# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1861_S197
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

God's Word and Luther's Doctrine. 197

while yet it lies clearly and definitely open to the day that the Missourians
want nothing else than to maintain the principle, namely the power of the
keys, as the property of the Church, and that with Luther and the Symbols
they ground it upon the spiritual priesthood of all Christians and not upon
a special official mandate of the preachers. But the possessors of the
spiritual priesthood of Christians are surely not Tom, Dick and Harry or the
coarse mass, but the truly believing, that is, the true and proper Church.
And finally: when the Missourians speak of the transfer of the office to the
individual, who absolves, baptizes, etc., "on behalf of the fellowship," then
people suppose that here everything is now thoroughly confused and that the
preaching office is trampled in the mire. In this sense Br. Wolf wrote to me
only recently: "Of an office given to all through Baptism, of a transfer of
the office of all to the one, I will know nothing." It seems to me that in
all this everything comes down to a simple misunderstanding; when one speaks
of "office," one must distinguish strictly between the office of the keys and
the pastoral office. The former belongs to the Church, the latter to the
pastors. But that the two are not one and the same is taught by the
Missourians also, and precisely by them very sharply and definitely. For
this I need only appeal to Walther's well-known book (The Voice of Our Church
on the Question of Church and Ministry), in which Theses 1 and 2 on the
preaching office read: "1. The holy preaching office or pastoral office is an
office distinct from the priestly office which all believers have. 2. The
preaching office or pastoral office is not a human ordinance, but an office
instituted by God Himself." These sentences are truly spoken clearly and
plainly enough, and in them the pastoral office is secured in its rights and
honors.

That the Missourians, with respect to the points of doctrine mentioned above,
mean and intend nothing else than truths which have at all times been held in
the Lutheran Church as undisputed matters, is taught by every glance into
their church periodicals."

Brunn closes thus:

To me it is solely a matter of the struggle for the truth; the disunity in
doctrine which I see among us burns me in my inmost soul, and therefore I
cannot refrain from wrestling too, in my small measure, from speaking and
bearing witness to what I have recognized as truth. But what I have written
in the foregoing is the fruit of a hot struggle of conscience; it is to me a
sanctuary of faith upon which I stand fast, and which as such I also confess
and testify: as surely as I have Christ and He is mine with His whole merit,
so surely am I also a king and a priest who with Christ through faith has all
might and power in heaven and on earth; so surely are the keys of the kingdom
of heaven mine also; so surely do I believe and confess that 1. therefore and
in this sense no one but the Church, that is, the congregation of believers,
has all might and power of the keys; and 2. that consequently it is only in
her name, the Church's, that is, by transfer of her rights and full powers,
that the officeholder