# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 12 07_S1018
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

18

Body or there,” for the candlestick may indeed be wholly removed from them: but let him believe that here and there in all the world, from the rising to the going down of the sun, there are Christians, and that same Church has the office of preaching or the Gospel and the Sacraments, Apol. p. 146, 148, (ed. German. p. 247) even though often with hay and stubble or without a public chair, the Gospel, which gives faith into the hearts as the sun gives its light and its warmth upon the earth; it must be a word of redeeming grace to him, even if he could hear it only from such as had not in turn been invested by a so-called clergy, Artic. Smalc. p. 345 § 26 sqq. (ed. German. p. 555;) the stamp of divine infallibility is conferred upon it solely by the canon of Scripture of the precious Holy Ghost, and His testimony through faith is its highest rightful interpreter.

If the invisible Church comes out of the visible as principiata, so that, as Grabau expressly teaches, not the spiritual priesthood, that is, the estate of Christians in faith and in grace, but abstractly and merely objectively the Gospel of the mouth of Christ, in which the calling of bishops and pastors is commanded, see Inform. Vol. 1. p. 47 and elsewhere, is the generating source of the concrete office of preaching: then indeed the office is the first, the immediate, not the Church herself; to the congregation of believers and saints the keys of the kingdom of heaven are not given immediately, she has them not for herself without means, but mediately, only in the public holy office of preaching, that is, through its mediation; (immediately does not mean: without the Word of God, for that would be nonsense, since God gives and reveals grace to men in no other way than through His Word, but it is to be understood thus, that the Church possesses such power and office in the same manner as the promise of the Gospel belongs to her, in that between her and Christ there is need of no other mediator than that she come to the Word and become believing in it, whether it come to pass through the office of preaching in its orderly realization, which is indeed most to be wished, or whoever will may offer it; for man remains man, who can add nothing of power to the Word, be it the Pope or his bishop, or the pastor and senior of a Protestant synod, etc. etc. (cf. Inform. Vol. 2, p. 23.) If the visible Church in principle begets the invisible, so that without the office of preaching in concreto there would be no believers at all, and they, whom Christ raises to be lords of the world, have nothing more of their own than that they choose in the presence and with the consent of neighboring bishops, to whom ordination, without which there is no setting up from God's Word and command, belongs above all, in which setting up of the office of preaching Christ without the mediation of His fellow-citizens of the kingdom transfers everything: then the office, the service, has nothing before it, nothing above it, except that it derives immediately from the King Himself, and the truth is bound to the bearers of this office, as in the Papacy. But if (the Word and) faith in the Word is the first: then the invisible Church is above the office, judge and mistress, the sole bearer, yes a pillar and ground of the truth; and the first voice of an opposition which, in accordance with the divine Word, rises in a corrupted visible communion, is, as I have already said above, that of the invisible Church.—How could a Reformation ever have arisen, if all who, in partly fallen churches and by themselves, find themselves asking and searching, whether laymen or not, were to be regarded only as spiritual catechumens, who, in order to become true members of the Church, would need the service of a regular office of preaching, but this being just a corrupted one, and a pure one not yet existing? (See Inform. Vol. 1, p. 2).

That we do Grabau no wrong in this is proved first of all by his error concerning ordination, which is well known.* See the above-cited correspondence between Grabau and the Missourians, New York 1849. A sharp New Testament exegetical investigation of the passages belonging here, Timoth. I, 4, 14. II, 1, 6. 2, 2., shows that Luther, Chemnitz, Gerhard, and all orthodox teachers of our Church rightly denied of it, insofar as it comprises in the narrower sense merely the confirmation through already existing servants of the church, the institution by God's command. For from the comparison of the first two it appears that the laying on of hands is not the essential thing here, which Grabau also concedes; and then that, if the prophesying, the prayers, the wishing of blessing by those ordaining call down the gift of God upon the believers to whom the office is conferred, see F. Gerardi annott. ad Timoth. II, 1, 6., and this is done everywhere in Scripture by persons fitted for it, in the parting of blessing fathers from their children, at the entrance upon a public life generally, in the imparting of wonderful powers, etc., the divine validity of the induction into the holy office of preaching can by no means be made dependent upon it. And as to the last, upon which Grabau seems to lay the most weight, the Apostle plainly speaks here not at all of the handing over of the office, but rather of the tradition of the doctrine, which naturally could be no other than what he had set down in writing. Cf. J. Gerhardi l. c.

*Note. It is now probably more than 15 years since some letters were exchanged concerning ordination between us and a grand-ducal official in the Saxon city of Weimar, who, together with his family closely befriended with Grabau, showed him the most heartfelt sympathy during his sufferings in prison, and, as he himself declared, stood with the man, then proven, on quite the same ground of doctrine. The writer of this defended at that time the same Romanizing doctrine of the Church and ordination as Grabau now, while that official commissary, in whose hands one could get to read letters from Grabau, was purely Lutheran in sentiment in such a dispute. How everything has changed since! Something similar is known to us still more certainly of the equally distinguished and vigorous laborer in God's vineyard, the early departed Pastor and Kirchenrath Wedemann in Breslau.

Especially, however, we have here to do with Grabau's interpretation of St. Matth. 18, 20. It is to be read in Inform. Vol. 1. p. 74. The whole discussion in which it occurs perverts the pure holy doctrine of the Lutheran Church on the office of preaching in a horrible manner; it is hardly credible that the mouth which here blasphemes is the merely human instrument of a man who has thereby struck shame into his own face with fists. What constraint it must cost his unerring, not yet stifled conscience to appear as such a shield-bearer of an antichristian spirit! With abhorrence a heart that has received of the Spirit of love, of power, and of a sound mind turns away from such powerless words of hatred. What he here thrusts down the Missourians' throats may have occurred in Buffalo earlier among those who departed from him, and also in part in Wisconsin, so long as such poor, strayed people lacked the right guidance; the congregations of our Synod know nothing of any such abuse of the spiritual priesthood.

This is certain, by virtue of our faith Christ is not in the midst among us, but He is by virtue of His promise present among us, showing grace, not merely in the hearts of believers, but personally in their midst as the true God who is man. The instance which Grabau brings forward is also so far quite right, that faith does not make the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper. But just as the body and blood of the Lord can be present only through Him by virtue of His promise within His Church, which is essentially the congregation of saints and believers, although she becomes visible through pure Word and Sacrament: so the personal Christ is in the midst of the assembly of His believers, whether hypocrites or ungodly be present or not, insofar as these are those to whom Christ gives Himself with His promise. How can one assemble in His most holy Name without believing in this Name? How can one assemble according to His Word, according to His ordinance of the Gospel and command, according to His revealed will, without believing in it? Obedience toward the Word presupposes the having of the Word, faith, which is a laying hold, a possessing, and without this a revelation of the divine will would not be recognized, nor could obedience be rendered to it. Just as in the visible true Church, which confesses the right doctrine, the body and blood of Christ would not be truly administered in the partaking, which is lacking among the Reformed, because they deny the essence of the holy Supper, if it were not just the Church, (whose potior pars, ex qua de-