# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 09 28_S21
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

21

from the former unity. For a church unjustly banned does not separate itself either from individuals or from all the members of the former unity, but, excluded from the former unity without its fault and separated against its will, it retains brotherly love toward all the innocent Christians of the former unity and remains most intimately bound to them by the inward unity; and it would also render them, if they were known, all the offices of love required for outward unity, if it were not hindered by the schismatics* ruling among them, or if the innocent themselves, misled by the schismatics ruling among them, did not shun fellowship with it.† Furthermore, the ground adduced also absurdly presupposes that the churches unjustly banned are obliged to return to the unity of the unjustly banning and schismatic church; whereas, on the contrary and conversely, it is the duty of the unjustly banning church to lift the unjust ban and to return to the churches unjustly banned. For that church which unjustly bans other churches ceases, through the hatred of the brethren which it reveals by the unjust ban, and through the fault of schism, to be a true church and a member of the mystical body of Christ; but those who are unjustly banned remain true churches and members of the mystical body of Christ, which, as we have seen, even the ("papistic") Messrs. Brethren cannot deny. It is, however, without doubt incumbent upon the schismatic church that it desist from the hatred of the brethren, through which it has ceased to be a true church, and that it lift the unjust ban, which is the effect of that hatred, and return to the unity of the churches which it had unjustly banned, and therefore through earnest repentance be reconciled again with God and with the offended churches, and after reconciliation with them regain the dignity of a true church." (D. J. Musaei tract. de eccl. Jen. 1671. P. II. p. 316—320.)

*By the schismatics are here to be understood those who in the unjustly banning congregation are guilty of the unjust ban and thus of the division.

†Pastor Grabau says that the unjust ban of the false church is indeed of no account, but the unjust ban of the true church must be respected. That is a petitio principii; for it is precisely this that is to be proved, that the true church bans unjustly. Thus the Papists once said to Luther: Whoever does not hear the true church is a heathen and a publican; therefore you are a heathen and a publican. But Luther answered: The first I grant; but first prove that you are the true church; then I must indeed hear you, or I am a heathen and a publican. But the true church lets only the true Word of God be heard from it. If you do not set that before me, then I do not hear the voice of the true church from your mouth either; and if I therefore do not hear you, I am not thereby disobedient to the church. So it is also with the ban. It is true, the ban of the true church is always to be respected. But a congregation that wants its ban respected as the ban of the true church, let it ban rightly according to God's Word, and prove thereby that it is the ban of the true church; if it bans unjustly, then that is not "the ban of the church of Christ, the bride of Christ, the dear and gracious mother of the believers," but of a tyrannical woman, whose unjust ban is to be regarded as little as the ban of the church, just as little as false doctrines, as the voice of the church, are to be listened to. Pastor Grabau indeed has thought of this, that even where there are many good Christians, an unjust ban could be carried out, and has often already been carried out, by ungodly preachers and overseers and other dishonest accomplices. But what could these innocent persons do about it, he thinks? Why should these innocent persons lose the dignity of the true church through the tyranny of individuals among them? Musaeus above gives the answer to this. The children of God (who indeed put no one unjustly under the ban) are and remain, to be sure, members of the true church, but the churches or congregations in which the tyrants rule and misuse the keys for unjust ban are, as such, not true churches but schismatic, although in them innocent children of God, and so the true church, may lie hidden. In short, it is never the true church but always the false church that bears the guilt of the unjust ban. D. R.

It may well be that after reading the foregoing many an honest heart thinks: If it is so with the unjust ban, then it is truly a dangerous matter. We answer: To be sure, it is not in vain that it has been revealed to us in God's Word that the unjust ban is a mark of the false church. The ban, this high work, by which, as Luther quite rightly says, "a separation from Christendom with a public judgment unto eternal death" takes place, must be carried out with fear and trembling, lest one wantonly lay hands on God's saints and thereby on God Himself. Where the sin of a man and his stiff-necked impenitence in sins is manifest,* there a congregation should indeed not be afraid to carry out the ban; yea, then it should be afraid to omit the ban which God has commanded. Only read 1 Cor. 5. (the whole chapter.) But if the sins and stiff-necked impenitence of a member of the congregation have not yet become manifest under observance of the steps of admonition prescribed in Matth. 18., then let a congregation fear the grievous sin of helping to carry out the ban upon the sinner, and perhaps in this yielding to a tyrannical or self-willed preacher. For such a ban is not according to Christ's order, as Mr. Pastor von Rohr does not blush to assert. Of such a ban our Luther rather writes: "But if you do not keep this measure and manner, you will become uncertain, and your heart cannot say: I know that I do not err. But it will bite you and say thus: You have bound and loosed without God's Word, God did not bid you so, but it is your own wilfulness; therefore you have had no keys, but you have only dreamed of keys. From this your conscience will then further judge you and say: You have blasphemed God's name, profaned the keys, and moreover done violence and wrong to your neighbor, frightened his conscience with lies, led him into error and false understanding of the keys* and killed him spiritually. Where will you then remain? ... You hear here" (Matth. 18.) "that there must be certain public sin, of certain known persons, where one brother sees the other sin; moreover such sin as has been beforehand brotherly rebuked and finally publicly proved before the congregation."—

*The impenitence of a man can, however, become manifest already in a single manifest sin, which the publicly convicted sinner will not recognize, confess and forsake.

*It is therefore indeed true, as Pastor Grabau maintains, that the unjust ban is no false doctrine; how could an act be a doctrine? But unjust ban flows either from false doctrine, or it at least begets "error and false understanding of the keys." D. R.

Who, after this, may still dare to say: Even if we have banned unjustly all the same, yet we are the true church, and therefore you must respect our also unjust ban?!

(Submitted.)

Above all I must ask the dear readers of the "Lutheraner," especially the learned among them, to excuse me, because my contribution, as to form, is perhaps not so correct as it ought to be; for I am only a craftsman, who every day must earn his bread in the sweat of his face, and no "scientifically educated" man. But quite apart from the fact that I am no "such" man, I see nevertheless by means of the Word of God and the eyes of my, though weak, faith, that the doings of the so-called secret benevolent societies are not well-pleasing to God, but unchristian and working against the church of the Lord. But to the matter.

Since the German Evangelical Lutheran St. John's (now St. Paul's) congregation in Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio, through the craft of Satan, by means of a rude mob (with the exception of a few) of deniers of God and of Christ and of members of those so-called secret benevolent societies, was deprived of its church and of what belongs to it (although it, thank God! thus stripped of everything outwardly, yet through the saving of its dear confession stood so much the richer inwardly), necessity required that a new congregation with a new constitution be formed. The first article of this constitution reads thus: "The name of the congregation shall be: the German Evangelical Lutheran St. Paul's Congregation in Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio, which acknowledges all the canonical books of the Old and New Testament as God's revealed Word and as the ground of its faith, and likewise confesses all the symbolical writings of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, according to which it wishes doctrine to be conducted and tested and all doctrinal controversies that may occur to be decided." Now if it draws upon itself the hatred of the world, especially of the secret societies, already through the first article, so