# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1864_S205
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Dr. K. K. Münkel's Assessment of the Work: The Right Form, etc. 205

Lutheran ground, and not on the subjective views and developments of one theologian — a recognition which the sincere, upright Lutherans of Germany are made able, indeed compelled, to grant, in no other way than by this very fact, that Prof. Walther in essence merely gives the ancients a hearing, and that his theses only, as it were, state the brief sum of the citations? It is not Walther's own development, but the witnesses he has brought forward, that give the matter its weight and its decisive force.

The proof-texts adduced from Luther and the fathers regarding free congregational assemblies, synodical association, etc., are indeed only "isolated and meager," for since conditions in the age of the Reformation were not favorable to a free development of the church, one finds, to be sure, foundational statements, principial hints, but no more detailed elaborations. And when one considers that Walther's work was originally only a conference paper, one that did not have a presentation for German readers in view, one will expect an elaboration on this point all the less, since such a one, worked out down to the smallest detail, already existed in the congregational and synodical constitutions — an acquaintance with which one could, at least in part, well presuppose even among German readers, thanks already to the Grabau controversies.

When Dr. Münkel wishes to guard earnestly against seeing, in the "Right Form," etc., "the norm or even the ideal of all congregational formation," when he says, "let us not dream of ideals on the ground of church constitution," and when he asserts that "elsewhere than in America, 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, equally right and true" — then it seems to us that a considerable lack of clarity comes to light here regarding the concept of the nature and purpose of church constitutions. For what, after all, is the purpose of a constitution? Surely this: to order the exercise of certain rights and duties in such a way that it actually takes place and brings blessing. The church is an organism of living members of the body, since Jesus Christ is the head. In every member the gifts of the Spirit are to show themselves for the common good, 1 Corinthians 12:7. That, therefore, is the right constitution which rightly calls forth into life the manifestation of these gifts through the exercise of rights and duties; a constitution, on the other hand, becomes the worse the more it paralyzes the activity of the individual members and stifles their gifts by transferring their functions only to a select few. A blind man can indeed compensate for the lack of sight by the sense of touch, and at times may even walk more surely than a man who can see but is drunk. But it is nevertheless always a state of distress. The inactivity of the eyes is no normal condition. — When Dr. Münkel himself confesses: "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 sanc-