# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1860_S84
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

84 The Present Tension among the Separated Lutherans of Prussia.

right is of course included, namely to see to it that doctrine is kept pure and prevails, and that the sacraments are rightly administered. Or the congregation has the pastorate filled by outside preachers, say through its synod. Then the right of appointing the pastor is a delegated one, in which the congregation must reserve to itself the right of objection; and again it becomes plain that the congregation has a share in church power and can only delegate it with reservations. Let the matter be given another turn, and let us suppose the case that the pastor falls into false doctrine or unbelief. Is the congregation to let this go on quietly, because the pastor holds the church power? That it ought not, and cannot, do. But by what path is a remedy achieved? Surely only in this way: that it deposes the pastor — for which it may well seek the opinions of outside pastors, but from which it cannot itself be released. Is that not a clear exercise of church power, an oversight of doctrine and a judgment upon it?

Perhaps, however, a remedy may be found by reserving all these rights nevertheless to the pastoral office. One might, for instance, appoint the pastor a committee of pious, experienced, sensible men, who indeed do not administer the pastoral office proper, but are yet specially ordained for this service, and are thus a kind of clergy without a pastorate. On this, however, Diedrich will not enter at all. He observes, rightly, that our Church knows only one church office by divine right, namely the pastoral office proper, and that all others, who do not deal with God's Word and the sacraments, likewise have no spiritual office, or are merely servants of the congregation. It was for this very reason that the Roman episcopal office was attacked and rejected, because it wished to have nothing more to do with the pastoral office and to be a mere office of governance. Those ordained persons are and remain, in our Church, nothing but laymen, even if they should be ordained ten times over. To draw them into church power is, therefore, tantamount to declaring that the congregation is entitled to it.

Whoever wishes to make the spiritual office the exclusive holder of church power must take a wholly different path. He must first restore the episcopal office, which can exercise church power in several congregations of a district and can thus step in for any single congregation where the pastoral office is vacant or hindered. But since a bishop is entitled to act only in his own district and not in a strange one, and yet the bishopric, too, can lie vacant or be hindered — say, through the death of a bishop — an archbishop or pope must stand at the head, who exercises church power in the whole Church. Yet mark well: this power the bishop and the archbishop must possess not by human grant, but by divine right, so that in virtue of his office he can command in the name of God. Otherwise there is nothing to him, and his power is only a delegated one, for which we must go seeking again the rightful, responsible holder. That, then, is the final goal of exclusive pastoral power, if there is any sense and understanding in it