Luther on how to become a citizen
[1] Since contemporary political theory wonders how to regain
and reactivate citizenship in a time of globalisation and
anonymisation, it seems appropriate to return to those who invented
the concept. It has frequently been noted that Luther and the
Reformation stand at the cradle of citizenship. It would be more
adequate, though, to say that Luther engendered the concept
indirectly through his radical understanding of good works; that
is, in making faith God's measure of the quality of a work,
including the works of citizenship. It is incorrect to
see Luther as holding an "ethic of absolute ends" (so Weber)
or an "ethics of conviction" "Gesinnungsethik"): Neither success
nor "Gesinnung" are the measure of good works according to Luther.
The only measure is faith because it means to live with God, to
listen to him and to receive everything from him. The ethics of
Gesinnung (mind), the ethics of the good will (Kant) reduce faith
to a mental attitude or reduce God's works to a human moral
capacity. According to Luther, it is neither a specific substance
nor a judgment of practical reason that makes good works good, but
only their origin in and accompaniment by the word of God. It
remains an open question whether modernity's conceptions of an
isolated moral subject blurs our vision on the creaturely life that
Luther had in view. In any case, what we will see unfold here is
the implications of the understanding of good works when carried
consistently into a political ethic and political
theory.
2.1 The realism of good
works
[2] While contemporary political theory has focused on the
moral subject or shifted attention completely to procedures and
institutions, people have not stopped turning towards each other in
justice. Enlightenment social contract politics is more about
surviving than about the good life. For Luther, though, it is about
the good life in a carefully defined sense since both the righteous
person and the citizen originate in God's calling. The righteous
one is called to convert to God in order to let his heart be ruled
by him and receive God's justice. The citizen is called to his
neighbour to become God's "co-operator" in the worldly
realm. As a product of God's word citizenship is endowed with the
promise that God is with those who let themselves be called into
this institution. To become a citizen means first to be called to
engage in good works for the sake of humanity that God wants to be
truly humane. It also means to live with God within a reality of
the world that appears unveiled and unmitigated.
[3] The reality of good works is thus given with the
assuredness that God--the God of creation, reconciliation, justice
and salvation--is with us when we turn towards our neighbour. This
is consistent with the understanding that this God is a serving
God, having shown in the servant Christ both who he really is and
what human beings really are. Luther follows Paul in asserting that
what a good work is can only be seen when we see how Christ served
humankind.[1] Thus,
good works call people into the immediacy of human need, rather
than fleeing into long-range plans or into the world of ideas
or utopias. It is within this unveiled reality of living together
that people learn to lift their heads to heaven, and learn to
expect everything from God. It is in following the call to their
neighbour and encountering the reality of human need that the
person learns how to receive everything good out of the hands of
God, and hand it on to their neighbour. What justice
vis-à-vis the other means is only discovered when people
realize that they encounter their neighbour with hands that were
empty unless God has filled them with everything good. Wherever
people suffer the reality of the other in his or her need, they are
amidst the Christ-story. This is why Luther holds that the
communion with Christ in faith is the only way to encounter
reality. Without the company of Christ in their suffering, people
will always be tempted to flee from reality into their judgements
or ideas and into doing good works on one's own account. Instead,
those who let themselves be called by the Word into an entanglement
into the other's life find that they learn something about the
reality of humankind: that it cannot be built on ethics and that it
entirely depends on God's mercy to survive. Through the practice of
good works the flesh (i.e., the person as he lives incurved upon
himself) is crucified and the justice of God becomes incarnate for
the neighbour.[2] It is in
good works that Christ, the servant, takes command through people
serving each other.
[4] The "citizen" that Luther thus brought into view is called out
of indifference and anonymity to do good works in the liberty to
start anew and to co-operate with others in love and justice. The
citizen is called to lift his head out of the flowing stream of
indifference and despair in which human society drifts and which
dictates its laws on any human action. He is called to see and do
the good work that is waiting to be done for the consolation of his
neighbour. And he is called to receive God's mercy that is there
for him to rule his heart and become the law of his existence:
Doing good works means discerning a goodness that is already
prepared, and handing it on to others in the freedom from
works.
[5] In this regard, though, it is important to stress
again that the calling to do those works and to such citizenship
reaches heathens as well as Christians.[3] Their citizenship does not
differ from those of the Christians, except that the Christian
understands that he lives in freedom from works. Luther's point
here is the reality of God's justice in the social order. Most
scholars have thought that Luther emphasizes this point in order to
secure consolation from any doubts that may arise when the faithful
look at their lives. This is indeed true. However, Luther's main
point is that God's justice is publicly present; it is there in
God's word and institutions for everybody to dwell in it. In faith
people move outside their morality into the reality of God's
justice. That's why good works are unspecified in quantity or
quality; they are of another kind, namely God's, so that the whole
life of faith becomes a good work.[4] This work of God happens
through heathens even if they do not understand it. The key
difference is that the Christian recognizes, in faith, the real
presence of God in the middle of the person's life. God calls the
faithful to citizenship as if to say: "Look and see that I am your
God, I am already there in my justice, in my peace and in my mercy
for you to live with me and with your neighbour." The common theme
is that faith and ethics both have an external origin, the call to
discern God's presence in the world.
2.2 Good works - beyond good and
evil
[6] If Luther ever was radical, then he was so in reserving the
term "good" for God alone. Luther disconnects good works from human
judgment about good or bad, and thus from the worldly powers that
mold human action. The key ethical question instead is whether a
person has God's word for what he is doing. Is God in the command-
and can the person be sure of that? This is why the first
commandment, the commandment of faith, is the clue to all the other
good works. The implication is that those who go out to do their
works in faith do them beyond good and evil! They do them beyond
their power to judge over the quality of a work that orients itself
to the possibilities of the human being, rather than of God. That
is why Luther bound good works to God's own commandments, as he
found them paradigmatically in the Decalogue and in calling faith
"the first and highest, the most noble good work"[5].
[7] Consistent with the discussion above, Luther holds
that not only the renewal of the heart through faith but also
citizenship has external sources. The latter is external as the
vocation (the calling) to act for others and with others to render
society humane. The frequent use of Luther's image of the good tree
that bear good fruit has somewhat blurred his understanding by
making good works seem to issue from the inward person. It is
crucial for Luther's thought on political ethics to insist that he
regards political or civic action and good works as possible only
by reference to externality. That is, he regards them by reference
to the way God takes command through his word. This explains why
Luther never grew tired of preaching good works in his sermons and
teaching them in his catechisms. He was doing that not on account
of a coherent theory of good works, but on theological distinctions
that help to discern good works for what they are. The context is
always God's work to create faith and justice, but neither lies in
the possibilities and imperatives of the human subject. Good works
live on faith while faith lives on God's word that he is with those
who engage in his commandments: "God's Word is the first of all;
faith follows it, and love follows faith. Love finally does every
good work, for it does not cause harm, it is the fulfilling of the
law. But the person can in no other way accord to or act with God
than through faith."[6] Only
those works may be called "good" in which the human actor becomes
the instrument of God's works. The passivity of faith gives way to
God's activity in good works.
[8] It is crucial to stress again here that although "love
doing good works" has sometimes been interpreted as if Luther's
ethics means to turn the inward person outwards-again as the image
of the tree and the fruits is sometimes used--Luther never
concluded this. This false interpretation is only prevented if we
continually recall that both the person with God ("inward person")
and the person with God and with others ("outward person")
originate in an external calling. This is quite consistent with all
the evidence in Luther that good works do not originate within a
supposed subjectivity, a res cogitans of an inner person, but in
God's creative action and commandment which refers the person to
his neighbour.
[9] For Luther, the paradigm of preaching, and listening to
God's word, is directed against all forms of politics that start
from the possibilities of human government. Preaching is about the
liberation of the person from any human politics that tries to
manipulate the human heart. Luther's sermons and catechisms aim at
a public that is specified and constituted by listening to the
challenge and promise of the politics of God conveyed to them by
his word. Political ethics hence starts with the transformative
power of God's word that withdraws governance from and places
cooperation at the heart of politics. A public that is constituted
by God's word is a public of witnesses to a power that contradicts
the necessities and reality of violent, administrative, and
anonymous forms of power. Such a public is the place for the
political good works to happen: Where people are invited to discern
how to find power and to act cooperatively for the sake of
others.
[10] Preaching good works of citizens does not mean
preaching a radical ethics of "supermen", but a confrontation of
God's will for politics to become truly humane. It is in good works
that citizens do for and with others and so find themselves engaged
in the initiation of politics and the full exploration of what it
means to become a citizen. Luther's sermon on good works may just
as well have been called the sermon of good works. Luther hence
does not presuppose a Christian society or restrict ethics to the
Christian community, but he sets the ethics of good works into the
context of the citizen who finds himself in the context of God's
public work.
[11] The citizen and his public witness are constituted by what he
has heard about how human beings may become humane. Luther relates
good works to a becoming, a transformation of the person by God's
word to serve the neighbour. The citizen that Luther has
(re)discovered is not just there somehow, but he is called to
action within a story of a liberating power. Luther was well aware
that the witness of good works calls for a public and for a
politics that does not yet exist. He knew it is yet to be found by
listening to the particular neighbour, by paying attention to his
needs and by being freed to discern the good life with others. The
preaching of good works constitutes a civic society by drawing
attention to good works of God around the specific need of the
neighbor: the iustitia civilis (civic justice).
[12] Good works are, then, a medium for God's justice to reach his
creatures. God himself has set a new start between himself and
humankind and clears the way for the genuine encounter among humans
in good works. Good works are removed from the story of
justification and released from the burden to improve human life.
Luther thus cleared the way for an unprecedented spontaneity of
ethics that grants them their genuine consolatory character. Good
works are freed from responding to failures in the human condition
and from the task to contribute to human fulfilment. Ethics becomes
freed from resentment, and a new beginning is suddenly possible. By
this means good works become initiative, true action within the
encounter of persons with each other. One could say that only such
ethics may be called truly political, because it focuses on true
encounter. Only within such an unburdening, liberating, and
promising story initiatory and cooperative action becomes
possible.
[13] It lies at the heart of Luther's political ethics
that Luther sees the whole world under God's rule. It is always a
rule which has an inward and an outward side. Inwardly, it is about
God's renewal of his creatures through his word of grace, outwardly
it is about God's maintenance of them through justice. This
introduces the vita passiva (life of reception or suffering) of the
inward person and distinguishes it from the vita cooperativa (life
of cooperation) of the outward person and so locates good works
within God's outward regiment. Ethics is about the cooperation of
God's justice with the person for the sake of others. The
possibility of good works therefore rests on the reality of God's
twofold regiment and any genuinely humane res publica (public
matter) can only be found within the freedom from works. The
freedom from the works of the inward person corresponds with the
outward person's freedom to discern the legal institutions as
humane instruments of justice. It is crucial, then, that the res
publica is not constituted by what people simply have in common,
but by the justice that they discern within their story under
God.
[14] The freedom of good works is that they do not fight
anything, or respond to anything else than vocation. The Christian
lives by the call that there is no reason anymore why justice,
peace, and consolation for the neighbour should not be possible. In
that sense good works are the signature of consolation which is
given in the message that God is our God. In this freedom the
teaching, preaching and doing good works takes shape as witness.
They are not valuable for their substance or for the goodness of
the person, but as witness to the goodness of God. While
doing good works, people find themselves receiving God's works. In
actual fact good works happen to them.
[15] Although good works live on the assuredness that God
is with us, they do not become transformed into a pious inwardness
within the private realm. Rather, they live from the external word
of God. God's commandment finds those who do good works in public.
The public-ness of the worldly powers is the battleground into
which the reality of God breaks with the message that the battle is
won for us. This message is heard through public teaching and
preaching that God is our God, a message that contains the call to
do good works.
[16] Moreover the witness of good works constitutes a new
public which is challenged by the promise that peace, justice and
charity are possible because God himself has made them the reality
in which people are called to live. Good works originate in the
gospel that "the law" - God's will - is already fulfilled. But the
place of good works is within God's worldly regiment. God's
reconciliatory action is the reality in which true politics occur:
In which initiative and a new beginning is possible and in which
they are called to exert power to make peace, to do justice, and so
forth. Wherever people live in the presence of reconciliation,
peace, and justice, good works become inevitable. As the signature
of creaturely life good works convey God's goodness to those who
are in need of goods, health, justice and peace.
[17] In terms of political ethics, in summary, good works
stand for the difference between any given politics that has lost
the human being in its particularity and a new politics that has
become attentive to the needs of particular human beings. Those who
do good works become the "pipes" or "channels" for God's justice to
reach human beings. Good works draw the attention from our politics
to God's politics and initiate the res publica of a public that
realizes what has to be done and where to start anew instead of
merely going on. The public reality of God's goodness controverts
the privatisation or idealisation of ethics. The witness of good
works is that justice is possible because the resurrection of the
dead is real. In the light of the message that God overcomes death,
good works are ready to be discovered and done. They are the
message on which a public figure arises in ethics, the figure of
the citizen. And thus, the public witness of good works is that
citizenship is possible.
2.3 Good works and political
institutions
[18] Since the politics of good works originate in
listening to God's commandments to act for and with the other, the
question of political ethics arises as to how God's commandments
relate to political institutions. Space permits only a short, if
suggestive, discussion of this question.
[19] For Luther, good works are related to
institutionalized human life-forms because politics is not only
about the neighbor next door, but also about the third, the fourth,
the four hundredth neighbor, and so on. Political "institutions"
are themselves established to prevent anyone from falling out of
the economy of good works and so that good works may happen. That
is, that good works may happen interactively in the presence of
justice for those who are out of immediate reach. God's
commandments call institutions to become media of good works. Law
as an institution has the commandment that it shall include
everybody as citizen in cooperation and communication. Institutions
extend the cooperative aspect of the political life to every
citizen.
[20] In this respect citizenship can be called a
paradigmatic institution and the citizen a paradigmatic life-form.
Living within life forms means to co-operate rather than to produce
order out of chaos or to realize ideas of justice and the good life
in an unjust world. Within life-forms, human life becomes limited
in order to remain humane. Such is the purpose of institutions.
They remain limited by God's word which safeguards and renews them
as places where human beings can remain humane in cooperation and
communication. The institution of citizenship is thus practiced
within a political ethics of good works that moves within a
political space - institutions. Luther distinguished between the
vain and useless "opera legis" (works of law) and the fulfilment of
the law by the "opera fidei" (works of faith), effected by the Holy
Spirit.[7] He
discovered that the law as the expression of God's will no longer
stands between God and the person, but leads the person to the
neighbour. In the light of the fulfilment of the law in Christ
institutions are "de-sacralized." This was radical in its time for
it meant an end to the divinisation of political institutions by
rendering them genuine places of cooperation. They were not sacred
in themselves even though they were instruments for God's justice
to reach humankind. Luther's politics of good works therefore
transforms the understanding of institutions into places of
promise.
[1]Martin
Luther, WA 7 (Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen,
1520)
[2]See
Martin Luther, sermon de duplici iustitia (1518), WA 2,
147.
[3]
See Luther, WA 6, 206, 14ff.
[4] See
Luther, WA 6, 207, 3ff. (A treatise on good works,
1520)
[5]WA
6, 204, A treatise on good works, 1520. (my translation)
[6]WA
6, 514, 19-22 " On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. A
prelude by Martin Luther, 1520 (my translation).
[7]Cf.
Martin Luther, WA DB 7, 7,1-26 (Vorrede auf die Epistel S. Pauli an
die Römer, 1522).
© June 2006
Journal of Lutheran Ethics (JLE)
Volume 6, Issue 6