# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1861_S142
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

142 From the Proceedings of the Rhenish Conference of Lutheran Ministers, etc.

polemical writings against the papacy from the years 1520–23, as well as in purely exegetical and devotional ones — for example, especially strongly in the expositions of 1 Peter 2 and Psalm 110 (written in 1539), in the Church Postil (compare, for example, the sermon for Quasimodogeniti Sunday, where Luther, as he stands throughout, always says only: "when your pastor or some other Christian speaks the absolution to you," etc.). Instead of further citations I refer only to Köstlin's Luthers Lehre von Kirche und Amt [Luther's Doctrine of Church and Ministry], where all of Luther's relevant writings are set forth and presented in detail according to their content.

On the opposing view it is quite plain that Luther could not have spoken as he did; in that case he could not have said at all that the Roman priests had arrogated to themselves a false power, in claiming that they alone, as officeholders, had the power and calling to exercise the keys and no one else — rather Luther would have had to answer them: you derive your ministerial authority wrongly; you must not derive it from the pope, but from the vocation of the church. But this is quite decisive: nowhere does Luther hold up to the pope and the Roman priests Crome's doctrine of the vocation of the church; he holds up, always and only, the spiritual priesthood of all Christians. He maintains that the very power which pope and priests alone claim for themselves — namely, to forgive sins on earth — belongs to all Christians. From this it follows plainly enough what it means, in Luther's sense, that the church has the claves: namely, since for him the church is always nothing other than the communion of the saints, this proposition means to him nothing other than that believing Christians, and each one of them individually, have (in principle) the claves, that is, the authority to forgive his neighbor's sin. There are hundreds of passages throughout Luther's writings where he states this consistently. It is, one might say, one of his favorite ideas to portray the church, the communion of the saints, as the bride of Christ, the queen and empress, who has and can do all things with Christ — rule, exercise the keys, etc. Every Christian is, for Luther, a pope, a cardinal, etc., who can do everything the pope can do. — It is plainly this very same doctrine, which Luther rejects in such strong terms as Roman mummery [literally: mask-spew], namely "that the right and practice of the keys belongs only to the officeholders," which the adherents of the Löhe direction likewise express in so many express words. And it belongs precisely to the specifically Roman doctrine that only the members of the clerical estate, the holders of the office, are the people on earth who alone have calling and command from God — and hence also power and authority — to forgive sin on earth; so I do not see how one can clear oneself of the charge of this very false doctrine. For whether the officeholders have their official authority by the pope's ordination or by the vocation of the church, it still remains the case that only with them is the calling and command to exercise the keys; this remains altogether and merely a privilege, an authority, and a work of their estate and calling.

I am convinced in my conscience, and bound, that this latter