# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 03 30_S122
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

122

otherwise, as though with the surrender of this idea of the true visible Church the Church itself were surrendered. To speak of a visible true Church has, to be sure, in itself nothing objectionable, if it is done with the reservation that, according to Art. 8 of the Augsburg Confession, "the Church is properly nothing else than the congregation of all believers and saints." For then one knows that it is only in an improper sense that a true visible Church is spoken of, and that one by no means intends to say that all who belong to such a visible church fellowship are true living members of the Church; nor yet that this true visible Church is the complex (the totality) of all true children of God on earth. In short, if by a true visible Church one understands such a churchly ordered fellowship of Christians whose confession is orthodox and agreeable to God's Word, although hypocrites and ungodly persons are also among them, then one may well let the aforesaid expression pass. Better, however, would it be to use instead the expression: the orthodox visible Church; for the orthodox Church can indeed, in the proper sense of the word, be a visible one, since it is possible that even the hypocrites have the orthodox confession. But the true Church in the proper sense of the word can never be a visible one, because it is the spiritual body of Jesus Christ, consisting of the truly sanctified Christians, who, however, are nowhere found unmixed in a visible fellowship.

But this explanation by no means satisfies those who plead for the true visible Church with such warmth; rather, they attach to this expression a much higher meaning. They will know nothing of an invisible Church outside the so-called true visible Church; and since they cannot deny that there may be true children of God also in heterodox church fellowships, they insist, strangely enough, on having these reckoned as belonging to the so-called one true visible Church. They so strangely invert the concept that what is invisible must be visible to them. The holy Christian Church of the Apostles' Creed is not sufficient for them; they must have a visible holy Christian Church; so that one can only wonder that they do not notice the self-contradiction when they say in the Creed: I believe a visible Church, etc. Every child knows that one cannot see what one believes. They zealously oppose, and rightly, the Jewish doctrine of a visible kingdom of Christ on earth, and yet, quite in contradiction to this, themselves will know only of a visible Church. Were it not such an error that through it one might lose the true Church altogether, it would not be so dangerous, although even otherwise it is not without evil effects; for it, so to speak, contracts the heart, and makes men proud and fanatical, as the example of Jewish and Roman particularism teaches. But the most dangerous thing is that it altogether obscures the true nature of the Church.

Church, according to the Biblical concept, is wholly equivalent in meaning to kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God; only that the expression kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God sets before our eyes rather its spiritual character, its heavenly goods, and the subordination of the members under a heavenly Head, the God-man Jesus Christ; whereas the expression Church points to the inner connection, the spiritual fellowship of the members with one another. As, then, the kingdom of God is something spiritual and invisible, so also is the Church. For the Head is an invisible one, the goods are of a spiritual, heavenly kind, and the members of the kingdom of God, the truly believing men, are such not so much according to their visible part as inasmuch as they are spiritual new men. Now that someone is a new spiritual man who belongs to the kingdom of Christ, the confession of his mouth does not tell me, nor his outward fellowship in Word and Sacrament, nor his office which he has in the Church; for all that can be a mask behind which the hypocrite hides; but it depends solely upon faith, that is, upon the living confidence with which one appropriates Christ as the ground of salvation. This faith alone makes one a true member of the Church, a fellow-partaker of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. But this faith no one sees, save God alone. How, then, can the Church, as the totality of those who are born again through faith and have the Holy Ghost and the eternal goods in their hearts, be something visible? And if it is said that the Fathers of our Lutheran Church expressed in their confessional writings a different view of the Church, one asserts downright an untruth. For only look up the article on the Church in the Apology, and compare, among others, the following passages:

"Although now the wicked and ungodly hypocrites have fellowship with the true Church in outward signs, in name and offices; nevertheless, if one will speak properly of what the Church is, one must say of this Church which is called the body of Christ, and has fellowship not alone in outward signs, but has the goods in the heart, the Holy Ghost and faith. For one must needs know quite properly whereby we become members of Christ, and what makes us living members of the Church. For if we should say that the Church were only an outward polity, like other governments, wherein were evil and good, no one would learn or understand from it that Christ's kingdom is spiritual; as yet it is, wherein Christ inwardly rules the hearts, strengthens, comforts, and imparts the Holy Ghost and manifold spiritual gifts; but one will think it is an outward manner; a certain order of some ceremonies and divine service."

Further, the Apology declares itself most definitely on this point, that the true Church is a "hidden" one, that is, an invisible one. "And," it says there, "when Christ says: the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, likewise the ten virgins, he does not will that the wicked should be the Church, but instructs how the Church appears in this world. Therefore he says it is like these, that is, as a heap of fishes, the good and the bad lie among one another, so is the Church here hidden under the great heap and multitude of the ungodly, and wills that the godly should not be offended..... And we speak not of a feigned Church which is nowhere to be found, but we say and know for a truth that this Church, wherein saints live, is truly on earth and remains, namely: that some children of God are here and there in all the world, in all kinds of kingdoms, islands, lands, cities, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, who have rightly known Christ and the Gospel, and say that the same Church has these outward signs: the preaching office, or Gospel, and the Sacraments."

We see from this how the confessors of the Apology by no means thought the true Church enclosed within the bounds of a certain outward or visible church fellowship. As decidedly as they, by their firm confession grounded on God's Word, excluded everything false and contrary to Scripture, yet they by no means thereby cut themselves off from the children of God, wherever in all the world they may be.

They acknowledged the existence of the true Church in all kinds of kingdoms, islands, lands, cities, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. Now the visible Lutheran Church had by no means such an extension; their words therefore cannot be understood otherwise than that the true Church is hidden also under the corrupted Roman, Greek, etc. Church. Now if this holds even of the most corrupted of all outward visible church fellowships, it must also hold of other sects which still essentially have Word and Sacrament. This is not contrary to the proposition that the pure preaching of the Gospel and the right administration of the Sacraments are the marks of the true Church, or, in other words, that there are surely true children of God where I find Word and Sacrament pure and unadulterated. The false in the confession of the corrupted church does not, to be sure, tell me that children of God are there; but I do infer it from what the corrupted church still has of right doctrine and of right Sacrament; for where there is still some of the seed from which children of God can be born, there I may and ought to believe that such are there; and experience confirms it. There is thus in the corrupted church the same mark that shows me the children of God and makes the Church recognizable, as in the