# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 11 11_S42
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

42

unlimited plenitude of power through his laws and ordinances, so that all Christians, on pain of the loss of their salvation, are bound to render him unconditional and inviolable obedience; but for this reason the Church of God is and is called the one, because she has one Head in heaven and on earth, namely the LORD Jesus Christ, this one LORD and King, who gathers her through the One Holy Spirit, by means of the one baptism and the one Gospel, in one faith into one spiritual body, of which He is indeed the Head, and thereafter continually quickens and governs this body.

Further, the Church of God is and is called not holy because she has, in an unbroken succession of bishops from the time of the apostles, after the legal pattern of the Old Testament theocracy (God-rule, in which spiritual and worldly government coincided), a holy priestly and earthly mediating estate, with its point and summit in the Pope, and from him in a fixed ladder of degrees and order of rank down to the common priest, through whose service and office the laity (people of the common folk) are first sanctified and essentially placed into the Church; — but for this reason the Church is and is called holy, because holy is her Head and Foundation, Christ, her Master Builder, the Holy Ghost, the means by which she is built, God's Word and Sacrament, and finally and chiefly, because she consists of none but saints, namely of such people as are joined to Christ in the right faith and are thus sanctified, so that Christ's righteousness and holiness are imputed to them, the Holy Ghost dwells in them and impels them to holy works pleasing to God, which proceed from faith. —

Finally, the Church is and is called not catholic or universal because all Christians who would be saved must be found under the supremacy of the Pope and in the bosom of the Roman Church under the pastoral care of its ministers, and that thus essentially and properly the Roman Church is the one that alone makes blessed; but for this reason the Church is and is called catholic or universal, because she embraces, from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same, among all manner of peoples, languages and tongues, all who truly believe in Christ, who, in the manner stated above, are under one LORD, Jesus Christ, through the same Gospel and the one baptism, in one faith one body in one Spirit, of whatever station, age and sex they may be — all children of the same Father, brethren and sisters of the same Saviour, dwelling-places and workshops of the same Holy Ghost, priests and kings before God (whether they be princes and bishops or not), the chosen generation, the holy nation, the people of His own possession, the spiritual Israel, the Jerusalem which is above, mount Zion, the city of the living God, the holy Christendom, out of which indeed no one can be saved. —

From such an evangelical purification and restoration of the doctrine of the one holy Christian or catholic Church by Luther and his friends, there became clear and manifest at last, as a right consequence, also the error and folly of the papists, who hold that this Church is essentially and properly visible for this reason, that the Pope, the priestly estate and its offices, and finally also the people who make use of the same, are indeed visible.

For from God's Word and Luther's doctrine the very opposite appeared, namely, that this one holy Christian or catholic Church on earth is essentially and properly invisible; and this partly on account of the one Head and LORD, who does not govern His kingdom on earth in bodily visibility, partly on account of the nature of this kingdom, which consists of believers, of members of a spiritual body, in all manner of places of the earth and at different times, whose faith, whereby they are joined to Christ and are properly Christians, together with the gracious indwelling of the Holy Ghost, no one can see except God; and therefore the Church also confesses and [illegible] indeed: I believe one holy Christian Church. For what one can see, one need not believe. And although this Church of Christ here and there, and from time to time, becomes recognizable as the pillar and ground of the truth through the pure and clear preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the holy Sacraments in accordance with it, and thereby here and there becomes the spiritual mother of a new generation of believers, yet these also remain, in their proper being and nature, as Christians joined inwardly to Christ by faith, invisible, even though outwardly, by the confession of the mouth and the works of love, they manifest this inwardly hidden faith and bring forth fruits of the Spirit.

Now since we live at present in a dangerous time, in which the papacy, this antichristian mystery of iniquity, as the history of the day repeatedly testifies, on this side and beyond the ocean, appears to be gaining new strength and impetus; — and since, alas, even in the Lutheran Church, here and there in this and that little book, propositions are maintained which stand in an inward, secret kinship, of which the writers have certainly not become aware, with the papistic doctrine of the Church, and which at the least permit the inference of a clouding and obscuring of the evangelical fundamental conception of the nature of the Church, chiefly purified by Luther: so it will not be out of place to put together from his writings, this fresh and living fountain of pure evangelical truth, from which the most important teachers of our Church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries drew most diligently, and in remembrance of the work of the blessed Reformation begun by God chiefly through his service, some important testimonies concerning the proper nature of the Church; for quite a few Lutherans, yes, even Lutheran teachers of our day, look upon the Church as hardly anything else than [illegible] the totality of all orthodox congregations, which, through the so-called teaching estate, as essentially distinct from the defending and nourishing estates, are governed not only by God's Word, but also by a definite constitution and order in manifold laws. They thus confound this and that temporal and visible form of appearance of the Church, of which we shall also speak in its place, with the proper nature of the Church, in which she is spiritual and invisible, and must consequently, from the viewing of such a visible form, as though the proper nature of the Church consisted therein, and not in the inward spiritual union of believers with Christ, fall by logical consequence into all sorts of errors, of which nothing further is to be said on this occasion.

1. Smalcald Articles.
(Part 3, Chap. 12.)

"We do not concede to them that they are the Church, and they are not, and we will not hear what they command or forbid under the name of the Church. For, God be praised, a child of seven years knows what the Church is, namely, the holy believers, and the lambs who hear their Shepherd's voice. For so the children pray: I believe one holy Christian Church. This holiness does not consist in surplices, tonsures, long gowns and other of their ceremonies, devised by them beyond the Holy Scripture, but in the Word of God and true faith." —

2. From the Large Catechism.

"The holy Christian Church is called Communionem Sanctorum, a communion of saints, for both are comprised together as one and the same, but in former times the one part was not included, and it is also badly and unintelligibly rendered in German: a communion of saints. If it were to be given plainly, one would have to speak quite otherwise in the German manner; for the word Ecclesia properly means in German, an assembly; but we are accustomed to the little word Church, which the simple understand not of an assembled multitude, but of the consecrated house or building; although the house should not be called a church except only for this reason, that the multitude comes together in it. For we who come together make and take for ourselves a special place, and give the house a name after the multitude.

Thus the little word Church properly means nothing else than a common gathering,*) and is by origin not German, but Greek (as also the word Ecclesia), for they call it in their language Kyria, as in Latin also it is named Curiam. Therefore it should on

*) "General Assembly."