# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1858_S359
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Kraußold and the Doctrine of the Ministry. 359

When Kr. points out that the chief tendency of the passage does not rest so much on who has the office as such, but on who has the right to call, to elect, to confirm, etc., that does not help him at all, for the true context is as follows:*)

The claim is to be refuted that the Pope is over the Church by divine right. This is refuted, 1, by rescuing the passages which seem to give Peter specifically a primacy above the apostles; 2, by the general biblical truth that the keys belong directly not to one man alone, but to the whole Church. This latter truth, however, is established in the following way: a. The promise of the Gospel belongs directly to the whole Church; b. therefore the keys also belong to it directly, for the keys are indeed nothing other than the office by which such promise is imparted to everyone who desires it; the conclusion is this: if the Church has the promise of the Gospel directly, then, since the keys are nothing other than the office of dispensing this promise, she must also have these keys, for whoever possesses something can of course also give it out; c. to this is added a third proof, namely that the Church, "as is evident in fact" and therefore need not first be proved, has power to ordain church servants; for had she not the keys or the office to dispense the Gospel, she could not call, elect, ordain for that purpose either; what I do not have, I surely cannot give; d. and all this is finally made plain also from clear passages of Scripture and words of the Lord, for when he says: "Whatsoever ye shall bind," etc., he himself indicates whom he means by this, in that he adds: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name," etc. — namely the whole Church, that is, every part of it, however small; to this is added that Christ says: "Tell it unto the Church," when it is a matter of the final stage of an ecclesiastical judicial process, whereby he gives the Church the highest and final judgment, even were it made up of only two or three. From this it is proved beyond all doubt that one cannot found upon any passage of Scripture a special authority of headship which Peter is supposed to have had, or to have been meant to have, above the other apostles, and hence nothing comes of the Pope's primacy. For if, 1, there was plainly no relationship of superiority and subordination among the apostles, then the matter is already proved; but in that, 2, according to Scripture the whole Church has the keys or the office directly, every thought of a headship of any one man or of several within the Church is dismissed as with a single stroke. To be sure, the question of the ministry is not here treated ex professo in the sense that it is presented for its own sake, but only insofar as, by presenting it, the Roman doctrine of a primacy in the Church is to be refuted. The doctrine of the ministry is here not the thing to be proved, but the thing by which something is to be proved. The same relation holds here as if someone wished to refute the claim that Peter alone, among the

*) Here let the honored reader compare the whole passage of the tract from No. XI onward.