# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1864_S265
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lic. Ströbel's Account of the Lutheran Doctrine of Civil Authority, as Opposed to the Calvinist. 265

declared an insurrectionist and guilty of the crime of high treason. Thus Christ, the apostles, and the first Christians would be slandered as rebels." (p. 296f.) — VI. As for the "right of resistance" in particular, the "Christian state" argues against it above all that civil authority is comprehended under the Fourth Commandment, and is thus entitled jure divino to demand unconditional obedience from its subjects. The latter is just as untrue as the former is unshakably certain: civil authority shines in the divine splendor of the fourth commandment—but only of the fourth. But what then becomes of the six other commandments of the Second Table, indeed of the whole First Table of the divine Law, if subjects are bound to that "unconditional obedience," that is to say, if their entire calling on earth is exhausted in the duty of subjects? Indeed, what then becomes of the Fourth Commandment itself, with its demand—which has nothing at all, in the first instance, to do with civil authority—"Honor thy father and thy mother"!? Here the principle of the (Fischart-translated) "Réveille Matin: or, Wake Up Early" must be upheld without contradiction. Namely, "above all it must stand as the highest law and unshakable principle that only the dominion of the One is infinite and unbounded—that of almighty God, to whom alone it belongs to possess infinite power. From this it follows that the authority of every civil power and prince is enclosed within certain bounds, as it were fenced in by them, which they may no more overstep than subjects, once those bounds have been overstepped by them, may render them obedience. Otherwise the authority of the magistrate would be made equal to the divine, which it would come very near to blasphemy even to think. For although magistrates reflect the image of the living God, nonetheless the word of the Lord through the prophet still holds: I will give my glory to no other." (p. 261.) For the majesty of civil authority does not lie in the First Chief Commandment: Thou shalt fear, love, and trust God above all things—that is included there—but rather in the second: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;—it is as his neighbor, not as his God, that the subject is to regard his territorial lord. Herewith the duty of resistance, and the "right of resistance" following from it,*) is established jure divino—concerning which there can be no dispute at all among Christians. "For if God commands one thing and the king the opposite, who would then hold the one who refuses the king obedience to be a rebel? Indeed, who would not rather accuse him of rebellion if he obeyed God only half-heartedly, or if instead he rendered obedience to the king in such a case? Finally, if here the king, but there God, calls us beneath his banners, who would not decide that we must leave the king in order to fight for God? Therefore we are not merely not—

*) With full truth the (strictly conservative) Count Bogdan von Reichenbach declares that the first Christian fundamental right is the right to do one's duty. From our obligation to keep all the divine commandments there flows, jure divino, our right as well to uphold that very duty, even against civil authority.