# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 09 28_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20

shut out, damned and cursed. But this doctrine does not accord with those passages of the Bible, nor has it been the doctrine of our old Lutheran Church.

Thus it says, for example, in the Chemnitz-Leyser-Gerhard Harmony on John 12, 42: "The hypocrites, in falsely appropriating to themselves the title of the Church, sometimes misuse the ban for the suppression of the truth, John 16, 2., in which case the ban is confidently to be despised, Ps. 109, 28., because, when we are shut out by the wicked, we then enter into the fellowship of the good." Furthermore Hollaz writes in his work on Christian doctrine of faith: "Those who, having been unjustly banned by a church, separate themselves and cease to have fellowship with it: these, as the guilt of the schism cannot be charged to them, do not thereby cease to be true members of the Church . . Those who are unjustly banned because they will not, against conscience, accept errors that were forced upon them as articles of faith, upon these the guilt of the schism is not to be laid, because they do not turn away from the Church out of malice, but are driven out by a greater power* . . . An unlawful ban does not injure the one affected by it, but damns him who has imposed the ban." (pp. 1290, 91.)

*Because they therefore yield only to force. Ed.

Most fully and thoroughly our theologians treat this subject in the writings in which they combat the papal church and repel its reproach that the Lutherans, by the separation from the Roman Church, have made themselves guilty of the sin of a schism, that is, of a division. Among others the famous Jena theologian Johannes Musäus has treated this point in his "Tractate on the Church," written in Latin. Therein Musäus first cites the following words of the brothers Walenburch, who were both papal bishops:

"If those unjustly banned set up private assemblies out of those unjustly banned, they make a schism; for since those unjustly banned are still members of the united Church, they voluntarily renounce by their setting up of private assemblies that union, and forsake the former unity. If, therefore, Luther and his adherents had made no schism before the ban, as the Protestants will have it, they would nevertheless have then forsaken the former fellowship, then rent the unity, then separated themselves: when they set up assemblies separated from the former unity. For since he who is unjustly banned does not cease to be a member of the Church by which he was unjustly banned, it is clear of itself that one so banned separates and withdraws from all innocent Christians of the former unity, then forsakes the former fellowship and divides, when he sets up separate assemblies, and that he thus becomes the author of the schism or of the part severed from the body of the Church."

What does Musäus now answer to this papistic reasoning?—The following:

"That those unjustly banned remain members of the Church can have a twofold sense: 1. That they remain members of that church which unjustly bans them; 2. that they remain members of the true Church, or of the Church which is the true and living body of Christ."

"The assertion in the first sense, in which the brothers Walenburch understand it, is wholly false. For since there is a twofold unity, an outward and an inward, the church which unjustly bans cancels both; the outward, namely, because the ban by its nature is the denial and cancelling of the fellowship in which the outward unity of the banned with the banning existed; the inward" (unity, however, the banning church cancels), "because he who unjustly bans cuts true and living members of the body of Christ from it without just cause, for otherwise it would not be an unjust ban. But to cut off true and living members of the body of Christ without just cause is an act of hatred of the brethren, which is directly opposed to brotherly love, whereby therefore the love, which is the bond of inward unity, is cancelled on the part of the banning one, in that he, together with the one unjustly banned, ceases to be a true and living member of the one mystical* body. Between the unjustly banning church and the one unjustly banned there remains therefore no unity; the outward none, since the unjust ban cancels it of itself and directly; but the inward also none, for to it belongs mutual brotherly love, which ceases on both sides, and indeed on the side of the banning church, which by the hatred of the brethren that it betrays through the unjust ban has lost brotherly love, but on the side of the one unjustly banned, because, although the one unjustly banned does not lose brotherly love through the unjust ban laid upon him, yet the unjustly banning church (since it is a schismatic one and has ceased to be a true member of the body of Christ, and this has become manifest to the one unjustly banned) is no object of brotherly love, so that he cannot afterward embrace with brotherly love that church by which he was unjustly banned."

*By the mystical body is to be understood the spiritual body of the Church, which hangs upon Christ in a mystical, that is, mysterious manner, as the members of a body hang upon their head. Ed.

"In the other sense, however, what the brothers Walenburch say is true, namely, that the one unjustly banned remains a member of the Church, not indeed a member of the unjustly banning church, as they falsely take it (for this has, as said, through the unjust ban and through the schism thereby introduced, ceased to be the true Church and has become a schismatic one), but of the true Church, which is the assembly of the truly believing and holy, who are scattered far and wide over the whole globe and, united with Christ through faith, constitute His mystical body. For since one who is banned, through the ban which he unjustly suffers, loses neither the faith which is in his heart and by virtue of which he is united with Christ the Head, nor the inward love by virtue of which he is joined with the true and living members of the body of Christ, at least in capacity, he also remains without doubt a true and living member of the same through true faith and love together. Likewise one must judge of whole churches unjustly banned. When it happens that a church, after a strife has arisen, rises up in enmity against others united with it and unjustly puts them under the ban, then that church which unjustly bans the others, through its rash rending of the bond of unity, only too plainly brings upon itself the guilt of the schism and ceases to be a member of the mystical body of Christ; but those who have been unjustly put under the ban and shut out from the unity of the banning ones remain (even according to the confession of the Messrs. brothers Walenburch) true members of the mystical body of Christ and therefore true churches. Those, therefore, who after the unjust ban laid upon them remain true churches do not thereby draw upon themselves the guilt of the schism (of the division) when they hold their own assemblies separated from the assemblies of the banning schismatic" (church). "For as to all true churches of Christ the right belongs to teach the Word of God in public assemblies and to administer the Sacraments, and to perform whatever else belongs to divine service, so the same right must also belong to churches unjustly banned, because they do not cease through the unjust ban to be true churches."

"The Messrs. brothers cannot also allege that churches unjustly banned, since they are members of the" (formerly with them) "united church, voluntarily renounce that union and forsake the former unity by the setting up of their assemblies (which the same call private conventicles). For this their ground is absurd in several respects. For first, it rests upon the presupposition that a church unjustly put under the ban is still a member of the unjustly banning church, which, as has just been shown, is false. It also avails them nothing when they say that the unjustly banned church separates itself, when it holds its assemblies separated from the assemblies of the banning church, from all innocent Christians of the