# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 12 07_S1016
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

16

S. 2. fin.*); but we say with the orthodox teachers the contrary, and set the bounds of the former much wider than those of the latter. Jo. Gerh. locc. th. V. p. 252 sqq. 317 sqq. conf. cath. p. 717. 728 sq. and the important passage in Baier. l. c. p. 768. 770 sq.

*) Note. — The Bossuet cited above defines the ecclesia proprie sic dicta thus: coetum doctorum et auditorum, in nomen Dei triunius baptizatum, communi consensu universam Christi et apostolorum doctrinam profitentem atque legitima sacramentorum dispensatione gaudentem. Lutherans have refuted him handsomely. With whom, then, does Grabau mean to hold, with these or with those? And truly, one cannot say otherwise: wanton misunderstandings or absurdities the Informatorium, vol. 2, p. 57 sqq., puts forth

All that is called and believes the Word of God and lives godly, God indeed counts into the true Church, and all that feigns and deceives He counts out; but from this it does not follow that all true believers and godly livers know anything of this Church in its having become visible kat' exochen, [and] regard its appearance in the confession, wherein it appears precisely as the Church (cf. Baier. l. c. p. 770. §. 29.), as the Church of Jesus Christ, for the right, true visible Church, and thus do not look upon their own communion at all as such. There is only One Church, which at all times is called and built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, that is, upon pure doctrine and Sacraments; but since all human knowledge in general is only in part, this One Church, according to the full extent of her outward appearance, can fall into the most diverse fragments, as indeed the sad sight of present-day Christendom irrefutably testifies; and if only God's Word and Sacraments are not wholly denied, but both remain essentially (Luther's exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians 1, 2.,), and the Spirit's leading into all truth is not persistently hindered by evil purpose: then, in spite of the falsification, God can gather a holy Church of His own even among them; although every one of them stands in the highest danger of his soul's salvation, and is therefore bound to forsake these erring multitudes or sects and their false teachers (among whom even Prussian Lutherans can come to be numbered, if they thrust from them all brotherly correction), and from them to go over to the orthodox visible Church, if it is not granted him in place, yet in spirit, unless the knowledge of this has not yet dawned upon him, but the fragments of the truth have already kindled in him a saving faith, which assuredly, if death does not come before it, will then also lead him further on little by little. The invisible Church, wherever she may be, always retains at least the foundation and the substance of the right faith and pure doctrine, as our dogmaticians say; but not always or everywhere does she rejoice in a publicly pure confession, in the preaching of it and the Sacramental administration conformable thereto, whereby alone it comes about that a true visible Church arises, which can thereby be distinguished from the heterodox communions, in which not the bearer of the truth, but a synagogue of error, so to speak, predominantly embodies itself (Baier. l. c. p. 763 sq.). Not, however, is the invisible Church, as the Romanists teach and Grabau with them, enclosed in the narrow bounds of the visible Church of right confession.

Before God there is in itself no invisible Church; before Him there is indeed only a visible one, whose sure foundation standeth and hath received the seal from Him. But she is on earth invisible to men, because faith is something invisible, wherefore she herself can only be believed; that is the One eternal Church, of which all the prayers of the Church speak, with which Eph. 2, 19 ff. is first of all concerned. Cf. the beautiful passage in Hagmaier. diss. de invisibilitate ecclesiae p. 14.: Haec praedicata non nisi solis et omnibus ad fidem Jesu Christi regeneratis competere recte supponitur, dum vel hypocritis vel peccati servis, licet Christum profiteantur, adscribi nequeunt. Quis autem dixerit, hanc civium et regis in hac republica, hanc patris et liberorum in hac familia, hanc lapidum fundamentali superaedificatorum in hoc aedificio, hanc inhabitantis et inhabitatorum in hac domo et templo relationem, communionem, connexionem, coagmentationem oculis corporis videri posse, dum menti tot in his relationibus inconspicua remanent? licet nemo neget, umbras harum rerum et figuras ipsas oculis etiam corporis usurpari posse. Conf. 1. Petr. 2, 4. 5, ubi sub eadem fere figura idem proponitur. As now before God her marks are faith and love, whereby she is distinguished from all who merely bear Christ's name: so, according to her appearance in the world, her marks for men are Word and Sacrament. (The definition of the Augsburg Confession is, even in a merely formal-logical respect, sharp and faultless: Est autem ecclesia congregatio Sanctorum, in qua Evangelium recte docetur et recte administrantur sacramenta, literally: The Church is the assembly of the saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments rightly administered. In definitions we seek the proper essence of that which is to be comprehended, the content of its concept. This is determined by the chief marks, the genus proximum, the next higher concept, and the differentia specifica, the specific difference. The Church is the assembly of the saints, that is the next higher concept, for there is a holy assembly both in heaven and on earth; she is the assembly of the saints where there is right doctrine of the Gospel and right administration of the Sacraments, that is her specific difference, whereby she is determined as a holy assembly on earth, for in heaven the temporal appearance of teaching office and hearership ceases. The Church also makes herself known thereby alone, and is thereby recognizable for this time.) Pure Word and Sacrament are and remain, so far as they are not clouded and falsified, the essential mark of the invisible Church on earth, as which she has received them and alone possesses them, and also through them is continually begotten. As man, a creature on earth made in God's image, makes this known through his body, which forms the highest stage of bodily organism: so the commonly confessed divine Word, together with the administration of its seals, is the operation, the appearance (Quenst. l. c. p. 504 sq. 507.), the body of the invisible Church, the highest stage of social religious associations on earth. (From one of the chief marks, which are the original, essential, constitutive ones of a concept, I can then derive mediate, explanatory attributes; so here, from the genus proximum, which is the sanctitas, the marks faith and love, which, however, are her marks not according to the Church's appearance in the world, but according to her inward side in relation to God.) — The false churches, therefore, in so far as their doctrine is impure, do not constitute a right Church, Baier. l. c. p. 768 sq. Yet the true Church lives, on the other hand, in the same in a hidden manner, and although under corrupted pulpits and episcopal chairs in an oppressed condition, she nevertheless gives the whole multitude its churchly significance. Here the true Church cannot reveal herself through pure Word and Sacrament, but so much of these as is still preserved is a mark of the believers, not in themselves falling under the senses, who are to be found in such communions. Apolog. p. 145. And these may err from simplicity, because they do not rightly understand the matter, but in the blasphemies against the truth they take no part; they are pious, innocent people, as the Book of Concord expressly names them, therefore already members of the true Church, not first on the way to it (for even the catechumens, as also all others who truly believe inwardly, are already to be reckoned to the Church and in it, as of it, even though they have not yet received Baptism, J. Gerh. locc. th. V. p. 252;), and yet in the outward communion of strange false churches, although they, rightly instructed, will let themselves be brought to the infallible truth of the divine Word. —

(To be continued.)