# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 11 24_S57
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall never pass away, nor ever perish."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 4.

St. Louis, Mo., December 14, 1847.

No. 8.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the annual subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay it in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis, each single issue is sold for 5 cents.
Only letters containing contributions for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, however — containing business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc. — are to be sent here under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Submitted by Dr. Sihler.)
The Lutheran Observer on Our Synod.

(Conclusion.)

2. Concerning the visitation journeys of the president of our Synod, Mr. Hermann expresses himself as follows:

"The foremost new measure which has been introduced by this body will greatly surprise our readers. If it had first been adopted by any of our American synods, what an outcry would have arisen from many quarters! The president, namely, must visit all the churches within the synodical district and report on their condition. Every minister of the church must preach before him at least once, and the president is to judge whether the preacher is orthodox, and, in a word, whether he understands how he must preach. He further has to judge whether the pastor is capable of giving suitable catechetical instruction, whether the ceremonies of worship are properly conducted, whether church discipline is observed — in short, he performs the duty of a diocesan bishop, except for ordination and confirmation. But what is this other than the beginning of episcopal government? We say to these brethren that this new measure, however well intended, will not succeed in this country. They will have to give it up before the three years of the president's term expire. We have heard from a reliable source that this extraordinary arrangement has kept quite a number of excellent 'Old Lutheran' brethren from uniting with this Synod, and we are not surprised at that."

To this the following must now be replied:

As to the title of this supervisory office as a so-called "new measure," as Mr. Hermann is pleased to call it, it is indeed such in view of the previous practice of the American Lutheran synods. Nevertheless it is a very old measure, and even one grounded in Scripture. For we read in Acts 15:36 the following: "And some days after, Paul said unto Barnabas, Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord, and see how they do." Barnabas thus exercised this same joint oversight and supervision, from which it is evident that it was not some special privilege or measure belonging only to the apostles chosen in the narrower and proper sense. Likewise it is clear from the so-called Pastoral Epistles — that is, from Paul's epistles to his helpers Timothy and Titus generally, as well as from particular parts of these letters, such as 1 Timothy 3:5, Titus 1, and most definitely from 1 Timothy 3:2–12, 5:17,19,22, and Titus 1:5 — that these helpers, who were by no means directly called and enlightened as the holy apostles were, nor possessed the same plenary authority, nevertheless, by apostolic direction, exercised oversight over a certain district of congregations.

But the Church has continual, ongoing need of this supervision, whether the visiting overseers are called bishops* (episcopus, the Greek word for overseer), or presbyters (elders), or superintendents,** or synodical presidents, visitors, and so on; for the same conditions and needs of the individual congregations and their settled ministers continually exist, which, as in former times, require a similar oversight.

* The wrong thing in the Roman Church and in the so-called Episcopal Church of England is simply this: that both maintain that episcopal church government is grounded in divine right, whereas it is in fact clear that this particular form is only a human ordinance. And it is from this very kinship [with Rome], and from this popish leaven which clings to the episcopal Church of England, that it is entirely explicable that, for instance through Puseyism, so many fall from it back to the papists.

** The wrong thing, on the other hand, in the Lutheran Church of Germany and in its consistorial government is this: that it is carried out as the arm, and in the name, of the respective territorial sovereign — to whom, however, neither by divine nor by human right, it ever belongs to govern the Church as such, nor even merely that particular church body to which he himself belongs as a member, as though he were a supreme bishop and prince-pope, but only to confirm its doctrine, worship, discipline, and government within his territory and to secure its lawful outward standing.

The peculiar, and hopefully salutary, feature of this office within our synodical district is, however, the following:

First, we are far from holding this office to be, as Mr. Hermann supposes, the office of a diocesan bishop. We regard the so-called apostolic succession of episcopal power, which the papists and Episcopalians hold to so rigidly, as though it were an article of faith necessary to the soul's salvation, as a vain product of human pride, and recognize only a propagation of the apostolic faith, confession, and doctrine, in which every orthodox teacher is its equal successor. But in matters of church government, we hold that its manner and mode is not, like doctrine, definitely prescribed by Holy Scripture, but rather, similarly to the ceremonies, left to the discretion and free determination of the Church, according to place, time, and other circumstances; only, of course, nothing contrary to Scripture may occur in it — as, for example, if the teaching estate, or the household estate, or the estate of civil authority, suppressing the other two estates, should seize church government entirely to itself, or as if here, in the Lutheran Church of America, where civil authority as such does not interfere at all in church government, the teachers wished to govern the church without the laity, or the laity without the teachers; for only in the proper cooperation of both, each according to its own order, can this be rightly carried out.

Therefore, secondly, the supervising synodical president exercises his office only in the name and by commission of the Synod, which consists of the ministers and the representatives of the laity, and which also cooperates toward this end — partly by choosing him at all, partly by furnishing him with special instructions for his visitation journeys, and partly by making him accountable to it for the discharge even of this part of his office. Thus he can nowhere encroach either upon the rights of the Synod or upon those of the individual congregation visited, while nevertheless being left ample scope, within his instructions, to cooperate most decisively toward the welfare of the Church.