# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1864_S38
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

38 Some Remarks on the Teaching of the Supreme Church Council of the Ev.-Luth. Church in Prussia, etc.

... the coming-into-being of the official authority of one appointed to the service of the church, in the theses cited above, bears in particular a character opposed to Luther's teaching in his writing to the Bohemians of the year 1523 — a teaching never revoked, confirmed by the confessions, and never disputed by any of the later orthodox dogmaticians, but rather unmistakably presupposed by them at the very least in every case. The free exercise, on the part of the priestly congregation of the saints, of the unfolding — lying within its own bosom — of a particular office will never be brought into unity unless the great difference between the Messianic kingdom that has entered into our midst and its preparation in the Old Testament (under whose cover, however, it also had its root at the same time) is recognized and understood, and the gospel is thereby preserved from grievous mutilation and painful injury through laws that can neither be types of the former nor be erected through faith in the heart. As certain as it is that, in a manner pleasing to God, only the gift that comes from Him ought to be made into a public office, so we must never forget that, just as temporal forms of appearance belong merely to life on this side of eternity, so too no limits may be set to the royal priesthood of believers other than those with which God Himself wishes to keep abuse at bay, nor may individual Christians be robbed of rights which, dearly purchased for them by the Redeemer and given to them as their own, are of precious, inalienable worth and of the highest significance for the kingdom of conscience. Compare with this, by contrast, the historical...

... of the world, that is, certain institutions which depend on the movements of the elements and thus belong to this world, concerning worldly, Jewish, outward things — are no longer given by Him to the children of God, who in the New Testament are to be regarded as having come of age; the commandment of love is the sole thing by which their faith is active, not out of compulsion but with delight. Even the administration of the sacraments is free from ceremonial legalism; the signs of grace themselves are given together with the gospel, and their performance and use are found comprised within the content of the First Table; not to mention that the same should hold no less true of the sending out of the disciples of Jesus and of a church office in general. Every institution to which one ascribes divine right, without being able to derive it essentially from the general natural law and the gospel, leads back to, and grounds itself upon, Old Testament legalism, which, when set up in the New Testament, annihilates its character and nature. The steps of admonition in the church discipline commanded by Christ, the calling in of at least one or two persons who are then to testify before the congregation, follow from the universally human sense of right, illuminated by the revelation of the kingdom of grace. All the sayings, institutions and admonitions of the apostles that cannot be comprised under those two sources are to be regarded as merely human counsels and arrangements, even if very significant ones; indeed we even read of opinions or concessions, e.g. 1 Cor. 7:11, because the Lord wished, in this passage, to have only such given, in milder and in stricter form. Insofar as they have regard, in general, to what is profitable for one's neighbor, or are arranged with a view to a certain time, or to another's condition and state of mind, they fall either more to Christian free discernment, or are yet not without reference to nature, taken from the treasure and store of faithfulness in the Holy Spirit, which had arisen through the experience of God's mercy in these dear vessels. And we may as little think of "a multitude of new norms or laws through the apostles" as suppose that the Lord, on the contrary, expressly forbade them to teach anything beyond what He Himself had commanded, Matt. 28:20.