# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1861_S196
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

196 God's Word and Luther's Doctrine.

(in the March number). Since we have already given an exposition of the
disputed doctrines treated here as well, by Pastor Brunn, we communicate only
the beginning and the close of this fine essay, from which its tendency and
its contents may best be seen. The essay (comprising 28 pages in octavo)
begins as follows:

"In Ehlers' Kirchenblatt I issued a cry of distress and appeal for help
concerning 'the preliminary training and sending out of pupils for the
Lutheran preachers' seminaries in St. Louis and Fort Wayne in N. A.' In
doing so I not only spoke on behalf of the Synod of Missouri in general, to
which these seminaries belong, but I also called for activity on its behalf,
which presupposes a unity in faith and in doctrine with this Synod. The
demand that I declare myself publicly concerning the latter and justify my
action I meet with the greatest gladness, since I see in this not only an
opportunity ordered by the LORD to clear up many misunderstandings
concerning the doctrine of the Missourians, but also a way of bringing about
a public discussion of the points of doctrine here in question, which I hold
to be all the more important because, in my conviction, upon them depends
the decision of our present-day churchly conflicts over the doctrinal
questions of the Church, the preaching office, church government, and
constitution.

Now as to the testimony I gave in the Kirchenblatt on behalf of the Synod of
Missouri and its doctrine, I must above all reject the many distorted and
wholly untrue representations and rumors that are in circulation about it.
Thus, when the Missourians, in their doctrinal struggle with the Synod of
Buffalo, came forward with the assertion that the Church "according to its
essence" consists in the invisible and purely spiritual fellowship of faith —
an assertion which they ground word for word upon the fourth article of the
Apology, in which the essence of the Church is clearly and forcefully enough
designated as a societas fidei et spiritus sancti in cordibus, and is
distinguished from the societas ext. signorum, in which last alone the wicked
who are in the Church have a part, and of whom therefore it is so often said
that they are not real and proper members of the Church, but rather members
of the devil — then people cry out that the Missourians want nothing but an
invisible Church, just like our Pietists, that they deny, or at least cast
into the shade, the true visibility of the Church. So again, and especially,
as regards the chief proposition that characterizes the doctrine of the
Missourians, "that the power of the keys has not been given to the pastors as
a privilege of their particular estate, but to the Church, and that by virtue
of the universal priesthood of all believers; that therefore it is only by a
derivation or transfer from the latter, that is, from the Church, that the
preaching office has to exercise and administer the keys publicly" — then
people complain that by this the pastor is degraded into the servant of Tom,
Dick and Harry, that is, of the coarse, unconverted mass which may outwardly
belong here and there to the visible Church,