# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1861_S147
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

From the Proceedings of the Rhenish Conference of Lutheran Ministers, etc. 147

which is to be exercised publicly and in an orderly manner by the officeholders, that the keys, in this sense too, can with perfect truth be called an office or a power of the pastors, of the bishops; that is, namely, a power whose orderly exercise is precisely the pastor's function. Thus it is everywhere the custom and usage of language that one calls baptizing, preaching, etc. the official functions of the pastor. It is therefore quite harmless, though it warrants no further inferences whatsoever, when the Augsburg Confession, in Article 28, calls the power of the keys outright a power of the bishops. The same holds for what it says in Article 14 about the orderly call; for indeed it stands here expressly: no one may teach "publicly" in the church without an orderly call. If, then, one wishes to hold strictly to the words here, it follows simply from this 14th Article that only public teaching depends on the church's call, but teaching and absolving as such and considered absolutely do not; consequently the latter can only be regarded as a general activity of Christians. I think that would be quite clear. — As for the chief passages of the Symbols concerning the keys in the Appendix to the Smalcald Articles, it is a wholly unfounded assumption when one takes, without further ado, the term "office," wherever it is there identified with the keys, to mean the "office in its orderly public exercise." The Small Catechism, too, speaks of the "office of the keys" and at first designates it as a power given to the church, while afterward it continues: "when the called servants," etc. Here, as everywhere, "office of the keys" is by no means simply identified with "pastoral office"; rather, a distinction must be made: the official activity, or activity of the keys, in its essential principle is a power or authority of the church, while the orderly public exercise of this power or activity belongs to the called servants. But from the fact that the church in principle possesses the power of the keys in the sense meant here, there follows simply the inference which the Smalcald Articles so often draw from it, namely, that she has the power to call ministers of the church, that is, persons who publicly exercise the power belonging to the church. But nothing at all is proved by the conclusion one draws — that because the Symbols infer from the church's power of the keys the right to call ministers of the church, the power of the keys is therefore, absolutely and altogether, nothing but a calling of these ministers of the church. No — it is not the absolute exercise, but only the public, orderly exercise of the office of the keys that is the calling of the ministers of the church, and it is a purely groundless assumption to foist upon the Symbols, in the relevant passages, the former sense, while they permit the latter just as well. — Let us take, for example, the passage that seems strongest and might be cited for the opponents' view: "Now the preaching office (the office of the keys) is bound to no fixed place or person, as was the office of the Levites under the Law, but is scattered throughout the whole world and is present wherever God gives his gifts — apostles, prophets, pastors and teachers." Accordingly it might sound