# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1864_S204
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

to be the only normal one, indeed perhaps even the biblically archetypal one. Already the title of the book here discussed awakens the expectation of finding only what is generally essential and characteristic in the form of a free congregational constitution, whereas the book goes into the smallest local and particular details, down to the inclusion of written minutes of congregational resolutions and their recapitulation at the next following meeting, and so forth. And indeed, however gladly we would grant the Missourian congregational constitution its justification and its merits for American conditions, we would have to guard just as earnestly against seeing in it the norm, or even the ideal, of all congregational formation. And that some of Walther's statements sound a little too strong in this respect — for example, when the separation of church and state is simply set forth as the very thing natural to both — this cannot be denied. So long as the church and congregation retain their fundamental rights and freedoms, granted to them by Christ, they may, as regards the exercise of these rights, accommodate themselves to the most various forms. It is perfectly natural for the Christian authority, in a territorial church, to claim as head and representative of the whole people its share in the outward government of the church — which our old Lutheran fathers also unanimously grant it — and it may be just as natural for the exact opposite to hold in free America. It may well be, quite in accordance with conditions there, when Walther declares the qualified adult members of the congregation to be the most natural representatives of the whole congregation, into whose hands the election and calling of their ministers, etc., is placed, and this may well be, absolutely, the only possible form of congregational representation and activity for America; but it is just as rightly and truly the case that elsewhere, even in free congregations, another way of exercising the rights and powers of the church has formed itself, in representative bodies similar to the consistories of our old Lutheran church, and so on. Let us not, therefore, dream of ideals on the ground of church constitution, especially in this latterly troubled, evil time; but if we have God's Word and Sacrament pure and unadulterated, let us, along with everyone else, accommodate ourselves properly to the times, and leave it to time itself to judge which kind of church constitution proves most sound. But he who here best knows how to accommodate himself wisely to the times is alone the master."

That Walther confines himself only to the setting forth of brief theses, and gives their further execution and development in citations from the ancients, finds its justification and complete propriety in the fact that, in our time, it must above all be a matter of concern to Lutherans, first of all, to become historically certain of the Lutheran confession and the Lutheran principles in the questions concerned. By what means is unity of spirit to be called forth within one's own synod, so that one is joyfully and firmly conscious that, with one's own distinctive church-structure — one not hitherto seen in the Lutheran Church — one stands on pure Luther-