# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1863_S370
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

370 The Discords in the Lutheran Church of Prussia.

church constitutional form of the Church, people were accustomed to seeing
the Church, too, governed by laws and by a government by the grace of God.
It was natural, then, that people thought this gap in the free, separated
Church had to be filled by something similar, and that the whole church
order had to be given the character of a binding law. It was also a factor
that the chief influence on the new constitution was exercised by one man,
Privy Councillor Huschke, who, with his imposing mind and genuinely
juristic training, impressed the stamp of his own spirit on the whole. Hence,
no doubt, the often unecclesiastical, pettily legalistic, bureaucratic-juristic
character of the Breslau synodical resolutions. Consider only this one thing:
for a number of congregations — some of them small — standing in free
brotherly fellowship and association, a body of church laws and ordinances
was created bit by bit that by now has grown to a volume several fingers
thick. And finally, among the circumstances of the time in which the new
church constitution took shape, several further peculiarities deserve
consideration. First, the fact that, whereas the Lutheran Church had
formerly been a people's church, it had now freshly gathered itself out of
individuals who were, for the most part, vitally believing; this opened up
entirely new perspectives, never before existing, for many things — for
instance, especially for the handling and exercise of church discipline, and
for the participation of the laity in church affairs in congregational
assemblies, presbyteries, and synods. Then, second, during the years of
persecution, when the pastors often lay for long years in prison, a board of
elders had formed itself in the congregations in their absence, in whose hands
the leadership and care of the congregations had lain. Much blessing had
come to the Church from this board of elders in those times of tribulation;
so this office was carried over into the newly forming constitution just as it
had taken shape, and in doing so it was overlooked that these had only been
transient states of emergency in the Church that had given this office of
elder its particular character.

Besides these circumstances of the time, there was still another cause that
had the most decidedly unfavorable influence on the formation of the Breslau
synodical resolutions. That was the theological lack of clarity on doctrinal
questions which are, without doubt, of decisive importance in the field of
the Church's constitution — the questions of church, the office of the
ministry, and church government. Just as, in our whole age generally, an
ecclesiastical party has increasingly and decidedly formed itself which
emphasizes and overstrains the concept of the visible church and, in keeping
with it, also its office and government, in an un-Lutheran manner, so we see
the roots of this extreme direction, without doubt, already in the beginnings
of the Breslau synodical constitution. People could not quite be clear about
it; they saw themselves, moreover, set over against a wholly unecclesiastical
age, and, in the struggle with the Union, driven to the sharpest emphasis on
the doctrine of church and office; and so, although they were careful to
avoid open contradiction of the Lutheran confession in these matters, they
were driven to ex-