Love and Law in Christian Life

Excerpted from Piety, Politics, and Ethics: Reformation Studies in Honor of George Wolfgang Forell, Carter Lindberg, Editor
Copyright © 1984 by Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc., Kirksville, Missouri. Used with Permission.

[1] What are the roles of love and law in Christian life? This has been and remains today an issue that lies close to the heart of Christian ethics.¹ This may be seen, for example, in the first set of officially-sponsored conversations between Lutheran and Reformed theologians in America. Superior biblical exegesis and improvements in historical research have facilitated many heartening breakthroughs on issues that have long divided these two communions in the past.² Among the theological problems still unresolved, however, is that which is the subject of the present study: the proper relation between love and law in the Christian life.

[2] For example, are the Ten Commandments still binding on believers in Jesus Christ? If so, which "ten" - as counted by the Lutherans or by the Reformed? What about the dietary rules and cultic regulations in Leviticus? Or the theocratic law in I Samuel? What about the apostolic admonitions regarding slavery, lawsuits, and even women's hair styles in I Corinthians?

[3] In his own day, Jesus freely broke with Sabbath observance, commanded obedience to a pagan Caesar, and was accused by more legalistic Jews of being a glutton and a drunkard. Yet he could also warn, "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets: I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17).

[4] Is the clue to this paradox to be found in Jesus' insistence that "all the law and the prophets" - and that includes the Decalogue - depend on the inseparable coupling of the "two great commandments" of love to God and neighbor (Matthew 22:37ff)? If not, how could his apostles proclaim, "We are not under law but grace . . . Christ is the end of the law" (Romans 6:15, 10:4); and again, "The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17)? But even if we insist in the name of Christian freedom that "the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient" (I Timothy 1:9), we dare never forget, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us" (I John 1:8).

[5] Conflicting interpretations of these critical biblical passages introduce us directly to our controversial subject of the so-called "third use of the law." The doctrine of the third use of the law used to be regarded as a secondary ornament in the architectural structure of the old Lutheran dogmaticians. Now suddenly it has become a storm signal on the theological scene, and it is of the greatest significance for the present crisis in social ethical relationships.

[6] According to the traditional view, as presented by the historians of the past generation, and found in virtually all theological reference works, Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin were in basic agreement concerning the third use of the law. The first use of the law is to show persons their sin (usus theologicus); the second is to hold people in civil restraint (usus civilis/politicus); the third defines the validity of the law for the "regenerate" (so Melanchthon and the Formula of Concord) or for "believers" (so Calvin). The third use is distinguished from the other two by the fact that it serves only to inform the regenerate or the believers, and hence the old dogmaticians called it the usus didacticus.

[7] This view has been frontally challenged in our day by the Swedish Lundensian theologians (Gustaf Aulen, Anders Nygren, Ragnar Bring, Gustaf Wingren), along with the Finnish systematician, Lennart Pinomaa. They have concluded from Luther's whole conception of the law that he could not possibly have taught a third use in this didactic sense. Ragnar Bring then also documents how the Formula of Concord has been generally misinterpreted as a result of the introduction of a pietistic or pentecostalistic conception of progressive regeneration. In the "Luther Renaissance" on German soil, Paul Althaus, Edmund Schlink, Gerhard Ebeling, and Werner Elert have all come to similar conclusions. To quote Professor Elert, "Ragnar Bring has established conclusively that the Formula [of Concord] knows nothing of a purely informatory function of the law. Insofar as the regenerate are empowered by the Holy Spirit, they do not need the law at all. Insofar as they do not succeed in getting rid of the 'old Adam,' the law continues to exercise its punitive, and not just an informatory, function." ³My purpose is to support the conclusions of Bring and Elert by tracing the historical development of the various uses of the law in the conflicting views of the major Protestant Reformers.

I

[8] For Luther, the law and the gospel stand in dialectical opposition to each other. In the soteriology of his "theology of the cross," law and gospel represent the two radically different ways in which the triune God relates to a fallen humankind. In explaining his ninety-five theses (1517), Luther writes:

According to the Apostle in Romans 1 (:3-6), the gospel is a preaching of the incarnate Son of God, given to us without any merit on our part for salvation and peace. It is a word of salvation, a word of grace, a word of comfort, a word of joy, a voice of the bridegroom and the bride, a good word, a word of peace. . . . But the law is a word of destruction, a word of wrath, a word of sadness, a word of grief, a voice of the judge and the defendant, a word of restlessness, a word of curse. For according to the apostle, "The law is the power of sin" (Cf. I Corinthians 15:56), and "the law brings wrath" (Romans 4:15); it is a law of death (Romans 5:13).4⁴

Through the demands of the law, God accuses sinners of their unfaith and disobedience. Through the promises of the gospel, God grants faithful persons the forgiveness of sin, life, and salvation. Condemned by the law, sinners are crucified with Christ; redeemed by the gospel, saints are resurrected in Christ. It follows for Luther that Christian salvation and service can take place only when persons pass from the work-righteousness of the law to the faith-righteousness of the gospel.

[9] A few years later, the Reformer was to develop his highly influential view of God's twofold rule in the "two kingdoms" of creation and redemption in the work entitled On Secular Authority (1523). In Luther's reading of biblical eschatology, the triune God rules the "two kingdoms" of creation and redemption by the power of his sovereign Word through the continual interaction of the law and gospel. As redeemer and sanctifier, God employs the gospel (1) to reckon the "righteousness of Christ" to faithful persons in the realm of redemption, and (2) to empower the "Christian righteousness" of loving persons in the realm of creation. As creator and preserver, God is at the same time employing the law (1) to prompt the "civil righteousness" of rational persons in the realm of creation, and (2) to judge the "self-righteousness" of sinful persons in the realm of redemption.

[10] How deftly Luther was able to handle the dialectical relationship between natural law and the law of Christ in the two kingdoms of creation and redemption is well expressed in his analysis of the place of the Ten Commandments in the ethical life of the Christian. He addressed himself to this controversial issue in his work Against the Heavenly Prophets (1525). His aim was to repudiate the radical sectarian attempts to re-establish an Old Testament theocracy in sixteenth-century Germany. In a letter to Spalatin contemporary with the treatise, Luther objected vigorously to the program of the Schwärmer.

Those men who brag about the law of Moses are to be despised. We have our civil law under which we live. . . . The laws of Moses were binding only upon the Jewish people in that place which he had chosen; now they are a matter of liberty. If these laws are to be kept there is no reason why we should not be circumcised too, and observe thewhole ceremonial law.⁵

[11] Probably most Christians would agree with Luther's contention that the civil and ceremonial laws of the Jews were limited in their jurisdiction to the theocratic conditions of ancient Israel. Certainly this was the view of Paul in his controversy with the Galatians. This initial decision already has some important social-ethical consequences (e.g. on church-state relations, sabbath regulations and "blue laws," etc.). An even more basic question concerns the moral law of the children of Israel as transmitted to them by Moses in the form of the Ten Commandments. What is the status of this Decalogue in Christian ethical life? In a significant formal opinion which Luther (together with John Bugenhagen and Philip Melanchthon) sent to Wolf von Salhausen on the authority of the law for the Christian, the reply is given as follows:

This is what should be preached in this case: First, the law should be preached in order to expose and punish sin. As Christ says, "Repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in Christ's name" (Luke 24:27); and Paul's words, "The law is our custodian" (Galatians 3:24). . . . Further, God also desires that the law should be preached for the sake of social peace and order against those godless and crude men who live immoral lives. As Paul says, "The law is not laid down for the righteous" (I Timothy 1:9).⁶

The problem then arises: If the twofold purpose of the law is to expose sin (usus theologicus) and to prevent crime (usus politicus), this covers the Christian as a citizen in society and insofar as he remains sinful before God. But what is the role of the law for a Christian insofar as he is already righteous before God? More concretely, are the "Thou shalt nots" of the Ten Commandments binding upon the Christian? Luther's startling response is typically dialectical: as Mosaic law - no; as natural law - yes!

[12] This very profound view is developed most cogently in a decisive section of the work Against the Heavenly Prophets. Luther has just concluded a defense of the Christian freedom of evangelicals either to keep or to destroy former Roman church images, depending upon their state of faith and the state of local conditions. To answer Andrew Karlstadt's charge that this liberty violates the letter of the Mosaic law, Luther replies vigorously that this does not concern him in the least. The reason: Christians who are under the dispensation of the New Testament gospel are not bound by the Old Testament dispensation of the Mosic law. Christ has liberated us from the law-all the law - from the minutest ceremonial nicety to the Decalogue itself. Says Luther, "For Moses is given to the Jewish people alone, and does not concern us Gentiles and Christians. We have our gospel and the New Testament."⁷

[13] If the sectarians reply that the Scripture cited by Luther (I Timothy 1:9; Acts 15:10; Galatians and Corinthians) abrogates the Mosaic civil and ceremonial law, but refers in no way to the moral law of the Decalogue, Luther insists that the whole law of Moses is of one piece. Rationalistic subdivisions of the law are an unbiblical invention of later theologians. Viewed religiously, the law is a way of salvation which must be completely obeyed or completely rejected. Christians who are saved by God's grace through faith alone have no other alternative but to disavow all ways of salvation which do not center in the cross of Christ. This includes the sub-Christian orientation of the Mosic law in which God shows his steadfast love only to the "thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments" (Exodus 20:6):

I know very well that this is an old and common distinction (between civil, ceremonial, and moral laws), but it is not an intelligent one. For out of the Ten Commandments flow and depend all the other commandments and the whole of Moses. Because he would be God alone and have no other gods, etc., he has instituted so many different ceremonies or acts of worship. Through these he has interpreted the first commandment and taught how it is to be kept. To promote obedience to parents, and unwilling to tolerate adultery, murder, stealing, or false witness, he has given the judicial law or external government so that such commandments will be understood and carried out. Thus it is not true that there is no ceremonial law in the Ten Commandments. Such laws are in the Decalogue, depend on it, and belong there.⁸

[14] This daring position becomes crucial, of course, when one views the first commandment in this law-free setting. Does Luther's position mean that the believer in Christ is also free from belief in the one true God, beside whom there is no other? Of course not, cries Luther, but it is not necessary that persons derive the knowledge of God from the Mosaic law. That there is a God is known by everyone from the law written on human hearts (Romans 1:19-20). What kind of loving God he is we only know from the gospel of his self-revelation in Jesus Christ (John 3:16). In neither case is Moses necessary, "For to have a God is not only a Mosaic law, but also a natural law."⁹

[15] From here Luther moves on to affirm that there is a basic identity between the law of God in the hearts of persons and the law of God in the Mosaic Decalogue.¹⁰ At bottom, these are elaborations of the "Golden Rule" (Matthew 7:12), which is itself a natural law summary of the Old Testament message of the law and the prophets. Moreover, since God the Creator and God the Redeemer are essentially one, the content and aim of all this law can be said to be love, as Paul himself maintains in Romans 13:9. It is this covenanted law of love - long predating the Mosaic law which "four hundred and thirty years afterward . . . was added because of transgressions" (Galatians 3:17-19) - that Christ did not abrogate but radically corrected and fulfilled (Matthew 5:17). "However, the devil so blinds and possesses hearts, that men do not always feel this law. Therefore, one must preach the law and impress it on the minds of people till God assists and enlightens them, so that they feel in their hearts what theWord says."¹¹

[16] Luther concludes that insofar as the Ten Commandments provide us with a concise statement of the natural law governing all of sinful humankind ("to honor parents, not to kill, not to commit adultery, to serve God, etc."), they are carefully to be obeyed. But insofar as they include special matters above and beyond the natural law which are peculiar to the Jewish theocracy ("legislation about images and the sabbath, etc."), they may be regarded as time-bound statutes of the Jewish law code which are not binding upon Christians. Luther writes:

It is as when an emperor or a king makes special laws and ordinances in his territory, as the law code of Saxony (Sachsenspiegel), and yet common natural laws such as to honor parents, not to kill, not to commit adultery, to serve God, etc., prevail and remain in all lands. Therefore one is to let Moses be the Sachsenspiegel of the Jews and not to confuse us Gentiles with it, just as the Sachsenspiegel is not observed in France, though the natural law there is in agreement with it.¹²

[17] The church instructs its members in the Ten Commandments, therefore, because ". . . the natural laws were never so orderly and well written as by Moses."¹³ In no instance should this practice be used to justify the reintroduction of any Judaic legalism in Christian daily living. Insofar as the Christian remains sinful, he is bound only to that part of the Decalogue which coincides with the natural law (civil righteousness). Insofar as he is righteous, however, he is free from all law - Mosaic and natural alike - in the liberating power of God's grace (Christian righteousness). Consequently, righteous Christians will find it continually necessary ". . . to make new Decalogues as did Christ, St. Peter, and St. Paul," in responding faithfully to the Holy Spirit of the living God.¹⁴

[18] It is hoped that the somewhat subtle nuances of Luther's thought as described here might help to refute the mistaken notion (particularly common in Anglo-Saxon Calvinism) that Luther was an "immoral antinomian." Along with what we have outlined, even the most casual examination of his heated polemics against the antinomian, John Agricola, should convince any impartial reader that this simply was not true - any more than it was true of his theological master, St. Paul. ¹⁵An antinomian is one opposed to all law (anti-Nomos) in the Christian life. Paul and Luther, however, taught that the Christian is (1) free from the law as a way of salvation, but (2) bound to the law both religiously insofar as one acts sinfully, and ethically insofar as one acts civilly.

[19] We turn next to Luther's careful summaries of the essentials of the Christian faith in his Large and Small Catechisms at the end of the 1520s. In our commentary, we must restrict ourselves to noting the crucial location of the law (Ten Commandments) in Luther's construction of the Small Catechism. Contrary to the later practice of Calvin and his followers (e.g. in the Heidelberg Confession), Luther treats the Decalogue before, rather than after, the Creed. Why? - because the law's function is to accuse us before our confession of Christ, not to guide us after our confession of Christ.

[20] As early as his work Brief Explanation of the Ten Commandments, The Creed and the Lord's Prayer (1520), Luther was convinced of the evangelical interrelation of these basic elements at the heart of his Catechism. He wrote:

The ordinary Christian, who cannot read the Scriptures, is required to learn and know the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer; and this has not come to pass without God's special ordering. For these contain fully and completely everything that a Christian needs to know, all put so briefly and so plainly that no one can make complaint or excuse, saying that what he needs for his salvation is too long or too hard to remember.

Three things a man needs to know in order to be saved. First, he must know what he ought to do and what he ought not to do. Second, when he finds that by his own strength he can neither do the things he ought, nor leave undone the things he ought not to do, he must know where to seek and find and get the strength he needs. Third, he must know how to seek and find and get this strength.

When a man is ill, he needs to know first what his illness is - what he can do and what he cannot do. Then he needs to know where to find the remedy that will restore his health and help him to do and leave undone the things he ought. Third, he must ask for this remedy, and seek it, and get it or have it brought to him. In like manner, the Commandments teach a man to know his illness, so that he feels and sees what he can do and what he cannot do, what he can and what he cannot leave undone, and thus knows himself to be a sinner and a wicked man. After that the Creed shows him and teaches him where he may find the remedy - the grace which helps him to become a good man and to keep the Commandments; it shows him God, and the mercy which He has revealed and offered in Christ. In the third place, the Lord's Prayer teaches him how to ask for this grace, get it, and take it to himself, to wit, by habitual, comforting prayer; then grace is given, and by the fulfilment of God's commandments he is saved.

These are the three chief things in all the Scriptures. Therefore we begin at the beginning, with the Commandments, which are the first thing, and learn to recognize our sin and wickedness, that is, our spiritual illness, which prevents us from doing the thing we ought to do and leaving undone the things we ought not to do.¹⁶

[21] In short, Luther consistently taught that the law always accuses both in society (coram hominibus) and before God (coram deo). Of special interest to us is the incisive way in which Luther consistently develops his view of the "double use of the law" (duplex usus legis) in his Lectures on Galatians (1531). He writes:

Here one must know that there is a double use of the law. One is the civic use (usus civilis). God has ordained civic laws, indeed all laws, to restrain transgressions. Therefore every law was given to hinder sins. Does this mean that when the law restrains sin, it justifies? Not at all. While I refrain from killing or from committing adultery or from stealing, or when I abstain from other sins, I do not do this voluntarily or from the love of virtue but because I am afraid of the sword and of the executioner.¹⁷

[22] The other use of the law is the theological or spiritual one (usus theologicus), which serves to increase transgressions. This is the primary purpose of the law of Moses, that through it sin might grow and be multiplied, especially in the conscience. Paul discusses this magnificently in Romans 7. Therefore the true function and the chief and proper use of the law is to reveal to man his sin, blindness, misery, wickedness, ignorance, hate and contempt of God, death, hell, judgment, and the well-deserved wrath of God. Yet this use of the Law is completely unknown to the hypocrites, the sophists in the universities, and to all men who go along in the presumption of the righteousness of the Law or of their own righteousness.¹⁸

[23] To protect Christian freedom from the continual threats of moralism and legalism, Luther then firmly concludes: "And that is as far as the law goes.¹⁹

II

[24] In contrast to Luther, Philip Melanchthon introduced a "threefold function of the law" (triplex usus legis) for the first time on Lutheran soil in the 1533 edition of his Christian Doctrine (Loci Communes). In addition, and therefore in contradiction, to its civil and theological functions, the law is now acknowledged to have also a "didactic use" (usus didacticus) for moral instruction in the sanctification of the regenerate: ". . . that saints may know and have a testimony of the works which please God." ²⁰

[25] Melanchthon's view of the alleged didactic use of the law received strong support from an unexpected quarter: the ethic of John Calvin. In his formidable work Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536ff), Calvin defended the position that the gospel and the law share in a substantial unity with each other. He writes:

Paul therefore justly makes contraries of the righteousness of the law and that of the gospel. . . . But the gospel did not so entirely supplant the entire law as to bring forward a different way of salvation. Rather, it confirmed and satisfied whatever the law had promised. . . . Where the whole law is concerned, the gospel differs from it only in clarity of manifestation. . . . The covenant made with all the patriarchs is so much like ours in substance and reality that the two are actually one and the same. Yet they differ in the mode of dispensation.²¹

[26] Against the background of this Judaized conception of salvation-history, Calvin goes on to deal with the role of the law in Christian life. First he treats the law's civil and theological functions (though in reversed order) along the familiar lines of Luther.

[27] Calvin then employs Luther's own language from the earlier quoted Lectures on Galatians to praise the didactic, rather than theological, use of the law. In other words, that third function of the law specifically rejected by Luther - Christ is no new Moses!" - is now lauded by Calvin as "the principal use, which pertains more closely to the proper purpose of the law."

[28] Furthermore, when related to the faithful, "in whose hearts the Spirit of God already lives and reigns," the law of God is said by Calvin to offer a twofold advantage: (1) its instruction will bring Christians to a better understanding and confirmation of God's will, and (2) its exhortation and mediation will excite Christians to obedience, confirm them in it, and restrain them from the slippery path of disobedience. (Psalms 1,, 119).²²

[29] To summarize, both Melanchthon and Calvin suddenly began to teach three uses of the law beginning with the mid-1530s. This is in direct contrast to Luther who had consistently taught only two uses of the law since 1517. Against this new development, Luther had his first major opportunity to respond to the new views of Melanchthon and Calvin in his Smalcald Articles (1537). Significantly, he did not deviate one inch from his lifelong teaching on the twofold use of the law (duplex usus legis) in civilly checking crime and theologically exposing sin. In the article on "The Law," Luther wrote:

Here we maintain that the law was given by God first of all to restrain sins by threats and fear of punishment and by the promise and offer of grace and favor. But this purpose failed because of the wickedness which sin has worked in man. Some, who hate the law because it forbids what they desire to do and commands what they are unwilling to do, are made worse thereby. Accordingly, in so far as they are not restrained by punishment, they act against the law even more than before. These are the rude and wicked people who do evil whenever they have opportunity. Others become blind and presumptuous, imagining that they can and do keep the law by their own powers, as was just said above concerning the scholastic theologians. Hypocrites and false saints are produced in this way.

However, the chief function or power of the law is to make original sin manifest and show man to what utter depths his nature has fallen and how corrupt it has become. So the law must tell him that he neither has nor cares for God or that he worships strange gods - something that he would not have believed before without a knowledge of the law. Thus he is terror-stricken and humbled, becomes despondent and despairing, anxiously desires help but does not know where to find it, and begins to be alienated from God, to murmur, etc. This is what is meant by Romans 4:15, "The law brings wrath," and Romans 5:20, "Law came in to increase the trespass."²³

[30] Now, however, we are confronted by a puzzling surprise. If we follow the text of the Weimar edition at the end of the Second Disputation Against the Antinomians (December 1, 1538), Luther suddenly - and totally inconsistently - apparently also teaches the law's three-fold use. From these dates we might conclude that sometime late in the year 1537, Luther had been converted to the doctrine of the third use of the law which Melanchthon had taught since 1533 and which Calvin had advocated since 1536. But closer observation will reveal that something must be wrong.

[31] Erlangen's Professor Werner Elert has published the results of his literary analysis of this intriguing mystery in Luther interpretation.²⁴ His conclusion: this sole exception in the Luther corpus is a forgery! Luther's Disputation is extant in nine manuscripts. But only two contain the closing sentences at issue. One of these manuscripts is undated. The other goes back to Israel Alekriander, a student who was not matriculated at Wittenberg until 1550 and therefore could not himself have heard the Disputation (1538). This man - or his authority, if he copied from someone else - is a deliberate forger. He took these sentences almost verbatim from Melanchthon's Loci in 1533 and then put them into the 1538 mouth of Luther. In this way the Melanchthonian view of the law's didactic function also came traditionally to be ascribed erroneously to Luther as well. Elert thereby disposes of the only place in Luther's voluminous writings in which he was said to have taught a three-fold use of the law.

[32] What, then, is the relation of Luther and Calvin to each other in their ethical thinking on the law? For Luther, the law plays only a negative and regulative role for the Christian insofar as one is still sinful. For Calvin (and for the Melanchthonian Crypto-Calvinists), however, the law also plays a positive and normative role for the Christian insofar as one is already righteous.

[33] After decades of controversy on this crucial point, the Formula of Concord (1577) finally sided with the followers of Luther against those of Melanchthon. The freedom of the Christian was undergirded by confessional authority against the unevangelical alternatives of antinomianism (license) and legalism.

[34] Article VI deals with the subject entitled "The Third Use of the Law." While granting that the material is not always lucid or well organized, its content remains a faithful witness to the Holy Scriptures. The key to the solution lies in relating the law to the Christian as already fully justified but not yet fully sanctified - simul iustus et peccator - at once righteous in hope (in spe) while yet sinful in fact (in re).

[35] The official decision: insofar as Christians remain sinful, they are still completely subject to the civil and theological demands of God's law (vs. Neander's antinomianism). But insofar as Christians are already righteous, they are completely free from the bondage of the law to live in God's will of love under the guidance of the indwelling Holy Spirit (vs. Calvin's legalism).²⁵

Since, however, believers are not fully renewed in their life but the Old Adam clings to them down to the grave, the conflict between spirit and flesh continues in them. . . . As far as the Old Adam who still adheres to them is concerned, he must be coerced not only with the law but also with miseries, for he does everything against his will and by coercion, just as the unconverted are driven and coerced into obedience by threats of the law (I Corinthians 9:17, Romans 7: 18,19)

But when a person is born anew by the Spirit of God and is liberated from the law (that is, when he is free from this driver and is driven by the Spirit of Christ), he lives according to the immutable will of God as it is comprehended in the law and in so far as he is born anew, he does everything from a free and merry spirit. These works are, strictly speaking, not works of the law but works and fruits of the Spirit, or, as St. Paul calls them, the law of the mind and the law of Christ. According to St. Paul, such people are no longer under law but under grace (Romans 6:14; 8:2).

[36] However, one peculiarity of language employed elsewhere in Article VI has led to frequent misinterpretations: picturing the law in the metaphor of a mirror. It is clearly affirmed that God "employs the law to instruct the regenerate out of it," and that "the law is a mirror in which the will of God and what is pleasing to him is correctly portrayed. It is constantly necessary to hold this before believers' eyes and continually to urge it upon them with diligence. ²⁶

[37] The "regenerate" and "believers" are Christians, of course, but these specific texts out of context could refer to such Christians either (1) insofar as they are already righteous, or (2) insofar as they still remain sinful. If employed in the former manner, the law's instruction would be edifying (as in Melanchthon). If employed in the latter manner, its instruction would be accusing (as in Luther). That the latter is clearly the case is indicated in a subsequent reference to the same mirror of the law: "The law of God prescribes good works for faith in such a way that, as in a mirror, it shows and indicates to them that in this life our good works are imperfect and impure" (section 21). In brief, the law naturally accuses even when it formally instructs.

III

[38] We conclude with the word of one of the foremost proponents of this century's Luther-Renaissance, the dean of German Lutheran systematicians, Erlangen's Paul Althaus. He has offered a penetrating analysis of the Formula of Concord's Article VI in his work translated The Divine Command. His theological conclusion:

We find it impossible to retain the concept of any "third use of the law". In the first place, the notion of "law" in theology has been decisively stamped by the contrast of law and gospel, the idea of the law as accusing and condemning, or as justifying. . . . In the second place, the term "law" can easily imply the notion of a legalistic regulation of the Christian life.. . . In the third place, the notion of "the law" can also imply that it is only the imperative element in the Scriptures - without the living example of righteous witness - that provides moral directives forthe Christian.²⁷

[39] To reconcile contemporary Lutherans, Calvinists, Gnesio-Lutherafls and Crypto-Calvinists, Althaus suggests that a good deal of the traditional confusion is semantic. It is too seldom noticed that the authors of Article VI insist in their conclusion, "the word 'law' here has but one meaning, namely the immutable will of God according to which man is to conduct himself in this life." (section 15). In dealing with "the law" in the Scriptures, Althaus insists that we consistently distinguish the "command" of God's loving will (Gebot) and the subsequent "commandments" of the Mosaic and Judaic expressions of that divine will (Gesetz). Article VI's delineation of the "Third use of the Law" must always be read in light of the former (Gebot), never in light of the latter (Gesetz).

[40] The immutable will of God is what Althaus designates as Gebot. As the "command" of the Creator to all creatures made in his holy image, it is ultimately love. It is the reverse side of God's Angebot-the offer with which the eternal love of God originally encounters persons. God's Gebot of love corresponds to man's original righteousness. It is supralapsarian, depicting the proper relation between the Creator and his human creatures before their fall into sin. It is the human's ethical expression of the image of God.

[41] It is in this wholistic sense of God's Gebot that pre-exilic Judaism and the Psalms (1, 19, 119) speak of the Torah, the holy and loving will, teaching and way of life promised, shared and commanded by Jahweh. God's Gebot of love is the gracious ground of Abraham's Covenant: it serves as the intentional base of Jesus' word, "From the beginning it was not so" and his summary of all the later law and the prophets in the twofold command of love of God and neighbor; it explains St. Paul's summary of all the various commandments of the Decalogue in the one command of love.

[42] Now this divine Gebot, says Althaus, must be radically distinguished from the Gesetz, the Mosaic and Judaic laws, which are the intralapsarian forms taken by God's Gebot in opposition to human sin. In other words, the Creator's permissive command "You may love" (Gebot)-now in opposition to sin - takes the form of the Judge's accusing commandment "You shall love" (Gesetz), and consequently, "You shall not" worship idols, lie, kill, commit adultery, steal, and so forth. Its negative formulations presuppose the divine-human alienation.

[43] The gracious Gebot of Abraham - a unilateral, unbreakable and unconditional covenant - thereby degenerates into the Gesetz of Moses-a bilateral, breakable and conditional contract. That is why the Jahweh of Moses does not graciously love unrighteous sinners; he rather judiciously rewards the righteous and punishes the unrighteous, quid pro quo. Abraham's Gebot is good news, whereas Moses' Gesetz is bad news. That is also why Paul affirms that Christians are children of Abraham - by grace through faith - but never children of Moses - by law through works.

[44] Incidentally, and correspondingly, that is also why Luther, in his treatment of the Ten Commandments in his Small Catechism, took the Mosaic Decalogue and relativized its binding authority (as Gesetz) for baptized Christians. How? - by using the last nine commandments simply as paradigmatic illustrations of the solely-binding Gebot of the First Commandment. "We should so fear and love God that "we glorify and serve him in all of life - ecclesiastically, domestically, socially, economically, politically, etc.

[45] In short, argues Althaus, Jesus Christ frees us from obeying the Gesetz of Moses in order to fulfill the Gebot of Abraham. No longer living legalistically under Mosaic and Judaic laws, righteous Christians live obediently within the law - the law of love.

[46] Althaus suggests that with regard to any "third" use of the law, we must now always ask, "Which law- Gebot or Gesetz?" Well, if baptized Christians are simul iustus et peccator (at once wholly righteous and wholly sinful), it means that

1) we are totally bound by the Mosaic Gesetz (both theological and civil uses) insofar as we are still sinful, but
2) we are also totally free in the Spirit to obey the Abrahamic Gebot of love insofar as we are already righteous, but
3) in no case is there any third (didactic) use of the Gesetz for reborn Christians.

It follows that the law (as Gesetz) always accuses, whereas the law (as Gebot) never accuses and is joyfully obeyed as the loving will of God in which the Christian - as righteous - "delights and meditates day and night."

[47] Our conclusion is that God's gracious foundation for an evangelical ethic is not any so-called "third" use of the law, but rather the "second" use of the gospel: i.e., justifying faith active in sanctifying love. The Formula of Concord (VI) denies that there is any third use of the law directed to the Christian - insofar as he is already righteous - to guide one didactically to sanctified perfection. As acknowledged repeatedly, however, the Christian - insofar as one remains sinful - still needs the law in both functions of punishing crime and exposing sin.

[48] Now if some Lutherans insist on speaking of a "third" use to describe all this - which is pastorally misleading because of the term's totally different meaning in Calvinism - then let it be clearly understood that such a so-called "third" use does not essentially differ from the first and second uses. It is merely the pastoral application of the first and second uses of God's law to Christians as well as to non-Christians. God accuses the "governed" sin of post-baptized believers as well as the "governing" sin of pre-baptized unbelievers. The law's "third" use does not differ in kind or in function, but only in the area of its application - i.e., on Christian as well as non-Christian soil.

[49] The pastoral and congregational consequences of this theological struggle are awesome.²⁸ If the unique task of the Christian theologian is "properly" to distinguish the law and the gospel, then what has been said here about the evangelical depths of law and gospel affects everything - absolutely everything - that the pastor and congregation say and do, whether in their worship, learning, witness, service or support. The Christian fellowship can all regenerate in "fruits of the Spirit" or degenerate into "works of the law." Passion for the law-free gospel will alone determine whether the Lutheran Church will remain a confessional movement within the church catholic or slowly succumb to the lures of American mainline, Protestant denominationalism.

End Notes

1  Along with original source analysis, this essay will summarise and integrate Luther research reported elsewhere in my Luther on the Christian Home (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960), and critical introduction to Paul Althaus' The Divine Command (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966); cf. Werner Elert, "The Third Use of the Law," The Lutheran World Review I (1949), 38-48; and The Christian Ethos (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, tr. 1957).

2  "We are agreed that the new life of faith in Christ involves obedience, but there is some question concerning the place and meaning of law in the new life." Cf. Summary Statement on "Gospel," point 3, in A Reexamination of Lutheran and Reformed Traditions published jointly by representatives of the North American Area of Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian Order and the USA Committee of the Lutheran World Federation (New York: National Lutheran Council, 1963).

3  Elert, "The Third Use of the Law," 38-39.

4  LW 31, 231.

5  Preserved Smith and Charles Jacobs (eds.) Luther's Correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1913-1918), 2, 223.

6  WA 15, 299.

7  LW 40, 92.

8  Ibid., 93.

9  Ibid., 96.

10  Ibid.

11  Ibid., 97.

12  Ibid., 98.

13  Ibid.

14  WA 39 (1) 47.

15  See WA 39 (1), 359-584 for Luther's extensive Disputation against the Antinomians.

16  Martin Luther Works, 6 vols. (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1915-1943), 2, 354.

17  LW 26, 308.

18  Ibid.309. Italics added.

19  Ibid., 313.

20  Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine, trans and ed Clyde L Manschreck (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), chap 7, "Of Divine Law," p 127.

21  John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed John T. McNeill, Vol 1 (Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1960), Bk. II, chap 9, sec 4, and Bk II, chap 10, sec 2.

22  Ibid.

23  The Smallcald Articles (Pt III, Art II) in BC, 303.

24  Elert, "The Third Use of the Law," 38-48.

25  BC, 566-567.

26  BC, 564-566.

27  Paul Althaus, The Divine Command, 45ff.

28  Historical references cited:

1517 Luther, Explanation of the Ninety-five Theses
1523 Luther, On Secular Authority
1525 Luther, Against the Heavenly Prophets
1529 Luther, Small Catechism
1531 Luther, Lectures on Galatians
1533 Melanchthon, Loci Communes
1536 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
1537 Luther, Smalcald Articles (Pt. HI, Art. II)
1538 "Luther" (forgery), Second Disputation Against the Antinomians
1577 Formula of Concord (Art. VI)

1900s Scandinavia: Aulen, Wingren, Nygren, Bring, Pinomaa Germany: Aithaus, Ebeling, Elert, Schlink

Usus Legis

Duplex Triplex

© November 2001
Journal of Lutheran Ethics
Volume 1, Issue 3