# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1864_S7
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on the Teaching of the Oberkirchencollegium of the Ev. Luth. Church in Prussia, etc. 7

according to the old man. To be sure, believers are always visible human beings, but as such they belong to the kingdom of nature, according to the body and the soul knowable through the body, insofar as both are something created; as such, the believing man is not yet a member of Christ. He is that only insofar as he is in the kingdom of grace. Christ, purely and exclusively "the Head of invisible subjects" in the above sense, cannot for that reason further be, as such, "the Head of the visible assembly." The Augsburg Confession understands by "assembly" nothing other than the spiritual, invisible one; otherwise it could not say "of all believers"; the head of the intermingled ungodly and hypocrites is not Christ but Belial; they come into consideration only insofar as they are members of the Church according to her outward form, and this happens in particular for the very reason that the 8th Article is appended to the 7th — since it can by no means be denied that the invisible Church must at the same time be defined as visible, lest we allow ourselves to dream that, apart from the Word of God and the holy Sacraments — no matter by whom administered — forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, knowledge of salvation, faith, and the calling upon the name of the LORD could be found; and the boundary of this visibility is one that precisely marks off the assembly of unbelievers from that of the Church, yet is, to be sure, a fluid one, impossible to discern, for distinguishing all the dead members from the living. As for the expression "dead members," through and with it the Church is never taken as the body of Christ — which can have no dead members at all — but as a body in general, insofar as such a body may consist of living and dead members; the dead members are not members of the invisible Church, but only of the visible (whether in its universality, catholicity, or in some particular) Church, insofar as this, together with the living and the dead, forms one whole, a body in general — just as the tares are no part of the wheat field as such, yet are indeed a part of the field, insofar as the field is a whole consisting of wheat and tares.* And thus, in the Smalcald Articles, it is said that "Christ

*) Compare on this the following passages of the Apology: "Therefore, those in whom Christ works nothing through his Spirit are not members of Christ. And this the adversaries themselves confess, that the wicked are merely dead members of the Church." Fol. 62a. — "For one must indeed know quite properly through what we become members of Christ, and what makes us living members of the Church," etc. — Fol. 62b, below. — "For it is certain that all the ungodly are in the power of the devil and are members of his kingdom," etc. Fol. 63a. — "And when Christ says: The kingdom of heaven is like a net, etc., he does not mean that the wicked are the Church, but teaches how the Church appears in this world. Therefore he says she is like these, etc. And Christ thereby teaches us that the ungodly, although they may indeed be in the Church according to outward fellowship, are nevertheless not members of Christ, not the true Church, for they are members of the devil." Fol. 63b. — "And yet we also confess that there are many hypocrites and wicked persons in the Church among the true Christians, who are likewise members of the Church, so far as outward signs are concerned." Fol. 65a. — "This, we consider, should suffice to guard and maintain the definition, since we have said what the