# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1861_S305
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Of the Present Controversy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia. 305

really says this, whether it declares itself roundly and definitely for all
these propositions, in such a way that whoever submits himself to this
Upper Church Council cannot do so otherwise than under the assumption
that these propositions are correct? And this question is not yet
answered affirmatively even if it can perhaps be shown that one or
another member of the Upper Church Council professes these
propositions — as, indeed, we certainly have every reason to believe that
the foremost member of this council thinks of church, church order, and
church government in the manner described: for if that alone were
already decisive, we would be very badly off in our territorial churches,
in which, in part, one does not know at all how church government views
its position, and in part knows only too well that church government is
understood there to be one instituted by Christ. We need only recall
Mecklenburg and Kliefoth's books on the church. Only, then, when a
church government as such professes these propositions, and obedience
to it can be rendered only under acceptance of these propositions, is
opposition not merely permitted but required. How, then, does matters
stand on this point with the Upper Church Council? This question has in
particular been put to it at the last General Synod, and one had, we
gladly admit, good reason for this, especially on account of the well-
known statements of the aforementioned member of the Upper Church
Council, Huschke."

In what follows it is now documented, with official declarations, that
not all members of the Upper Church Council agree in this doctrine of
church government, and the account then continues thus:

"If the opposition applied only to church government that wishes to
be one instituted by God, it would not be easy to see why, in view of these
declarations, it did not fall silent. But it is not hard to see that the
opposition has yet another ground. This, to be sure, has come to light
only gradually, but can no longer be mistaken. It is this: that one does
not believe one can acknowledge a church government as a distinct office
alongside the ecclesiastical office at all. To this end aims the motion put
by Pastor Lohmann to the General Synod: 'that the Synod resolve, on
the basis of Art. 28 of the Augsburg Confession and of the Smalcald
Articles, to reject the proposition that there exists in the church a
distinct office of church government, different from the preaching office,
which is instituted by God and can demand obedience in God's name.'
This motion is namely not to be understood as though only the assertion
were to be rejected that, just as there is a preaching office instituted by
God, so too there is a church government instituted by God in the same
sense — for that assertion we too would reject — but rather its meaning is
that there should be no church government at all distinct from the
preaching office. The opponents of the Upper Church Council seem,
namely, to have gradually agreed upon the view that church government
belongs to the ecclesiastical office alone, and they think they can appeal,
for this, to the old Lutheran doctrine of the status triplex