LutheranTheology.com

Part 8

The Church and the Preaching Office

What, then, is the relationship between the Church and the Preaching Office?1 This is the second major question that Walther discussed in the most thorough manner, taking into account the various controversies and misinterpretations.

Just as the doctrine that the Church is the congregation of believers and is thus invisible in its essence has been accused of dissolving the Church and turning it into a Platonic abstraction, so too it has been asserted that the doctrine of the Preaching Office attested by Walther does not give the latter its rightful place. In particular, the so-called doctrine of transference2 has been used as the basis for claiming that Walther identifies the universal priesthood of believers with the public Preaching Office, or at least does not properly distinguish between them.

But Walther, on the one hand, clearly and sharply distinguishes the public Preaching Office or the pastoral office from the priesthood of all believers, and then, on the other hand, just as vigorously protests against a false opposition between the Preaching Office and the Christian estate.

First of all, in opposition to the enthusiasts of earlier and more recent times who claim that by becoming believers they are thereby made public preachers, Walther teaches that no one becomes a public preacher either by natural birth or by spiritual rebirth. Walther’s First Thesis “On the Holy Preaching Office or the Pastoral Office” in “Church and Ministry” reads thus: “The holy Preaching Office or pastoral office is an office distinct from the priesthood of all believers.” He elaborates on this loc. cit. p. 315, to the effect “that the spiritual priesthood, which all true believers have, and the Preaching Office or the pastoral office, according to God’s Word, are not one and the same; that neither is an ordinary Christian, because he is a spiritual priest, therefore also a pastor, nor is a pastor, because he holds the public Preaching Office, a priest.” “Christians are certainly priests through the baptism which they have received or at least apprehended in faith, but they have not thereby become public teachers, preachers, shepherds, pastors, bishops, etc.”3 In the scriptural proof for Thesis I just cited we read: “Although Holy Scripture testifies that all believing Christians are priests (1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 1:6; 5:10), at the same time it expressly teaches that there is an office given in the Church to teach, to shepherd, to govern, etc., which Christians do not have by virtue of their general Christian calling. For thus it is written: ‘… Are all teachers?’ 1 Cor. 12:29. ‘And how shall they preach, except they be sent?’ Rom. 10:15.” But Walther excludes not only the enthusiasts’ complete identification of the Christian estate and the Preaching Office, but also Höfling’s doctrine, according to which “the distinction between the clergy and laity … is merely, albeit with an inner necessity, one belonging to the human order of the church and of worship.”4 Against this, Walther teaches in Thesis II: “The Preaching Office or the pastoral office is not a human ordinance, but an office instituted by God Himself.” For not only is the public Preaching Office already contained in the apostolate, and already instituted by God along with it (Matt. 10; Matt. 28:18-20; Mark 16:15, etc.), but the mediately called teachers are presented in Scripture as being appointed by God (Acts 20:28; 1 Cor. 12:28–29; Eph. 4:11) and are placed alongside the holy apostles as brothers in office (1 Pet. 5:1; Col. 4:7; Phil. 2:25; 1 Cor. 4:1; 1:1).5 Thus, if the Preaching Office is God’s institution, then it is not an arbitrary office but one whose establishment is commanded to the Church and to which the Church is duly bound until the end of days.6 From Matthew 28:19–20 (“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them… And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the age”) it is clear that the Preaching Office of the Apostles is to continue by Christ’s command until the end of days; but for this to happen the Church must, until the end of days, continually establish the regular public Preaching Office and administer the means of grace in this order among herself.7

On the other hand, the Preaching Office is not to be set in an improper opposition to the Christian estate. “The office of the ministry is not a special, holier estate standing over against the common Christian estate like the Levitical priesthood, but an office of service.”8 All believing Christians, and they alone, are priests or of the priestly estate (1 Pet. 2:9 ff.). Among the believers of the New Testament, there is no distinction of estate at all (Gal. 3:28; Matt. 23:8-12); preachers are not made priest, or even priests above others, because they have the public Preaching Office; rather, as preachers they are the servants among a priestly people (1 Cor. 3:5; 2 Cor. 4:5; Col. 1:24-25).9 When Löhe says of the Preaching Office: “The office stands in the midst of the congregations like a fruitful tree that has its seed within itself; it replenishes itself,” and when Löhe consequently calls the preachers a “holy aristocracy,” Walther judges: “Hereby Löhe clearly makes the preachers into an estate like the Levitical priesthood. Löhe’s view is a Roman error.”10

The most contested question, however, has been, and still is, the question of the origin of the Preaching Office in concreto, or the question: “How do individual persons come into the office?”

That the office is bestowed or transferred by God is conceded on all sides, although this concession is meant in a somewhat different sense by those who deny the divine institution and ordinance of the Preaching Office. The question which to this day is controversial within the Lutheran Church is this: what are the human instruments through which specific individuals receive the Preaching Office. Löhe, as already noted, claims that the Preaching Office replenishes itself, calling it a fruitful tree standing in the midst of the congregations, “that has its seed within itself.” Löhe says further of the Preaching Office that it replenishes itself and propagates itself from person to person, from generation to generation. Those who have it pass it on — and whoever received it from the office-holders also has it from God… The office is a stream of blessing, which flows from the apostles to their disciples and from these disciples further on down through the ages.… Where the Lord’s office is to be propagated, there the Lord’s chosen servants, the bearers of His office, preside.” According to Löhe, then, the Preaching Office is transferred by the clerical estate through ordination. The Christian congregation may express “reasonable wishes,” it may also be permitted to elect and to call. But no one comes to the Preaching Office through the election and call of the congregation; rather, the latter is transferred solely through ordination by those “who were elders (preachers) before him.”11 Grabau at least called ordination one of the two feet on which the Preaching Office stands.12

Walther, by contrast, teaches: the Preaching Office is not transferred by a clerical estate, nor by a church government or a committee within the church, but by those to whom God has originally and properly entrusted all spiritual power, goods, and gifts in the Church, that is, by the congregation of believers. Walther therefore says in Thesis VI on the office of the Preaching Office: “The Preaching Office is transferred by God through the congregation as the possessor of all ecclesiastical power or of the keys, and through the call prescribed by God.” The question through whom the public ministry is transferred thus goes back to the question: who on earth actually has all spiritual power? To whom on earth has Christ entrusted all spiritual goods and thus also the public Preaching Office originally and properly? Walther answers: Not to individual persons or to a privileged estate within the Church, but to the Christian congregation. Of the Christian congregation, the Apostle says in 1 Cor. 3:21 ff.: “All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours. And you are Christ’s.” Here it is “clearly taught: everything that even a Paul and a Peter had were only goods from the treasury of the believing Christians or of the Church.”13 “Therefore we also read that even the Apostle Matthias was elected to his high office not by the Eleven alone, but by the whole company of assembled believers, of whom about a hundred and twenty were present, Acts 1:15–26.” 14 We cannot refrain here from pointing to an exposition of 1 Cor. 3:21, found in one of Walther’s sermons on this text:15

“All things are yours,” says the Apostle. Accordingly nothing is excluded which believing Christians do not have through faith; and indeed, what is here ascribed to them is clearly not only the use and benefit16 of all things, but the things themselves. Christians are, so to speak, not merely tenants and lessees in God’s goods, but are hereby declared to be the only rightful possessors, owners, and lords of all things; yes, while they do not actually enjoy many things as yet, they nevertheless possess all things through faith. The Apostle hereby calls out to them: Yours is everything that God the Father has created, yours what God the Son has merited, yours what God the Holy Spirit has worked. God Himself is yours, the kingdom of heaven is yours, the earth is yours. Yours are all the treasures and means of grace and all the fruits of reconciliation and redemption; yours is freedom from sin, death, the devil, and hell; yours all established forgiveness; yours all acquired righteousness; yours is divine sonship and all hope of eternal life; yours is the Word and the holy Sacraments; yours the keys of paradise and of hell; yours are all offices and rights and powers which Christ has again purchsed for sinners with His blood. Yours, finally, is every gift and comfort of the Holy Spirit — in short, “all things,” says the Apostle himself, “whether Paul or Apollos.”

That the congregation of believers is the proper and sole possessor and bearer of all spiritual goods, rights, powers, and offices which exist in the Church, is further and primarily expressed in the fact that Christ gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven to the congregation of believers according to Matt. 16:15–19, Matt. 18:18, and John 20:22–23. For the expression “keys of the kingdom of heaven” comprehends in itself all ecclesiastical rights and powers, that is, those official functions, authority, and plenary power by which everything is done that is necessary for the kingdom of Christ or for the governance of the Church,17 and in particular also the office of the Word and the Sacraments.18 Furthermore, if the fellowship of believers is called the bride of Christ (John 3:28–29; 2 Cor. 11:2, etc.), this thereby expresses that this fellowship is also the rightful possessor of the goods of Christ, her Bridegroom. When Gal. 4:26 says that “the Jerusalem above,” that is, the Christian Church, is “our mother,” then that by which children of God are born — namely the Word and Sacraments — and that by which Word and Sacrament are brought into use likewise belongs to the Church.19 Finally, St. Peter writes to the believing Christians, 1 Pet. 2:9: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

Thus God has commanded the entire true, holy Christian Church to proclaim His dear Gospel. Wherever, therefore, a little group of believing Christians or a true church is found, that Church also has the command to preach the Gospel; but if it has this command, then it naturally also has the power, indeed the duty, to ordain preachers of the Gospel.20 — But if this is the case: if the congregation or Church of Christ, i.e., the assembly of believers, has the keys and the priesthood immediately, if she is the bride of Christ, the mother of all believers, if originally everything that exists in the Church belongs to her, then it is she, and she alone can it be, through whom — namely through her election, call, and sending — the preaching office, which publicly administers in the congregation the office of the keys and all priestly offices, is transferred to certain persons competent for this. A pattern for this is is set forth for the Church in every age in the example, among others, found in Acts 6:1–6.21 With this, Walther has proven Thesis VI cited above.

He also describes the relationship in which the Church and the officeholders in the Church stand to the Preaching Office thus: “According to God’s Word, it is the doctrine of our Church that Christ has given the office and all the goods and powers acquired by Him, as well as the Gospel itself, to His Church immediately as the original first possessor; that therefore the Church does not have the office mediately through Christ’s having conferred it only on certain persons in the Church, who must then propagate it and, to be sure, administer it for the benefit of the Church. On the contrary: the Church does not have the office mediately through the officeholders, but the officeholders have the office mediately through the Church, which, as the congregation of believers and saints, and as the body of Christ, carries all this within herself.”22

From Luther, Walther quotes with the following emphases and interjections: “The Christian Church alone has the keys, no one else, although the bishop or the pope can use them, as those to whom it has been entrusted by the congregation. A pastor exercises the office of the keys, baptizes, preaches, administers the Sacrament, and performs other duties by which he serves the congregation, and not for his own sake” (that is, not by his own special absolute power), “but for the sake of the congregation” (that is, as one to whom it is transmitted by the congregation, who does it on her behalf). “For he is a servant of the whole congregation, to whom the keys are given, even though he be a knave. For if he does it in the stead of the congregation, then the Church does it.”23

And indeed, the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and with them all spiritual power, belong in equal measure to every local congregation, the smallest as well as the largest, as Christ expressly testifies in Matt. 18:17–20 (“Tell it unto the church.” — “Where two or three are gathered together,” etc.). “That a local congregation, in order to have and exercise all the rights of the Church, must be externally connected with other congregations and stand with them under one church governmental structure, and be thus dependent on other congregations, is an error on which the Papacy is founded.”24 That every congregation, even the smallest, has all ecclesiastical rights and all ecclesiastical power; that the whole Church or a number of congregations together has no more than the smallest local congregation, indeed, than each individual Christian, follows from the fact that Christians, precisely as Christians or believers, and not insofar as there are more or fewer of them, etc., possess everything.25 Some have tried to interpret the well-known words of the Smalcald Articles, “Moreover, it must be confessed that the keys do not belong to one man alone, but are given to the whole Church,” to mean that here nothing is said of the “congregation,” but only of the “Church,” and indeed of the “whole Church.” But Walther rightly remarks: “To distinguish here between congregation and Church is pure invention!” The Smalcald Articles immediately define the “Church” that has all power as a local church or local congregation, when it continues: “Christ speaks with these words: Whatsoever ye shall bind, etc., and indicates to whom He has given the keys, namely, to the Church where two or three are gathered together in my name,” etc. “When the Smalcald Articles speak of the whole Church, they mean, as the context teaches: not only this or that (member), but all members of the same.”26

Thus it is through the call of the congregation, as the possessor of all church power, that God transmits the Preaching Office. As to ordination, this is an apostolic, ecclesiastical ordinance. Holy Scripture testifies that the holy apostles used ordination and that at that time the communication of these glorious gifts was connected with the laying on of hands. Ordination, however, is not a divine institution. For Scripture is silent about any divine institution of ordination. “But whatever cannot be demonstrated from the Word of God to be instituted by God cannot be declared and accepted as God’s own institution without idolatry.” Therefore ordination, as a good ecclesiastical ordinance, is indeed to be retained; for since it is connected with the believing prayer of the Church and grounded on the glorious promises given especially to the Preaching Office, it is no empty ceremony but is accompanied by the outpouring of heavenly gifts upon the believing ordinand. Nevertheless ordination has nothing to do with bringing the essence of the Preaching Office into being. “Our fathers testify (Smalcald Art. II, Appendix, Müller p. 342) that the divine ordinance of the Preaching Office is properly realized through the call and election of the Church; that ordination does not first create this work of God, but where it has already taken place, only publicly acknowledges, testifies to, and confirms it.”27 Löhe has a different view. He considers ordination to be a divine institution and have a sacramental character, and makes it not merely the conditio sine qua non, but itself the sole proper factor of the office.”28 Grabau likewise taught: “Ordination itself is no adiaphoron and no unessential thing. It belongs to the commanded divine order and has divine and apostolic command.”29

After Walther has explains how the spiritual priesthood and the Preaching Office relate to each other, and furthermore, that the Preaching Office, like all spiritual goods and powers, originally belongs to the believing congregation, which according to God’s order and command, transfers the Preaching Office to certain qualified men, he says in Thesis VII, what the Preaching Office is in its essence: “The holy Preaching Office is the power transferred by God through the congregation, as the possessor of the priesthood and all ecclesiastical power, to exercise the rights of the spiritual priesthood in public office for the sake of the community.”30 The correctness of this thesis follows from all that has been said before; and to establish it Walther also says by way of recapitulation: “Let us remember once again that Holy Scripture presents the Church, that is, the believers, as the bride of the Lord and as the mistress of the house to whom the keys are given and thereby the right and access to all chambers, sanctuaries, and treasures of the house of God, and also the power to appoint stewards over them; that furthermore every true Christian according to Holy Scripture is a spiritual priest and therefore is authorized and called not only to use the means of grace for himself, but also to dispense them to those who do not yet have them and therefore do not yet possess the priestly rights with him; but that where all have these rights, no one may push himself forward before the others and exercise them over against the rest; rather, wherever Christians live together, the priestly rights of all are to be publicly administered for the sake of the community only by those who have been called to do so by the community in the manner prescribed by God; therefore the bearers of the public Preaching Office within the Church are called in God’s Word not only servants and stewards of God, but also servants and stewards of the Church or congregation and are thus presented as those who administer not their own rights, powers, goods, treasures, and offices, but those of the Church, so that they act not only in the name of Christ, but also in the name and stead of His bride, the Church of the believers.” See the further exposition loc. cit.

Many who wish to be Lutherans have, however, been unable to reconcile themselves to this doctrine of the origin of the Preaching Office in concreto and what is connected with it. Some have even seized upon the very term “transfer.” Walther never insisted on this expression as a shibboleth of the correct doctrine. He proved, on the one hand, that this expression is not a new one, but was already used by the orthodox teachers of old. On the other hand, he wishes to acknowledge anyone as orthodox in this article who holds firmly to the fact that the congregation originally has the office, that the office is not transferred from one preacher to another, but comes through the election and call of the congregation. In 1873 he remarked on this:

Again and again we are reproached — even by the most well-intentioned, as by Pastor Lohmann in Müden — that we seem to be making a special “form of the theory of transfer” into our shibboleth and thereby are in danger of rushing into an unhappy separatist position over against the entire rest of the Lutheran Church on earth. Thanks be to God, it is not so. Whatever form other Lutherans may use in speaking of the office and the transfer of the same, we still extend to them the hand of church fellowship if only they confess with us the doctrine of the office of the keys as it is set forth over against the papacy in our Confession, especially in the Smalcald Articles, namely, that they do not deny that not the office-bearers but the Church originally possesses the keys or the office and hands it over through her call; that therefore the pastoral office is not a privileged, self-perpetuating estate existing alongside the Church. But whoever denies this — or although he pretends to concede it still declares our doctrine to be enthusiastic, hiding, for example, behind the invisible Church as a whole and thus shows that at bottom he considers a fundamentally different doctrine to be the right one — with him we indeed cannot work together.31

Against the matter itself it has been objected that one becomes entangled in contradictions by the doctrine of a transfer of the preaching office by the congregation. It has been said: If Christians transfer the Preaching Office as something they previously had and which the pastor is to conduct in their stead, then they must all have previously been preachers or pastors. This often-repeated objection is not particularly clever. It ignores the most ordinary analogies. The American citizens transfer the presidency of the United States to a particular person by election without needing first to have been presidents themselves. But let us hear Walther. He writes:

We too maintain that the calling Christians are not pastors, but only the priestly race of the New Testament, in whom all ecclesiastical official power originally resides, by whose transfer to specific persons for public administration, according to God’s order, these persons become something that the Christians are not, namely pastors; just as the electing free citizens are not mayors, but only the free citizenry in whom all civic official authority originally resides, by whose transfer to specific persons for public administration these persons likewise become something that the citizens are not, namely mayors.32

Another form of this objection runs thus: since Christians have the office of the keys through baptism and faith, they cannot divest themselves of the office of the keys unless they “wash off baptism” and “pluck out faith.” Moreover, the fact that Christians bear the Gospel in their mouth shows that they still have the office of the keys. One would then have to assume a division of the office of the keys. But then the question would arise “according to what measure and proportion” should the division take place. Walther answers:

The solution to all … the difficulties and contradictions named here into which the doctrine of transfer is supposed to lead lies simply in this: that preachers are servants of the congregation. Just as a mistress of a household does not thereby become “divested” of her power when she appoints servants to whom she transfers her power, so also the Church of believers does not; only with this difference: while it is at the mistress’s discretion to appoint such servants, the Church has a mandatum divinum to do so. The question “according to what measure and proportion” the Christian has and retains the office in relation to the preacher is answered by Article XIV of the Augsburg Confession.33

Concerning the relationship of the Preaching Office to other offices in the Church, Walther teaches: “The preaching office is the highest office in the Church, from which all other offices flow.”34 The correctness of this thesis, which is also found verbatim in the Lutheran Confession (Apology, Art. 15; Müller, p. 213), is evident already from the fact that the preaching office has the public administration of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which embrace all ecclesiastical power. Thus there can be no office in the Church that stands above the Preaching Office. Rather, every other public office in the Church is only a helping office standing alongside the Preaching Office, whether it be the office of elders who do not labor in the Word and doctrine (1 Tim. 5:17), or the office of ruling (Rom. 12:8), or the diaconate (service office in the narrower sense), or whatever offices may be entrusted in the Church to particular persons for particular administrations. Therefore those who administer the holy preaching office in the Church are in Scripture called elders, bishops, overseers, stewards, etc.; and the bearers of a subordinate office are called deacons, i.e., servants, not only of God but also of the congregation and of the bishop; and of the latter in particular it is said that they are to care for the congregation of God and watch over all souls as those who must give an account (1 Tim. 3:1, 5, 7; 5:17; 1 Cor. 4:1; Tit. 1:7; Heb. 13:17). Thus there can be no superiority and subordination among the administrators of the Preaching Office jure divino; rather, all are equal to one another. All superiority and subordination is only of human right.35

As for the rights of the Preaching Office, reverence and unconditional obedience are due to it when the preacher proclaims God’s Word. Walther impresses this with the utmost earnestness. He has been accused of making preachers into men-servants whom congregations might treat and handle at their pleasure through his doctrine of the relationship of the Preaching Office to the Christian estate. This accusation is entirely unfounded. From the beginning and to the end Walther yielded not a jot of the rights of the Preaching Office which God’s Word gives it. But let us hear him himself. He writes:

Although the bearers of the public preaching office do not constitute an estate different from and holier than the common Christian estate, but only exercise the general Christian rights entrusted to them for public, orderly administration, they are not therefore men-servants. The primary efficient cause of the order of the public Preaching Office is God the Most High Himself. It is not a wise arrangement devised by men for the sake of propriety and expediency, but an institution of the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, if the power of the office has been transferred to a person by the congregation through an orderly legitimate call, that person is appointed by God Himself over the congregation, though through it (1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 4:11; Acts 20:28). The appointee is now not only a servant of the congregation but also a servant of God, an ambassador in Christ’s stead, through whom God exhorts the congregation (1 Cor. 4:1; 2 Cor. 5:18–20). Therefore, when a preacher in his congregation bears God’s Word, whether teaching or exhorting, rebuking or comforting, whether publicly or privately, the congregation hears from his mouth Jesus Christ Himself; and she owes him unconditional obedience as the one through whom God would make known to her His will and lead her to eternal life; and the more faithfully the preacher administers his office, the more highly the congregation should hold him in honor.36

Walther, therefore, protested from the outset against the practice, widespread in America, of calling preachers “at will.” He called this a shameful contempt for the divine order of the Preaching Office, by which preachers are made men-servants. The congregation can and should depose a preacher from his office only when it is manifest that the primary cause of the public preaching office, namely God Himself, has deposed the preacher from his office; that is, when the preacher has become a false teacher or lives an offensive life. Concerning this Walther says loc. cit.: “The congregation also has no right to take away the office from such a faithful servant of Jesus Christ; if it does so, it thereby thrusts away Christ Himself, in whose name he presided over it. Only when it is evident from God’s Word that the Lord Himself has deposed him as a wolf or a hireling can the congregation remove a bearer of the office from his office.” In his “Pastorale” Walther deals at length with the custom, especially prevalent in America, that preachers are called only temporarily, that is, either with the reservation that they can be dismissed at will, or that they are called only for a fixed term, e.g., for one or more years, or “upon notice,” so that from the day the notice is announced, after a set period they must step down from the office. Walther judges that neither is a congregation authorized to issue such a call, nor is a preacher permitted to accept it:

First, such a call conflicts with the divinity of a proper call to a preaching office in the Church, which is clearly attested in God’s Word (Acts 20:28; Eph. 4:11; 1 Cor. 12:28). For if God is in truth the One who calls the preachers, then the congregations are only the instruments for setting apart the persons to the work to which the Lord has called them (Acts 13:2). When this has taken place, the preacher stands in God’s service and office, and then no creature can depose God’s servant from his office or dismiss him, unless it can be proven that God Himself has deposed him and dismissed him (Jer. 15:19; cf. Hos. 4:6); in which case the congregation proper does not depose or dismiss the preacher but only carries out God’s clearly revealed deposition or dismissal. If the congregation nevertheless does the former, then the instrument makes herself mistress of the office and intrudes into God’s governance and His household. … The preacher, however, who grants a congregation the right to call him thus and to dismiss him at its whim, thereby makes himself a hireling, a men-servant.

Such a call also conflicts with

… the honor and the obedience which hearers, according to God’s Word, are to show to the administrators of the divine preaching office (Luke 10:16; Heb. 13:17, etc.); for if the hearers truly had the alleged plenary power, then it would lie fully within their power to withdraw themselves from showing that honor and obedience which God requires.37

To be sure, the commanding and ordering on the part of the preachers and the obedience on the part of the congregations go only as far as God’s Word goes. Of that which is not commanded in God’s Word, the preacher may not demand obedience. If he does, he arrogates to himself a lordship in the Church for his own person and overturns the cardinal principle that Christians are subject only to Christ but among one another are brothers. Therefore the so-called constitutive ecclesiastical power, that is, the power to order adiaphora, does not belong to the preacher alone, but to the entire congregation; that is, to the preacher with the congregation.38 The demand on the part of the preacher that by virtue of the Fourth Commandment obedience is due to him even apart from God’s Word is a papistic error. In “Church and Ministry” Walther lays down the thesis: “The preacher has no lordship in the Church; therefore he has no right to make new laws and to arrange adiaphora and ceremonies in the Church arbitrarily.” In the “Proof from God’s Word” he cites Matt. 20:25–26; Matt. 23:8; John 18:36 and continues:

From this we see that the Church of Jesus Christ is not a kingdom of rulers and those who obey, but a great holy brotherhood in which no one can lord it over others and exercise dominion. Just as little as this necessary equality among Christians is abolished by the obedience which they render the preachers, when these set before them the Word of Jesus Christ — for then they do not obey men in the preachers, but Christ Himself — so certainly would that equality of believers be abolished and the Church turned into a secular state if a preacher demanded obedience also where he does not set before the Christian people the Word of Christ, his and all Christians’ Lord and Head, but only what he, according to his insight and experience, considers good and expedient. Therefore, as soon as in the Church the matter concerns things indifferent, that is, things neither commanded nor forbidden in God’s Word, the preacher may never demand unconditional obedience for what seems best to him. Rather, it is then the affair of the whole congregation, of the preacher together with the hearers, to decide about what is to be adopted and what rejected; although it is incumbent upon the preacher, according to his office as teacher, overseer, and watchman, to lead the deliberations to be held thereon, to instruct the congregation about the matter, and to see to it that in establishing adiaphora and in arranging ecclesiastical orders and ceremonies neither frivolity prevails nor anything pernicious established.39

The holy apostles forbid preachers to lord themselves over the people, that is, the congregations: 1 Pet. 5:1–3; 2 Cor. 8:8; 1 Cor. 7:35. “If nevertheless the holy apostles, among other things, write: ‘The other things I will arrange when I come’ (1 Cor. 11:34), then it follows from the foregoing that they made such indifferent arrangements not as commands but as counsel and with the consent of the whole congregation.” As is well known, the newer Romanizing Lutherans ascribe to the preachers the power to establish orders in the Church by themselves alone, appealing partly to passages such as Heb. 13:17: “Obey your leaders and submit to them,”40 and partly citing passages such as 1 Pet. 2:13: “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human ordinance.”41 Concerning the former passage Walther says with the Apology: This is not about human ordinances but about the preaching of God’s Word. “Thus this passage does not establish a government apart from the Gospel.”42 As to the use of 1 Pet. 2:13, Walther says: “To understand ‘human ordinance’ here to be arrangements made by a preacher is an exceedingly gross confusion.”43 In this passage it is the order of the civil power in civil matters that is in view!

In drawing the boundary of the legal sphere between the congregation and the Preaching Office, Walther discussed two points in particular at length. These are the questions: “To whom does the imposition of the ban [excommunication] belong?” and “Who has the right to judge doctrine?” Both questions had to be addressed on the occasion of the controversy with Pastor Grabau (cf. Buffalo Colloquy, pp. 21–22).

With regard to the first question Walther emphasizes: “The preacher has no right to impose and exercise the ban alone, without the prior recognition of the whole congregation.”44 True to his manner, Walther first duly highlights here the rights of the Preaching Office. He is certain that “the bearers of the public preaching office are indeed entrusted also with the office of the keys in the narrower sense, namely the power publicly to loose and to bind,” so that “the public execution of the ban, according to the word of the Lord and His holy order, belongs to and must remain with the bearers of the public Preaching Office.” Nevertheless, according to that same Lord’s express ordinance, the recognition that precedes the execution of the ban and the final judicial decision are to be carried out by the whole congregation, that is, by teachers and hearers, Matt. 18:15–20. After citing this passage Walther continues:

Here Christ plainly gives, just as our Confessions say, the highest judgment to the Church or congregation, and He wills that a sinner in the congregation shall be regarded as a heathen and a tax collector, and that the dreadful judgment of the ban shall be carried out upon him, only when, after multiple fruitless private admonitions, he has also been admonished publicly before and by the whole congregation in vain, and thus his exclusion from its fellowship has been unanimously resolved by the latter and executed by the preacher of the congregation. Accordingly even Paul himself did not wish to put the incestuous man at Corinth under the ban without the congregation, but, although he declared this great sinner worthy of the ban, he wrote to the congregation that this should be done by her in her assembly (1 Cor. 5:4).45

Walther therefore judges: “A ban carried out by a mere majority with the exclusion of the minority, a ban not resolved unanimously, even without the tacit consent of all the members, is improper and invalid.”46 Yet here too Walther carefully avoids overstepping the proper boundary. A ban imposed by a presbytery or consistory with the knowledge and consent of the people he declares to be valid and legitimate. He remarks:

It scarcely needs to be mentioned that at the time of the apostles what the "congregation," did man by man (2 Cor. 2:6; 1 Tim. 5:20) can, where the ruling congregation is represented by a presbytery or consistory composed of men of spiritual and of lay estate, be legitimately and validly judged by the presbytery or consistory alone, provided only that this takes place with the knowledge and consent of the people.47

Nevertheless, Walther always emphatically argues against introducing this order into our American congregations, especially for the reason that congregations would not thereby lose their right to exclude impenitent sinners, as has happened for the most part in state churches.

As to the right to judge doctrine, Walther says that “no proof is needed” that this belongs also to the Preaching Office. “To the Preaching Office there belongs by divine right also the office of judging doctrine.” Indeed, the Preaching Office cannot be carried on at all without judging doctrine. Its task is not only to set forth the right doctrine but also to expose false doctrine, to refute it, and to warn against it if it is to attain its ultimate aim of leading souls to salvation amid manifold seduction. But the conferral of this special public office to judge doctrine by no means takes away this right from the laity.48 Rather, the exercise of this right is made their most sacred duty in Scripture. This follows indisputably, first, from all the passages of Holy Scripture in which this judging is commanded also of ordinary Christians; thus, for example, the holy apostle Paul writes: “I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say: the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?” etc. (1 Cor. 10:15–16). Furthermore: “Test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1; cf. 2 John 10–11; 1 Thess. 5:12). Further proof is provided by all those passages in which Christians are urged to beware of false prophets (Matt. 7:15–16; John 10:5), and in which they are praised for their zeal in testing doctrine (Acts 17:11). Finally the Acts of the Apostles reports that at the first apostolic council laymen were not only present but also spoke, and that the decisions were made by them as well as by the apostles and elders, and were carried out in their name as well as in those of the latter. Therefore there can be no doubt that in ecclesiastical courts and synods, laymen are to have a seat and a voice alongside the public ministers of the Church.49 To take this right away from laymen, or even merely to diminish it, would be an accursed robbery of the Church having the consequence that the intrusion of false doctrine could no longer be prevented.50

Footnotes

  1. German: Predigtamt. This is synonymous with the Office of the Ministry. We will use “Preaching Office” here throughout.
  2. German: Übertragungslehre.
  3. Das Buffaloer Colloquium, p. 14.
  4. Grundsätze ev.-luth. Kirchenverfassung, 3rd ed., 1853, p. 76. Cited in L. u. W. 16, 174. Further: Buffaloer Colloquium, p. 13.
  5. Kirche und Amt, pp. 193 f.
  6. Ibid., Thesis III, p. 211.
  7. Ibid., pp. 211–212.
  8. Ibid., Thesis IV, p. 221.
  9. Ibid., pp. 221–222.
  10. L. u. W., vol. 16, 176, 178.
  11. Ibid., p. 178.
  12. Buffaloer Colloquium, p. 26.
  13. K u. A., p. 31.
  14. Ibid., p. 245.
  15. Brosamen, p. 589.
  16. German: Nutznießung, usufruct, the right to use and derive benefit or profit from a thing.
  17. K u. A., pp. 42–43.
  18. Ibid., p. 38.
  19. Ibid., pp. 30–31.
  20. Ibid., pp. 31, 33.
  21. Ibid., pp. 245–246.
  22. Ibid., p. 33.
  23. Die rechte Gestalt, p. 18.
  24. Ibid., pp. 13–20.
  25. Ibid., p. 15.
  26. L. u. W., vol. 16, p. 179.
  27. K u. A., p. 289.
  28. L. u. W., vol. 16, p. 178.
  29. Buffaloer Colloquium, p. 26.
  30. K u. A., p. 315.
  31. L. u. W., vol. 19, pp. 366 f.
  32. Ibid., pp. 365 f.
  33. L. u. W., vol. 16, p, 182.
  34. K u. A., VIII Thesis, p. 342.
  35. Ibid., pp. 342–344.
  36. Ibid., pp. 360 f.
  37. Pastorale, pp. 41 f.
  38. Ibid., pp. 365 ff.
  39. K u. A., pp. 370 f.
  40. Thus Grabau: “Lutheran Christians know that when God’s Word says, ‘Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves,’ that this is not only about the sermon, but about all good Christian things and occasions which God’s Word brings with it and desires, and which belong to the good government of the church, also to Christian decency in life and action, and honor, love, and obedience are demanded according to the Third and Fourth Commandments. … Here the required obedience is everywhere a matter of conscience; but through the Holy Spirit also a willing and joyful one, because of the believing knowledge of that which is good in the grace of Jesus Christ.” (Colloquy, p. 20.)
  41. Thus Superintendent Münchmeyer. L. u. W., vol. 16, p. 184.
  42. K u. A., pp. 418 f.
  43. L. u. W., vol. 16, p. 184.
  44. K u. A., Thesis IX, p. 383.
  45. K u. A., p. 384.
  46. Pastorale, p. 348.
  47. K u. A., p. 384.
  48. Löhe and Grabau wanted to grant seat and voice in ecclesiastical courts and councils (synods) to pastors alone. The latter: “You should leave the judging of doctrine to those to whom it belongs according to the 28th article (?) of the Augsburg Confession.” (Second Synodical Address, Colloquium, p. 22.)
  49. K u. A., pp. 398 f.
  50. K u. A., pp. 400 f.