# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1864_S120
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

120 New Literature.

the moral authority of order, established by the will of God (ordinatio
Dei) and sanctioned in the fourth commandment of the Decalogue. By
virtue of this, the church too, which as a constituted body enters into the
moral domain of order, has a governing power proper to itself; and its
governance, whatever form it may take, has the moral significance of an
authoritative power over against the pastors and congregations belonging
to it. Naturally not a potestas tyrannica or regia or secularis (Apology
288, 12ff.), but a power that is churchly bound and shaped, yet still an
authority to which, according to the fourth commandment, honor and
obedience are due. "'For from the authority of parents flows and spreads
out all other [authority],'" etc. (Large Catechism, p. 412, 141ff.) — this
also applies to the particular power of the church and of its governing
office." But since Professor H. can prove from Luther's exposition in the
symbolical Large Catechism only this much — that preachers are to be
reckoned among the "fathers" of the fourth commandment insofar as they
preach God's Word — he appeals to other passages in Luther's private
writings. In these, to be sure, Luther does ground obedience to the
church's ordinances on the fourth commandment. But Professor Harnack
can adduce for this only writings from the years 1516 to 1520, in which,
although a glorious light already shines, it is also documented that Luther
at that time, as regards for instance the Mass, and especially as regards
the church and its power, had not yet freed himself from all the errors
absorbed under the Papacy. (See Walch X, 1641, 1649, and III, 1842.) In
later writings Luther himself expressly condemns this doctrine. (See the
citations from Luther appended to the theses placed at the head of the
present number.) It is true that Professor H. also cites Luther's sermons
on the second book of Moses from the years 1524 to 1526; but when
Luther there calls rulers, bishops, pastors, schoolmasters, judges, etc., the
"fathers," and says that all estates derive from this, the conclusion is
more than bold that one may therefore say, following Luther, that when
the church governs in outward matters, obedience is owed to it for the
sake of the fourth commandment; for that is precisely the question —
whether parents, when they command things indifferent, do so as
household bishops and pastors, or rather as household princes and
rulers. Hence Luther also writes here expressly: "Upright people see well
what God has intended to indicate by the government and obedience of
parents; namely, that father and mother in their households are bishops,
popes, doctors, emperors, princes, and lords. Therefore a father should —
punish and teach his child like a judge, preach to him like a doctor —
like a pastor or bishop." (Walch III, 1658.) Luther thus says no more
that the father makes ordinances like a bishop than that he preaches like
a judge; and just as little as Luther, by deriving the estate of princes and
the office of judge from the fatherly office, wishes to prove that a prince
or a judge may preach, just so little does he wish, by deriving the office
of bishop or pastor from the fatherly office, to prove that the