# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1864_S206
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

tuary 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" — should it not, then, be the right, natural, normal, indeed, if one will, even ideal constitution, when those who truly, actually, and fundamentally possess the power are also assigned its exercise? Is that not natural, is that not fitting to the matter? A transfer of the exercise of the rights and powers of the congregation to representative bodies could only appear natural if the incapacity — and therefore the impossibility — of a right, blessed exercise of congregational rights on the part of the congregation itself could be demonstrated, as, say, in the case of minor children. But this proof can never be furnished, because incapacity to administer one's own rights is no essential element of the concept "congregation," and apostolic practice would furnish actual proof to the contrary. The representative consistorial constitution is therefore, considered in itself, not "equally right and true" as the self-government of free congregations; the latter is more normal. It is, of course, another question whether it is always and under all circumstances of benefit to the church that congregations exercise their powers and rights themselves; this question must obviously be answered in the negative, for the exercise of the right to vote, for example, in rationalistic territorial churches is a great evil, while the filling of pastoral positions by representative, believing church authorities is, at present, far more advantageous. One cannot, therefore, simply speak of a constitutional ideal according to which the same form would have to be stamped upon all churches as by a template. Rather, what holds good as the ideal here is what Dr. Münkel states: "He who best knows how to accommodate himself to the times is alone the master." But it would nevertheless be an unhappy state, a blind groping in the dark, if amid the many various constitutional winds and currents one had no norm and no compass. If one is to "accommodate oneself to the times," one will only be able to do so in the right way if one first knows exactly with what one is to accommodate oneself to the times. — In questions of constitution, then, the abstract and the concrete question must be kept well apart. If one asks what is the natural, normal constitution of the church in itself, the answer is: when those to whom God has given power and rights also exercise them. But if one asks what is the natural, right constitution for a particular church, that depends on the character of that church, and the answer is: when the power is exercised in such a way that it serves the greatest blessing of the church. — In both these respects, then, one has to judge the constitutions of different churches: first, how far they conform to their given ecclesiastical circumstances, and second, to what degree the rights of the congregations are exercised by the congregations themselves, so that the normal form has been attained, or not. On this basis we must judge, for example, that God has given our Synod a better constitution