# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1858_S356
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

356 Kraußold and the Doctrine of the Ministry.

sarily be false about his doctrine of the ministry too. Whoever does not proceed from the premise that the Church "properly" is the invisible congregation of believers and saints, and that a visible totality is called Church only in a synecdochical sense, that is, because a part of this visible fellowship is truly Church, i.e., a gathering of believers, and whoever does not hold consistently to this, must necessarily go astray on the question of the relation of the ministry to the Church. A Roman view of the Church brings with it a Roman concept of the ministry. Fortunately Kraußold is not consistent in his false doctrine of the Church, and therefore still preserves in his concept of the ministry a good deal that is biblical and Lutheran.

The chief fault, however, of Kraußold's writing with regard to the doctrine of the ministry is that, in order to safeguard the direct divine institution of the pastoral office, it does not grasp that office as a divine ordinance in which the office directly given to the whole Church is to be publicly exercised, but rather at bottom regards it as a separate estate; in that it ascribes the office to the Church only insofar as the Church has pastors, thus not, as the confession says, directly, but indirectly. It is remarkable in this connection that Kr. nevertheless wishes to keep the concept of the estate separate from that of the office, and makes use of the word "directly" to describe the manner in which the Church has the office — indeed stresses this latter word in a certain way — and yet denies the very concept contained in it! Let us hear him for himself. Speaking of the well-known passage from the tract "On the Power and Primacy of the Pope," which is appended to the Smalcald Articles, Kraußold writes: "The sense is accordingly: just as the promise of the Gospel belongs to the whole Church without the mediation of any special person, so also do the claves (keys). The accent and emphasis plainly rest on principaliter (originally) and immediate (directly). For that the keys also belong to the Church, the Catholic Church has never denied; but what she has denied is that they belong to it principaliter et immediate, but rather that they belong to it only mediate, namely through the primacy of Peter, respectively through the primacy of the Pope. To him they are given principaliter, and only through him (mediate) to the Church. — It is the reverse according to evangelical and Protestant doctrine. Here the keys have not come to the Church only by way of the Pope, but directly. According to what, then? — "'For,'" says the German text, and this reasoning deserves careful attention! "'For just as the promise of the Gospel surely and without intermediary belongs to the whole Church, so also do the keys belong without intermediary to the whole Church, since the keys are nothing other than the office by which such promise is imparted to everyone who desires it (scl. ministerium verbi). Therefore one can in no way found upon such sayings any special power of authority (aliquam praerogativam seu superioritatem seu dominationem) which Peter is supposed to have had, or to have been meant to have, over the other apostles. But as for the passage that reads: Upon this rock I will build my Church (Matt. 16:18), here it must