# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1863_S169
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Dr. Hengstenberg's Position on the Questions of Office and Church Government. 169

...that Satan can accomplish nothing against it. — Though we have indeed fought a great deal over polity and church government, those who imagine that the goal of our struggle was to force our particular form of polity upon everyone, if possible, altogether misunderstand us. Ah no, for us it was never a matter of so comparatively trifling a thing. Let the Buffalo people govern their church according to whichever of the old agendas they please, and the Silesians through a supreme church council [Oberkirchencollegium], and the Lutheran territorial churches through consistories — that we do not contest. Let each see what suits him best. Our struggle concerned higher goods. It was a matter of the honor of Christ and of his Church. Jesus Christ is the sole Lord of the Church; he alone is King in his kingdom and no one else, and he gives his honor to no other. No pope, no church council, no consistory, no congregation has the right to command so much as a jot in Christ's kingdom. Only to carry into effect the commands of Jesus, which have been laid down once for all and forever in Holy Scripture — that is their calling. If they wish, beyond the commands of Jesus himself, to command anything whatever out of their own plenary authority, then they are rebels against the King of Heaven; and if they even go so far as to say that this usurped power derives from divine right, then they are blasphemers besides. That is the one point at issue; the other is the honor of Christians. Christians are called to the fellowship of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:9), that is, they possess all the goods that Christ possesses, are in truth Christ's bride, Christ's brothers — and these are no empty phrases! Stewards who, even in but a single matter that the Lord has not commanded, demand obedience for themselves, thereby make the Lord's bride into their maidservant, the Lord's brothers into their servants, and thereby commit a shameful outrage, destroy God's wonderful order, profane his temple, touch the apple of his eye; the wrath of the master of the house will surely overtake them, though the devil dress up their blindness and arrogance with the name of a fine, effective church government, of a firm, blessed church order that has grown up historically. The Roman hierarchy is an order, a firm, strong one, also one that has grown up historically (a point on which especial weight is now laid; H. says: "In general the polity which every church has, being necessarily conditioned by historical circumstances, is thus also the one willed by God (?)") — and what Christian can deny that this order is the most accursed disorder, the most abominable destruction of the household order of God? — It remains forever true: "One is your Master, and you are all brothers." These brothers can now, among themselves, according to their several gifts, divide the work in the house. But woe, woe to the brothers who set themselves up as lords, who hold the other brothers — who perhaps have rougher work, bakers, smiths, farmers — to be not so fully entitled as themselves; who indeed suppose that it is through them that these brothers first become brothers, that through their distributing these first receive the goods of the house, that these brothers really have no right, for example, even to have a voice when it comes to putting an impenitent person