# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1864_S8
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

set up in the Pope's place as the Head of the Church" — precisely and exclusively as the cause, working in believers, of a spiritual unity and of the life therein. (Smalcald Articles, fol. 141a.)*)

From the fact that "the symbolical books declare Christ to be the Head of believers (and believers are visible), while at the same time also saying that the true Church deals in Word and Sacraments, thus something visible, wherein the faith of the one so acting is of no consequence," it indeed follows that Christ "is the Head of the Church, which as such also acts," but by no means that I must let him count as the Head "for all who act within the visible company" (or who are simply in it). With this latter claim the Lutheran confession is abandoned, and one arrives at the notion that

the Church is. And since the true Church is called, in Scripture, the body of Christ, it is indeed simply impossible to speak of it otherwise than as we have spoken of it. For it is indeed certain that hypocrites and the ungodly cannot be the body of Christ, but belong to the kingdom of the devil. — All this is quite open and so plain that no one can deny it. (Just as little are the latter drawn by Christ, Vhdlungen, p. 124, so that the Apology rather says: "the devil has taken them captive and drives them wherever he will." Fol. 65a, below. — It is claimed that Rom. 12:5 calls the visible assembly of the called the body of Christ, Verhandlungen, p. 118; by no means — the Apostle speaks of the spiritual body of Christ, the invisible Church, only insofar as she truly is that, for whose sake also the intermingled dead members of her visible assemblies, among them, may be used as instruments of His gifts by the Spirit of grace that dwells, however, only in the believers.

*) If we analyze the definition of the Church in the Augsburg Confession, then "the assembly" is the genus, "of all believers" is the differentia specifica; the addition "in which," etc., does not belong to the latter, for there is also an assembly of which the same thing can be predicated — a visible company of the called — and this is called "Church" only in an improper, synecdochical sense; the genus is the determinandum, the specific difference the determination, which states what always belongs to the thing being defined as wholly and solely its own; the Church, then, is properly the assembly of all believers, with the exclusion of those merely called, and the addition "in which," etc., is a predicate which she — the invisible, spiritual assembly — has in common with such an assembly of which believers are only the most eminent part; it therefore does not belong to the logical essence of the Church, although it does belong to the logical essence of the genus, which comprehends under itself, as species, both the visible and the invisible assembly in which the Gospel and the Sacrament are rightly administered. These two, the societas interna and externa, which can never wholly coincide — because the spiritual life of many believers is at the very least interrupted, and because there are also falsely teaching churches among which there are nevertheless saints — stand to one another as parts to a whole, cause to effect, etc., and here the kingdom of nature must serve the kingdom of grace. For two reasons the extremely important addition ("in which," etc.) is added in the definition of the Augustana: 1) in order to affirm the true existence of the invisible Church on earth; 2) in order to indicate what suffices for true unity. The word "assembly" is here meant, to say it once more, not to express the visible one gathered around Word and Sacrament, but the spiritual union under the spiritual Head — just as the children of this world form a totality under their prince; but at the same time the 7th Article means to testify not merely that the Church must always be and remain, but also where she is, by what signs she is recognized. That believers, however, insofar as they are human beings, do indeed also constitute a visible assembly gathered around Word and Sacrament, without their being individually distinguishable from those merely called who are intermingled with them, is self-evident.