# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1862_S101
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Transfer of the Rights and Duties of the Spiritual Priesthood. 101

not to the church, but to the whole world, that the office of the keys is entrusted by God. This conclusion, then, we may designate as the standpoint of our opponents, if one wishes to call it a standpoint from which one leaps away again at will. Before, however, we go into this any further, let us see what errors our Prussian brethren believe they have discovered in our doctrine, that is, in the old Lutheran doctrine.

Pastor Crome writes: "With this much-agitated theory of transfer it is a very fragile thing. First of all, who gives a man to whom God gives an office — as to the Christian the office of the keys — the right and warrant to lay it down from himself and transfer it to another? I know how you will answer: the Lord himself has commanded it. But first this other question: how can a Christian free himself from his office of the keys and lay it upon another? He has it, after all, through baptism and faith. He would have to wash off his baptism, tear out his faith — only then would he be rid of the keys, otherwise not. Just see, dear Brunn, what a dead, mechanical thing you make of the office of the keys with your theory of transfer. And what a Christian does and practices daily, when he has the Gospel in his mouth — is that not the office of the keys? How does it come, then, that he still has it, if he has given it away? Has he divided it? By what measure and proportion?" — "There I lay, O Crito, struck speechless by such talk!" cried Socrates, when the sophist Dionysodorus had shown him the supposed absurdity into which he had run himself, in maintaining that he could sell what was his own — even if it were living creatures, such as oxen and the like — while yet granting that Zeus was his god, whom, however, he surely could not sell! Since we find ourselves here in a similar position, we shall no doubt have to beg our opponent for instruction when we ask: how does it come about that, when Herr Pastor Crome holds it his duty to publish his objections to our doctrine, this publication is carried out by the printer and the bookseller? Surely that was not their duty? And when parents, conscious of the duty laid on them by God to raise their son through instruction, hand him over to a teacher for this purpose, has the father thereby, by this very act, torn out his fatherhood, and the mother restored her virginity in integrum? Since this is plainly impossible, would it not be necessary to make known to all parents what a monstrous act they were guilty of, whenever, in carrying out their duties, they let themselves be helped by other people?

We have never taught that the Christian, upon the calling of a pastor, lays down his office of the keys from himself, nor likewise that the Lord himself has commanded him to lay it down. But this we do say: when a Christian joins together with others into a Christian congregation, they all have, together, as spiritual priests, the duty to carry out the preaching office, in a public manner too, for their own benefit and that of others; outwardly