# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1864_S217
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Church Controversy of the Lutheran Free Church in Prussia. 217

shaped into an institution of grace for heavenly goods. For him it is first a congregation
of the saints, and only then a means of salvation. For Huschken it is the reverse: first
an institution, and then a congregation of the saints, because the latter is produced by
the former. One will perhaps say: the one is right, and the other is not wrong; but the
two cannot be reconciled in this way. Brunn, who does nothing more than set forth the
Lutheran doctrine simply and clearly, follows the doctrine acknowledged by the whole
ancient church, that the body of Christ — to which only believers belong — is within the
visible church, so that the body of Christ and the visible church do not coincide, because
the visible church is intermingled with hypocrites. Huschke, on the other hand, declares
the visible church itself, with all the godless and hypocrites, to be the body of Christ.
Every member of the visible church is supposed also to be a member of the body of
Christ; and when one asks how that is possible — that, for example, the children of the
devil in the visible church, who thus in a certain sense belong to the body of the devil,
can at the same time be members of the body of Christ, or when one asks how Christ and
Belial can be made to rhyme — Huschke draws a distinction which, in other words, comes
down to this: that the children of the devil, though (subjectively) they belong to the
devil according to their disposition and heart, are nevertheless (objectively) still kept,
apart from their own doing, by certain roots and fibers in such a connection with Christ
that in this respect they can be called members of Christ. We do not have to examine
this assertion here; we have only to call attention to two points. First, it is settled that
if one wants a governing church organized or constituted as a body, with divine authority,
one must want it wholly and rightly, and begin right at the foundation, namely with the
visible church. It makes an impression of pitiful half-measures if one wants to give that
governing church a substructure such as is found in Brunn. If the congregation of the
saints is the root of the church, then such a governing church cannot come into being,
even though it makes use of the preaching office given by God and the natural ordinances
established by God — as Brunn has rightly shown. Besides this, it is to be noted, secondly,
that Huschke, through the consistent development of his doctrine, has also made plain
his complete break with the Lutheran doctrine of the church. This doctrine is decidedly
and essentially Catholic. The Catholics, and they alone, teach that the visible church is
not only the true body of Christ but is also, first of all, an institution; and all Protestant
communions have unanimously rejected this doctrine, because it would follow from it
that they were cut off from the true body of Christ at the Reformation. Huschke himself
will not be able to hide this contradiction from himself. For when the Lutheran church
teaches that the godless are in the true church "only in name," while the pious are in it
"in name and in fact," that means, by all reasonable rules of interpretation, that the
godless have nothing more of the church — which is the body of Christ — than the name.
Huschke, on the contrary, declares that "the name is also an essential part of the church,"
and consequently that they belong essentially to the church and are thus, after all, in
the church not merely in name but also in essence, or, what is the same thing, in fact.
All the world will say: that is a piece of sophistry. But one resorts to sophistries only
when one wants to conceal from oneself or from others an insoluble difficulty that
cannot be set aside.

What great advantage Huschke gains through his doctrine of the visible church shows
itself at every step. The visible church as an outward institution is the first thing, the
fundamental essence of the church. Since now the whole authority of the church is
given to the church, it is, without question, given to this institution, and indeed
originally. This institution, however, is an organized body or an organism with manifold
gifts and offices, from which it follows that the church's authority is invested in the
offices within the church. Thus it is not the congregation of the saints that originally has
the church's authority, but the organism of the offices, which are established by the Holy
Spirit within the church. Both — the believing congregation and the organism of the
offices — stand in such a relation to one another that the ruling offices, by virtue of the
divine authority invested in them, form an ecclesiastical superior power over the
congregation of believers, to which the pastors, insofar as they do not share in the power
of governance, are equally subject. Hence no distinction at all is to be made between
church order and divine or civil laws on the point of obedience. This too holds of such
church laws: He who hears you hears me;