# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1861_S295
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Remarks on the Office. 295

but rather grasped as an ought-to); as, for example, when Luther (no.
8) says that the proper business of the holiday is the preaching office, he
obviously does not mean to say that preaching may occur only on the
holiday, but merely that it should occur only on the holiday.

Now, to link directly onto this, "Amt" can certainly, in a narrower
sense, also mean a business to which someone is not only exclusively
obligated but also entitled, for which, for example, among the passages
cited by Grimm the following (from Klinger) can be used as an
illustration: "Frederick II knew his office [Amt] in all its duties and
aspects and truly exercised it as an office" — for here by Amt is meant the
royal office, which, if anything does, contains an exclusive entitlement in
itself. But this very passage is also quite suited to bring home that German
usage, with the word Amt, thinks more of duties than of rights; for in the
closing clause of the sentence, "and he truly exercised it as an office," the
sense of the word is plainly this: a calling that imposes duties. — Further,
"Amt" can, in a narrower sense, also mean a lasting commission, indeed
one binding for life, as likewise appears from the very example just cited,
whereas in the passage under 1 (from Frank's preface to the Weltbuch)
"Amt" (of the reader) is plainly meant to denote only a momentary,
transient activity. — Further still, "Amt" can again, in a particular sense,
mean a commission that passes from hand to hand, that is meant to have
an existence wholly independent of the perhaps endless succession of its
individual, momentary holders, as when one speaks of the office of the
magistracy or of the office of fatherhood. And finally the word can also be
joined with the concept of a legally instituted commission, an arrangement
having the character of a legal institution, as in the passage in Grimm
from Luther's Bible translation: "the priest's son shall have the office," or
as it will always be meant when a textbook of public law speaks of
"offices." But none of all this belongs to the essential marks of the concept
of office; in itself the office is neither exclusively entitling, nor a lasting
commission, nor a commission passing from hand to hand, an ever-
continuing order, nor is it in itself a legal institution — although, in a
given context, the word "Amt" can denote, without qualification, a
concept that includes one of these various marks, or several of them at
once.

I hope these linguistic remarks will convince the well-disposed reader,
or confirm him in the conviction, that in drawing conclusions from
individual passages of our Lutheran symbols in which the words "Amt,"
"Predigtamt," "Schlüsselamt," and so forth occur, great caution is needed
with respect to the symbolic concept of office and the symbolic doctrine of
office of the Lutheran Church, and — I add at the same time — that the