# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1861_S165
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Question of the Ministry and Its Consequences. 165

quarter from which one would least have expected it, the true state of the
matter has been laid bare before everyone's eyes. In the Lutheran
congregations of the Breslau church association, voices are being raised
condemning the previous system of glossing-over and denial, voices that
openly confess that a whole complex of anti-Reformation false doctrines
is essentially bound up with that theory of the ministry. Through the
kindness of the Reverend Pastor Räthjen of Neu-Ruppin, two documents
bearing on this have reached me (which I intend to consider separately
at another time): the Lutheran Village Church Gazette for 1860, No. 1
(pp. 1–24), published by the same man, containing this year's preface; and:
Christ the Crucified Our Watchword, by J. Diedrich, pastor of the Lutheran
parish of Jabel near Wittstock (Neu-Ruppin, 1860, price 5 silver groschen).
From both I will communicate what belongs here in literal excerpt. The
Village Church Gazette says of the condition of the Silesian Lutherans:
"Different conceptions of the church existed among us, and this has
probably been so since 1834. But little was said about it. Many also
thought it natural and self-evident that we should all fully agree, and
that any differences ought rather to be covered over or passed over in
silence than that one should confess them, bring them into the light, and
deal with them in the light. A certain worldly party-spirit sought to take
hold of us in this, which, however, does not befit the party of pure truth.
... We must not gloss over emerging differences in doctrine, but discuss
them most diligently in love and settle them through God's word ...
In our opinion there are two main currents present, although they break
into many waves. Some maintain (and we stand on their side) that
Christ's church, as the kingdom of grace and truth, is something so
inward, spiritual, and heavenly that, just as it came into being here solely
through the Holy Spirit and not through human authorities, institutions,
and the like, so too it can only be maintained, again and again, through
the Holy Spirit in Word and Sacrament ..... Our opponents, on the other
hand, we believe, betray in their own words a striving after something
more, and hence after something other than the pure word of grace,
although this expresses itself very differently. Some say: besides the
doctrine, the organism of the church in this world is also necessary. This
worldly, visible organism, which one calls the Lutheran church, which
has the pure doctrine — this organism has, precisely because it first has
the pure doctrine, and second is an organism of human beings, for the
sake of these two reasons the promise from the Lord, and is the only
church .... The organism is the bearer of grace, and was so even in the
Roman church, for as long as it had not yet solemnly renounced the pure
Gospel in the Tridentine confession. One of our own number, who
champions this doctrine most decidedly, has openly and quite often
asserted in our hearing that the chancery of the most abominable Pope
John XXIII was the proper place where one had to look for the center
of the church