# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1864_S81
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on the Doctrine of the Supreme Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia, etc.   81

so they cannot yet, for their acts and powers appropriate to that office, appeal on that account to a divine right, because such things would ultimately rest on what God has partly commanded and partly given to the church; for what is built upon this divine foundation, even if it is holy, is still only man's work — quite unlike how it stands with the formation of a pastoral office: this office is contained within the apostolate itself, as a continuation of it, referred to individual congregations that issue the call, whereas that other authority is contained in the church only in the sense that the church draws it out not merely from itself, but at the same time from the public apostolic office, and thereby, together with the holders of that office, takes the apostles' place — who are, indeed, always to be regarded as both such and church at once. (Proceedings, p. 277.) The teaching-elders remain instituted by the Holy Spirit in the narrower sense; the ruling-elders as such are so only under the gracious guidance of the same Spirit, as the Christian congregation enjoys it, and under divine providence, whose eye watches over the shaping of the church in all ages; they hold no divine office equal to a commanding power, as the pastors do, whose word of pure doctrine is so consecrated, sanctified, and confirmed by the Chief Shepherd that he acknowledges it as his own — a word that mightily and powerfully absolves men before God from all sins, and pronounces unconditional commands against those sins. Can it, then, be the intent of our church ordinances — as it never was among our forebears — that among the exceptions where they may be broken, besides the absence of an offense, it should belong only to the case where something in them is against God's Word, and not already to the case where something in them, which is of human right, is set up as though it were a divine command? (Proceedings, p. 255.) Does the church, then, even in having authorization and commission from Christ at all to make ordinances, thereby also have the power to make, for its own particular arrangements, a claim to obedience as such — that is, may it command that matters indifferent be done or omitted for the sake of its own commandment? (See Johann Gerhard, Confessio catholica, p. 627. Compare, against this, the conflation in Thesis 52, Synodical Resolutions, p. 106 f.) Does not the Formula of Concord, in its tenth article — on which Thesis 52 itself relies — teach, in the clearest general words: "I. We accordingly reject and condemn as wrong, when human commandments are held, in and of themselves, to be a form of worship or a part of it. II. We also reject and condemn as wrong, when such commandments are forced upon the congregation of God as necessary" (fol. 318a)? Here it is well to note that the first statement already declares wrong the treating of human ordinances in themselves as worship, while the second declares wrong, rather, the compulsion — the forcing of them upon others as more necessary — inasmuch as the word "necessary" here does not carry the added sense "for salvation" (for in that sense even the works commanded by God are not necessary), but rather makes human statutes binding in such a way that their transgression injures the conscience and is sin before God — similarly as a believer remains obligated to do the will of his Lord, something which, through faith, is even