# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1864_S78
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

This doctrine stands or falls with Luther's Reformation. A governing body in the church, so far as it does not administer the means of grace, can demand for all its functions no other obedience than that which it has voluntarily and freely imposed upon itself, after it has tested the demand made of it by the holy law of liberty. The individual official acts of the teaching-elders as such belong, by divine right, to them and to the church which confers them upon them; those of the ruling-elders, however, belong to them only by human right, though by divine right to the church in such a way that the church can, for God's sake, carry them out within itself, without there being a fixed command as to what these must be. The office of the latter, even when a pastor alone holds it, is limited to outward ordering and is merely an outflow of the spiritual priesthood — something the church does, though not contrary to the will of God, who, apart from church discipline and certain matrimonial matters, etc., has ordained nothing specific, and in the writings of the New Testament has given only the pattern of apostolic arrangements. The office of the former, by contrast, is at the same time something that God does; here it is not only the congregation that deals with itself, but above all Christ, through those who stand in his place, dealing with it — and this spiritual ruling or presiding office commands and rules unconditionally. As surely, then, as it is also true here that what one entrusts to another one does not thereby lose, and that the administering of the means of grace ought properly to be transferred to one person alone, so that it may be done publicly — just as surely will it be consistently more advisable, at least in the appointment of preachers and in matters of church discipline, that these same powers remain, in their exercise, so far as possible with all Christians who are entitled to them, as the Lord Jesus originally ordained. That there should be locally distinct parishes is God's will, and likewise their general relation to one another is grounded in the law of nature and in general equity; particular arrangements in this regard, changes, and the like, are human ordinances, and the power to establish them in unity and peace has been given to the believers themselves. But it is only by delegation, in turn, that individuals can carry this out. Without the consent of the congregation concerned, no ruling power in the church may presume to any such thing, still less may any share in its discipline be claimed by any oversight office other than that of the pastor and his assistants — likewise with taking a pastor from it and transferring him elsewhere, unless the enlightened conscience of the one called compels him himself, for the sake of greater need or of a more abundant exercise of his gifts, to make a change. (Theses 31, 51; Synodical Resolutions, p. 19, § 31; cf. 35, p. 123 f.; Thesis 62, etc. — not to mention the restrictiveness, disturbing through a lack of evangelical simplicity and intruding upon consciences, of the disciplinary procedure among our opponents.) When the steps of admonition have been carried out with one who is burdened with an offense, and he, once it has become public, remains impenitent in mind and is thereby bound by the judgment of his brethren, then, as everywhere,