# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1859_S68
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

68 On Church Language.

the territorial church, the expression church and clergy for preacher,
etc. — have become the fruitful seeds of the most dangerous,
deepest-rooted errors. Thus Luther, for example, writes of the word
priest: "Now I think that from all this it is established that those
who preside over the people in the sacraments and the Word may not, nor
should, be called priests. That they are nevertheless called priests
has come about either after the heathen manner, or has been left over
from the Law of the Jewish people; accordingly it has been adopted to
the great harm of the churches. But according to the evangelical
Scripture they would be far better called servants, deacons, bishops,
stewards, who are also meanwhile, on account of their age, called
presbyteri, that is, elders." (Letter to the Bohemians. X, 1859–60.)

With full right, therefore, does old Wilhelm Lyser write: "It is a
mark of a modest disposition not only to believe with the church, but
also to speak with it."*) For there is, namely, not only a special
Bible-language**), but also a special church-language founded upon it.
As for the Bible, there occur in it, namely, a great number of words and
expressions that are used there in a meaning which they did not have
before — a meaning which they first received from the Spirit of God who
inspired them, a meaning that can be inferred and gathered from no
profane writer, but only from the context of the divine Scripture
itself. Here belong, for example, the words: faith, to believe in
Christ, works, to deal in works, righteous, righteousness,
justification, election, the elect, the called, edification, baptism,
old man and new man, flesh and spirit, cross, church, Word (λόγος), God
the Father, Son of God, Holy Spirit, to beget and to proceed (used of
God), dead in sins, dead works, sin unto death, perfection, etc. Now the
church does indeed also speak in these biblical expressions; indeed,
these remain for her inexhaustible mines of divine revelation: but none
the less she must, because it is her calling not only to preach and
expound the Word of God to the world, but also to defend and guard the
same against the heretics, make use also of other words than such
biblical ones, by which she expresses the correct understanding which
she has of the words of Scripture and repels the heretics' perversion of
them. And so, besides the special Bible-language, a certain special
church-language has gradually arisen as well — that is, a certain way
of expressing and speaking of concepts contained in Scripture which,
though not contained in Scripture in so many words, are yet grounded in
it in sense, and which is proper to the orthodox church and is
constantly used by her.

*) "It belongs to a moderate disposition for the church not merely
to feel, but also to speak, the same thing." Syst. theol. exeget. p.
494.
**) We here take the expression Bible-language in the sense of
biblical terminology.