The Lutheran Doctrine of the Office of the Ministry[1]

 

by Hermann Sasse

 

[Translated by Pastor Matthew Harrison]

 

"Talk about the church is every where today. Every one has an inkling that 'Church' is no mere name."[2] With these words Wilhelm Löhe, now nearly 100 years ago in December of 1844, began the forward to his Three Books About the Church. It was a time of questioning about and seeking after the church, the likes of which had not been experienced since the days of the Reformation. It was a time when the modern Roman Catholic Church, in its pilgrimage to Trier,[3] stood before the German nation after its victory over the Enlightenment and national churchism. Friedrich Wilhelm IV[4] called the general synod in Berlin. Lutheranism came to a new realization of its ecclesiastical heritage and its ecumenical task. The Tractarian Movement[5] in Anglicanism experienced its high point and its crisis with the conversion of its great leader, J.H. Newmann, to the Catholic Church. In the Disruption of 1845[6] the Church of Scotland experienced the rebirth of the Reformed Church, and Reformed Protestantism of the world devised its ecumenical program in the Evangelical Alliance.[7]  A generation had passed since the end of the Napoleonic wars.[8]  In these thirty years the awakening (lasting all in all some forty years) reached the high-point in its rediscovery of the church.

 

A century has since flowed by. The high water mark of interest in the church which was characteristic of that time has expired. And other movements, great social and political torrents, have replaced it. But the sharper eye can see a new wave of interest in the church arising. In the midst of the collapse of the social and political world of modern Europe, there is arising a new questioning about the church. And this questioning is happening today throughout the entire world. This struggling over the church began in the ecumenical movement of the years after the First World War. And it continues in our decaying, apocalyptic times. He who has ears to hear, hears a voice through the thunder of the canon of this wretched war. It is the soul of Christianity, which in the midst of the collapse the orders and associations which had hitherto obtained, is asking about that fellowship which alone, among all the fellowships of this world, has been given the promise that the gates of hell shall not overpower it.

 

What is this fellowship? What is the church, which, as the people of God, as the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit, is a reality, even in the midst of the history we are now experiencing? This is a question for all of us. People pose this question to us pastors. The world directs it to the great confessions. The churches themselves are asking it. We have to answer it. But we can only do so if we give more thorough consideration to the reality of the church than has hitherto been the case, and only if we seriously ask what Scripture and the Confessions say to us regarding the church.

 

We are gathered here today for such serious consideration. And indeed we shall, in this hour, take up that part of ecclesiology which most directly concerns us servants of the church: The doctrine of the ecclesiastical office. For everything which we today can be, say, and do in the service of the church, is completely dependent upon how we understand our office. My task is to speak on the LUTHERAN doctrine of the office of the ministry [geistlichen Amt], and thus to point out what the Lutheran Church as church teaches regarding it. Perhaps it will become clear that Lutheranism today still has an important contribution to make to the great struggle of modern day Christianity over the question of the church, and the office of the ministry of the church.

 

Section 1.

 

If we are to understand the Lutheran doctrine of the office of the ministry, then we do well first of all to be reminded of the fundamental distinction which separates our church's understanding of the way the church is constituted from that of all the other confessions of Christianity. All other confessions, namely, know of a constitution of, [or way of organizing] the Church established by Christ, and commanded by God in the New Testament, "an order, by which the Lord intended His church to be governed" (ordo, quo Dominus ecclesiam suam gubernari voluit), as Calvin put it. This ordo, according to the view of the Orthodox, Old Catholic, and Anglican Churches, is the three-fold gradation of the Office of Bishop, Priest, and Deacon. According to Roman Catholic doctrine it is the papal-episcopal constitution. All Catholic Christians the world over are in agreement that the legitimate church of Christ is only present where the ordering of the church commanded by God is present. But even Protestant church fellowships agree in large measure with this proposition. In the Confessio Gallicana, drafted by Calvin, it says in Article XXIX: "Regarding the true church, we believe that it must be ruled according to the ordinance firmly mandated by our Lord Jesus, namely that there be Pastors, Elders, and Deacons..." This is an article of faith, as is the preceding Article XXVIII, and the one that follows in which we read: "We believe, that all true pastors, in which ever place they may be, have the same authority and similar power, and one general sovereign, one universal Lord and universal highest bishop, Jesus Christ..." and "We believe that no one has the right, arbitrarily to assume the rule of the church, rather that this must occur by election."

 

Along side this presbyterial-synodical view of Reformed Protestantism (whose views have indeed also played a major role in the struggle in the German church of the last thirty years), there has stood, since the days of old, the independent-congregational viewpoint. This has been advocated primarily by the Congregationalists and Baptists. It replaced the aristocratic leadership of the congregations of Calvin with a spiritual democracy. The individual congregation is viewed as the church of Christ, and it refuses a synodical connection of the congregation to a church body which stands above the local congregation. Lutheranism is quite fundamentally different from all these confessions in this: It finds in the New Testament no "order by which the Lord desired to have His church governed" (ordo quo Dominus ecclesiam gubernar voluit), no divinely ordained ordering of the church. And therefore Lutheranism knows of no article of faith regarding the correct constitution of the church. This has often been viewed as a weakness of our church. It has been more easily able to compromise with forms of constitution which have been forced upon it from without, and yet as is said, it has fought for its freedom just as decisively as the Roman Catholics and Reformed. But quite aside from the fact that scarcely any Reformed Church in Europe has ever been able to actually achieve the form of church government called for by its confessions, in the case of an article of faith the question can never be about whether it is useful, rather it must always be whether it is true.

 

So what is the situation regarding the constitution of the church in the New Testament? The New Testament is, as we well know, full of thoughts and directions for ordering of the church. Before the Gospels were even written there were already "church orders" [Kirchenordnungen] given, such as I Corinthians. It is God's will that the church, which is His people, be ordered; for He is not a God of disorder but of peace. The Lutheran Church never contested this, and the church orders of the time of the Reformation show just how seriously they strived to order the church. But the question is this: Has God legally commanded a particular ordering? We must answer this question in the negative. It is an historical fact that at the beginning of church history, in the Apostolic and post-apostolic ages, there existed various forms of constitution (e.g. the episcopal-deaconal and the presbyterial), whose gradual coalescing we can notice already in the New Testament. A definite, divinely ordained form of constitution has at times been drawn out of the New Testament by lifting out one of its statements from among the various ones found there, and then subordinating all the others to it. Thus it is that systems so different as the episcopal, and papal, presbyterial and congregational could all call upon Holy Scripture with the appearance of legitimacy. But they are all finally contrived. And Calvin's doctrine of the presbytery as the office which rules the church has no better Scriptural foundation than the corresponding doctrine of the episcopate or the primacy of Peter in the church. The common error which overturns all these theories is the conviction that there is one "order by which the Lord desired to have His church governed" (ordo, quo Dominus ecclesiam suam gubernari voluit), and that the New Testament necessarily contains a law regarding it.

 

But according to the view of the Lutheran Reformation, this is a false understanding of the New Testament, born out of the confusion of law and gospel. The church is, to be sure, the new people of God, the "Israel according to the Spirit." But Christ is no new Moses, who gives a new constitution to the new people of God. Golgotha is no new Sinai. To be sure, everything in the church should occur in an orderly manner (kata taxin). But on the form and manner of how this orderly manner (kata taxin) is realized, Jesus Christ gave no law, and neither did the apostles. These forms of the church belong to the "human traditions or rites or ceremonies instituted by men" (traditiones humanae seu ritus aut caeremoniae ab hominibus institutae) [A.C. VII.3]. Whether the church is constituted with a presbyterial or episcopal system, whether archbishops stand above bishops, whether and in which form synods are held; these are questions of human law or right (ius humanum) in the church. These questions ought to be answered in view of expediency. They ought be answered according to the circumstances in such a way that the church can expand its strengths, advance its life, and fulfill its tasks in the world. In the home of Jewish Christianity the traditional arrangement of the presbytery was taken over. In Pauline congregations the offices of bishop and deacon were created. In the second century the move was made from the collegial to the monarchical episcopate. In the Lutheran Reformation the old episcopal constitution was maintained, and under the influence of the situation the church took on consistorial, presbyterial or congregational church forms. And all these finally did not have to do with the essence of the church. They are matters of adiaphora of which our Confessions state that "in God's Word they are neither commanded nor forbidden, they are rather established only for the sake the well-being [of the church] and good order. In and of themselves they are no divine service, nor a part of the same" [F.C. Ep. X.3]. And "that the community of God [Gemeinde Gottes] at every place and every time... has the authority to change such ceremonies, as may be most useful and edifying for the community of God" [F.C. Ep. X.4].

 

With this great, and at first sight rather curious freedom in the question of the constitution of the church, Lutheranism stands alone among the great confessions of Christianity. As with all evangelical freedom, it must be understood correctly. It can be falsely understood and misused. It serves to distinguish between that which is really God's order and that which is not. Where this distinction is not made, God's order in its entire greatness and in its most profound meaning, can not be understood. The order of God which is hidden behind the human orders of the church, is the ministry of the church (ministerium ecclesiasticum), the office of the ministry. This office is a divine ordinance (divina ordinatio) in the strict sense. The office of the ministry, along with marriage and the offices of father and mother established with it, and the office of secular authority [weltlische Obrigkeit] form, according to Luther, the three "holy orders and right institutions [Stifter]", upon which all our life is based. Just as those two secular orders are great gifts of God, so too is the office of the ministry (ministerium ecclesiasticum). And it is an institution of Christ, through which He graciously wills to give us redemption.

 

Section 2.

 

Article V of the Augustana "Concerning the Ecclesiastical Ministry" ("De ministerio ecclesiastico"), "On the Preaching Office" [Vom Predigtamt], speaks of this gracious gift of divine mercy. Together with article XIV "On Church Government" and XVIII "Of the Power of Bishops" it presents the doctrine of the office of the ministry [geistlichen Amt], which in Lutheranism is the counterpart to the teaching of the other confessions [i.e. denominations] on the constitution of the church. Ut hanc fidem consequamur  institutum est ministerium docendi evangelii et porrigendi sacramenta. "That we may obtain such faith, God has instituted the preaching office, to give gospel and sacrament." Thus Article V begins,"To obtain such faith," namely the faith of which the preceding article speaks, the article of justification. It is not a faith of just any sort, not faith in providence, or a higher being or in what ever else natural man may believe. It is rather faith in the God incarnate (Deus Incarnatus), saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. "Thus we believe that Christ suffered for us and that for His sake our sins are forgiven, righteousness and eternal life are given; for this faith God will hold and reckon as righteousness, as St. Paul said in Romans 3 and 4" [A.C. IV].

 

It is important that this connection be noted. The doctrine of the office of the ministry is most closely connected with the doctrine of justification, the "article by which the church stands or falls" (articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae). It is not, as has been commonly thought in modern Protestantism, a Catholic remnant in the Confession of the Evangelical [Lutheran] Church, something foreign to the teaching of the Reformation. It is rather a completely essential part of this doctrine. For justifying, saving faith would not exist in the world if the ministry of the church (ministerium ecclesiasticum) did not exist. The sequel of the proposition "That we may obtain such faith" (Ut hanc fidem consequamer) is not "God has given to us the Holy Scriptures" (Deus nobis dedit scripturam sacram). Christ did not leave behind a book for his church in the way Mohammed left his people the Koran. Christ rather gave the office of gospel proclamation, "The Preaching office or oral word" as Schwabach Article VII, the predecessor of Augustana V, stated. Let us remember the fact that for Luther, at least in his early period, Holy Scripture is, properly speaking, the Old Testament, "thus it alone has the name that it is Holy Scripture and the gospel should not properly be a written, but an oral word... Therefore also Christ himself wrote nothing, rather only spoke and named his teaching not scripture, rather gospel, that is, a good message or proclamation, which must be advanced not with the pen, but with the mouth" (Kirchenpostille: Ein klein Unterricht... 1521 WA 10 I 1.17 [LW 35.123]). Yes, it is of the essence of the gospel that it not only be read, but also plainly preached and heard. Only thus is it met with faith, and exercises authority over the spirits. A mission which is satisfied to send the Word of God in the form of the printed Bible, to repenting pagans, would quickly suffer shipwreck. There are two fundamental truths which the beginning of Article V makes us cognizant. And we must always have them in view, if we are to understand the Lutheran doctrine of the office of the ministry: The doctrine of the office of the ministry is inseparably connected with the doctrine of justification. And God willed that justifying faith be awakened by the oral preaching of the gospel.

 

The task, and with it the proper content of the ministry of the church (ministerium ecclesiasticum), is already indicated in these propositions. It is the "ministry of teaching the gospel" (ministerium docendi evangelii) [AC V.1]. To be sure, the office of the ministry also has the task of preaching God's law. For there is no preaching of the gospel without the preaching of the law! But just as the proper office" of Jesus Christ (officium proprium Jesus Christi) was the forgiveness of sins, and the explication and preaching of the law His "alien office" (officium alienum)[9] ; so also is the "proper work" (opus proprium) of the office of the ministry that which makes our office an "ecclesiastical ministry" (ministerium ecclesiasticum), namely the proclamation of Christ as the Savior of the sinner. We bearers of the office of the ministry cannot take the preaching of the divine law serious enough, in a time in which men not only transgress this law, but also despise, ridicule and trample it under foot. But the more seriously we take the immutable, eternal, divine commandments, the more we also know that the preaching of the law is not yet the last and highest preaching which has been committed to us.

 

The final and highest matter of our office is this, that we lead penitent sinners to the One who is their Savior, because He has borne the sin of the world. The gospel is this and nothing else: That in Jesus Christ there is forgiveness of sins, in Him alone and nowhere else in the world, but also truly in Him. A sermon which would fail to say this, a sermon in which this specific gospel were not mentioned, would not be a Christian sermon. Certainly, the sermon should present the entire fullness of Biblical revelation. It should bring to bear upon the lives of men the entire riches of the Scriptures in their entirety, fullness, and reality. But the basic melody of the eternal gospel must ring through the variation and fullness of our preaching with an illustrious consistency: "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, and not reckoning their sins against them and has committed to us the word of redemption. Thus we are now messengers in the place of Christ. For God makes His appeal through us, and so we plead now in the place of Christ: Be reconciled to God! For He who knew no sin, was made sin for us, in order that we might become in Him the righteousness which avails before God." (2 Corinthians 5:19 ff.). That is the content of the message delivered by the ministry of the church (ministerium ecclesiasticum), it is the heart and soul [Kern und Stern] of all Christian preaching. Where the sermon fails to contain this message, it may be a marvelous religious address, but it is no longer a sermon in the sense of the Reformation. So this is the unrelinquishable task of the ministry of the church (ministerium ecclesiasticum). Because God wills that this message be delivered from generation to generation through the mouths of men, there has been an office of the ministry from the days of the apostles, and will be one until the end of the world.

 

The public ministry (ministerium ecclesiasticum) is, however, both the "ministry of teaching the gospel" (ministerium docendi evangelii) and the "ministry of administering the Sacraments" (ministerium porrigendi sacramenta). The two are inseparable. There is no dispensing of the Sacrament without the preaching of the gospel. Even in the churches which are for the most part estranged from the gospel, a remnant of the gospel still continues to exist in the Sacraments. When in the time of rationalism the sermon no longer contained any gospel, there still rang at least in the distance the "given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins" in the liturgy of the supper. At every Roman mass in the "Thou only art holy, Thou only Lord, most High" (Tu solus sanctus, tu solus Dominus, tu solus Altissimus), are heard the words of the Canon Mass "God does not value merit but is an abundant giver of grace" (non aestimator meriti sed veniae largitor). And when in the mass for the dead the hymn of the last judgement rings, the Catholic congregation also prays:

 

Rex tremendae majestatis,	King of awesome majesty
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,	Who in saving does freely save,
Salva me fons pietatis...	Save me O Font of piety...
Qui Mariam absolvisti	You have absolved Mary
et latronem exaudisti,	and heard the thief,
Mihi quoque spem dedisti.	And You have given me hope.

 

And in the Sacrament of Penance the Catholic priest occupies the confessional not only as judge, rather he speaks the "I absolve you" (ego te absolvo) to the penitant sinner in the place of Christ and by the gospel. The Roman church does not live from its outer might, nor from its teachings which depart from Scripture, nor from the paganism that lives within it. It lives, in spite of all these things, from the Gospel which is still hidden at least in its Sacraments.

 

On the other hand, the proclamation of the gospel never lasts in Christianity without the administration of the Sacraments. In the deeply pious fellowship of the Quakers, for instance, who fundamentally reject the Sacraments, the gospel has been changed into a new law. Even where the Sacrament is maintained, but no longer understood, the gospel goes into decline. This connection between gospel and Sacrament defies rational explanation. But it is a fact. What would result if a Christian mission, founded among pagans, were to limit itself to the proclamation of the gospel and forsake the consummation [of this gospel in] Baptism and the celebration of the Supper? It would never result in a church, rather at most a short-lived society for bestowing a Christian world view. The proclamation of the gospel would die away like a voice in the wind, if those who had come to faith were not baptized and thebaptized were not to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Why this is so, we do not know. No sociology can explain it, because the communion [Gemeinschaft] of the body of Christ constituted by Baptism and Supper remains inaccessible to sociology. We only know that the miracle of the church, which is inscrutable to reason, is bound up together with the miracles of Baptism and the Supper.

 

While we assert this essential connection, we are opposed to the view very broadly held today, that "the teaching of the gospel" (docere evangelium) is essentially identical with the "the administration of the sacraments" (administratione sacramenta), because the sacramentum is only the "visible Word" (verbum visibile). It is asserted that the Word (verbum) is, as it were, an "audible sacrament" (sacramentum audibile), and that the Word is finally the only means of grace and the only "mark of the church" (nota ecclesiae). This view is advocated today also within the Lutheran Church (by Ernst Wolf and other Barthians) by calling upon individual quotes from Luther. It is untenable because it not only contradicts the clear testimony of the Lutheran Reformation, but also the Holy Scriptures. To be sure, the Sacrament is never present without the Word, and in this regard it is the primary [übergeordnete] means of grace. But one need only consider the great assertions of the New Testament on Baptism and Supper, the description of Baptism as the "washing of regeneration," and the assertions on the connection between the elements in the Supper and the true body and blood of Christ, and one will understand that the sacraments are something other than duplicates or appendages to the Word of God. There is nothing enviable about Luther scholars who interpret Luther as though he simply placed an equal sign between Word and Sacrament. One must ignore everything which Luther said regarding the Sacrament since the beginning of the fight against the fanatics [Schwärmer], or declare it irrelevant, in order to ignore the great, and unique effect which he attributed to the Sacrament. It is certainly not detached from the Word, and yet has its own different kind of effect. The office of preaching the gospel is also the office which baptizes and celebrates the Supper. It is also the office of the keys, whether this office is reckoned among the sacraments in accord with the Augustana, or viewed as a particular case of the proclamation of the gospel, as happened later in the Lutheran Church. In all circumstances it is the office of the administration of the means of grace, not only of one means of grace. And the Lord who left behind these means of grace to His church, is also the Lord who established the office of the ministry.

 

There is still one more thing that arises out of the fundamental first sentence of our Article V: There is only ONE church ministry (ministerium ecclesiasticum). To be sure, as the Augustana presupposes and the Apology expressly acknowledges, there are levels in the church (gradus in ecclesia), grades [Stufen] of the office. There are pastors, superintendents, bishops and archbishops. And yes, theoretically, as Melanchthon correctly noted, even the office of one highest bishop, a pope, is possible. But these grades are not established by Christ. They are always of human ordinance, man made law (de jure humano), not divine law (de jure divino) as is the church ministry (ministerium ecclesiasticum) itself. For the sake of order the ministry may be divided, but it always essentially remains one and the same office. That which distinguishes a bishop from his youngest pastor is of purely human origin. The church ministry (ministerium ecclesiasticum) may also be unburdened of peripheral tasks through the establishment of new offices. This happened already in the ancient church through the creation of the deaconate, or in more recent times by the creation of the office of elder [Kirchenvorsteher, Kirchenältesten] or what ever else those who lead the congregation may be called. The essence and task of the church ministry (ministerium ecclesiasticum) is in no way impinged by these offices. Preaching of the gospel and the administration of the Sacraments appertain neither to deacons nor to one who is today called a presbyter. The former has the duty of the work of love in caring for the poor. The latter has the duty of helping in the administration of the parish. According to Lutheran doctrine they do not have a part in church government [Kirchenregiment]. For Luther and with him the Confessions of our church (C.A. XIV & XXVIII) mean by church government the exercise of the functions peculiar to the office of the ministry: "an authority and command of God, to preach the gospel, to forgive and retain sins, and to dispense and administer the Sacraments." This is ecclesiastical power (potestas ecclesiastica), real church government. For in the exercise of these functions of His servant, through the administration of these means of grace, Christ the Lord Himself rules His church. "For this is always the same kingdom of Christ" (Semper enim hoc est regnum Christi"), says the Apology VIIand VIII, "which He makes alive by His Spirit, whether it be revealed or hidden under the cross" (sive sit revelatum, sive sit cruce tectum) [VII & VIII.18].

 

Herein Christ demonstrates His existence as Lord, His kingdom, that He is the Redeemer, who gives the Holy Spirit who works faith, grants forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. His kingdom is hidden from the eyes of men in this age, hidden under a cross (cruce tectum). His kingly dealings take place invisibly to our eyes in the unpretentious preached Word of the gospel and in the administration of the Sacraments. Therefore these functions of the ministry of the church (ministerium ecclesiasticum) are properly church government [Kirchenregiment]. What we are otherwise accustomed to call church government, the external administration and governance of the church, the enacting and execution of ecclesiastical law, is no manifestation of the kingdom of Christ. And this external, human order must exist, because the church is not only "an association of faith and the Holy Spirit in hearts" (societas fides et spiritus sancti in cordibus), it is always at the same time "an association of external things and rites" (societas externarum rerum ac rituum) [Ap. VII&VIII.5]. Just as both these sides of the church are inextricably joined, so also the external government of the church belongs to the church, and it must be so ordered that it grant to the proper church government the fullest opportunity to operate. That Christ is the only head and the only Lord of the Church, according to the Lutheran view, is never expressed in the constituted form the church takes, neither in the dominion of a visible vicar of Christ, nor in the rule of a synod or council of brothers [Bruderrat]. It is rather always only expressed in this, that the means of grace are administered, in which and through which Christ exercises His rule which is hidden from the eyes of men.

 

Section 3.

 

If this then is the ministry of the church (ministerium ecclesiasticum), then an important question arises: How is it realized in the world? How does it come to exist today in the world? We shall turn first to Luther's thought on this, in order to investigate what of this thought has been recited by the Lutheran Church in her Confessions.

 

Luther's doctrine of the office, as was the case with many of his doctrinal understandings, has two sides, one anti-Roman and one anti-spiritualistic. His doctrine of the Supper had a double front against Rome on the one hand, and the sacrifice of the mass and the philosophically false theory of transubstantiation; and against Spiritualism on the other hand, which denied the bodily real presence. So also his doctrine of the office of the ministry was directed against the Roman doctrine of the priesthood, and against the destruction of the office of the ministry among the fanatics [Schwärmertum]. And just as Luther's understanding of the doctrine of the Supper can only be understood when both its sides in their inseparable connectedness, are in view; so also both sides of his doctrine of the office must be directly in view in order to portray it correctly. His fight against Rome on this doctrine was directed against the falsification of the New Testament doctrine of church and ministry, by the introduction of the priest concept. The false differentiation of priests and laity occupied his struggle since the time when he wrote "To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation" [LW 44.115], in which he discovered anew the doctrine of the general priesthood of believers and which found the widest dissemination in the church. From that time forward he tirelessly asserted the exegetical facts of the New Testament. He wrote in 1533 in The Private Mass and Consecration of Priests that the Holy Spirit has "in the New Testament diligently prevented the name sacerdos, priest or cleric, from being given even to an apostle or to various other offices. But it is solely the name of the baptized or of Christians as a hereditary name into which one is born though baptism. For none of us is born an apostle, preacher, teacher, or pastor through baptism, but we are all born simply as priests and clerics" (EA 31.350 [LW 38.188]). The New Testament in fact knows of a double priesthood: The high priesthood of Jesus Christ, and the priesthood of the entire holy people of God of the end times, the basieion hierateuma(royal priesthood) of the church.

 

Luther fought against the fanatics [Schwärmer] however, because they drew a completely false conclusion from the general priesthood, namely the dissolution of the office of the ministry all together. When Carlstadt[10] renounced his title of Doctor and desired only to be a layman, when the fanatical [schwärmerische] sneaks and clandestine preachers, against which he wrote in 1531, forced themselves into congregations without a call and claimed the right to free proclamation of God's Word, on the basis of the general priesthood, then Luther most emphatically emphasized the divine institution of the preaching office, the ministry of the church (ministerium ecclesiasticum), which may be exercised only by one who has been legitimately called. "The call (vocatio) gives the devil great pain." But the devil has his greatest joy in the sneaky, secret preachers. "For just as the infiltrators come among us and want to split and devastate our churches, so afterwards other intruders would invade their churches and divide and devastate them. And there would be no end to the process of intrusion and division, until soon nothing would be left of the church on earth. Thus indeed is the devil's purpose with such spirits of dissension and intrusion. So we say, either demand proof of a call and commission to preach, or immediately enjoin silence and forbid to preach, for an office is involved - the office of the ministry. One cannot hold an office without a commission or a call" (EA 31.218 [LW 40.336-37]). And Luther then provides express Scriptural proof for this from the New and Old Testaments. It is well know how Luther himself had to wrestle with the grave concern [Anfechtung] about whether he had a call to be a reformer, and how he found the steadfast confidence that he had such an office, in the fact that he had only exercised the office which the church had conveyed to him, in giving him the Doctorate of Holy Scripture.

 

But what is the call for Luther? How does the call (vocatio) happen? It is not a bestowal of priestly ordination. For all Christians are priests, since their baptisms. It happens in this way, that the congregation [Gemeinde] designates one out of its own midst to carry out those things to which all its members are fundamentally entitled [alle ihre Glieder berechtigt sind], namely to preach the Word of God and the administer the Sacraments. It was a turning point in the history of the church when Luther in "To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation" answered whether a small number of Christians in a wilderness, who had no ordained priest, were entitled to choose a pastor from their own midst. One must compare the certainty with which Luther answered this question affirmatively with the way the humanist Thomas More[11] left it open only a few years previously. More recounted in his Utopia [1516] of that mythical island in the far west whose inhabitants were so cultivated that their religion had already anticipated the Enlightenment. "After they had heard from us the name of Christ, His teaching, His character, His miracles, and the no less wonderful constancy of the many martyrs...," they were so inspired by this religion which corresponded to their reason that some of them became Christians. "Not a few of them joined our religion and were cleansed by the holy water of baptism. But because [...] there was, I'm sorry to say, no priest, they were initiated in all other matters, but so far they lack those sacraments which with us only priests administer. They understand, however, what they are, and desire them with the greatest eagerness. Moreover, they are even debating earnestly among themselves whether, without the dispatch of a Christian bishop, one chosen out of their own number might receive the sacerdotal character. It seemed that they would choose a candidate, but by the time of my departure they had not yet done so."[12] So far the diplomatic position of the enlightened humanist, who then later died as a martyr for the Papal system.[13]

 

How different was Luther's answer to this question which since the fourteenth century - since the Defender of the Peace (Defensor Pacis) and Occam,[14] Luther's "dear Master" - had moved both theology and sociology. Just how radical Luther's answer appeared to his contemporaries is seen most clearly from the effect of his theological opinion entitled: Concerning the Ministry (De instituendis Ministris) [LW 40.3-44] which he sent in 1523 to the council and congregations of Prague. It is the most fundamental treatment of the doctrine of the office of the ministry from Luther's pen. Here Luther lays out the basis for his council that the Bohemians, since they could not obtain any worthy clergy through the old way of Catholic episcopal ordination, should take it upon themselves to choose office bearers from among their own midst. But they could forsake apostolic succession in the Catholic sense and still retain the Catholic doctrine of the office. It has always remained the criterion for an Evangelical [Lutheran] Church and concept of the Ministry, whether one agrees with Luther here or not, that in the case of necessity the congregation [Gemeinde] may place its own office bearer. And in fact, so far as I know, no Lutheran theologian has ever opposed Luther on this question. August Vilmar himself, the proponent of an outspoken "high church" view of the office, expressly agreed with Luther, even though he declared the case of Christians in the wilderness a fictitious boarder-line case.

 

Luther explained the establishment of the office of the ministry as the congregation entrusting one from its own midst with the office. However, one must be careful to avoid the following misunderstanding. The congregation, from which the call (vocatio) proceeds, can be the local congregation [Ortsgemeinde]. Luther is speaking of the local congregation in the example he presents of the Christians in the wilderness. So also in the document "That a Christian Assembly or Congregation Has The Right and Power To Judge All Teachings and To Call, Appoint, and Dismiss Teachers, Established and Proven by Scripture." (1523) [LW 39.301-314]. But it is certainly not always the local congregation. In the case of the Bohemians it was the entire church of the country.

 

When Luther used the word "congregation" [Gemeinde], he did not mean that which modern Protestantism has understood it to be in the wake of the rise of Individualism, Pietism and the Enlightenment; namely the local congregation understood as a society [Verein], in distinction to the total church [Gesamtkirche]. Luther views it as the norm that the calling congregation [Gemeinde] is that which we would commonly call the total church [Gesamtkirche]. There is no other way to explain why he sanctioned the princes' or other patrons' right of vocation, and did not contest the bishops' or superintendents' right of ordination. In "That a Christian Assembly or Congregation..." he also treated it as a right of necessity [Notrecht], whenthe local congregation acts independently: "In such a case a Christian, out of brotherly love, surveys the need of poor perishing souls, and does not wait for a command or letter from a prince or bishop to be given to him: For necessity breaks all laws and knows no law. Thus love is obliged to help where there is otherwise no one who can help..." "If our bishops and abbots did represent the apostles, as they boast, one opinion would certainly be to let them do what Titus, Timothy, Paul and Barnabas did when they instituted priests, etc. But since they represent the devil and are wolves who neither want to teach the gospel nor suffer it to be taught, they are as little concerned with instituting the office of preaching or pastoral care among Christians as the Turks or the Jews are" [LW 39.311].

 

Here a right of necessity or emergency [Notrecht] of the local congregation is proclaimed. And it must always be considered that in view here is a congregation which stands in faith in Christ, and which does not merely represent the sum total of those who pay their church tax in a parish district. The so-called "congregational principle" of the nineteenth century, which consists of the right of the members of a parish to chose a pastor who shares their belief or unbelief, has nothing to do with Luther's thought on the congregation. This is most clear in the view which Luther always firmly maintained, that the pastor called by a congregation of the church is at the same time the bearer of the office established by God. And he does not act only in "our name" (nostro nomine), as is stated once in the document written to the Bohemians. He is the bearer of the public ministry (ministerium ecclesiasticum), which is not established by men, but by God. He now stands before the congregation in the stead of Christ. He speaks and acts in the name of Christ (nomine Christi), so "that every pastor's mouth is the mouth of Christ." "Therefore you ought not to hear the pastor as though he were a mere man, but as though he were God" (Ideo non debes pfarrherr audire ut hominem, sed ut deum). Thus the preaching of the pastor, insofar as it is the preaching of the pure gospel, becomes the Word of God. And the forgiveness which he dispenses to the penitent sinner in the Absolution, is God's forgiveness.

 

This is Luther's view of the origin [Zustandekommen] of the public ministry (ministerium ecclesiasticum). Is it also the view of the Confessions? It is by and large, but for one very characteristic exception. The Lutheran Confessions did not accept Luther's view that the public ministry (ministerium ecclesiasticum) is the commission or exercise [Ausübung] of the general priesthood. There can be no doubt that the general priesthood is the presupposition for the office [of the ministry]. The church, which according to I Peter 2 is the royal priesthood, has, according to the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, the right to chose and ordain ministers (ius eligendi et ordinandi ministros) [Treatise 67]. But it is not yet said thereby that the public proclamation of the gospel belongs to the general priesthood [dass die öffentliche Verkündigung des Evangeliums Allgemeines Priestertum sei]. This cannot be proven exegetically. For both passages which Luther used to do so, I Peter 2:9 "That you should proclaim the praises of the One who has called you..." and I Cor. 14:31 "You may indeed all prophesy," do not say what Luther finds in them. The passage from Peter is speaking of the jubilant announcement of the 'praises' of the Redeemer God. And the 'prophesying' of I Cor. 14 is the manifestation of the prophetic charism, not of the general priesthood. Luther himself even revised his early exposition of I Cor. 14 in the writing on the "Sneaky Preachers" [Winkelpredigern]. The preaching of the gospel and the administration of the Sacraments is not the manifestation of the general priesthood, rather the execution of a mandate given to the apostles, and through them, to the entire church. And this mandate did not cease to exist with the death of the apostles. According to Matthew 28:20, it continues until the end of time and is carried out by the bearers of the ministry of the church(ministerium ecclesiasticum) as the successors of the apostles' and the representatives of the entire church.

 

What our Confessions teach regarding ordination is to be understood in this sense. The public proclamation of the gospel, preaching and administration of the sacraments, is bound to the charge imparted at ordination. The private proclamation of the divine word to the neighbor, the instruction of children in the discipline and admonition of the Lord, home devotion, 'the mutual consolation of the brothers' (mutua consolatio fratrum) [S.A. III.IV] is not in view. According to Luther there can be an absolution in the course of the mutual consolation of the brethren (mutua consolatio fratrum), though this is normally the pastor's activity [normalerweise dem Pfarrer zusteht]. Theministry of the church (ministerium ecclesiasticum) always has to do with that which has and shall take place publicly before the congregation. Here Augustana XIV obtains: "that no one ought to publicly teach in the church ('preach' in the German) with a regular call" (quod nemo debeat in ecclesia publice docere ("predigen" in the German) nisi rite vocatus). Just how this "rightly called" (rite vocatus) is to be understood is shown by the addition made by the Variata, which elucidates but does not alter [the teaching of the Augustana]: "just as Paul instructed Titus, that he should set up presbyters in the cities" (sicut et Paulus praecipit Tito, ut in civitatibus presbyteros constituat), an example which moreover also is used in the Treatise. The call consequently normally happened through the bearers of the office authorized to extend it, self-evidently (according to ancient ecclesiastical law), with the agreement of the congregation. This principle was formally maintained even in the case of the choosing of a pope. That this is the original sense of the Augustana XIV is shown by the Apology in which is it declared that it is the intent of the Evangelical [Lutherans], to maintain the obtaining church polity (politia ecclesiastica), and consequently the old church constitution, and the grades in the church (gradus in ecclesia), the steps or levels of the office of the ministry, even those which are established by human authority (humana autoritate). And on Article XIII, concerning the number and use of the sacraments (De numero et usu sacramentorum) the Apology gives an explicit presentation of the connections between the Evangelical [Lutheran] and the [Roman] Catholic concepts of the office of the ministry and the correct understanding of ordination. The Evangelicals [Lutherans] know of no priesthood (sacerdotium) in the Roman sense according to the analogy of the Levitical priesthood, rather only the "ministry of the Word and distribution of the Sacrament to others" (ministerium verbi et sacramentorum aliis porrigendorum). If this is granted, then the forms of church constitution can be kept. "But where one desires to call the sacrament of ordination a sacrament in relation to the preaching office and the gospel, we have no difficulty in calling ordination a sacrament" [Ap. XIII.11]. More precise foundation is offered for this (in the Lutheran Church the precise concept and number of the sacraments is fundamentally left open) and then the Confession continues: "For the church has God's command to appoint preachers and deacons. And this is very comforting, because we know that God wills to preach and work through men and those chosen by men. Thus it is good that we highly boast of and honor such choosing [Wahl] (adorn the ministry with every sort of praise) (ornare ministerium omni genere laudis), especially against the devilish Anabaptists, who despise and ridicule such choosing" [Ap. XIII.12-13].

 

Section 4.

 

So far the answer of our church to the question of how the office of the ministry is realized in the church today. From what has been said we see how much the Lutheran doctrine of the office of the ministry stands in opposition not only to the Roman Church, but also and above all to fanaticism [Schwärmertum]. The fanatics [Schwärmer] are then also the target of Article V of the Augustana with its doctrine of the divine institution of the office. This is quite clear in the foundational assertion: "For the Holy Spirit is given through the Word and Sacraments as through means, Who works faith, when and where it pleases God, in those who hear the gospel" (Nam per verbum et sacramenta tamquam per instrumenta donatur Spiritus Sanctus, qui fidem efficit, ubi et quando visum est Deo, in iis, qui audiunt evangelium). It is

not the condemnation at the conclusion of the article which first clarifies the battle line: "Condemned are the Anabaptists and others who think that the Holy Spirit comes to men without the external Word through their own preparations or works" (Damnant Anabaptistas et alios, qui sentiun Spiritum contingere hominibus sine verbo externo per ipsorum praeparationes et opera). No fanatic [Schwärmer] could grant that God gives His Spirit through the means of grace of "the external Word and the Sacraments as through means" (verbum externum und der Sacramente tamquam per instrumenta). That appeared to the spiritualism of that time, and now, as a form of blasphemy against the Spirit. I say: Then, just like today. For who are those "who think that the Holy Spirit comes to men without the external word" (qui sentiunt Spiritum Sanctum contingere hominibus sine verbo externo)? Is it not the mystic of every age? Is it not the greater part of the newer theology from pietism and rationalism, through the Moravians (Herrenhuter) of a higher order, Schleiermacher, to the theology of liberalism and the history of religions' school? Does not all of modern protestant theology really fall under this condemnation? In fact, here the spirits are distinguished. As Luther once went the lonely way between Rome and spiritualism, so the Lutheran Church today stands alone between Roman catholicism, which is a world power, and modern protestantism on the other side. Her doctrine that the Spirit is being bound to the means of grace is as inconceivable to modern men in the twentieth as it was to their predecessors in the sixteenth. But we are convinced that behind this doctrine stands one of the most profound truths which have ever been expressed in Christian theology. Luther once formulated it in the Smalcald Articles in the following way: "And in these matters which concern the external spoken Word, we must hold firmly to the conviction that God give no one his Spirit or grace except through or with the external Word which comes before. Thus we shall be protected from the enthusiasts - that is, from the spiritualists who boast that they possess the Spirit without and before the Word" [S.A. III.VIII.3, Tappert p. 312]. "In short, enthusiasm clings to Adam and his descendants from the beginning to the end of the world. It is a poison implanted and inoculated in man by the old

dragon, and it is the source, strength, and power of all heresy, including that of the papacy and Mohammedanism. Accordingly, we should and must constantly maintain that God will not deal with us except trough his external Word and sacrament. Whatever is attributed to the Spirit apart from such Word and sacrament is of the devil." [S.A. III.VIII.9-10; Tappert p. 313]. This is Luther's theology. Moreover, it is the theology of the Lutheran Church. Just as God is revealed only as the Incarnate One, just as He always remains hidden outside of Jesus Christ, just as we can never conceive of God in his undiluted majesty (Deus nudus), so the Spirit of God works only through the external means of grace.

 

But if this is correct, then we understand the enormous significance of the office of the ministry which is never understood by the world, and despised and ridiculed by it. Then the humble preaching of the gospel, then the administration of these unpretentious sacraments, are the greatest things which can happen in the world. For in these things the hidden reign of Christ is consummated. He Himself is present in these means of grace, and the bearer of the ministry of the church (ministerium ecclesiasticum) actually stands in the stead of Christ. Any clerical conceit is absolutely done for. We are nothing. He is everything. And the terrible sin of pessimism, which is the pastor's greatest temptation, is done for as well. For it is nothing but doubt and unbelief. For Christ the Lord is as present in His means of grace today as he was in the sixteenth or the first century. And "all authority in heaven and on earth" is just as much His today as it was when He first spoke this promise to the apostles. And it remains so into all eternity.

 

Do we still believe this? I began with a remark from Wilhelm Löhe. Allow me to conclude with a remark which August Vilmar made, with prophetic insight, in 1849 regarding the monumental struggles over the church which lay yet ahead in the future: "He who still confesses the present Lord, continues to confess His office, which is still present. And he who bears this office knows that now the life and death of the church depend upon him - not on his person, which we know full well is weak, sick and fragile as anything which is of us. But the life and death of the church depends upon the authority which the Lord has given to him, and upon his unshakable faith in this authority, upon his confidence in his office, in which and with which the Lord of the church Himself is active, with all His redeeming, saving and world-judging power."

 

 

Endnotes