# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 12 05_S58
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

58

name and of the offices, and that the Sacrament may be rightly received from the wicked." But where in all the world does the Apology concede that godless, unconverted people, who stand in the fellowship of the devil, belong to the Church, to the body and kingdom of Christ? Our Apology testifies, on the contrary, in the defense of the 7th and 8th Articles of the Augsburg Confession: "Since the Church, which is surely Christ's and God's kingdom, is distinguished from the devil's kingdom, the godless, who are in the devil's kingdom, can certainly not be the Church, although in this life, because the kingdom of Christ is not yet manifest, they are among the true Christians and in the churches, having therein also the office of teaching and other offices... And the parables of Christ also agree with this, where he says plainly, Matt. 13, that the good seed are the children of the kingdom, the tares are the children of the devil, the field is the world – not the Church... And when Christ says: The kingdom of heaven is like a net; likewise, the ten virgins: he does not wish that the wicked should be the Church, but teaches how the Church appears in this world; therefore he says it is like these, etc., that is, as in a heap of fishes the good and the bad lie mingled together, so the Church is here hidden under the great heap and multitude of the godless... And since the true Church is called in Scripture the body of Christ, it is certainly not possible to speak of it otherwise than as we have spoken of it. For it is certain that the hypocrites and the godless cannot be the body of Christ, but belong to the kingdom of the devil."

Can our Church testify more plainly that not "all the baptized," that no "hypocrites and mouth-Christians" belong to the Church?

The "Herald" will say: it also makes a distinction between the invisible and the visible Church, and asserts only that the unconverted belong to the visible Church, or to the Church in the widest sense.

We answer: It is true, the old orthodox teachers also say that hypocrites and mouth-Christians belong to the visible Church or to the Church in the widest sense. But by this our old teachers do not mean to say that false Christians really and truly belonged to the visible Church, were really and truly members of it. The dear Fathers then remain much rather strictly with what the Book of Concord says about it, that unconverted people can be called members of the Church only if one means by it nothing more than that they stand with the Church "in outward fellowship of the name and of the offices." When, therefore, the writer in the "Herald" says: it is one of the errors of the Reformed Church that hypocrites and mouth-Christians do not belong to the Church, "while our Church does not expel the false Christians, hypocrites and open sinners," the writer of these words does our Church an injustice. To be sure, our Church expels all who are not governed by the Spirit of Christ out of the Church, namely into the devil's kingdom, whither they belong; only from the outward society with the Church she does not expel them in a fanatical way. She asserts, namely, only this, that the Church will never be rid of the godless in this life, that they mingle among her again and again, that the Church here below will never come to the point of being able to shell herself out from the world and to stand there as a pure Church free of false Christians; yet one has the comfort in this, that even if unconverted persons often take and hold the offices in the Church, the means of grace are nonetheless effectual and the holy acts nonetheless valid. For thus it is said in the Apology: "We have set the 8th Article thereto for this very reason and cause, that no one may entertain the thought as if we wished to separate the wicked and the hypocrites from the outward society of Christians or churches, or as if it were our opinion that the Sacraments, when they are administered by the godless, are without power and effect." Let it be well observed, then, that the Apology does not assert that we do not separate the wicked from the Church, but that we do not wish to separate them "from the outward society of the churches." That the non-Christians do not really belong to the Church, to prove this the whole further exposition of the 7th Article of the Augsburg Confession in the Apology is much rather occupied. When, therefore, it says in the 8th Article of the Augsb. Conf.: Likewise, although the Christian Church is properly nothing else than the assembly of all believers and saints, yet since in this life many false Christians and hypocrites are in it, etc." – it then does not go on to say: "So these also belong to the visible Church," but: "So the Sacraments are nevertheless effectual, even though the priests through whom they are administered are not godly, etc." How little the confessors at Augsburg thought of confessing that the hypocrites and open sinners also belong to the Church, one sees especially plainly from the Latin text of the 8th Article, where it says: Cum in hac vita multi hypocritae et mali admixti sint, that is, since in this life many hypocrites and wicked are mingled in. But what is only mingled with a thing does not belong to it. Therefore the renowned Carpzov writes in his excellent Introduction to the Symbolical Books: "It is one thing, a company that consists of hypocrites and of truly and sincerely believing persons; it is another thing, a company to which hypocrites are mingled. The Church properly so called is not a company that consists of hypocrites and the unholy, but it is a company to which hypocrites and unholy persons are mingled. Thus the Augsb. Conf. explains it with caution at the beginning of the 8th Article." (Isag. in libb. symb. p. 305.) *)

The writer in the "Herald" will now, to be sure, still keep on saying that he too does not deny all this, since he too reckons the hypocrites and open sinners not to the invisible but only to the visible Church! But as far as we are from wishing to saddle the said writer with an error by way of inferences from which he himself solemnly disowns, so we must nevertheless ask him: does he truly believe, with our Symbols, that the unregenerate belong to the visible Church only insofar as they stand with the Church in outward fellowship of the signs, of the name and of the offices? Does he not much rather confess with Delitzsch: "Whosoever is partaker with me of one and the same heavenly calling, he is my brother, and whosoever is born of water and Spirit, he is with me a member of the one mysterious body of Christ, which is held together not by the life of faith of its members, but by the mysteries of the means of grace"? Does not the writer hereby show clearly and plainly that in a wholly different sense he would let the faithless belong to the visible Church than the confessors at Augsburg, than our Lutheran Church? Does not the writer see that he hereby actually makes two churches (which the Papists have always wished to charge against the Lutherans), to the one of which only true Christians, to the other of which also non-Christians belong? Does not the writer see that he hereby ascribes to the holy Sacraments a power (which the fanatics have always wished to charge against the Lutherans), according to which the Sacraments work ex opere operato and make even the unconverted a member of the body of JESUS Christ and a brother in Christ?

However clearly it already appears from this that the "Herald," in its development of the concept of the Church, has not remained with the pattern of our doctrine of the Church, we must nevertheless declare it a still more flagrant offense against Lutheran orthodoxy when the "Herald" itself goes so far as to understand by the communion of the "saints" the totality of all the baptized, even of the unconverted; and wishes to justify this from a New Testament usage of language. Indeed, it calls

*) The old, spiritual Strasbourg theologian Dannhauer expresses excellently the relation of hypocrites to the Church when he writes: "Those (the hypocrites) are indeed not members of the invisible Church, nor of the true visible one, but yet of the visible, insofar as they make up one whole with other members – as the tares are no part of the wheat-field as such, but yet a part of the field insofar as it is a whole consisting of wheat and tares." (Hodosoph. phaen. 2. p. 61.)