The Grades and Ranks of Ministers of the Church

Abstract

The preface of this article explains, “A very significant part of the debate concerning church and ministry between the faculties of the St. Louis seminary of the Missouri Synod and the WauwatosalThiensville seminary of the Wisconsin Synod was over the question whether God has instituted only one form of called public ministry of the Word, namely, the pastoral office, or whether his institution may include also various other forms of public ministry. This discussion has played a significant role in the history of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, but it is not our intention to review that lengthy and never-fully-resolved discussion in our anniversary volume, except in so far as it appears in other more general articles. But with the appearance of another volume of Concordia Publishing House’s publication of John Gerhard’s massive dogmatics, English readers now have an opportunity to consider the views on this much debated issue which were held and taught by the teacher who is generally ranked as the leading dogmatician of the Lutheran church. A brief excerpt of Gerhard’s discussion of the topic is reproduced below.! We leave it to our readers to draw their own conclusions about where Gerhard would have stood in the more recent debate.”