# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1863_S177
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Dr. Hengstenberg's Position on the Questions of the Office and Church Government. 177

so the believers were called in those days, whose number, as many of them as were then gathered, came to 120. And there Peter lays before them from Scripture whom and how one should elect such a one. . . . When Acts 6:2ff. requires deacons to be chosen and called, the apostles do not claim the right of election for themselves alone, but call the congregation together. Yet they do not entirely relinquish the concern for the calling, and do not leave it to the blind and disordered arbitrariness of the people or the crowd, but take the governance of the election and calling into their own hand; that is, they lay down the doctrine and rule as to whom and how one should choose, before the congregation; thereupon the ones chosen are brought before the apostles, so that it might be confirmed by their judgment whether the election was rightly carried out; and these confirm the election by the laying on of their hands with prayer to God. According to Acts 14:23, Paul and Barnabas appoint presbyters in the individual congregations to whom they had preached the Gospel; but they do not take the right and authority to elect and to call to themselves alone — rather, Luke here uses the word χειροτονήσαντες [having elected by show of hands], which is used in 2 Corinthians 8:19 of the election that takes place by the votes of the congregation; the word is in fact taken from the custom of the Greeks of casting their votes by the stretching out of the hand, and it denotes choosing someone by casting a vote, or making known one's assent. So Titus was appointed in Crete to direct and govern the election of the presbyters, so that it might be carried out in due order, and so that he might, by ordination, confirm and ratify the election once rightly made. For Paul, in Titus 1:5, where he speaks of appointing (in the cities) presbyters, uses the very same word that occurs in Acts 14:23, where mention is made both of the voting (by the people) and of the appointing of the presbyters. And he commands Titus that he sharply rebuke those who are not sound in doctrine, and who do not teach what they should — that is, as he puts it more plainly in 1 Timothy 5:22: "Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins" — namely, by approving an election or a calling that has not taken place in due order. These examples of apostolic history show plainly that the election and calling concern the whole church in a definite way, so that in the election or calling both the presbytery and the people have their part... From this it will become clear what judgment must be passed on the decree of the Tridentine Council concerning the lawful calling and sending of the ministers of the Word and the sacraments. For that decree lays down that those alone are lawful ministers of the Word and the sacraments who are called, ordained, and sent by the Christian bishops and their suffragans alone, and that neither the consent nor the calling nor the authority of the believing people, nor of any pious civil authority, is required."

Even when Dr. H. also draws on the Apocalypse to support his view, he