# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1864_S77
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on the Doctrine of the Supreme Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia, etc.   77

or otherwise in plain words; and even the right of calling, because its spiritual head actually carries it out, the congregation has itself never been able to give up, but only to entrust to the faithfulness of others; and the numerous guardians and trustees have so often exercised it on its behalf — in part, as in Lutheran congregations, not without the congregation's own fault, either out of indifference, or because they did not wish to support their pastors from their own resources — although in earlier times, for the most part, they too were entitled to refuse the acceptance of a preacher for just cause.

How, then, can one speak here of a canonical obedience, which, in the sense of the Theses (34 ff.) and according to the way they use the expression "church superiors," stands in the sharpest contradiction to the gospel! (Proceedings, p. 233 ff.) When Luther, Gerhard, Meisner, and others speak of spiritual authority — which is rightly to be called at the same time a serving authority, for those who serve most are the princes in Christ's kingdom — we must not merely take care that the expression "serving" be referred to Christ the Lord and to the church (in the proper sense) as mistress and lady, but also that our theologians restrict this power to that of the divine Word alone — which, indeed, they extend not only to what is read in Holy Scripture, but also to what, on its basis, is expounded and applied from the Law and the Gospel, but in no case to human word as such, even though in itself it might not be contrary to the gospel. And for this reason they do indeed set the full authority of preachers far above that of all emperors and kings, for these are not able to open and shut the kingdom of heaven by their dominion. When our forebears appeal, for their church ordinances, to the command "Let all things," etc., they mean thereby to assert the church's divinely authorized right to introduce such ordinances — a right whose breach could only become sin when the commandment of love were directly violated (in such a way that the servant of that commandment were himself violated at the same time) (Thesis 55); only under these conditions can one speak here of God's ordinance at all. When, in Hebrews 13:17, the word of the Greek original was translated by Luther as "teachers," he had in view precisely the spiritual governing of the Word, which one must obey, cf. verse 7; and what follows — "for they watch," etc. — cannot, to be sure, count as a ground of obedience toward God, but rather toward those who, under a heavy responsibility, must lead back the souls of their hearers to the right relationship with their Creator and Redeemer; and it both may and should count as such, so that failure may not excessively weaken the joyful courage of teachers, nor utterly cast them down in fear of a future reckoning. (Proceedings, p. 236.) What an abuse of dialectic it is, then, to drag this whole passage into the domain of church ordinances! And the words of the Augsburg Confession and the Apology are clear: they deny the bishops any power at all outside the gospel, precisely with respect to statutes that are not express commandments of God.