# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1858_S357
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Kraußold and the Doctrine of the Ministry. 357

can ever confess that the Church is not built upon the power of any man, but is built upon the office which conducts the confession. Therefore he also addresses him as a servant of such an office.'" So far Kraußold.

From this, one might well suppose that everyone would believe Kr. acknowledges the doctrine that the Church has the office directly. But an addition which he makes thoroughly destroys this supposition. He continues, namely, as follows: "Three things, besides what has been said, deserve to be noted. First, namely, that in this passage the potestas clavium is nowhere named, but only the claves, while the office is separately mentioned besides.*) Second, that it is not the congregation that is named, but constantly the Church,**) and indeed not bare "the Church," but the whole Church, that is, the Church together with the episcopis and pastoribus as opposed to the Pope, that is, the Church in its totality, that is, in its combination of congregation and office;†) and finally third, that the chief tendency does not rest so much on who has the office as such, but on who has the jus vocandi, eligendi, confirmandi etc., so that there can certainly be no talk here of a treatment of the question of the ministry ex professo."

From this it is clear, among other things, that Kr. understands the words of the symbol — that the Church is given "the keys, which are nothing other than the office" — directly, in such a way that they are given to the "episcopis and pastoribus"; the difference between his doctrine and the Roman one is therefore only this, that the Romanists bestow the keys upon the Pope, while he apportions them to the pastors. But by this route he arrives at the true concept of direct possession no more than the Romanists do. For if the Church has the keys or the office not, indeed, through the Pope, but through the pastors, then she has them precisely not directly, but indirectly. To be sure, Kr. says that by "whole Church" he means "the Church in its totality," and by this he means to be able to ascribe direct possession to the Church as well, since the pastors and bishops also belong to that totality. But in that sense

*) This is not correct; the office is not "separately mentioned," but is declared identical with the keys.

**) Oddly enough, Kr. makes, throughout his entire writing, a distinction between Church and congregation; he writes: "Church and congregation are not identical." (P. 22.) But to wish to designate two different things by these two words is neither biblical nor Lutheran-ecclesiastical usage, and to build certain favored conclusions upon such a self-devised distinction is therefore sheer arbitrariness.

†) Kr. namely reckons the office to belong to the concept of the Church; he writes: "A congreg. sanctorum, even if it were possible without an office, would be no Church. The office is an essentially constitutive element in the full concept of the Church." (P. 9.) With this Kr. thus detaches himself from the definition of the Church which the Augustana gives in Article 7. He seeks to rescue an appearance of agreement by turning what Article 7 lists as "externae notae," as "outward signs by which one may recognize it" (see the Apology), into "essentially constitutive elements." This is the very same logic by which he reckoned the ungodly into the concept of the Church.