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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
To the Editor:
Julie Smith’s very thoughtful article, “Disordered? Beginning to Sort Out What Makes a Call ‘Proper’” (SIMUL, Fall 2023) opens with an unfootnoted quote the reader must assume is from CA XIV. Except that it isn’t. It says,
“Concerning church government it is taught that no one should publicly teach, preach, or administer the sacraments without a proper [public] call.”
The statement is from p. 46 of Robert Kolb’s and Timothy Wengert’s 2000 version of The Book of Concord. It contains a bracketed word, meaning the word is not found in the original quote but is the authors’ opinion. CA XIV on page 69 of the original German BSLK however reads:
XIV. Vom Kirchenregiment. Vom Kirchenregiment wird gelehrt, daß niemand in der Kirchen offentlich lehren oder predigen oder Sakrament reichen soll ohn ordentlichen Beruf.
That is, “With regard to church order it is taught that no one in the churches should publicly teach or preach or administer the sacraments without a regular call.”
The Kolb/Wengert misquote was created at the height of the debate over the Lutheran-Episcopal agreement “Called to Common Mission” which requires Lutherans to submit to episcopal ordinations as part of a so-called successio episcoporum. Both Kolb, who is LCMS, and Wengert who is ELCA, promote a preeminence of institutional ordination over that of a congregational call. In furtherance of this notion, they attached footnotes 78 and 81 to their misquote.
Footnote 78: “On ordentlichen Beruf. Beruf means both ‘call’ and ‘vocation.’ The 1531 editio princeps and the 1580 Book of Concord add the word [public] in brackets.”
Footnote 81: “Rite vocatus means called in a regular manner by a proper public authority. This is not a matter of ‘ritual.’”
Both footnotes, and the CA XIV “quote,” are fictitious. Not only does Beruf (from berufen “to call”) here not mean “vocation,” but one’s “call” to a vocation or calling (die Berufung zur Berufung), as reiterated in Ap XIV (gebührlich berufen sein), but the bracketed word [public] doesn’t exist in either of the cited works not in the German nor in the Latin, which even a cursory glance at the BSLK makes clear.
