# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1863_S173
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Dr. Hengstenberg's Position on the Questions of Office and Church Government. 173

of the officeholders in the church as mere „„functionaries of society,““
he so decidedly rejects, [and] presents the office as a divine ordinance.“
First of all, in this sentence the status controversiae is altogether unclearly stated. One party (Höfling) maintains, as is well known: the officeholders are mere functionaries of society. We "Missourians," on the other hand: the officeholders are not mere functionaries of society, but they are at the same time, and properly and in truth and reality, officers of God, although society has instituted the office among itself and has itself chosen the officers. A godly man takes a wife for himself and yet knows at the same time that God gives her to him — precisely through his own taking, she is given to him by God. Thesis VII of our book "Church and Office" reads: "The holy preaching office is the authority transferred by God, through the congregation, as the possessor of the priesthood and of all churchly power, to exercise the rights of the spiritual priesthood in a public office on behalf of the community." Which teaching, then, does H. reject as a "modern dream"? Apparently only the former, but in truth both — he is against all "who let the office grow up out of the congregation" and seeks to refute this by the assertion that Titus, "without any action of the congregation," installed pastors. That our teaching, however, is no "modern dream," while the Hengstenberg-Stahl teaching is rather a modern edition and reflection of old papist dreaming, will become clear to everyone willing to see it through the following evidence. Luther writes against Emser in 1521: "Priesthood and power must exist beforehand, brought along from baptism, common to all Christians through faith, which builds them upon Christ, the true supreme priest, as St. Peter here says. But to exercise such power and put it into effect belongs to no man on his own, but to him who is called by the multitude, or by him who has the command and will of the multitude; he then does such work in place of, and as the person of, the multitude and of the common authority." Further, it is stated in the letter to the Council and congregation of the city of Prague, 1523: "We are told something else, however, Matt. 23:8: One is your Master, Christ, and you are all brethren. Therefore we all count equally, and have but one right, all of us. For it cannot be tolerated that those who are called brethren, and all have one fellowship, that one should be above another, receive a greater inheritance, and have a better right than another, especially in spiritual matters, of which we now speak. Yet all this we have said only of the common right and power of all Christians. For since all things are to be common to all Christians, as we have hitherto related, so it is not fitting for one, who would push himself forward on his own, to claim for himself alone what belongs to all of us. Take up this right, and also put it into practice, so far as no other is there who has likewise received such a right. But the right of the community requires this: that one, or as many as the congregation pleases, be chosen and received, who in the place and in the name of all those who