6. Ordination.
The ordination of those called to church ministry with the laying on of hands and prayers is not a divine order, but a church order, because it is mentioned in Scripture, but not commanded.16l8) Ordination, therefore, belongs to the indifferent things (adiaphora). It is not by ordination, but by calling and accepting it that a person capable of ministry becomes a pastor. Luther's words (XVII, 114) are well known: "It depends on whether the church and the bishop are one, and the church wants to hear the bishop and the bishop wants to teach the church. This is how it happened. Laying on of hands, blessing, confirm and testify such, as a notary and witnesses testify a secular thing, and as the pastor, so bride and bridegroom bless, their marriage confirms or testifies that they have taken before and publicly confessed." The Smalcald Articles (342, 70 [Trigl. 525, ibid., 70 🔗]) expressly declare ordination to be a public confirmation of the calling: "For formerly the people elected pastors and bishops. Then came a bishop, either of that church or a neighboring one, who confirmed the one elected by the laying on of hands; and ordination was nothing else than such a ratification." We therefore do not practice the so-called absolute ordination, that is, an ordination without a previously received and accepted call, because it fosters the erroneous opinion "that by ordination a person is admitted into the so-called spiritual state and thus, as an ordained priest, only becomes capable of election".1619) It goes without saying that ordination is also a power transferred by the congregation, as it is stated in the Smalcald Articles [Trigl. 525, ibid., 69 🔗]: "Since the church alone has the priesthood, it must also have the power to elect and ordain ministers."1620)
1618) Walther, Past., p. 65: "The use of ordination is mentioned in Scripture, but Scripture is silent about a divine institution of this use. If, however, it is a divine endowment, the proof a silentio applies, however."
1619) Cf. Walther, Pastorale, p. 65. Pronouncements of old Lutheran theologians that ordination, on the one hand, should not be overestimated, on the other hand, should not be despised, in Walther, op. cit. III, 699 sq.
1620) So also Balduin, in Baier-Walther III, 702. Likewise Hülsemann: Potestas ordinandi non inest uni membro ecclesiae, e. g., episcopo, per modum habitus vel characteris permanentis, sed per modum
520 > The Public Ministry. [English ed. ~ 455-456]
There are whimsical things being taught about ordination within Christendom. According to Roman doctrines, there is no other way to become a "priest" than through the ordination of a bishop made by the Pope. Those merely elected and instituted by the Christian people are not servants of the Church, but are to be considered thieves and murderers.1621) This zeal for ordination is a zeal pro domo; for the things supposedly wrought by ordination are exceedingly valuable to the kingdom of the Pope. By ordination, in fact, not only is the Holy Spirit given ex opere operato, and a character indelebilis pronounced, but, above all things, power is conferred which neither the angels nor the Virgin Mary have, namely, the power to say Mass, that is, to make (conficere) the Body and Blood of Christ, to offer as a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead, and thus to secure for the Pope dominion over consciences and access to the treasures of the world.1622) The Episcopalians, while omitting the Pope, insist that only through the ordination of bishops descended in unbroken succession from the apostles (apostolic succession) can bishops, priests, and deacons become and administer the church office.1623) The Romanizing Lutherans, too, who do not allow the public ministry to come about through the calling of the congregation, but conceive of it as a "special Christian state" that propagates from state to state through the transfer of the office, naturally make ordination a divine order.1624)