# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 07 05_S154
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

154

Doctrines of Pastor Grabau.

son be set to work, then the little flock transfers its spiritual common priesthood to a collective priest (as we may fitly call him), who priests and performs it in its stead. This crude Missourian error rests upon a false interpretation of Matt. 18, 20., where the LORD says: For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." (Informatorium I., 74.) — Pastor Grabau seeks to prove from our doctrine, that the office and its power lie originally not in a particular estate in the Church, but in the Church itself, that is, in all believers, that we overturn all divine and human order. But as is to be seen from the opposite column and from what is cited therein out of Chemnitz, the Papists once made the same reproach against Luther and likewise misconstrued his doctrine. But as Luther once taught only for this reason that the office is originally in the believers, in order that the proud priests might know that they were in no particular, spiritual, privileged estate and had no advantage before the children of God, which these could obtain only by their grace, but that the office is only a divine ordinance, for the administration of rights which all believers originally possess: so also we.

Doctrines of the Roman Church.

odious, as if it destroyed all divine and human order in the Church. But Luther never meant that every Christian without distinction, without lawful call, might or should arrogate to himself or exercise the office of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments in the Church . . The laity they (the Papists) looked upon with contempt, as swine and dogs . . . The perfection and efficacy of the Sacraments they placed in part in the character which, according to their pretence, is impressed upon them at ordination. — Against these tyrannical principles Luther taught from God's Word that Christ has delivered the keys, that is, the office of the Word and of the Sacraments, to the whole Church; yet not in such a way that everyone may seize upon and exercise the office at his own pleasure and by his own presumption without lawful call, but in such a way that God, since the immediate calling has ceased, sends the servants of the Word and of the Sacraments through the calling and choice of the Church, when it takes place according to the prescription of His Word: so that the highest power of the Word and of the Sacraments is with God; that secondly the office is with the Church, as that through which God mediately calls, chooses and sends the servants; thirdly thereafter with those who have been lawfully chosen and called by God through the Church, as with the servants to whom the use and administration of the office of the Word and of the Sacraments is commanded. By this distinction, which is true and clear, Luther meant to repel the pride of the mass-priests, who were filled with the proud delusion that they alone had the whole power over the Word and the Sacraments, so that the Sacraments should be efficacious on account of a character of an estate impressed upon them, I know not what; and that thereby the rest of the Church should have no power at all over the Word and the Sacraments." (Exam. Concil. Trid. fol. 222 - 223.)

Doctrines of the Lutheran Church.

and set over these one burgomaster, to whom they deliver the keys and statutes of the city, that he may administer them in the common name of all and govern the republic according to them: so also do the citizens of the city of God. They have indeed a communion of all saints, and all things are theirs, whether Paul, or Peter, etc. 1 Cor. 3, 21.; they possess all things under the one Head, Christ, who has obtained by His bloody merit all that is necessary to salvation for His Church, and in it especially for each and every member, even the least: and yet for the sake of order they choose certain persons to whom they commit the administration of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, such as are among us deacons, pastors, doctors, bishops or superintendents, and the like, that so among us all may be done decently and in order according to Paul's teaching, 1 Cor. 14." (See: Continuation of the Evangelical Harmony by Chemnitz, on Matt. 16, 19.) So Luther writes further in his last larger writing: "God will be unbound to the multitude, greatness, height, might, and whatever is personal among men, but will be only with those who love and keep His Word, even though they were mere stable-boys. What does He ask after high, great, mighty lords? He is the greatest, highest and mightiest alone . . We have here (Matt. 18, 19, 20.) the LORD Himself, above all angels and creatures: He says that they shall have 'all equal' power, keys and 'office,' even two plain Christians alone gathered in His name. This LORD shall neither pope nor all devils make for us a fool, liar and drunkard, but we will tread the pope under foot and say that he is a desperate liar, blasphemer and idolatrous devil, who has torn the keys to himself alone under the name of St. Peter, whereas Christ has given them to all alike in common, and would make the LORD, Matt. 16., a liar." (From the writing: Against the Papacy at Rome, founded by the Devil. Anno 1515.) So it is said finally in the Smalcald Articles: "Besides, one must confess that the keys do not belong to one man alone, but to the whole Church, and are given to it, as this can be sufficiently proved with clear and certain reasons. For as the promise of the Gospel belongs certainly and without means" (immediately) "to the whole Church, so the keys belong without means" (immediately, that is, not by means of a person or an estate in the Church) "to the whole Church, since the keys are nothing else than the 'office,' whereby such promise is imparted to everyone who desires it, as it is before our eyes in fact that the Church has power to ordain ministers of the church. and Christ says at these words: Whatsoever ye shall bind, etc., and indicates to whom He has given the keys, namely to the Church: Where two or three are gathered together in my name." (First Appendix.) In the Latin text it reads: "Christ gives the keys to the Church originally and immediately." Further it is said in the 2nd Appendix of the Smalcald Articles: "Here belong the sayings of Christ, which testify that the keys are given to the whole Church and not to certain particular persons, as the text says: Where two or three, etc. Finally, this is also confirmed by the saying of Peter, where he says: Ye are a royal priesthood. These words concern properly the true Church, which, since it alone has the priesthood, must also have the power to choose and ordain ministers of the church." — Here our symbolical books, to which Pastor Grabau also has sworn, declare that the whole Church, that is, the believers, and even if there be only two or three of them gathered anywhere, have the keys, that is, the whole official power, immediately and originally, and indeed by virtue of their spiritual priesthood.

(Submitted by Dr. Sihler.)

Unionistic-Churchly Views of Professor Ph. Schaff.

Third Article.

In the course of his treatise Prof. Schaff then asserted further that it is from the researches of recent times, especially from the valuable church-historical biographies of famous teachers of the Church of the first centuries, likewise from several of the most important events of Christian antiquity, pretty nearly certain that ecclesiastical antiquity, according to its ruling spirit and tendency, was far more catholic than protestant, and that the Middle Ages were only a natural continuation of the Nicene Church. Most striking, he said, is the difference between the primitive Church and Protestantism in the doctrine of the rule of faith, of the relation of Scripture to tradition, of the Church, its unity, universality and exclusiveness, and of the Sacraments. Of the material principle of Protestantism also, of a justification by faith alone, in Luther's sense, the Fathers, even Augustine, knew nothing, and instead of placing this in the center of the whole of Christianity, there takes the central position with them rather the doctrine of the incarnation of God, — the mystery of the Incarnation (the becoming flesh of the Word, that is, of the Son of God) and of the Trinity (the Triune Godhead), and the confession or the denial of Christ come in the flesh is with them, according to 1 John 4, the sure mark of Orthodoxy or Heterodoxy (otherwise-mindedness). — Supposing now that it is as Prof. Schaff says, that ecclesiastical antiquity and the Middle Ages were more catholic than protestant, the question first is whether this, held against the plumb-line of Scripture, is rather a praise than a blame; for since Professor Schaff does not exclude from the concept of the Catholic the Scripture-contradicting papacy and the heap of human commandments and inventions that came forth from it, but rather includes them therein, it is hard to comprehend what glory for the mediaeval Church can be contained in this, that it already lay captive under the papistical tyranny and was led bound in the snares of human ordinances and of the commands of power that entangle consciences, and