# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1864_S39
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on the Teaching of the Supreme Church Council of the Ev.-Luth. Church in Prussia, etc. 39

[Footnote, continued:] Origin of the Prussian Lutheran Church Constitution, especially the Synodal Resolutions, p. 2 below.

The rule within the church, for which the present theses are meant to form a foundation, is indeed, in its outward form, different from the properly so-called hierarchy. According to the 23rd [thesis], all service of the church since Christ's ascension is derived from the right of calling one who is gifted and tested for it, with prayer in the Holy Spirit, through whom the church is one with Christ. The complete act of this calling belongs, according to the 26th thesis, variously to organs ordained for it (which cast their vote for such matters). The service of the church divides, by divine right, as the 24th and 25th theses say, into distinct offices, whose number and kind alone are left to the discretion of the church's organism in the Holy Spirit. Apart from the fact that, accordingly, the origin of the office of the means of grace — which is supposed to be the most important (Th. 28, 30) — is one and the same as that of the other services (cf. Report, p. 35 above), it may also not be the origin of the Word itself, from which all the others flow (which are for that reason holy church offices, because they are erected and directed on the basis of the Word, and serve for the purpose of the means of grace); indeed, rather, certain functions, even where they concern merely the side of outward order, are likewise to have divine right, and, where they deal with persons, are, for the sake of the order willed by Christ, to be owed obedience on God's behalf in this domain (Th. 29, 31ff., 34, 37, etc.) — Whoever does not strictly hold fast to the concept and essence of the church as something purely spiritual and heavenly must, of course, count the earthly goods of the congregation as already belonging to its nature, and therefore also require that the administration of these goods be a self-standing office to which, by divine appointment, matters are subordinated. But where does one find in Holy Scripture even the slightest command, a mandate from God, for this? At what point did Christ institute this office? Do not the holy Twelve and the apostolic church erect it in Christian freedom? It is likewise with a particular office of ordering, governing, and oversight within an individual congregation and the association of several, which would have to command something beyond the Word of the Lord. Where in all the world is this supposed to have its divine institution and warrant? What, according to the teaching of Christ, is alone of divine command and right? To preach the gospel, to loose and to bind, to baptize, to celebrate in His remembrance the wonderful sacrament of His body and blood, to teach and to keep everything that He, in the commandment of love for God and neighbor that became new out of the New Testament, has taught and confirmed — in which, in turn, what has gone before is also comprised; and just as the first witnesses of Christ were to the church gathered by them, so this church too is to, partly in a missionary way, partly in particular within congregations that have arisen, mark out boundaries through the erecting of a particular service, which — proceeding from the common calling of the apostles (Smalcald Articles, fol. 152a) and, like that calling, from Christ's authorization — through the now