# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1863_S371
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Discords in the Lutheran Church of Prussia. 371

press themselves in these matters, they nevertheless inclined toward a
phrasing and manner of expression that did not arise nakedly and purely
from clearly grasped Lutheran principles, but rather took shape under the
harmful influences mentioned. So it is when the Breslau synodical
resolutions speak of "ecclesiastical authority," of "obedience," of "the
validity of church laws," in a manner such as one is accustomed to hearing
only of worldly authority, and such as can only with difficulty be brought
into harmony with the Lutheran doctrine of Christian liberty as against all
human and ecclesiastical statute-making. So it is, further, when church
discipline and the ban are handled in a manner that, as Professor Harnack
has recently shown, removes them from the domain of pastoral care into that
of a church police — a procedure that obviously rests on a failure to
recognize the nature of the visible church.

For many years after the formation of the Breslau synodical constitution,
the tensions latent within it lay unstirred. It was the time of the still
burning first love, in which people gladly overlooked and bore with
theological unclarities and dissonances. But gradually the individual
tendencies along which people moved took shape ever more clearly and
decidedly. First there emerged, in its full sharpness, the complete
overstraining of the false concept of the visible church and office. About
ten years ago now, a number of Lutheran pastors appeared in Prussia — for
instance Pistorius, Weicker, and others — who declared the visible Lutheran
church to be simply "the Church," or the body of Christ as such; they
publicly championed the concept of "the body of Christ" as an outwardly
visible social organism with offices, etc. Corresponding entirely to this,
the doctrine of church government later emerged as that of an office divinely
instituted for the Church, for the organically structured body of the Lord,
and charged with the governance of the Church. At pastoral conferences, in
exchanges of letters, the disputed points of doctrine were argued
incessantly and vigorously; opinion swayed back and forth without arriving
at clarity; people wanted gladly to acknowledge what was right in the sharp
emphasis on the visible church and office as it asserted itself, and yet
found themselves thereby led into consequences that could not be reconciled
with the Lutheran confession. But what gave the whole dispute its greatest
practical force was one circumstance. It was, namely, increasingly the
bureaucratic, legalistic-juristic character of the Breslau
synodical resolutions that had become practically
unbearable. At every synod since 1848 help and amendments had been sought
and resolved upon; commissions had even been appointed to revise the
synodical resolutions, but no goal had been reached: everything foundered on
the obstinacy of the lay deputies at the synods and on the theological
unclarity as a whole. Thus the synodical resolutions became a heavy burden
in practical life; it was an open secret at the synods, as they say, which
everyone confided to everyone else in confidence, that