# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1858_S362
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

362 Kraußold and the Doctrine of the Ministry.

concerning both, quite a few nuggets of evangelical truth are found. He writes, for example: "Since preaching is bound solely to the Word of God, which is given to the whole Church, and since the congregation has the duty and the right to refuse obedience and a hearing to preachers who depart from the Word, the right of judgment concerning doctrine and preacher is thereby given of itself to the congregation, and the office always has in the congregation its living corrective. It can therefore not be otherwise than that every member of the congregation, by virtue of the common priesthood belonging to all, has power and a share in the proclamation of the Word. Hence the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Art. X, not without reason says: "'We believe, teach, and confess that the whole congregation of God, indeed every individual Christian, but especially the ministers of the Word, as the leaders of the congregation of God, are bound, by virtue of God's Word, freely and publicly to confess the doctrine and everything that belongs to the whole of religion.'" (Pp. 80, 81.) Further: "Nevertheless, here too the congregation's right and share in this power of the keys is preserved, and not merely passively, insofar as every member can claim absolution upon his confession — cf. the Smalcald Articles' Tract, p. 333, 24: "'Since the keys are nothing other than the office by which such a promise is imparted to every man who desires it'"; — but rather insofar as the whole capacity for the spiritual office, and thus in particular also for the power of the keys, rests in the general priestly estate of Christians; wherein it rests that not merely every Christian has the divine power and capacity to forgive sin, but is, in case of necessity, also fully entitled and empowered to do so." (P. 83.) Further: "If excommunication was a real ban, an exclusion from the coetus, then the congregation indeed had to cooperate, had to carry the ban into effect, had to make the fellowship with the banned person a fact. Here a mere announcement to the congregation would plainly have been incompatible with its position; it would merely have been the executor of a judgment rendered without it, which nevertheless could not be carried out without it. In the case of mere retentio this was not so, since there the office remained solely within its own domain. If, then, the Smalcald Articles complain that the bishops act according to their own arbitrary will (suo arbitratu) without any preceding legal determination (sine ordine judiciali), the conclusion is certainly justified that the Reformers could not have wished to allow their own clergy what they there condemned as tyranny." (Pp. 87, 88.) Finally: "In the Levitical priesthood as in the Roman, the power of the function lies not in the Word,*) but in the work, and thereby precisely in the person appointed for this work, namely through a special ordination that qualifies him alone for this work. But as with the ministerium verbi

*) Preger characterizes this Levitism quite correctly: "In the Old Testament the Israelite was bound to the Temple and the Levites; his offering was not legally valid, even if all the other prescriptions had otherwise been fulfilled, if it was not brought by the legitimate priest. There the offering received its efficacy through the legally ordained person of the priest." Kr.