# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1861_S179
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

From the Proceedings of the Rhenish Conference of Lutheran, etc. 179

points, those which seem to me to stand as the wholly undoubted and
firmly grounded opinion of Luther and of the fathers.

1.

When Christ says, John 20, "whosesoever sins ye remit," he thereby
signifies not merely Himself as the one who forgives sin, and the
officeholders as the organs and executors of His, the Lord Christ's,
sin-forgiving power and activity — but with the words "whosesoever
ye" etc., Christ designates a human subject, which stands there as
acting and forgiving sins, so that in the act of an absolution spoken by
men, it is, in the first instance, not Christ but these men who forgive
sin and have the authority to do so — whereby we are to believe that
what these men do is just as certain as if Christ himself were acting.

2.

This sin-forgiving subject in the act of an absolution spoken by men
is principaliter the church, and this is, at bottom, properly the
meaning of ecclesia habet claves [the church has the keys].

3.

And indeed it is "the true, proper" church, that is, the congregation
of believers, that has the keys (just as the Confessions, too, quite
plainly always mean only this true, proper church, "which has the
priesthood," when they say, Christ. tribuit ecclesiae claves [Christ
bestows the keys on the church]) — from which it follows that the
church has and exercises the keys as bride, priestess, and queen with
Christ, as these are the standing expressions of the fathers — (but the
church does not have the keys on account of, and by virtue of, some
mandate or calling given by the Lord only to particular, individual
persons within her, for in that case the church would have the keys
only in an improper sense, namely only insofar as she had these
persons, the officeholders.)

4.

The officeholders therefore stand there only as mediators, mouth,
and organ of the church, when they pronounce the absolution to us.
They have and exercise the keys (as opposed to the laity), indeed in a
manner ordained and commanded by God, but only in a derived way.

5.

It is specifically Lutheran to say: in the act of absolution it is
principaliter the church that forgives sin; it is specifically Roman to
say that it is the officeholders alone, by virtue of a special mandate,
calling, or priesthood given to them alone. (It is — one might well add,
to the fathers' account — a Reformed and pietistic view to picture only
Christ, alone and immediately, as the one who forgives sin.) —

I formerly believed it was merely the letter of Luther's to those at
Prague, in which, driven by the force of circumstances, he was moved