# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1860_S86
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

86    The Present Tension among the Separated Lutherans of Prussia.

new office of oversight, one is stepping outside of Scripture and our Symbols."

All the same, Diedrich exaggerates here too. Because there is no special office of oversight by divine right, there should therefore be no office of oversight at all — just as there should be no church wherever there is no pure doctrine. Without question the church has a command from God to exercise oversight, so that the wolf does not break into the flock. Who then will forbid it to charge particular persons with this and to create an office for it? This office does not indeed exist by divine right, for the church has created it; but it does exist by the church's grant and transfer, for the sake of good order, which is likewise of divine right. There is nothing to find fault with in such an authority, so long as it stays within its bounds — that is, does not command by its own absolute power or demand obedience in God's place, but serves the church on the church's commission, with its good will and in its spirit. For it has no coercive power; that it would have only if the civil authority stood behind it, and for conscience's sake it cannot demand obedience, because it cannot, like the Roman bishops, ground itself on a divine institution. One may always hold that against it, so that it does not stray onto false paths. But within these Protestant bounds one really should let the Supreme Church Council be, and rejoice that under God's guidance such an authority has formed, which brings connection, unity, and order into the scattered congregations. It still has the synod at its side, after all, which sets its bounds, and every congregation is still free to withdraw at any time. Why will one not pray publicly for this authority, that God may bless it in its heavy work and keep it on the right path? If that sounds objectionable, then let one simply include the synod in the prayer every fourth year, and nothing objectionable remains to be seen.

But Diedrich has yet another reason for opposing the Supreme Church Council, and this reason is directed equally against the synod. The whole present order of church affairs displeases him. In the Supreme Church Council laymen sit, and at the synod laymen have a voice in counsel and decision. Thus the laity, and in them the congregations, have a share in the power of the church. That is the stumbling block. It is true that the synod of 1840 established that matters of doctrine should be judged by the teaching estate. But this is no longer observed, and it would be difficult to carry out. As a rule everything is decided by majority vote. Diedrich is greatly displeased at these majority decisions. He says of the synods: "A great part of the delegates understood nothing at all of precisely the most important matters. Besides, everyone was always in a hurry to get home. And how, indeed, could all the pastors stay long away from home? So everything went forward hastily. Many deputies, in a curious way, thought — because they