# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1864_S74
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

74   Some Remarks on the Doctrine of the Supreme Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia, etc.

but only then, when by the opposite the commandment of love was transgressed. In our church's teaching all this is

whose separation and commissioning the church freely carries out. To choose the holders of a pastoral office, by contrast, for a fixed term of years, or, if they themselves promise their work only with the reservation of a free departure after a set period, does away with its proper nature; here the service is wholly and entirely — every function and act touching the giving of the means of grace, and the act by which the appointment, the designation, is realized in a person — the doing of Christ and of his Spirit, and a matter of divine right, even though a human mouth is his instrument in all this, a mouth that may never presume in bold fashion to prescribe anything to the Lord that he has not left to its representation. His own instruction, his own judgment alone determines how far the authority of such persons is to extend, and who is to be and remain his preacher.

Indeed, it is much the same in the kingdom of nature. The government of house and state is administered by deputies personally sanctioned by God; those who are taken on as their helpers stand in a divine calling that is nevertheless still distinct from the general, natural calling of an individual as such, by which he is of use to the world at large — except that they, like that individual, have come into their office under the almighty governance of God as Creator. The gracious working of the Holy Spirit according to the third article is administered by the church government, and indeed through persons called as intermediaries — including in its subordinate branches. Here, in the case of these latter, just as with the ambassadors of the highest authority, only with the difference of the spiritual or ecclesiastical on the one hand and the worldly on the other, a concursus divinus generalis takes place in the act of installation. On the other hand, when persons are appointed who possess all the rights of territorial sovereignty, or at least an uncontested part of them, then — just as with the public ambassadors of the gospel — a concursus divinus specialis (cf. Hollaz, ex. theol., ed. Teller, p. 1333) cannot be denied, provided these are set in place by the Holy Spirit himself, as the words state, and those others are ordained as servants bearing God's image — although their functions as such, in a formal sense, though not as to content, may claim no higher character than other works belonging to different callings that are sanctified through faith, for example that of a servant, etc. A right justly claimed to stand in God's place never passes over to men so long as the condition is lacking under which alone this can be granted. Furthermore, wicked rulers are equally in a divine office as good ones are, and obedience is owed them, so far as no divine command is thereby set aside, in that very thing. Likewise, false teachers too have, through the call of the congregation of true believers hidden beneath their pulpits, an installation by the Holy Spirit just as orthodox teachers do; only that no voice is to be heard which is not the voice of the Lord Jesus, that is, according to the word of the apostles and prophets; in everything that agrees with that word, Christ speaks and acts through them officially; against any impure admixture, those who have come to knowledge must testify, and when malicious resistance follows from those who persistently refuse to hear, such are to be held as heathen and tax collectors, and one is to join in unity with the companions of the true faith. (Luther, "Von den Schleichern," etc.; cf. J. Gerhardi, Loci theologici, De ministerio, § 157.) That all these — the New Testament presbyters, that is, the teaching elders — sit upon the apostles' seat by an outwardly lawful or at least valid call, and, if truly believing, also by an inward call, follows unanswerably from Ephesians 4:11 ff.; for the very purpose for which the Lord gave apostles, prophets, and evangelists — that they should labor for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ — for that same purpose he also gives pastors and teachers; and that in Acts 20 St. Paul commits the care of this very congregation at Ephesus to its elders as a continuation of his own apostolic teaching office is shown by the whole context of his speech, and therefore the words of verse 28 can be applied only to the public teaching shepherds, that is, to pastors.

How falsely our great theologians are understood in this whole matter can best be seen from a few examples. Chemnitz, the co-author of the Formula of