# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 12 05_S59
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

59

the Scripture a whole community, which consists of converted and unconverted, "saints and beloved of God," but thereby it does not give the individual unconverted the name of saints, but gives it to the whole for the sake of the truly holy who are found among them and whom one cannot pick out in this life. In doing so it employs the well-known figure of speech, synecdoche, by virtue of which one says of the whole what one wishes understood only of a part, namely of that to which it in fact applies. It is altogether false, indeed a most damnable assertion, that the Scripture calls even the hypocrites – saints! That would be the well-known figure of the Quid pro quo (This for That) or of the Katachresis (misuse of words); as when one says that Lucus (the forest) comes from Non lucendo (from not shining), because it is dark in the forest, or as the papistic sect calls the Catholic church, the carnal Roman priests the Spiritual, and the most supremely domineering Popes, hypocritically and falsely, the servants of all servants. No, such lying modes of speech the holy Scripture does not employ. With the synecdoche applied in the Bible it is an entirely different matter. This rests on truth. As one in truth calls a field a wheat-field, although tares too stand in the midst of the wheat; as one in truth calls a coin a gold piece, although copper too is mixed with the gold; as one calls a regiment of soldiers which has distinguished itself in war a brave regiment, although some cowards were among the brave: so also the Scripture, in accordance with the truth, calls a community of men a holy church when it is certain that truly believing and holy Christians are in it, although hypocrites and godless persons are mingled with them. But as one would call, only abusively, falsely and mendaciously, the tares wheat, the copper gold, the cowards brave, so it is damnable to assert of the Scripture, and moreover of the New Testament, where the ceremonial Levitical holiness has reached its end, that it calls even the hypocrites saints. God forbid! When the Scripture calls a whole visible community a holy church, it wills precisely that one should understand this not carnally, but according to the Apostles' Creed: "I believe," not I see, "One holy Christian Church," that is, that one thinks therein, in faith, of the communion of saints lying hidden in this visible community. From this precisely it is to be seen how needful it is, in the doctrine of the Church, as our old dogmaticians have done, to proceed from the concept of the invisible Church, but also to hold fast this concept in the whole development of this article of doctrine and faith, if one does not wish to fall into confusion and self-contradictions, as has befallen the writer of the "Herald."

Quite otherwise do our old dogmaticians teach. Thus says, for example, Johann Gerhard: "By this title of honor (holy) the Church is distinguished not only from the assemblies of the godless and heretics, who are called the synagogue of Satan, Rev. 2, 9. 3, 9., but also from the hypocrites, who are mingled with the outward assembly of the Church." (Loc. de eccl. § 34.) Still more plainly speaks Luther. He writes as follows: "A rogue may well baptize rightly, read the Gospel, and go to the Sacrament, speak the ten commandments; this is and remains all right: but he remains a wicked rogue and becomes no Christian, nor is he called the Christian Church. But one says: he is in and under the Christian Church, as mouse-dung lies under the pepper and cockle under the corn, and helps to fill the bushel. Just as also in the human body there are fine, clean, sound, upright members, which a man can use for his need. But afterward there is also on the body sweat, butter in the eyes, rheum, scab, ulcer and other filth. These parts are as much on the human body as the ears, stomach, heart, fingers or eyes; but the filth is yet also in the body, though it stinks. Thus the heretics, false teachers, or godless are also in the churches not natural, upright members, but the filth which festers out of the body." (On John 7, 44.) So speaks a Luther of those so-called "saints!"

The writer in the Herald appeals now, to be sure, for his opinion that all the baptized, also the hypocrites and godless, belong to the "communion of saints," to the two Scripture passages: "As many of you as have been baptized have put on Christ" (Gal. 3, 27.), and: "By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body.. and have been all made to drink into one Spirit" (1 Cor. 12, 13.): but herewith the writer puts a wholly false sense upon those apostolic words, against the assumption of which we must protest the more solemnly the oftener just now the dreadful error is imputed to us Lutherans, e.g. by the Methodists, as if we believed that whoever is baptized and has received the holy Supper is thereby also regenerated ex opere operato, a member of the body of Christ, needs no further conversion and new birth in the Holy Ghost, and is a child of life and of salvation. We Lutherans, however, teach that whoever after baptism lets sin rule over him again has no longer put on Christ and bears him as his garment, but has put on Satan, is no longer one body and one spirit with Christ and the Christians, but with Satan, for "if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." (Rom. 8, 9. cf. 1 Cor. 10, 21.) Remarkably enough, moreover, the Papists of earlier times already adduced those passages cited by the writer in the "Herald" against the Lutherans also, to prove that even the hypocrites belong to the congregation of the saints. Thus Quenstedt writes in his great dogmatic work: "(The Papists) object: All the baptized would be called sheep of the Church, although among them there are many who lack the Spirit of Christ and true love, according to the sayings 1 Cor. 12. 13.: 'We are all baptized into one body'; and Gal. 3, 27.: 'As many of you as have been baptized have put on Christ.'" To this Quenstedt replies: "I answer: Those who are baptized are living members of the true Church so long as they lead a life worthy of their baptism. Simon the sorcerer also was baptized, yet no one held him to be a citizen of the Church, Acts 8, 20. 21. So long, therefore, is he also who has put on Christ in baptism a citizen of the Church, as long as he is not cut off by a godless life and unbelief from the vine Christ, into whom he was engrafted as a branch. John 15, 2. ff." (Theol. did. – pol. II., 1636.) Johann Gerhard also proves from that passage 1 Cor. 12. 13. the very opposite of what the "Herald" wishes to prove from it; he adds, namely: "In whomsoever, therefore, the Spirit of Christ is not, they do not belong to the mystical body, which is the Church." (Loc. do eccles. § 50.)

May the writer in the "Herald," then, receive these our well-meant criticisms in the spirit in which they are written. Far from wishing to brand him a heretic for his erroneous development of doctrine, we have yet not been able to refrain, since the doctrine of the Church has now become a burning question, from raising our voice against it. So much that is good and sound, which is found in the writer's exposition beside the unsound and distorted, lets us hope that he will not let himself be embittered, but will return with us to the pattern of the doctrine as our dear old ev. luth. Church has set it forth.

Unionist Church.

So reports the Braunschweig Kirchenblatt:

"In Nassau a pastor Hein had applied for his dismissal from the pastoral office, because he could not unite the introduced Union with his conscience, because not with the Lutheran Church, to which he belonged. The dismissal is refused him, but suspension is ordered, at the same time a criminal investigation is moved for, because in his farewell sermon he had given the ground of his departure; the criminal court dismissed the inquiry, because no insult was present; nevertheless on a Ministeri-