# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1864_S11
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on the Teaching of the Oberkirchencollegium of the Ev. Luth. Church in Prussia, etc. 11

be at once visible and invisible, and that we, in what takes place on earth, must also proceed from her visible side. Yet the very starting point of Lutheran orthodoxy is precisely the "assumed presence of believers," through that which was originally spoken to the first ones directly from heaven without human instruments.*)

5th Thesis: "Pure Word and Sacrament, which an assembly of people receives and practices — or, what is the same thing, being gathered together in Christ's name — are alone the immediately essential factors (generators) and marks of the Church; that is, they alone constitute the Church essentially and make her recognizable as Church, insofar as 1) through them the eternal purpose of the Church — to make men blessed (the restoration of fellowship with God through Christ) — is achieved solely and completely, and 2) everything else that belongs to the Church, or that she needs and that God bestows upon her — such as gifts, offices, arrangements, localities, time, sufferings, and so forth — in turn serve only the Word and Sacrament as means. Thus, indeed, the office (the ministry) of preaching and administering the Sacraments, within the coming-together of at least 2 or 3 people in Christ's name (C. Aug. art. 5), belongs to the immediate essence of the Church, but not also a larger, permanent congregation constituted for its more prosperous exercise, nor a permanent preaching office established at such a congregation for the same purpose — just as the efficacy of the Word and the Sacraments may not be made dependent upon their being administered by a permanently established office."

To a superficial view this thesis may seem harmless, but it is a remarkable example of how a dialectic not subordinated solely to the service of faith can smuggle in, alongside it, what is most harmful to it. In that the author wishes to maintain, of Word and Sacrament — which are indeed the generators of the Church — at the same time that, as received and practiced, they also constitute her essentially and belong to her immediate essence, he thereby claims a visible being-gathered around Word and Sacra-

*) On the occasion of the discussion of the 4th Thesis, a professor of theology remarks, in the "Proceedings," p. 123: "The ancients taught that the Church synecdochically is the fellowship of believers." This is not so. Rather, they say, together with the symbolical books, as follows: although Christ the LORD does not will that the wicked be the Church, He and His Apostles nevertheless teach how the Church appears in this world — that is, what standing she has in this life; and when, for that reason, they do not deny the name "Church" to the whole visible company that gathers around Word and Sacrament, they thereby show that it belongs to them in a synecdochical sense, inasmuch as, in these subjects — the visible company — there is a duality, believers and the ungodly, while the main thing, the believers, are singled out as the most eminent part, after which I name the whole subject — according to the principal substance, the two united substances — in other words, that the whole bears the glorious name "Church" for the sake of the part to which it properly and solely belongs; and this holds both of the general (catholic) visible Church and of her individual divisions, the so-called particular churches, such as the Roman, Greek, Lutheran, English, Calvinist, etc." How, then, could "visibility also rest within the concept of the Church"?