How the Missouri Synod is Judged in Germany Today.
[A review of an 1881 pamphlet by Pastor Rudolph Hoffmann of Germany]
By Pastor Ch. Hochstetter, Stonebridge, Canada.
On the other hand, it must first be testified that in Hoffmann the great error prevails, as if it were only a constitutional question, which forms the gulf between Buffalo and Missouri! The differences between these two or between the New Lutheran Romanists and the real Old Lutherans, whose Germany counts only a few, are much deeper, they are far-reaching doctrinal differences! The question is: with whom is the spiritual power, the power of the Keys that Christ has given to His Church on earth, that is recognized in all church governance? Grabau attributed it, as shown above, to the "teaching estate", and today's state and court theologians allow the communion of the saints, which is already the Church according to the Apostles Creed, to be only the object and the goal, on and towards which the so-called church government should work. The latter, which according to Hoffmann remains best in the hands of the sovereign, is considered to be the Church. He distinguishes this “real” Church [p. 32] from the so-called idealistic one and thinks that the Missourians are mistaken in wanting to make the fellowship of the saints visible!
They know that only true believers belong to the Body of Christ, but they are afraid of falling into subjectivism, individualism or atomism if they hold to the teachings of Sacred <page 76> Scripture and the Lutheran symbols, according to which the Church is the Body of Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven, which is characterized by the pure Word and the Sacrament, but is essentially invisible, because Christ also dwells invisibly in the hearts of his believers. Through Christ and by Christ, the communion of saints, as his bride, has the power which the Caesareopapist Union [i.e. Prussion Union] wants to take away from it. Hoffmann accuses the Missouri Synod of transferring the church government to each individual congregation; but here nothing at all is to be transferred, but only to confess what Christians, as spiritual priests and kings, already have originally. Therefore, if only two or three were gathered in Jesus name, they would have orders and power from Him to set up the public preaching office. For "where the true church is, there is also this command", as the Smalcald Articles already teach [Of the Power and Jurisdiction of Bishops, § 67-69], citing not only Matthew 18:20 but also 1 Peter 2:9 as a passage proving that the congregation has the spiritual priesthood.
Hoffmann, on the other hand, thinks that only the whole church, existing as a divine union of the three estates, has the church government and the appeal of the Missourians to the spiritual priesthood is not valid, because this leads to a spiritual priesthood rule! It would be like carrying water into the sea to show in this publication that the Missourians have Scripture and symbols for their doctrine, that the Smalcald Articles, for example, with reference to the above passages, do not ascribe to the Church as a whole, but to the whole Church the power to appoint church servants who, on behalf of the congregation, in the name of other Christians, maintains this ministry of the Word and Sacraments. If even the Apostle Paul says that he administers the keys for the sake of the believers, in Christ's stead, 2 Cor. 2:10, then the servants of the Church today need not be ashamed of this either. Nevertheless, it is partly official priestly pride and partly fear of the so-called “spiritual priesthood” that underlies the aversion with which people want to reject our genuine evangelical doctrine as a kind of American democracy. A spiritual priesthood is a contradiction in adjecto [a contradiction in terms], a self-contradiction, because spiritual priests [the laity] do not want to rule, but serve their Lord and his Church as a dearly bought property of Christ; they willingly surrender to the Word of God together with their preacher, who has to administer the public service, and have a better guideline for it than the statutes of the royal state church. From obedience to the Word of God flows independence from the state authority in spiritual matters; for in matters of faith they are also kings, that is, directly under Christ, who do not have to go into fealty to any other power, whether secular or spiritual, that is the ecclesiastical freedom of the Christian man, which, of course, is destroyed as far as possible in the [Prussian] Union.
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