# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1861_S140
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

140 From the Proceedings of the Rhenish Conference of Lutheran Pastors, etc.

domains into which everything falls. The church is "properly and according to its essence" the assembly of the saints, of the vere credentes; it therefore lies entirely in the domain of faith, whereas the keys and the office lie wholly and solely in the domain of action, and thus the church as such has nothing to do with the keys. The keys belong solely, according to the ordering of law, to the calling of the pastor, just as ruling belongs to the king and the tilling of his field to the farmer, etc.

In the same way the other proceeds solely from the question: to whom are the call and the command given to exercise the claves, to preach, etc.? and answers: only to individual persons, to the office-bearers. The spiritual priesthood of all believers includes nothing of this call and command to preach. Faith in itself qualifies for the office of the ministry no more, and in no other way, than it does for the office of a house servant (that is, it gives the preacher only the right inward disposition and attitude of heart for conducting his office in a manner pleasing to God). Accordingly all New Testament passages in which Christ confers the power of the keys or the command to preach are to be referred not to the church, to the totality of all Christians, but only to the individual persons, the apostles and office-bearers. — The proposition of the Symbols, "ecclesia habet claves," is on this view to be understood only as an antithesis against the pope. The specifically Roman element in the doctrine of the ministry is this: the pope is the sole administrator of the Gospel, the only one out of whose power and authority the office can be conferred and office-bearers appointed. Against this the Symbols say: no, not the pope, but the church, which is bound not to a pope but only to Word and Sacrament — the church has the command to send Christ's servants; and thus where there is a true church, there are also true office-bearers, independently of the pope's consecration; through the church's service Christ sends preachers, not through any supposed service of Peter and the pope. "The church has the claves" therefore means, in sum and strictly taken, nothing else than: the church has the office and the office-bearers; it has the keys only insofar as it has the office and the office-bearers; or, the church has the sin-forgiving power only as administered through those whose hand wields the keys. — This view is supposed to be grounded: in the Augsburg Confession, where the power of the keys is directly called a power of the bishops. But especially in the Appendix to the Smalcald Articles, where it says: the keys are nothing else than the office of preaching, and the office of preaching is everywhere that the LORD gives his church the promised gifts, apostles, prophets, pastors and teachers, etc. Consequently, when it is said that "the keys are given to the church and not to individual persons," this has only the sense that the office and the office-bearers, pastors and teachers, are a gift which the LORD has given to the church. From this, however, there follows for the church merely the right, not to wield the keys itself, but only to call and appoint office-bearers at any time. A layman who baptizes in an emergency, etc., must be regarded as a pastor who has arisen or been called through the emergency, as therefore and in this sense the Smalcald