# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 07 19_S162
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

162

Church, and the individual divisions of the same are called churches, because in this multitude of the called the true Christian Church is contained, that therefore this external communion also possesses the power of the keys; fourthly, that although God also has and preserves His believers in such communions as err in some doctrine, yet do not wholly deny the foundation of salvation, nevertheless everyone is bound, as he values his salvation, to hold to those congregations in which God's Word is taught in its purity and the holy Sacraments are rightly administered; that therefore also no Christian, where he perhaps cannot find any orthodox congregations, may join heterodox congregations, since for the salvation of souls only membership in the invisible Church is unconditionally required. That this doctrine is false, no one will assert who sees in the book before us how Scripture, Confession, and teachers of the Church all agree in it, indeed how the oldest Confession of the Church, the Apostolic Symbol, and afterwards such excellent ancient teachers of the Church as Ignatius, Jerome, Augustine, and others all hold this doctrine. If, therefore, Rev. Mr. Grabau teaches that outside the Lutheran Church, which indeed is visible, no one can be saved, because in it alone the invisible congregation of the saints is present, no simple Christian will any longer let himself be assailed by such misleading talk. If he maintains that the visible Church has the power of the keys not on account of the congregation of the saints present in it, but on account of the ministry that exists in it, everyone will have to see that Rev. Mr. Grabau is on the way to set up a popish priesthood over the congregation, and to regard this as the true Church. Neither will anyone agree with Rev. Mr. Grabau when he considers our doctrine dangerous, first, because the proposition that the power of the keys has been given to the Church seems to him to lead to fanaticism, and further, because he thinks that the individual will easily withdraw from membership in the external orthodox Church if he knows that for salvation only membership in the invisible Church is unconditionally necessary. There is, to be sure, not merely a danger, but it happens, alas, only too often, that the pure doctrine is abused to all manner of fanaticism; but ought we on that account to keep silence about this doctrine? In saying that the Church has the power of the keys, it is not said that everyone may use this power in public service; if this man or that does so without a call, he sins, to be sure, and the pure doctrine cannot help that. But that for the salvation of souls only membership in the invisible Church is unconditionally necessary will, on the one hand, keep him who dwells among nothing but heterodox congregations from joining any of them, but, on the other hand, will drive no one to keep away from the orthodox congregations, unless he should want to abuse this doctrine; but for the abuse the pure doctrine is not to answer.

The second part teaches as follows: As on the one hand there is in the congregation no special estate of clergy or priests, but rather all believers are priests, so on the other hand our Lord Christ Himself has ordained that until the end of days individual persons in the congregation shall be called and appointed to the public preaching of the Word of God and the administration of the holy Sacraments, and has thereby instituted an office in the congregation which is distinct from the priesthood of all believers. The holy ministry therefore has no worldly power or government at all, but it has the spiritual power of public preaching and of administering the holy Sacraments, and therefore the power of a spiritual court. God Himself calls to the holy ministry, but He does this through His priesthood, the congregation, by which, even as it exists on earth in its mixture with mouth-Christians, is by no means to be understood a rude and wild rabble, but a communion of such as confess the Word of God and at least outwardly obey it, and also either already have pastors or elders, or at least, where possible, are advised by pastors. The ordination of those called, by the laying on of hands, is an apostolic ordinance for the confirmation of the call and ought always to be sought, although for the establishment of the ministry only the call is unconditionally necessary; the ministry is the highest, in fact the only public office in the congregation, but the pastors may relinquish this or that function of the office and move the congregation to choose special persons for them, for example for the service of the care of the poor and the sick, for government, and so forth. When the pastor delivers God's Word, unconditional obedience is due him; in all other upright matters, special reverence and respect; on the other hand, he has not the right to establish external ordinances and ceremonies on his own authority, or to impose the ban alone without the previous judgment of the congregation. The duty to judge of doctrine according to the Word of God belongs to the pastors before all others, but also to the members of the congregation, who therefore ought to be called in to the church courts and assemblies. — This doctrine, too, is again victoriously proved from Scripture, from the evangelical Lutheran Confessions, and from the writings of the orthodox Fathers; indeed toward the end the testimonies multiply and become positively mighty sermons to us, that we should leave to God and His holy Word alone the honor, and preserve to His congregation the dearly bought freedom from popish priestcraft and ordinances of men. Luther especially comes forward here with such mighty preaching that one seems to hear the sword of the Spirit whirring in his hand; the citations from his writings, as throughout the whole book, so especially in this second part, prove that, as long as he taught at all of Church and Ministry, he always held the same doctrine. It seems now, to be sure, that Rev. Mr. Grabau, even after this account which we have given of our doctrine, will not cease to accuse us of ecclesiastical Independentism or fanaticism, and to confirm the complaint of some of our friends in Germany, as though we introduced popular sovereignty into the Church and made of the Christian congregation a democracy. But whoever reads the book before us will have to see that the Christian Church of which we speak cannot be put on a level with such a multitude of men as is called a people, and that therefore our doctrine, that the Christian congregation possesses the right of calling its pastors, has nothing to do with the doctrine of popular sovereignty, and therefore just as little makes of the Church a democracy. On the contrary, this second part of the book convicts Rev. Mr. Grabau of false doctrine, first, as if it were the ministry through which in the congregation the power of preaching, of binding and loosing resides, and as if the ministerium, or the public administrators of the office, as the sole possessors of it, conferred the office upon the pastor-elect through ordination, from which indeed it would also follow that pastors might pronounce the ban upon members of the congregation without having first obtained in the matter a unanimous resolution of the congregation; secondly, as if the efficacy of the holy Sacraments were dependent on the pastors and their call, so that pastors who were not lawfully appointed would, for example, in the Lord's Supper distribute mere bread and wine; thirdly, as if the members of the congregation must be obedient to the pastor even in worldly matters which are not against God's Word, whereas in this way, against God's Word, a worldly power would be given to the pastor; fourthly, as if the pastors were appointed lords over the consciences of the members of the congregation, in that they alone were to examine doctrine and life, while the members of the congregation, on the contrary, were permitted to take part in the examination and judgment of doctrine and life only with the permission of the pastors. — The way of pure doctrine is narrow; Rev. Mr. Grabau's departures from it may look slight and insignificant, but even the one doctrine for the sake of which he so grievously strains and twists the Word of God and the confessions of the Church, the doctrine that the power of preaching, binding and loosing is not an immediate gift and present of God to the congregation of the saints, but through the ministry, so that pastors must be entrusted by pastors with that power through ordination, this leaning toward the popish propagation of the office by the office leads him away from the narrow way of the doctrine of the Church onto the wide, tangled ways of the sectarians, on all of which, openly or concealed, popery flourishes. If he will not let himself be led back to the pure doctrine of the Church even by the full and clear testimony of this book, he will at last fall in among the sectarians also, from which may God in mercy preserve him.