# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1861_S182
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

priesthood. Anyone who has the Holy Spirit can absolve; but it is only
of the church as a whole that I know she has the Holy Spirit — so it is
this that guarantees the certainty of a salvation-effecting absolution:
that the individual, layman or priest, stands there at the same time
in the name of the fellowship, as its member or officer, so that the
individual's absolution is the church's absolution. The finest and
clearest statement of Luther's on this I have found in his answer to
"Billy-goat" Emser: "... so answer me," Luther writes to him, "you
yourselves all say that the priest holds mass and blesses the bread not
in his own person, but in the person of the whole church; to this the
truth compels you, your conscience's distress, and the unanimous
speech and belief of the whole world — namely, that it is not on
account of the priest being truly pious or believing and worthy that
Christendom stands and is worthy. Who, then, is the true priest? He
who does it as a servant, or he in whose person he does it? Who is the
priest — the one who performs and dispatches the work, or the
servant who carries and delivers it? The priest is a messenger and
servant in the work, so someone else must after all be the true priest.
I think, indeed, that it has been proven clearly enough that we are all
priests, and that these priests are not some other kind of priests, but
are the servants and officers of the common priesthood." How clearly
it follows from these words: 1) that the church, by virtue of the
universal priesthood, is the true priestess, or the real priest, who
stands there acting in all the official acts of the pastor — the mistress
who really does the work and dispatches the servant; and 2) that
precisely herein lies the efficacy of official acts, even when the
officeholder is personally unworthy — not in the objective mandate of
the Lord resting on the office and station of the officeholder, but in
this, that it is the church who acts through her servant; the church
absolves me, whether the mouth of the servant she employs for this
be a worthy one or not. The grounding of the power of the keys in the
universal priesthood of all believers is thus precisely the means of
being certain of the absolution, etc., even from the mouth of the
unworthy — not, as our opponents so often assert, the reverse, namely
that this very fact — that the validity of the keys holds even in the
hand and mouth of unbelievers — is proof that the power of the keys
does not rest in the priesthood that only the believer possesses. The
believing Christian — indeed, every one — can exercise the keys, we
shall have to say with Luther; but when he does so, he does it not
merely in his own name, but at the same time also in the church's
name; his work is at the same time also the church's work; if the
former lies, the latter, without fail, does not. ——
Here the difference between Luther and our opponents emerges
most strikingly; I would therefore like to set it once more, quite
sharply, side by side: our opponents maintain: the keys of a personally
unworthy servant of the church are efficacious for the sake of the
objective mandate and command from the Lord, resting on the office
and mediated through the church.