# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1864_S13
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on the Teaching of the Oberkirchencollegium of the Ev. Luth. Church in Prussia, etc. 13

as though the Church, in her essence and concept, were not fellowship but institution, and as such stood above that fellowship. The 6th, 7th, and 8th Theses are, in themselves, unobjectionable additions to the preceding one, and form the transition from it to the 9th.

9th Thesis: "Accordingly, pure Word and Sacrament in confession form the foundation of the constituted or organized Church, and insofar as one takes 'Church' in this sense, one can then also say that the false churches are not churches but sects, heretical religious communities, and the like."

How ill it is to depart from the admonition of the holy Apostle, 1 Cor. 1:10, the present proposition shows. The consideration of the Church as constituted, or according to the aspect of church order, when the question asked is what she IS (Thesis 1), is decidedly foreign to the symbolical books; only for the purpose which the theses have, to be sure, is such a distinction in the concept most serviceable.* There is no other Church, if one wishes properly to speak of it, than as she is brought forth by the Holy Spirit through faith — one that reaches exactly as far as God's Word and Sacraments are still present, exactly as far as outward Christendom, with all its individual companies of the called (outside of which no elect are to be sought), even where human delusion and error obscure the Gospel, so long as saving portions of divine truth still remain. We concede, however, that the Church of the pure confession may, as visible true — or better, pure — Church, be called, in distinction from the false visible churches, the visible Church without qualification, because the true Church,

*) The author intends, as the two following theses also openly show, nothing other than to assert this: that Christ founded His Church — apart from her immediate relationship to God on the basis of the reconciliation, which elsewhere ("Report on the General Synod held at Breslau in [18]60, etc.," p. 96) he calls the inward side (to which, however, he already reckons as factors the outward exercise of the Word and the Sacrament in themselves, without the special establishment of a public office, as belonging to the immediate essence — and which he accordingly at the same time asserts to be visible) — essentially also as a visible organism or structure of members, in which she should be active for her own upbuilding, and that this is the outward or social side, etc. (Report, p. 93, 96; cf. Verhandlungen, p. 70.) That side which is turned toward God does indeed turn outward, toward men, and attests itself through activities as manifestations of inward faith — activities which, however, do not together constitute the essence, just as the workings of a soul are not the soul itself, but are produced by it according to an immanent law. One sees that the author posits the Church, from the very outset, as a visible being-together. Did the LORD, in Paradise, found His original church, Adam and Eve, by an outward command that determined them — regardless of whether they believed or not — to the exercise of the Protevangelium, or did she arise out of faith? (Luther: "out of faith the Church arises," etc.) The reception and exercise of the Word and the Sacrament, as they come into appearance, are, on the Church's own part, her body as an outward organism, which she herself — as the spirit builds its body, also further by virtue of the spiritual gifts bestowed upon her — builds for herself, once the commandment of love has been established within her. Here there is no "multitude of new norms or laws" that are dreamed onto the apostolic Church (Report, p. 93), as shall be shown more fully in what follows.