Part Fourth. The Doctrine of Public Worship

78. Prayer is not simply an act and a need of the individual believer (§ 54), but is also intended as well for a public exercise.¹ Prayer is the most spiritual form of divine worship. Therefore, in the perfect religion of Christianity, it has replaced all material offerings and sacrifices which in other religions are used in the service of God.²

79. In the conception of prayer as a whole, petition and thanksgiving are not equally important parts. For otherwise the error would be encouraged that self-seeking petition may serve as justifiable worship of God, and that one has to return thanks to God only when his petitions are heard. Instead, prayer is represented as a whole and under all circumstances as thanksgiving, praise, recognition and worship of God.³ The “confession of His name” is thus the recognition of God as our Father, inasmuch as He has revealed Himself as such through His Son⁴ and shown Himself such in the direction of our lives (§ 54, 1). Petition is a variety of the prayer of thanksgiving. For the humble and unselfish recognition of God, or thanksgiving, governs in all cases the petitions which the need of the one who prays brings before him.⁵ This indicates also the limits within which we may be confident that our petitions will be heard (§ 55). Public prayer, especially, cannot be a prayer of petition unless one is sure that what is desired will serve not only our need but also God’s glory. Thus is assured the hearing of such petitions as are offered in the name of Jesus Christ,⁶ i.e., which are directed to the obtaining of the blessings which stand in direct relation to the purpose of the revelation through Christ. The right and the duty of mutual intercessory prayer is thus pre-eminently established.

80. The prayer which Christ taught His disciples at their request⁷ offers a characteristic confirmation of Paul’s direction that every prayer is to be accompanied with thanksgiving, and is the key to the sense in which the confession of God’s name is to be understood as a sacrifice of praise. For, in the first place, all the petitions of this prayer are clearly subordinate to the recognition of God as our Father, and are comprehended in this confession of His name. Further, every petition includes in itself the recognition of the fact that the blessings to which in varying measure they relate are assured by God to the praying community. The desire that God’s name may be hallowed presupposes that God has brought His being and His power to the knowledge of man,⁸ and therefore that the hallowing of His name, or the recognition of Him,⁹ is in the same measure possible. The petition that God’s kingdom may come presupposes on the lips of His disciples that this kingdom is made real by Christ in the full sense in their own circle (§ 5, 2). The prayer for daily bread presupposes the assurance that God cares for the maintenance of the one who prays;¹⁰ and for him who has won by toil the bread he needs the petition bears the character of a thanksgiving for the blessing enjoyed. The petition for the forgiveness of sins in no sense gives expression to a just claim on God’s favour, because it is conditioned upon our forgiveness of others. This condition signifies rather that we are engaged in the characteristic work of that community (§ 6, 2) which is brought together through the forgiveness of sins, or reconciliation with God (§ 38). The petition for continued or ever-to-be-renewed application of this gift presupposes therefore a recognition of its universal establishment for the community. Finally, the petition that we may be spared temptation from any relation into which we may be brought to the world, or may be delivered from the evil likely to arise out of it, is inconceivable apart from a recognition of God’s direction of the world and of His loving purpose to direct it for the best good of His children.

81. United and public prayer is the characteristic mark of the unity of Christians as the ἐκκλησία or church. For although this community is also destined to the ethical realization of the kingdom of God, yet this activity has no direct materially measurable manifestation (§ 9, 2). Yet public prayer as the manifestation of the religious worship of God is not only in itself the object of the church, but serves also to secure the homogeneity of believers in the task of the kingdom of God. Apart from this fact, the confession of the name of God as of our Father in public prayer is that which distinguishes the character of the church as the religious community of Christ. In its exercise all Christians are priests.¹¹ Also the confession before men of Jesus as Christ, or as our Lord, is that which distinguishes this community as historically established by Christ.¹²

82. As every religion depends in some sense upon a divine revelation, no religious community maintains its peculiar character without resting upon the repetition of similar revelations, or upon the original revelation as held in remembrance and to be reproduced in speech. It is especially necessary to the existence and authentic maintenance of the Christian community as a religious body, that its public activity in worship be regulated by a common and openly controlling remembrance of its Founder and of the revelation of God as represented through Him (§§ 19, 25). Therefore, the Christian community as a religious body, or as the church, has its characteristic also in the word of God or in the gospel. By this we understand the revealed and gracious divine will, which has as its end the kingdom of God, and which therefore includes the right understanding of Christ,—that He makes actual the grace and truth of God (§ 22), and as the reconciler of sinners with God founds and represents the community of the kingdom of God (§ 42). All this content of knowledge is called the word of God, being set forth in the form of the will of God, and of His purpose that we should belong to the kingdom of God (§ 5), and possess freedom over the world (§ 45). So constituted, the word of God is effective not only for the gaining of knowledge, but also for the corresponding stirring of the feelings and the will, and is therefore effective for personal conviction, and as the motive and measure of that worship of God which forms the essential active characteristic of the Christian community (§ 81). With such content and such effectiveness the word of God, even as spoken by men, has its value as God’s word.¹³

83. The two acts of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which Christ instituted, and whose observance has been maintained by the piety of the Christian community, are in their identical repetition also characteristics of the unity of the Christian church.¹⁴ These, in their visible form, are acts of worship on the part of the community, and are not conceivable outside of the same. Accordingly, they are of the same nature as public prayer, and like this are acts of confession on the part of the community.¹⁵ But inasmuch as the Lord’s Supper has reference to the sacrificial death of Christ, in which is included the founding of the community (§ 42), this act of worship on the part of the community is at the same time an assurance of the continuance of the forgiving grace of God by virtue of which Christ founded the community. This is true also of baptism, in so far as it has reference to the revelation of the Father through the Son and through the Holy Spirit bestowed upon the community (§ 46). Upon these considerations rests their value as sacraments or means of grace.

84. The Catholic conception of the church makes the value of the common Christian faith and of public worship to depend upon the recognition of the special canons of the Catholic Church. Now a right appreciation of the community or church of Christ belongs necessarily to the religious conception of Christianity as a whole. This involves not only a right appreciation of the community in its relation to the kingdom of God, as its highest good and its common task (§ 5), but also in its relation to the word of God, that is, as a community of faith and worship (§ 82), which maintains the efficacy of the revelation of God in Christ. Therefore it is necessary, even according to the Evangelical view, to believe in the church as possessing these characteristics by sharing in its worship. But in the Evangelical sense one believes thus in the church without reference to the authorized forms in which it may otherwise exist.¹⁶ For, although the religious elements of the church could not have become historically effective without the mediation of authorized forms, yet the appreciation of the communion of faith and prayer, in which the Christian church universal really consists (§ 86, 2), is perfectly indifferent to the church canons which vary in its different divisions.

85. The Christian church, which, according to its nature and proper destiny, is understood by the characteristics already given as the fellowship of believers in one and the same divine worship, began as such its public history on Pentecost.¹⁷ But it did not attain to permanence without developing within itself other functions than those which are primarily characteristic of it. For example, the ordering of fellowship in public worship and the propagation of the same in succeeding generations, led of necessity to the establishing of an official class, whose privileges over the community called for governmental as well as moral obedience.¹⁸ This organization of the Christian community attained, however, a larger scope than the original exigency demanded, because the Christian church found itself placed in the midst of a society whose moral institutions were determined either by the pagan or the Jewish religion, and whose legal institutions left no place for the Christian community as a religious body. The latter was therefore necessitated, by historical circumstances, not only to develop its morals in contrast to surrounding society, but also to protect them by legal regulations and to intrust the execution of these to the officials of the church service. As early as the Apostolic age the Christian church began, by free-will offerings and regular alms, to attain to economic independence, to decide questions of private justice among its members and to develop a new marriage code;¹⁹ it continued this development in exercising the punitive right of excommunication against unworthy members, and in recognizing the bishops as the divinely appointed organs of these judicial forms. In these functions the Christian church, holding itself distinct from the Roman Empire, became itself a state without national foundations; as such a state it was after three centuries recognized in the Roman Empire, and the Roman Catholic Church emphasizes now more strongly than ever its claim to the divine establishment of this organization. On the other hand, according to the Evangelical view, all attributes of a state nature are excluded from the conception of the church. Yet inasmuch as this fellowship of worship as such is in need of authorized form, this is limited essentially to the maintenance of the preaching office.²⁰

86. The unity of the worshipping community of Christ is such an essential part of the view of the world which belongs to the Christian religion,²¹ that the splitting of the church into a multitude of divisions and sects, and the ceaseless continuance of controversy among the same, forms a great hindrance to the convincing power of this religion. Yet, in the first place, this very fact is a proof of the significance of Christianity as the religion of humanity. For the divisions and strifes of the church are occasioned by the fact that all possible religious, moral and intellectual tendencies of prechristian humanity are to be brought into union with Christianity. This phenomenon therefore which is possible to no national religion, which does not appear in Buddhism and only to a very limited extent in Mohammedanism, is a proof that Christianity attracts to itself all intellectual elements of culture, even at the risk of its own deformation. Besides this occasion of divisions, in the second place, the unity of Christian worship as a matter of fact may be recognized in all divisions and sects in that they without exception make official use of the Lord’s Prayer,²² and thereby maintain the intention of a pure understanding of God’s word. Nevertheless, divisions arise because variations, now in the different forms of worship and now in the understanding of God’s word, are regarded as necessary grounds of separation. Thus in the different divisions we have differences not only in the kind but also in the grade of their presentation of Christianity. When, therefore, in that branch of the church to which one naturally belongs he is conscious of sharing in a higher grade of Christian development than were possible in other branches, he is under moral obligation just there within his own church to fulfil the common duties of Christianity, both the religious, those pertaining to public worship and the ethical.

87. The fellowship of worshippers becomes at the same time a school, in that it expresses its understanding of the pure word of God, or the religious view of the world peculiar to Christianity, in universal statements of truth or dogmas.²³ Variation in dogma (conception of doctrine, order of instruction) are not the only possible sources of church division. The Eastern and Western Catholic Churches were originally one in doctrine, but separated because of differences in worship, church custom and government. On the other hand, the great dividing of the Western Church, even in worship, is the result of difference in doctrinal conceptions. An Evangelical Christian interprets this to mean that he receives a riper development of Christianity than is offered in the Catholic Church (§ 45, 5). The positive interest of Evangelical Christians in the doctrinal teaching of their Church, which is the natural consequence of this, is regulated by two conditions. First, the doctrinal teaching of the church must be governed and respectively justified by Scripture. Secondly, doctrinal teaching always marks the church as a school. It brings confusion, therefore, when the doctrinal teaching is recognized as exclusively the “Confession of the Church,” without regard to that which is set forth in §§ 79–81. For churchly systems of doctrine since the Reformation can only be appropriated through a fundamental theological training; theological training, however, cannot be expected of the members of the church as such. Membership in the Evangelical Church is rather to be determined by what constitutes Christian perfection according to Evangelical teaching (§ 50, 2). By this means the distinction is also made clear between the Christianity of the Evangelical Church and all sects (as well as sectarian tendencies within the Evangelical Church) which aim toward the determining of Christian perfection by other conditions than those laid down in the Augsburg Confession.

88. The properly limited and privileged preaching office (§ 85, 4) has as its object the moral leading of the community toward the attainment of the ends aimed at in its public worship. The principle of the German Reformation that the religious-ethical authority of the preaching office was not a legal-political authority, nor to be confounded with such,²⁴ is maintained without difficulty, since a local Evangelical parish is constituted a parish by its property and the administration of the same, and a church by the maintenance of the office of the word and the administration of the sacraments. The official preaching of the divine word (§ 82) may, as occasion demands, take the form of rebuke of errors and immoralities on the part of certain individuals, and under certain circumstances the local church may be obliged to deny to individuals the privilege of sharing its worship. But even this exercise of the natural right of a community is properly understood as a moral force, and as the application of moral compulsion.—The Evangelical Church acquires a legal character in the proper sense of the term, including the right to administer external compulsion, only when the many local communities wish to become a unity and at the same time to stand forth as a corporation privileged by the state. This calls for a legal organization with a gradation of offices, as well as for the superintendence of those holding office in the interest of the whole; the legal compulsion, however, which is necessary thereto, cannot be exercised by the church as such, but only by the state,²⁵ which recognizes and protects the church as a public corporation. For as the legal representatives of a Christian people the authorities [Organe] of the state cannot be indifferent to the church. In Germany, at least, historical circumstances brought it about that in the sixteenth century the magistrates, as representing the churches under their jurisdiction, bestowed upon them their legal organization, and assured its execution by special state-church officials. This introduced everywhere at first a confusion of religious and legal authority, since under the influence of Middle-Age views the chief object of the state was made to be the direct furthering of the Christian religion and its morality. On the other hand, under Calvinism, several forms of church constitution were developed, which were independent of or indifferent to the state. Of these forms, however, the synodal constitution of the old French Church was not possible without forming a state within the state and in contrast to it. Independency in England and America gave up the legal organization of the church as a whole, making the local churches sovereign, and establishing only a moral bond between them. Finally, in Scotland, a synodal church constitution arose, partly in union with the state and partly independent of it, whereby a church absolutely identical in worship and faith is divided in polity.

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