# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1864_S201
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Dr. K. K. Münkel's Assessment of the Work: The Right Form, etc. 201

of church order; the election and calling of ministers, which is carried out by the congregations, is placed under the oversight and direction of other tested church officers; the establishment of "conventicles, that is, of teaching- and prayer-gatherings led by persons not called, outside of the publicly preaching office ordained by God," is forbidden. In these provisions, we believe, sufficient proof is furnished that the Synod of Missouri faithfully and firmly preserves the Lutheran confession in its congregational constitution, and that it accords it the foundational and all-governing position that is its due. With this the often-heard reproach falls away of itself, that the Missourians are charged with ecclesiastical democracy and the like. Let doctrine and life be distinguished from each other in the Lutheran manner; if doctrine and confession are pure and clear, and hold their rightful place, then the outward constitution of the church is in itself immaterial, and merely on that account one may charge us with being neither aristocrats nor democrats; rather it has ever and always been the true Lutheran principle that the church, in its outward constitution, has accommodated itself to time and circumstance, and has paid due regard to historical right and custom. And it is precisely in this that we see the glory of the Lutheran Church as the Church of the pure Word: that it does not, like the Papacy, hold up before us an outward constitutional structure as its jewel and its palladium, but gives honor to the Lord and His Word alone, lets itself be content with Him, and, armed with this shield and treasure of divine truth, accommodates and builds itself into all natural human orders and relations. We shall, however, have to grant that in the ecclesiastical constitution of the Missourians, as it stands before us in Walther's book, the proper and fundamental seat of all church power is placed not in the ministry, but in the "congregation." Herein lies, without doubt, the true root of the accusations made against the Missourians. But here too, in order to arrive at a correct judgment, we shall have to distinguish strictly between two things: the principles of Lutheran doctrine in themselves, and their practical execution in the field of ecclesiastical constitution. As far as the doctrine is concerned, we shall have to hold fast, over against all papal and hierarchical theories of the ministry, as an inalienable sanctuary of the Lutheran confession, that all church power has its principal seat and source in faith alone, and therefore in the Church as the congregation of believers. For the sake of the truth of our Lutheran confession we must therefore regard it as a special merit of the Missourians that, in their struggle against Pastor Grabau and the Buffalo Synod, so far as it concerns the field of doctrine, they have so emphatically testified to and defended the fundamental rights and the freedom of the congregation. It is, of course, a different matter as soon as it is a question of the outward, practical exercise of the rights and powers of the church on the ground of ecclesiastical constitution: there the church walks humbly in the ways of naturally human relations, orders, and estates, assigned to it by God. Thus