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The state government of the church in Germany is a condition of the union of the churches of the different Evangelical provinces, and cannot be judged and depreciated by the example of the conditions in America and Scotland. According to Evangelical doctrine, there is no exclusively ideal form of church government, and the course of Protestant history in Germany justifies the assertion that the maintenance of the unity of the provincial churches by the state has protected the Evangelical Church against being split into sects and won back into Catholicism. But it is true that the state government of the church is to be defended in a very different way from that formerly used. For it cannot be inferred either from the assumed religious object of the state, nor from a fictitious transfer of the Catholic Episcopal office to the princes, nor from the extent of state sovereignty as such. Still the government of the church by the princes as an independent addition to their sovereignty is comprehensible, since the national state, for the sake of the spiritual well-being of the people, must maintain the Evangelical Church as a whole, and since all public administration which involves compulsion falls within the sphere of the state. And such administration is necessary, because it would not be of advantage to the Evangelical Church itself that by a legal independence it should form a state within the state, and its independent religious end would be injured if it should be forced into this course. And by this government of the Evangelical Church by the princes the fundamental distinction is preserved between religious and legal authority in the church. For, on the one hand, by the existence of state officials the pastors are spared the necessity of extending their office to the government and administration of the whole church, and thus impairing their moral authority, and on the other hand, the princes are to be trusted to maintain the peculiar character of the Evangelical Church, both in worship and in doctrine, and not to impose anything upon it contrary to the gospel. How far it will be possible by the establishing of synods to strengthen the existing church government, and to preclude the danger of the dissolution of the national church, is at present still undecided.

  1. Baptism (immersion) into the name of the Lord Jesus, or of Jesus Christ, or into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,26 is in its visible form an act of the community, by which it pledges the individuals uniting with it to the revelation of God to which it owes its existence. This pledging includes the renewing and purifying of the spiritual life, which is symbolized in the washing of the body, and which is to be really understood as acceptance into the circle of forgiveness or reconciliation.27 The rite, however, is not to be understood merely as the confession of the individual who enters as a believer into the community, but as a sacrament, because it is an act of the community, since the existence of the community depends upon the revelation of the Father through the Son, and as such assures to the one newly received the peculiar blessing of this revelation. This value of the act is clearly expressed especially in the baptism of infants.28 Although this practice rests only on very old tradition, and on no word of Christ or practice of the oldest community, yet it has its justification in connection with religious and moral education within the church; on the other hand the principle of the Baptist sects that only adults, and such as can be recognized as sanctified and regenerated, may be baptized, rests on the mistaken supposition that one can attain to the formation of Christian character outside of the community.

  2. The Lord’s Supper in its visible form is an act of the whole community (and of the individual as a member of the community), by which it thankfully recognizes the worth of Christ’s life-offering for the establishment of the community.29 As Christ Himself, however, set forth the value of His coming death to the community of His disciples as the sacrifice of the New Covenant (§ 38, 1), the constant repetition of the Lord’s Supper in the same form becomes analogous to the sacrificial meal of the Old Testament. And since, further, the community founded through the sacrificial death of Christ stands in the relation to God brought about by the forgiveness of sins or reconciliation, the act is not only an act of confession on the part of the community, but also a sacrament. This value of the act to the individual believer is apparent from two related reasons. First, the community within which he partakes of the Lord’s Supper guarantees to him the forgiveness of sins, to which forgiveness the community owes its existence.30 At bottom, however, Christ Himself guarantees this to him, in so far as the act is repeated through which in advance He appropriated to the community the reconciling efficacy of His death. Accordingly, the Lord’s Supper has the practical value of quickening the tenderness of moral feeling, of directing the life from the motive of reconciliation toward humility, trust and patience (§ 50), and finally of arousing the sense of fellowship in the community.

Christian churches of different confessions are divided as to how the body and blood of Christ, symbolized by the bread and wine, are connected in the act of the Lord’s Supper with these elements. The Catholic doctrine asserts the change of the natural elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, while retaining the appearance of bread and wine; the Lutheran doctrine asserts the spaceless coexistence of these substances within the space of the natural elements; and both teach that the body and blood of Christ are partaken. The Calvinistic doctrine teaches that the administering of the body and blood through Christ for spiritual participation concurs in time with the partaking of the bread and wine. The controversy between these doctrines can be settled neither by an appeal to the words of Christ at the instituting of the Supper, nor to the later explanation of Paul. And especially is this true, since none of the confessional doctrines takes the fact into consideration that the broken bread and flowing wine make present the body and blood of Christ under the characteristics of His violent death. Finally, it is without question that Christ established this sacrament in order that all might unite in it, and not in the expectation that they would divide as to its meaning and content, and so separate from one another in its celebration.

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Footnotes

  1. The same community which, in mutual moral action, forms the kingdom of God, is through reconciliation with God at the same time destined to unite itself in public worship (§ 9, 2). ↩

  2. The fruit of lips which confess God’s name is the sacrifice of praise (Heb. xiii. 15; compare 1 Pet. ii. 5), which occasionally, even in the Old Testament, is recognized as the opposite of, and the most complete substitute for, material sacrifice (Hos. xiv. 2; Ps. l. 14, 23; li. 15-17; cxvi. 17; Isa. lvii. 19). ↩

  3. The word “prayer” is a real hindrance to the recognition of this fact, since the first thought which it suggests is that of petition. But one only needs to look through the Psalms, which in Hebrew are called “tehillim” (songs of praise), to recognize the norm of the matter in the statement above. ↩

  4. The calling upon God as our Father through Jesus Christ (§ 12) distinguishes Christianity from all other religions, including the Jewish. For although God stands in the Old Testament as the Father of the chosen people Israel, which is His Son (Ex. iv. 22; Hos. xi. 1), it is first through Christ that the right is given to the members of His community to regard themselves individually as sons or children of God, while He designates the Israelites as strangers, i.e., as servants of God (Matt. xvii. 24-27). Accordingly, it is characteristic that Paul, in the opening of his epistles, identifies himself with the community he addresses, in giving thanks to God as our Father and as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and does so on the ground of the existence of the Christian religion in the community (1 Thess. i. 2-5; 2 Thess. i. 3, 4; Gal. i. 3-5; 1 Cor. i. 4-9; 2 Cor. i, 3-7; Rom. i. 8; Col. i. 3-6; Eph. i. 3-6; Phil. i. 3-7; compare Acts ii. 11, 47). ↩

  5. Phil. iv. 6; 1 Thess. v. 16-18. ↩

  6. John xiv. 13, 14; xv. 16; xvi. 23, 34. ↩

  7. For various reasons the text of this prayer and the occasion for it as given in Luke xi. 1-4, is to be preferred to the text and the context in Matt. vi. 9-13. In the former the prayer consists of five petitions: Πάτερ, ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου, ἐλθάτω ἡ βασιλεία σου. Τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσον δίδου ἡμῖν τὸ καθ’ ἡμέραν, καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν, καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὶ ἀφίομεν παντὶ ὀφείλοντι ἡμῖν, καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν. What is added in Matthew proves to be only an enlargement of the second and fifth petitions. For the coming of the kingdom of God consists in the fact that God’s will shall be done on earth as in heaven (Ps. ciii. 21), and being delivered from evil is identical with being kept from temptation. ↩

  8. This is the meaning of the “name of God” (Ps. ix. 10; lxix. 36; Deut. xxviii. 58; xxxii. 3; Is. xxx. 27; l. 10). ↩

  9. Is. xxix. 23; Ezek. xxxvi. 23. ↩

  10. Matt. vi. 31, 32. ↩

  11. Priests are those who are permitted to draw near to God (Num. xvi. 5). In this sense the Israelites were originally a kingdom of priests (Ex. xix. 6). The exer- cise of this right was then limited in being restricted to the mediation of the sacrifice by the official Levitic priests. In Christianity this condition is done away with, since in its community only the sacrifice of prayer is offered; thus all Christians are priests (1 Pet. ii. 5-9; Rev. i. 6; v. 10; Heb. vii. 19; x. 22; xiii. 15). ↩

  12. Matt. x. 32, 33; Rom. x. 9; 1 Cor. xii. 3; Phil. ii. 11. This confession of the church corresponds both to its historical peculiarity and to its universal human destiny. By this recognition Christians are to distinguish themselves from all other religious communities, but at the same time are to extend their community until it embraces humanity. ↩

  13. Mark iv. 14; John v. 24, 38; viii. 31; xiv. 23, 24; Luke x. 16; Acts iv. 29; 1 Pet. i. 23-25; Rom. i. 1; 1 Cor. xiv. 36; Col. i. 25; 1 Thess. ii. 13. ↩

  14. Eph. iv. 4-6; 1 Cor. x. 17. ↩

  15. 1 Cor. xi. 26; Matt. xxviii. 19. The marks of the unity of the church, indicated in §§ 81-83, are not similar in nature to one another, and no one of them ought to be emphasized in a one-sided manner. The preaching of the divine word in the church must be estimated with reference to its object, namely, that the church may be united in the prayer-confession of God through their Lord Jesus Christ, and the two acts instituted by Christ fully attain their divine sacramental value only when they are performed as acts of worship on the part of the community. Thus the definition of the church in the Confessio Augustana, I. 7: “the gathering of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel,” is incomplete, because it lacks the characteristic of united [identisch] prayer. But further, a right understanding of the matter would not be reached if the word of God, prayer, sacraments, were only enumerated side by side as similar characteristics of the church. For the contrast must be maintained between the word of God and the prayer of the community, in order to recognize the reciprocal relation between the two, and it must be made clear, in the case of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, that the reciprocal relation between the act of the community and the gracious gift of God are expressed in one and the same act. ↩

  16. Belief here has reference to the church as the union of believers in the Holy Spirit and as the sphere of the forgiveness of sins (§ 38, 1). This belief recognizes these determinations of value as belonging to the church and recognizes the church in these relations as a reality whose existence is assured by God. Authorized forms, how- ever, are not value-factors for religious faith, and thus it ignores them in establishing the religious value of the church. ↩

  17. Acts ii. 1-11. ↩

  18. 1 Thess. v. 12, 13; 1 Cor. xvi. 15, 16; 1 Pet. v. 1-5; Heb. xiii. 17. ↩

  19. 1 Cor. vi. 1-6; vii. 10-17. ↩

  20. Conf. Aug. I. 5. The fact is here overlooked that the preachers of the divine word are at the same time the leaders of public worship, i.e., those who offer prayer for the congregation. Now as prayer is an activity in whose exercise all Christians are priests (§ 81, 1), there can be no objection to calling those who offer the public prayers also official priests. In so doing the right of the Catholics to limit this title to the sacrifice of the mass would be denied, since in the Evangelical sense to the priest belongs no other sacrifice than that which belongs to all, the sacrifice of the lips,—prayer. ↩

  21. John x. 16. ↩

  22. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in spite of their original intent (§ 83, 1), unfortunately can no longer be called actual characteristics of the unity of the church. The Lord’s Supper is almost everywhere without hesitation made the confessional sign of churchly schism. Baptism also is no longer what Luther considered it, a common characteristic of all sects. In the Greek Church, which practises a threefold immersion, the sprinkling of the Western church is not so fully recognized that Latin Christians may not be rebaptized at the option of the individual priest. The numberless sects of Baptists do not recognize infant sprinkling as baptism at all. And lately the Roman Catholics are departing from the former recognition of heretical baptism, and occasionally rebaptize converts from Protestantism. ↩

  23. The earliest document of the kind, the so-called Apostles’ Creed, cannot rightly be regarded as the uniform confession of the whole church. For in the Greek Church it is neither in official use, nor is it generally known, since there its place is occupied by the Nicene-Constantinopolitan formula of the Rule of Faith. ↩

  24. Conf. Aug. II. 7: “Non commiscendae sunt potestates ecclesiastica et civilis… . Secundum evangelium seu de jure divino nulla jurisdictio competit episcopis ut episcopis, hoc est, quibus est commissum ministerium verbi et sacramentorum, nisi remittere peccata, item cog- noscere doctrinam, et doctrinam ab evangelio dissentientem rejicere, et impios, quorum nota est impietas, excludere a communione ecclesiae, sine vi humana, sed verbo.” ↩

  25. Luther, “To the German Nobility”: “Since secular officials are ordained of God, to punish the wicked and to protect the good, they shall be suffered to exercise their office unhindered throughout the whole body of Christendom, regardless as to whom it may affect, be it pope, bishops, priests, monks, nuns or whomsoever it may.” ↩

  26. Acts ii. 38; viii. 16; x. 48; xix. 5.—Rom. vi. 3; Gal-iii. 27.—Matt. xxviii. 19. ↩

  27. Acts ii. 38. Many passages of the New Testament which are generally understood as referring to the Christian baptism of the individual, do not have reference to this, but to the general renewing of man by the Spirit of God, which is symbolically referred to in the Prophets as cleansing and quickening through water (John iii. 5; Tit. iii. 5; compare Ezek. xxxvi. 25, 26; Is. xxxii. 15; Joel ii. 28, 29). ↩

  28. Conf. Aug. I. 9: “Pueri per baptismum oblati deo recipiuntur in gratiam dei.” Here the baptism of children is rightly represented as a consecrating of them by the community, which act is effective because of the relation of the community to God. ↩

  29. 1 Cor. xi. 23-26; Mark xiv. 22-24; Matt. xxvi. 26-28; Luke xxii. 19, 20.—1 Cor. x. 16, 17. ↩

  30. Lutheri Catech. major, V. 32: “Jam totum evangelium et fidei articulus: credo ecclesiam sanctam catholicam, remissionem peccatorum, virtute verbi in hoc sacramentum conclusus est et nobis propositus.” ↩

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