congregations as have to conform to the instruction which was given at the handing over of the keys.

The same holds of the preaching office [Predigtamt, ministry]. The preaching office is to be set up in the congregation, and also for the setting up of the preaching office we have our God's instruction. He has said what sort of people are to become preachers, but also what sort of people are not to become preachers. He has said that men and not women are to exercise the preaching office in the Church. He has also otherwise spoken in His Word with regard to the preaching office in a prescribing, ordering, norm-giving manner. And that is the same preaching office which we have today; the apostle speaks of the preaching office, which existed in his days and was then a churchly matter, as of an office which is to continue until the end of the world. He too looks out beyond time, to the day of the Lord's return, when he says: "Feed the flock of Christ which is committed to you . . . and when the chief Shepherd shall appear, you shall receive the crown of glory that fades not away." If we have the preaching office, and if we have the preaching office to which everything else applies, the glory and praise of the preaching office, the task of the preaching office, then we have no other preaching office than the one to which also those prescriptions contained in Scripture must be applied which are to be the norm for the preaching office as a matter belonging to church life.