# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1861_S145
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

From the Proceedings of the Rhenish Conference of Lutheran Ministers, etc. 145

confess it, to all who have the Holy Spirit, while Luther declares this to be so strong a wall of God's word that it lays the whole papacy low — nevertheless, despite this, one ventures the assertion that the passages named are to be referred only to Peter and the apostles, that is, to the officeholders; that they, however, have nothing to do with Christians in general, and that this is also the meaning of the Symbols. I maintain, on the contrary, that Luther and the ancients say so often, and promiscuously in one breath, that the keys were given not only to Peter but to all the apostles or Christians, that one clearly sees: when they use the word "apostle" here, it is not used at all in the specific distinction between laymen and officeholders, but as a designation for the whole company of Christ's disciples, as opposed to one alone. — In all these so direct and manifest contradictions of Luther, the matter concerns, in truth, not chance utterances of Luther but fundamental views of the ministry that are found in him consistently, down to his very end, and that plainly rest on a principle sharply contrary to that of my opponents.

As for what, next to Luther, concerns the writings of the old Lutheran dogmaticians: in everything that I have read most carefully again and again, I find, in part, not a single sentence contrary to Luther's principles, and, in part, there are among the most reliable of the old fathers (M. Chemnitz, P. Leyser, Joh. Gerhard, etc.) enough wholly clear and unambiguous passages in which the same principles are expressed as in Luther. By way of example, here only a few of the most striking statements. To Bellarmine's objection: "Peter received the keys in the person of the church, insofar as he received them for the use and benefit of the whole church," Joh. Gerhard answers: "by no means; rather, just as Peter confessed Christ in the person of the church, insofar as in the confessing Peter the church herself confessed, so also were the keys given to Peter in the person of the church, not merely for the use and benefit of the church, but so that the church herself might exercise them." Further, to Bellarmine's further objection: "the church has the power to bind and to loose, but this power to bind and to loose takes place in the church's rulers; for it is truly said that the church looses and binds, because those who preside over her loose and bind — just as it is said of a man that he speaks, that he sees, although it is only the tongue and the eyes that speak and see" — Joh. Gerhard answers: "we turn Bellarmine's simile around: the tongue and the eyes are only the instruments of the man; hence speech and sight are ascribed to the man as the primary cause, to the eyes and the tongue as the intermediate cause. So the church appoints her servants, who perform everything in the church's name; the church has the keys as mistress and bride, Peter not as lord, but as servant." — Similarly P. Leyser: "Christ gave the church the keys of the kingdom of heaven, Matthew 18:18. We do not concern ourselves here with the outcry of the Jesuits, who cry: '"Thus have and use