1 : a black basalt stone found in 1799 that bears an inscription in hieroglyphics, demotic characters, and Greek and is celebrated for having given the first clue to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics 2 : one that gives a clue to understanding
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What is the main idea that Steve Paulson is attempting to get at in his theology? Perhaps without just coming out and saying it directly (could be dangerous?!).
My pastor’s thoughts after reading and reflecting deeply on Paulson’s Outlaw God trilogy:
“”Taking his cue from Luther in the Bondage of the Will, however, Paulson develops instead the idea that the “proper distinction” that really should be made theologically is not that of the law and the gospel, but the unpreached and the preached God. The unpreached God is the god that man comes up with in his mind and heart and soul when there is no one there to preach to him anything else. What man comes up with then Paulson identifies as the law. The law is therefore a construct of man. The law is man’s attempt intellectually, and so philosophically and theologically, to construct a way to understand who God is, and who man is, and how God is related to man, and so how God acts. So here is meant not just the moral law that found in the Ten Commandments, but the ceremonial and civil laws of the children of Israel as well, and the ancient pagan attempts to describe the same in works like the Analects of Confucius (551- 479 B.C.) the Republic of Plato (d. 347 B.C.) and the Nicomachian Ethics of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). As with philosophies, so even with theologies like those of Augustine of Hippo (354-430) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). For anything which man considers to be “law”, i.e. some idea which he should accept and abide by, whether understood to be what man can deduce (i.e. the natural law), or even that which is Scripturally revealed—which Paulson also seems to take as deduced—is in fact all man’s own effort to somehow construct who man is, who God is, and how man and God are related. Theology itself then, the study of God, is also then a construct of man. It is a law-filled edifice used ultimately to cover up the demand that the Christian justify himself. In such a theological edifice, God is the “the source and goal of the law,” Christ the fulfiller of the law, and the Holy Spirit that which helps the Christian to fulfill the law. As a human invention then, whether legally, philosophically or theologically, the law oppresses man and confines who God is and how He acts to some sort of legal order, philosophy, or theological system. And it is just such law, as a creation of man, that demands that questions be answered such as why man does indeed suffer, or commit heinous evil acts like that of the Holocaust.”
Read the whole thing. As I just wrote to someone this morning: “I thought you would find it interesting, and perhaps, fair. I must admit that he plumbs the depths more than I believe I myself would have ever been capable of! I believe [my pastor] is not only very knowledgeable but wise. And compassionate.”
The “Facebook Apostle” Dr. Peter Scaer recently shared the paper I posted on his profile.
I was very pleased to be recognized by him, because Dr. Scaer is a talented and compelling writer who I think “gets” what I have been trying to say for so long.
Here is a compilation of some of his Facebook posts on or touching on the topic of the “Third Use of the Law”. This, again, is the skill and art of encouraging and exhorting Christians to lives as Christians — always on the basis of the mercies of God in Jesus Christ! (see Romans 12:1-2).
Peter excels at this skill but many Lutherans, particularly a bunch called the “Radical Lutherans,” have let these muscles atrophy over the years. Simply put, when very popular but very wrong teachers like Gerhard Forde and Steven Paulson get the atonement of Jesus wrong, there are massive consequences. A Fake Lutheranism that snuffs out the flickering wick and breaks the bruised reed is the result.
The posts are roughly in chronological order, with the most recent posts appearing at the top. Especially check out his first four short and punchy ones, his most recent work on the topic.
Use these for devotions with your family. They are excellent for that! Sadly, this kind of talk is lacking in a lot of contemporary Lutheran devotional material.
At the same time, also realize that Peter has also written much more besides this, on most every topic of Christian theology. If you just use what he has written below, you certainly will not get a complete view of all his great writing, nor a balanced view of the Christian faith!
Finally, if you would like to find the dates of these particularly posts (so you can like them, comment on them, or share them), you can find Peter on Facebook and do a search for “third use of the law”.
Here’s Peter:
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Run the race, fight the good fight of faith. Pray without ceasing. Struggle to enter through the narrow door. Store for yourselves riches in heaven. Forgive. Do not neglect the meeting together, as is the habit of some. Keep yourself free from idols. Bear one another’s burdens. Choose life. Love one another. What do all these exhortations have in common? They are all examples of the third use of the law denied by Paulson and his followers.
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If a man finds himself in prison for armed robbery, the law is a problem, but is not the cause of his problems. It was his armed robbery. If the man is released, and turns his life around, he is grateful for that law. The law was good, and still is. So it is with us sinners. Christ serves our sentence, pays the penalty of the law, which is the essence of the gospel. But the law remains, for the law is God’s good will. And the Christian, as Christian, helps his neighbor to improve and protect his possessions and income, which is the law viewed positively. This is the law’s third use.
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To Christians as Christians, the third use of the law sounds like encouragement and instruction, like the words of a coach, father, or perhaps a commander in battle. To the one who is not on board, to the one who is unrepentant, the third use sounds just like the first use. Likewise, to the one who struggles, the third use sounds like exhortation, but to the one who doesn’t wish to struggle, to the one who does not want to give up his sin, the third use again is hard on his ears. But the Christian as Christian, the repentant as repentant, the New Adam struggling against the Old, loves the law, knows it to be a better way, a way of life and love. So, really, when people deny the third use of the law, they are really denying the law’s first use, because, frankly, they just don’t want to hear it.
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Moses preached the gospel. Jesus preached the law. And vice-versa. And they both preached, and often, what we call the law’s third use, which is not just information, but exhortation.
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There Aren’t Two Kinds of Righteousness,
at least now as it talked about among us. We speak of civil righteousness, which is the righteousness of the unbeliever, the one who seeks to do good in accord with conscience and the natural law, or perhaps just for show. This sort of righteousness is outward, and has to do with the deeds that are done. It makes no difference whether a believer or an unbeliever helps me in physical distress. In either case, I am the better for it. But civic righteousness, righteousness apart from Christ, is not true at its core, as it is motivated by self.
In Christ, we are declared righteous, because Christ alone lived the perfect righteous life on our behalf. His active and passive obedience are credited to our account. He died for our transgressions, and rose for our justification. Christ did all things well, nor were his motives ever mixed or self serving.
But when Christians do good, they are acting in the righteousness of Christ. Christ lives in them. Christ animates them. For Christians, sin always remains, and motives always remain mixed. But, Christians, in as much as they are Christian, do good things. It would be a mistake to say that civil righteousness and the good works of a Christian, as a Christian are similar versus the righteousness that comes from Christ.
Sometimes, this is spoken of as a vertical righteousness versus righteousness on the horizontal level. But we do well to remember that the righteousness that is imputed to us is the righteousness of Christ as he lived and died among us. Christ’s cross is more than the key that opens up heavenly treasure and heavenly righteousness. What we receive is what Christ fulfilled for us as he walked the horizontal plane. As for Christian righteousness? It is not of a different kind from that of Christ. It is after all the life of Christ into which we have incorporated. Any good we do is due to Christ living in us, and his Spirit working through us. This good is always mixed, as we remain sinners, and is nothing to brag about. But it is not civil righteousness, for it is something wholly different, for it is the life of Christ in action, it is the life of the church and her members.
Or, perhaps, think of it this way. In the heavenly places, there is no place for civil righteousness. It is simply the life of Christ. To say that our righteousness is mixed up with sin is a given, and a painful one at that. The good that I do, I don’t do. And yet, the I is the I of Christ, the new life we have been given, the strength by which we say, and we mean, “Lord, thee I love with all my heart.” This righteousness, this holy desire, mixed as it is with sin and selfishness, is not of a different kind from the righteousness of Christ, for it is indeed the life of Christ.
So, yes, civil righteousness is the outward keeping of the commandments. But the life of Christ is in fact the life of Christ. We are saved because the merits of Christ’s life and death are given to us, and his righteousness is forensically applied. But the new man then participates in that very life of righteousness, and not into some other third thing.
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Commenting on Deuteronomy 30 in the latest Lutheran Quarterly, Steven Paulson writes, “Moses invented the theological idea of “sanctification” as something added to justification because he couldn’t quite believe that he himself was declared righteous by the second person of the Trinity – and his righteousness had nothing to do with his shining face and two tablets of stone!”
So there you have it. Moses offers up what looks like exhortation, a strong third use of the Law. So Paulson says Moses did not understand what he was saying. Accordingly, “Paul recognized that Dueteronomy 30 really says something Moses was trying to avoid . . .”
It’s remarkable what a theologian can do, slicing and dicing the scriptures, throwing even Moses under the bus. But then, what to do with all of St. Paul’s exhortations? Or Christ’s? Exhortations abound. But Paulson’s exhortation to avoid exhortation should be avoided, and indeed, should be considered laughable in our midst.
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Be Thou Faithful Unto Death,
and I will give you the crown of life. Strangely, in some worlds, these words are categorized as law, and since we are sinners, we cannot fulfill the law, and so we are driven to the gospel. But what is the gospel? Supposedly, it’s the word of peace, the word of forgiveness. Now, this is true, but the word of forgiveness has no meaning if it is not backed by Christ’s atoning death. And when we preach Christ’s death, we surely preaching about the gospel, which is supposedly bad. But that distinction is silly too, for in preaching about the gospel, that is the life of Christ, we are preaching the gospel. And the absolution, if it is simply a creative word, a creation ex nihilo, is no gospel at all, for the words of forgiveness depend upon Christ’s work, his active, yes active, and passive fulfilling of the law, yes, the law, which is God’s will. Our Lord is no outlaw god, which would be another god entirely.
This matter of dividing law and gospel matters, but it has been turned by some into a madness. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life! These are words of exhortation, and packed into them is a prize which is also a gift won by our Savior. Packed into these words is the strength that Christ gives for the journey, and sure hope of his promise.
Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. In these words are vigor and strength, a powerful reminder that our life has purpose. These are words for the Christian, and they are exhilarating, reminding us that our Lord who died for us has for us life eternal. So, fight the fight, run the race. Work while it is day, before the night comes and no man can work. Don’t shy from ending your sermons with exhortation. St. Paul has plenty of it, as does our Lord. We are hereby reminded that our Lord has died to pay for our sins, and in his resurrection we have life, and that life, even now, has meaning, shape, and purpose.
To be at peace does not mean to be inert, and the Christian life is not passive. We have the armor to fight, and we have tongues to proclaim. Be thou faithful unto death. Of course, these words remind the sinful flesh of failing, but even more, they remind us that our life is indeed a noble calling, one that beckons us to the kind of courage that is well founded, and the kind of life that is joyfully active in life and confession. That’s what exhortation, sometimes known as the third use of the law, is all about. And it’s great.
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A Few Simple Theses on the Gospel (A Work in Progress)
1. The atonement is an objective fact accomplished on Calvary (as opposed to Forde who says, “The atonement is not an objective fact accomplished on Calvary.”
2. Christ actively and passively fulfilled the law on our behalf (as opposed to Forde who claims that Christ suffered the law only passively, and that he was acting according to God’s will, not his law.)
3. Can the suffering and death of one man atone for the sins of the whole world? Forde calls the question trite. But the answer is a resounding yes, for it is God’s Son who has suffered and died.
4. Forde asks, If God has been paid, how can one say that he really forgives? Yes, we can and do say this. God’s action in Christ is mercy, and it came at a great cost, which demonstrates how great is his love towards us.
5. If Christ has not fulfilled the law on our behalf, then there is no gospel to preach.
6. In creation, God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” In matters of salvation, absolution depends not simply upon a word, but upon the atonement, Christ having made payment for sin so that it may be forgiven. A gospel without such a payment is no gospel at all, and makes meaningless Christ’s sacrifice.
7. On the cross, mercy and justice embrace, for upon it Christ has more than satisfied the demands of the law. He dies not simply as one murdered, but as the necessary sacrifice. Christ did not sin, nor did he break the law, but as the scapegoat he did take upon himself all of our sins.
8. A God who does not demand payment for sin is not a more loving God, but an apathetic God who does not care about the suffering of Abel.
9. The law is eternal, for the law fulfilled is simply love. So we rejoice in confessing the law positively, including worship of the Triune God alone, honoring parents, protecting life, and all the rest.
10. The Third Use of the Law is not simply a reimposition of the law in order to whip unwilling Christians into shape. The law is useful for wisdom, exhortation, and understanding. The law always condemns, but does not only condemn. The Christian, in as much as he is a Christian, loves the law.
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Radical Lutheranism’s Appeal
Kilcrease’s “Forde’s Doctrine of the Law: A Confessional Lutheran Critique” is an excellent introduction to the problems of such a theology. But what is the attraction of radical Lutheranism today? I think it owes at least partially to its existential view of the law, which places the law, as Kilcrease puts it, “into the realm of vague abstraction.” In both Paulson and Forde, our salvation does not depend on Jesus actively fulfilling the law on our behalf or upon his death as a penal substitution. The question becomes, did Jesus die to pay for our sins, or did he die simply that the law might die with him. Is the enemy sin or is it the law? If law is the experience of dread, and if our sin is simply a matter of works righteousness, then there is little need to enumerate specific sins, leaving the content of the law, in Kilcrease’s assessment, “overly vague.”
But if you say that Jesus died for sins, and that the law is an expression of God’s eternal will, well then that changes everything. It means we have to come to grips with the specifics of what we have done, and also that, as Christians, we embrace those deeds which are good. This may explain why in radical Lutheranism there is so little discussion of particular sins, nor is there much appetite for discussing the besetting sins of our culture, those sins which the culture trumpets as virtue.
Those who look at Christ’s work as the law fulfilled, and the price of redemption paid will then think of their lives differently. The command not to kill is embraced, and now viewed positively for what it is, that is the command to honor and protect innocent life. The Christian pastor then goes further and proclaims the sanctity of life, the fifth commandment, the incarnation and the resurrection in one breath, as whole. For the Christian as a Christian sees the law as fulfilled by Christ, but also then having meaning for life today, for we are called to live the life of the law fulfilled, which is the life of love.
But as long as we play with radical Lutheranism, then we don’t have to address such things, as the law is vague, and flattening, and any attempt to speak the truth about the goodness of things now denied is turned into just another example of works righteousness, as if the Christian does not love what the Lord loves, and does not see the beauty of Christ’s life or in the Christian life. Again, this is not to deny that we remain sinners, but it is to assert that as a Christian, I see and speak of a better way.
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In Christ There is Rest
not paralysis. Biblical exhortation is invigorating. The third use of the law is simply the law as understood by one who knows that Christ has fulfilled it for us. We are freed not from the law, but from the law’s condemnation. We are freed not from the law, but from sin. For the law is good and right, and eternal. Moses sets before us life and good, death and evil. He tells us to choose life. In as much as we are sinners, we hear “Thou shall not murder,” and we know we are condemned. But in as much as Christ has fulfilled the law, we count ourselves privileged to fight for life. For Christians, the command to choose life is a shot in a arm, a spark of invigoration. In as much as we have been redeemed and baptized, we say together, “As for me and my house, I will serve the Lord.”
When St. Paul tells us to race the race, to fight the fight, we do not feel weighed down, as if it were a burden on the unwilling. When the Lord tells us to keep watch, to strive to enter through the enter door, we hear the words as an athlete might listen to his coach, like a soldier might hear his commander. When we are at rest in the Lord, we are free to be active, to be courageous. We, we happy few, we band of brothers!
In fear of the Lord, we need fear no man. Our Lord says, “Fear not, little flock.” And shortly thereafter he adds, “Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning.” Knowing we are not saved by our own good works, our heart is cheerful to hear “Work while it is still day before the night comes and no man can work.” For at day’s end, we know that we shall count every hour in the vineyard as precious. When St. Paul exhorts us to present our bodies as living sacrifices, we are not dispirited but ennobled. “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord,”Paul says. Hearing these words, we rejoice in hope.
Radical Lutheranism is really not Lutheranism at all. But there is no reason to think about this theoretically. Simply read through the scriptures as one redeemed. Hear our Lord’s commands as what they now are, an opportunity to get in the game, to play a part. Resting in the Lord does not mean inactivity. It’s a chance to fight the good fight, to put on the armor of salvation. Indeed, sin remains ever with us, as does the law’s condemnation. But the law’s third use is the law seen through the eyes of those who happy to comply, even as a son hears his father, a patriot rises to defend his homeland, a runner strives to reach the finish line. Biblical exhortation is not an enemy, but an encouragement to stay awake, to keep our lamps filled with oil, to make use of our talents, not out of some horrible constraint, but as the Father’s children, as those who are Christ’s brothers.
And if you still don’t understand, try Henry V’s famed speech on for size. He speaks in a human way, but gets at the idea that exhortation is not just another condemnatory law, it’s an invitation to life, real life. It’s an invitation to take up the cross, not as a burden, but as true glory.
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Christ’s Temptations
Radical Lutherans like Forde and Paulson have no place for Christ’s fulfillment of the law. They speak of Christ suffering whatever the law has to offer, and therefore his passivity in suffering, but not his active obedience. Paulson calls our Lord an Outlaw God, which is strangely reminiscent of the man of lawlessness. But the law is an expression of God’s good and eternal will. The law is eternal, and its fulfillment is love.
But in the temptation, our Lord begins fulfills the law in a most active way. This is why our Lord was baptized, to fulfill all righteousness. No, we are not saved by our good works, but we are saved by His. There is no need for merit from Mary or the saints. Christ offers up his life for ours, his credit for ours, his active and passive obedience for ours.
In what ways is our Lord tempted? To make stones to bread, to rule over the kingdoms of the world, to jump off the top of the temple. And what do those temptations summarize and encapsulate? The desire to fulfill the desires of the body, the will to power, and the desire for glory. In short, these are the kinds of things we all want, in our sinfulness, for ourselves. We want the pleasures of the body, though they lead to the heartache of broken families and the cruelty of abortion. We want power, to do what we want, and to have other people to do our bidding. Money helps with that, as does position. And we want others to think we are great. Ah, the glory of having the angels swoop you up from the fall. What a spectacle! What an honor! Your name will be in lights, in every headline, retweet a million times!
But our Lord says no. He came not for his own glory, but for the glory of his Father, and for that he was willing to endure the worst humiliations, stripped and spit upon, mocked and ridiculed. He came not to be served, but to serve and to save. He came washing the feet of his own not always stellar disciples. He came not for his own pleasures, but to endure the very worst of pain, to have nights where he had no place to lay his head, to be beaten and whipped, nailed agonizingly to the cross.
And so we pray, hallowed be THY name, THY kingdom come, THY will be done. We all want to make a name for ourselves, to have power, to get what we want. That is not the Christian way, for it is not the way of Christ. The third use of the law is instruction, but it is also an invitation into a much better life, the life of Christ which he lived for us and for our salvation, that life that is already ours, the life of Christ, who we claim when we say, “I am Christian.”
In my sin, I desire that which is selfish, that which is vain and gives me pleasure, damn the world and all others. But in Christ, I want something better. The law always accuses, but it does not only accuse. It shows us, positively, the life of true love. In the wilderness temptations, we see a truly glorious picture of the better Adam, the righteous and good and loving Adam, and it’s a sight to behold. And all of this our Lord does in loving obedience to his heavenly Father and in fulfillment of God’s eternal law. And all of this our Lord does that he might win for us salvation, bringing the law not to the end, but to its glorious fulfillment, here now, and then on the cross, for our salvation.
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Exhortation Allergy
I’m not sure where it came from, this fear of what is often called the Law’s third use. But woe to the preacher who offers a word of exhortation, to run the race, fight the fight, wait on the Lord, well, just about anything. Right away we hear, “Of course, we cannot run, fight, or wait, for we are sinners.” For that matter, we cannot even repent, for, we are told, God repents us.
Now, in this protest, there is a kernel of truth. We do the good that God has called us to do, and surely we stumble, fall and rebel. We do the good that God has called us to do, and, in the end, we see it was God’s doing all along. But still, in Christ, we are a new creation. The sinner remains. Original sin remains. To grow in Christ means to come to grips all the more with that sin that lurks in every fiber. And yet, we exhort one another to good works, to run, to fight, to wait, to show mercy, to help our neighbor, and, yes, to go to church.
Now, we may say that the law always condemns, and this is true, but it does not only condemn. Exhortation actually is invigorating. St. Paul includes so much of it in his letters, and likewise, or we should say, primarily, so does our Lord. Watch, he says. Work while it is still day before the night comes and no man can work, he says. Now, we might point out that the first disciples fell asleep in the Garden, and we may recall Peter’s denial. But then we should also think of Peter’s heroic sermon at Pentecost, and that he eventually fulfilled his promise to go to prison, even death, for the Lord.
Yes, exhortation is invigorating, for it is an invitation into the life of Christ. It is the general’s call to would be soldiers, who are grateful to play a part, ever so small, in the great cosmic drama of salvation. Exhortation is the natural call of the preacher to people redeemed. Exhortation is to say that your life matters, and that what you do, yes, what you do, matters.
All that we do, we well know, comes by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we know that our every good work is tainted by sin. And yet, think of all those Christians who have answered the call in your life, and in the life of the church militant. Think of martyrs, and faithful witnesses. Think of loved ones who brought you into the Truth. The saints are for us witnesses, examples of lives well lived.
So, when the preacher says, “Fight the good fight,” do no go into the corner and sit. Don’t think it too burdensome, nor think of yourself, by virtue of your sin or weakness, incapable. Get out into the ring. Enter the arena of life, as our Lord has blessed you. And when you do, thank God that you have been given the opportunity, knowing, that at life’s end, you will not have wanted it any other way.
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Ecumenical Opportunities and Pitfalls
The first thing we probably need to say is that the greatest challenge for our own church is the religion of the secular left, a piety that prizes abortion and dogs over children, an elite priesthood that punishes those who confess that there is such a thing as male and female, a people who have taken the rainbow, and turned it into a flag of defiance against the god of nature, a cult that while not valueing children, are on the prey for ours.
The second thing that faithful Lutherans need to watch out for is the hiding out behind slogans that make us feel comfortable, phrases like law and gospel, simul justus et peccator, theology of the cross and all the rest. This can be seen most vividly in the attraction of Forde and Paulson, whose radical Lutheranism isn’t Lutheran at all. But it is appealing. Drop the law’s third use, and you no longer have to speak to the rainbow pride, or the secular heresies that are stealing the hearts of our children. No man can serve to masters, and to deny the God of Creation is to deny the redemption of Christ, the eternally begotten Son of the Father.
And then, yes, the basics, the baptizing of infants, the body and blood, and yes, so very basic atonement. But now we are back to radical Lutheranism, which offers words behind and under which there is nihil.
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Apart from the third use of the law, apart from the atonement, the fact that Christ actually died for our sins, paying the price, a substitute in passive and active obedience, you end up with a strange world in which a version of Lutheranism remains, while Christianity itself vanishes.
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A Lawless Theology for a Lawless World
So, Steven Paulson continues to preach about his Outlaw God, and it is, admittedly, a good fit with the lawlessness all around us. The refrain, which hardly changes, goes something like this: The law kills and condemns, and it not only always kills and condemns, it only kills and condemns. So, there is no place for the third use of the law in the Christian life. Good works are spontaneous. How we might judge a good work good is hard to say, as love is the fulfillment of the law, the law lived out.
Now, all this has an appeal, but takes us nowhere. With the end of the law, and by this Paulson does not mean the fulfillment, but the law’s abolishment, there is no love, for love is spelled out most simply in the two tables of the law, love of God and love of neighbor. The Ten Commandments offer a good summary of the situation, but should not be viewed as a kind of code or a set of regulations. And, yes, Christians love the love. That is, they love to sing, “Lord, thee I love with all my heart.” Christians, as Christians, love to call on God’s holy name, and to go to church. So also, Christians as Christians love their mom and dad, and with that they love and defend marriage, and in doing so proclaim Christ our Bridegroom. They love to preserve and protect life, and in doing so they honor Our Father who art in Heaven, and likewise give praise to the one who made us male and female, so that offspring might come into the world and be cared for. And so on. The Christian loves the law, and the law is eternal, even as love is eternal.
But there’s more. A recent post captures the Paulson theology well. Turning again to the story of Nathan and David’s sin, he writes, “God’s all-working, almighty power is done purely by speaking, and it travels at the speed of sound.” Well, ok, I guess, as far as it goes. but does it ever go deeper? Here’s the problem. Absolution may be likened unto God’s powerful word at creation, but something else is at play. At creation, God could simply say, “Let there be light,” and there was light. At the speed of light or sound is not clear. But God could not simply say to David, “Let there be forgiveness.”
Absolution comes at the price of atonement. This is not simply a matter of God’s mercy overcoming his wrath, or his love overcoming his righteous anger. If God did not demand a price for sin, he would not show himself more loving, but simply apathetic, indifferent to the cries of Abel’s blood, and to the crimes of all humanity. Justice must be served, because God cares for those who have suffered.
What needs to happen brings us to the cross, but not just some theology of the cross, which is so often just a play of words and contradictions. But the cross is the culmination of God’s work, in which Christ fulfills the law on our behalf, and then pays the price for our sin, propitiating the wrath of God, taking upon himself our punishment. The law is not separated from the will of God, nor will it ever be. But on the cross, justice and mercy kiss. Like Abraham offered up Isaac, so also the Father places his Son upon the altar of sacrifice. Christ himself is victim and peace. This forgiveness does not come simply at the speed of sound, though that is the way it is delivered. It is earned by bloody sweat and tears, but a perfect life of obedience, by being forsaken that we might be embraced.
Ah, but a lawless God so fits our generation. Perhaps, for that reason, so many find it unnecessary to talk about the degradation of our humanity, as if it is somehow separate from Christ. As if somehow we can preach Christ’s birth without speaking out against abortion, as if by preaching marriage, we do not also speak of Christ and the church. The man of lawlessness is with us, but Christ is not that man, no outlaw God. Christ is the fulfiller of the law, and the one who gives us grace at what came at the most awful and mysterious price.
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Social Issues, Moral Issues and a Gospel that Is No Gospel
Some things need to be said. And when they are true, and when they are being denied, they need to be said over and over again. So, here goes. As Lutherans we love the gospel. But we better be clear by what we mean. Speaking of the gospel proper, we may say that it is the good news of salvation. It is for you. But it is not enough for it to be for you. There has to be a there there .The gospel comes to us in a word of absolution, but that word of absolution is not itself the gospel.
It is impossible to preach Christ without preaching about Christ. Before the absolution, there must be atonement. Peace with God is made by Christ’s active obedience. Not just passive suffering, but active obedience to the law, which is God’s will. Yes, the gospel is free, but it comes at a price.
The wrath of God is not to be equated with the hidden God, or that part of God that is somehow not touched by the atonement. The wrath of God is simply God’s reaction to injustice, to the shedding of innocent blood, and all such crimes. The opposite of wrath is not love, but indifference and apathy. Any God who is good and loving would be angry with sin, would demand that sin be punished. And that is done in the mystery of the cross, where Christ fulfills the law, not ending it, but taking its penalty so that as Christians we can see the law in all its eternal goodness. Those who would dismiss the third use of the law would dismiss love itself.
Some say, though, we need to free ourselves from what is deemed moralism, or even politics. By that they seem to mean the twin terrors of our time, the LGBTQ movement and abortion. But really, we may try to distinguish these things, but they can never be separated. Indeed, abortion and gay marriage are the sacraments of a false and competing religion. As it was for Israel and the Baals, so also today.
What could it mean to say we love the baby Jesus, but do not stand up and speak for children in the womb? What could it mean to say that we believe Christ is the bridegroom and the church the bride when we have no idea what marriage is. And no, these matters are not simply about our morality, but confessing Christ through our lives and our actions. When we deny marriage, we deny Christ as groom and God as creator. So also with those who deny the very idea of male and female. When we are silent about the unborn, we deny the Lord who made himself at home in Mary’s womb. It’s a package deal.
The temptation now is to run away. To retreat into a safe gospel, which is no gospel at all. If we confess that the Church is the body of Christ, we cannot stand idly by while fellow Christians suffer, as if their martyrdoms and sufferings do not affect us. The gospel has to be more than a slogan or a philosophy. Instead, it’s a life lived out by Christ for our sake, and now a life that we are invited into by means of Holy Baptism. There is no reason to look upon the cross of Christ, we are not then in the business of picking up whatever cross is placed upon us. And it does us no good to confess Christ if we are not doing so precisely where he is being denied, precisely where fellow Christians are suffering.
No, the gospel has to be more than words of affirmation. More than the story of a God who relents in his anger, because he wants to be a God of mercy. On the cross, justice and mercy kiss. And this life we now live, we live in Christ, which is precisely the life of the law, which is love itself. And apart from love we find ourselves apart from God.
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Once we speak of ethics, eyes glaze over. So also, the Third Use of the Law. What is there to say but that the life we live is the life of Christ? How can we speak academically about natural marriage or abortion? As if we were discussing the merits of gambling or marijuana? Of course, we can, but deeper still, it is simply the life of Christ. The life of Christ, in whose image we are created. The life of Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Marry. The life of Christ, who is the Church’s bridegroom. Tell me that the law is not eternal, and you tell me that life has no meaning, nor does love. It is not two separate words, or worlds, no dichotomy, no yes and no, but it is of a whole cloth. Please don’t tell me that God is not law, if you then don’t proceed to say that God is Love, which is nothing but the law fulfilled. Tell me nothing of the cross as a concept, if it is not the price paid for our sin. What is a gospel apart from the affirmation of these things except simply an empty and self-affirmation? To affirm the things of God is to affirm the man created in his image and vice versa. To affirm the things of God is to affirm Christ, who is the firstborn of all creation, the very image of God.
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Theology is for Proclamation, but Not Forde’s Theology
For whatever reason, Forde’s theology is having a mini-renaissance among us. Were it not so. I have my thoughts as to why it is. In a way, by denying the law’s eternality, our lives are made relative, which is helpful when society is in collapse. What began in women’s ordination and the divorce culture has led to the wholesale slaughter of the unborn and marriage which is not marriage. But if it is all the way of the law, which is not eternal, then no big deal. Supposedly like riding a bicycle without training wheel or hands. As if the law is not good, as if the fulfillment of the law is not ultimately the very definition of love.
But from the beginning Forde played with words, Lutherany words meant to bring us in. So he writes, “The favor of God does not need to be purchased by the suffering and death of God.” What nonsense. Why then did Christ die? Does not Christ call sin a debt? Or is God simply apathetic? Forde continues, “God cannot and does not need to be bought, even by Jesus.” What vile words. Forde takes that which is sacred and defiles it. His theology here is simply liberal protestantism, and is not sanctified by talk of absolution. God is not bought off, as if it were unseemly, but he is just, and cares for the suffering. Not to care for the blood Abel is not to make God more loving, but simply indifferent.
And true, as Forde says, “God out of love and mercy sent Jesus to forgive.” But that forgiveness would have a price. It wasn’t simply a word spoken from nothing, as if he could just say it without putting his money where his mouth was.
We simply must rid ourselves of Forde. Whatever may be good in what he says may be found elsewhere. And when he does say good things, he simply become all the worse for it, because he brings in his poison, striking our faith at its very foundation. Yes, Christ died for us. He paid the debt. God’s wrath is real, because love demands justice. And in the mystery of it all, Christ is abandoned and forsaken by his Father, who so loves his Son for being abandoned, and for that the Lamb is to be praised into the ages of ages, amen.
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The Law of Love: Let the Dove Fly
We might think of law and gospel as contrary forces. The law puts to death, and the gospel makes alive. And yet, in Christ, they are made one. The law is not to be thought of as a legal scheme, but as the eternal will of God. As such, Christ comes to be the telos of the law, not to put the law behind us, but to fulfill it. Christ came to do the Father’s will, but in doing so, he was not acting outside the law as if the law were alien to God, for indeed, the law perfectly expresses God’s will.
If we are to consider a topic like Anfechtung, we cannot let our discussion dissolve into complaints about a fallen world, as if that fallenness were not a result of the very sin which we commit. Unbelief is the ultimate sin against the Holy Spirit, but it is our sin, our very transgressions, that bring us into judgment in the first place. Our death is due to God’s justice, a penalty for transgression. Now, it is true, there is no way that we can climb a ladder to God. However, the fulfilling of the law does in fact play a role in our salvation, and so we speak of Christ’s active and passive obedience on our behalf. In his Baptism, Christ actively take our sin upon us, but so also does he begin for us to fulfill all righteousness.
Could Christ have simply forgiven, as some claim? No, he could not. He knew that forgiveness came with a price. Beware of any theologian who dismisses Anselm, or puts words like substitutionary in quotation marks. Indeed, our Lord died not only for us, and on our behalf, but also instead of us. He became for us a scapegoat and sacrifice. His death was a payment, not simply to the powers of this age, but in accordance with the eternal law. He offered up his sacrificial death as a payment to God for our sin.
Are we saved by some legal scheme? Of course, not. But we are saved by Christ who fulfills the law on our behalf and in our stead. What then is the law to us? Well, of course, it always condemns, in as much as we remain sinners. But in as much as we are Christians, we love the law, even as we rejoice in God’s will.
The law is then, for the Christian as Christian, nothing other than love, to love God with our heart, soul, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourselves. To drive out the law in its third use is not to bring in more gospel, but to drive out love from within our midst. To say deny Anselm, to deny that Christ’s death was a payment to God is not to enhance the gospel, but to turn it into nothing. If this is all tied to legal imagery, so be it. After all, our Lord was declared guilty that we might we declared just. Though we might say Christ was murdered, a deeper truth remains: the deepest stroke that pierced Him was the stroke that justice gave.
Yes, our salvation came at a heavy price. His death is the propitiation for our sins. God’s justice is satisfied, and because of that fact, the dove can fly. This is a theology worth proclaiming, and a truth worth teaching. No theory, but the gospel itself.
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Abortion, Marriage, and the Third Use of the Law:
Heresies have a way of sharpening our confession. They force us to think about things that matter, things we have taken for granted. So it is with abortion, gay marriage, and transgenderism.
First of all, it simply won’t do to say, “I’ll preach the gospel,” if we are not addressing these issues. Nor is it enough to say that these are simply first article issues, while the second article, that of redemption is left untouched. Gnosticism, in all of its forms, has tried to separate the God of creation from the God of salvation.
It is not coincidence that abortion rises in a culture that rejects the Christchild. Every child is sacred through Christ, the one through whom the world was created, and the one who entered the womb of Mary. Every marriage is sacred, as it is the way through which God creates, even now, and is doubly sacred by Christ, who changed water into wine, blessing marriage, and anticipating the Lord’s Supper, the eternal marriage feast of the Lamb.
As Christians, we know that every birth is the celebration of the Christchild, and every marriage a celebration of Christ our Groom. Our own life is not separate, or an add on, or a living out of a code. Christ is our life, and our lives are wrapped up in him. The third use of the law is much more than a command or injunction, but it is life itself, our living in Christ into whom we were baptized. Life matters, because it is Christ who is the life, not as an add-on, but an essence, like vine to a branches, like a body to a head. To abort the child or to distort marriage is to abort the Christchild and to divorce oneself from Christ himself.
Christ has not come to put an end to creation, but to renew it. The second article is also the first, redemption is also creation. There is a lot of work to do here, and charity is called for as we work together. But this is important, a great opportunity to renew our confession. But make no mistake, confessing life and marriage is ultimately the same as confessing Christ, the Lord of Life, and to marginalize such teaching is to marginalize Christ.
“Contempt of the word [of God] is a sin so terrible that a country and its people must finally be destroyed because of it; for since it remains unrecognized, no repentance, forgiveness, or improvement can follow. This is what happened to Jerusalem, Rome, Greece, and other kingdoms.”
The implications of such a conviction are obvious, are they not? Do we share such a biblical message — somehow, someway — or do we keep quiet?
If many in America today are increasingly afraid of Christians, many Christians are also increasingly afraid of their fellow Americans as well. Or are at least, conflict-averse to ludicrous degrees. I, for one, am guilty as charged.
Allow a few moments of extended personal confession. In recent months, I have become ever more aware of my own persistent and besetting problem with cowardice, a constant shrinking from the fight. I might admire the Apostle Paul when he speaks of being willing to go to hell for his brothers according to the flesh (Romans 9:1-5), but I truly, truly, don’t want to experience the pains of death, much less go to hell, even if for my own family! I might admire and look up to, for example, a friend from seminary who was a military chaplain, participated as a spiritual presence in the Canadian trucker protest (the “Freedom Convoy”) at great cost to himself, and who is in fact a bona fide Lutheran exorcist who recently served as a missionary in Africa. Still, that kind of sacrifice, that kind of potential risk of pain and danger, is something that I find hard to imagine involving myself in.
I am a simple husband and father whose greatest joy is passing the time with my loved ones, receiving with them all the gifts of God’s creation in joy and worship. Oh, and reading good articles and books, which I don’t get to do very much of these days! So when I pray “lead us not into temptation”, for example, I really do mean “keep the Evil one, his lies, and his evil designs as far away from me as possible!” Because I deeply fear destruction-and-death-loving entities such as the devil and his demons or even just the twisted politicians who might send me and my sons into senseless or even grossly immoral wars. To say the least, I am conflict averse – and that means when it comes to both heavenly and earthly matters.
And frankly, I don’t even like just disagreeing with people either. And here’s the rub: How wrong really is that orientation? After all, were we really made for violent conflict or even just bitter argument instead of unity, fellowship and joy? Wasn’t Dietrich Bonhoeffer right, when, seeing the dark clouds on the horizon, he felt led to confess: “[s]truggle is not the basic principle of the original creation, and a fighting attitude is therefore not a commandment by God established by the original creation”? Really, were we originally built for – were we originally intended to be – those for whom the matter of physical survival looms large? When the Apostle Paul tells us love is not self-seeking or “does not seek its own way” doesn’t this assume an overall environment of love that would, in part, make this lack of self-concern possible? To say the least, when he says:
“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God— even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (I Cor. 10:31-33).
…I can only say “Amen” to italicized portion here and in all the other places he says similar things. And not only because there is perhaps something good in that kind of orientation, and because this kind of behavior that Paul recommends is indeed appropriate at most times. Rather because, honestly, the idea of pleasing everyone in every way deeply appeals to my fallen nature.
Unlike the great Apostle Paul, I am sure that I can deeply defend my aversion to all conflict, my sheer cowardice – all under the auspices of doing God’s will – in innumerable ways. So yes, I must confess that, deep down, I know I have been a rather fearful, cowardly, and lazy fellow when it comes to recognizing and living my Luther’s hard words about, among other things, our responsibility to make clear that government must respect God’s laws…
We continue to falsely proclaim that our government need not answer to the laws of God–indeed, that anything other than official neutrality between God and Satan would be a great wickedness. https://t.co/JE1Oid4V8N
Nathan Rinne, “The Third Use of the Law, ‘Seminex,’ and Today: Fatal Denial.” A Congress on the Lutheran Confessions presented by The Association of Confessional Lutherans: National Free Conference No. 30 and The Luther Academy – Lecture Series No. 26, May 08, 2019, Bloomington, Minnesota. Talk given at the conference.
Not long ago, I heard a relatively conservative Lutheran pastor tell me that he taught his young children to cover their ears and scream whenever they heard a different pastor tell them what they should be doing after hearing the message that Jesus had put away their sins.
Huh, right? What about the Epistles?
And years ago, we know that confirmation instruction—which I think does not always end with the Gospel either—was quite intense in the LC-MS. My pastor, however, speaks about the kinds of conversations we hear among us today…
“[We have] the compelling question as to whether or not there need be any instruction in the Christian faith like that of standard confirmation classes. Must the student attend? Must lessons be completed? Must the Small Catechism be memorized? These were not even questions years ago, but now they seem to be falling more and more under a law/gospel dialetic as in: Are we not imposing something on the students (and parents!) by insisting on learned content? Are we not insisting that Christianity have a specific shape, form or mold? And are we not, by doing so, really imposing the law of God, where the gospel should predominate? (Here we can note the title of the confirmation materials used in the ELCA for quite some time: Free to Be)”
Sound familiar? How to best explain this change?
Well, let me give you a long answer in the form of this paper. In the year 1966, recent Concordia seminary graduate John Warwick Montgomery, sometimes known as “the Warlock” by both his supporters and detractors, toured districts of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, delivering a number of lectures dealing with the changing theological currents in that church body. These essays, which were soon thereafter collected in two volumes titled Crisis in Lutheran Theology, largely dealt with the topic of biblical inerrancy over and against the higher critical method of biblical interpretation, but also contained, for example, a short essay titled “The Law’s Third Use: Sanctification”. Montgomery’s essay makes clear, that “[t]he believer does what no unbeliever can: he loves God’s Law (Ps. 119; 1; 19) and desires to learn more and more of God’s will for his life through reading Holy Scripture.” He warns that in our day (again, 1966 at the time)…
“…the tendency is everywhere present to substitute vague existential and personal morality for the unchanging standards of God’s scriptural law… the Third Use of the Law – the ‘law of Christ’ (Gal. 6:2) – must be retained if our Church is to lead both its children and its adults to holy living and to the true joy that comes only when our lives are brought into accord with Divine precept and example.”
In sum, speaking of love is of little help unless that love has a specific form…
A few years later, at the 1973 Missouri Synod convention in New Orleans Louisiana, many shared Professor Martin Scharlemann’s concern about “the Lutheran character of the life and instruction going on at Concordia Seminary.” For this reason, a resolution was passed that said the Seminary Board of Control should take appropriate measures towards the president of the Seminary, John Tietjen (1928-2004), who had not only failed to address false teaching related to the authority of the Scriptures but issues of “Gospel reductionism” and “the third use of the Law” as well (this was “Resolution 3-09”). Not even one year later, the event we now simply call “Seminex” occurred, where the majority of the faculty, refusing to face what they considered a modern-day inquisition, left their positions and formed Concordia Seminary in Exile (Seminex), later called Christ Seminary.
There is no doubt that in addition to issues of theology, there were all kinds of historical, personal, cultural and political currents that came together to create “Seminex”. In order to get the best grasp currently available on that very big picture, I heartily recommend Kurt Marquart’s Anatomy of an Explosion. This paper, however, will deal very directly with what I see as the main theological issues at stake in this debate over the third use of the law, including the practical implications for the church then and now. We will begin with a brief analysis of the arguments involved in this issue and a brief look at some of the main players involved. This will be followed by the beginnings of a forceful theological critique, where I argue that although the convention of the Missouri Synod implicated Seminex professors in false teaching regarding the third use of the law, what lay beneath this denial was in fact an overall hostility towards the law of God period, including the natural order of creation, and that this hostility in all likelihood goes hand in hand with a denial of the Bible as the Word of God as well. Near the end of the paper, I will also argue that this exact same problem remains with us today, and is, in fact, not far from any one of us.
Let us first take a look at how the work of theologians from the past, particularly Werner Elert with his own teaching of the law of God, paved the way for this tacit denial….
“Only an inebriated mole would claim that the [Lutheran Church] Missouri Synod is not in theological ferment.” — John Warwick Montgomery, in 1966.
Seminex and the Third Use of the Law Highlights
I am going to start with the event of Seminex and work backwards. Actually, I’ll do better than that. I’ll start with a good chunk of relatively contemporary words (from 2004) from one Edward Schroeder, one of the major representatives of the Seminex contingent, as he reflected back on his earliest days as a theology student. Here are some rather salacious tidbits (for some of us at least) about his days at seminary in the 1950s, and how what he experienced there led directly to Seminex:
In the early 1950s in the Luth. Church-Missouri Synod [LCMS] Jaroslav Pelikan, young professor at Concordia Seminary (St. Louis), was recommending to us students that if we wished to escape Missouri’s “hang-up” with Verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures, we should go to Erlangen and study under Elert. Elert’s 2 volume “Morphologie des Luthertums” [literally: The Morphology of Lutheranism], was “epoch-making”–he said–with its presentation of the “Evangelischer Ansatz” [“Gospel-grounding”] for Lutheran confessional theology.
So three of us students “went to Erlangen” for the academic year 1952-53. Bob Schultz, already graduated from Concordia, became Elert’s doctoral candidate. Baepler and I were only half-way through Concordia, but had finagled scholarships to go to Germany for the year. Elert died before Schultz finished his work. He attended Elert’s funeral. Elert’s colleague, Paul Althaus, took over as his “Doktorvater.” Bob’s dissertation (written in German, of course) was a flat-out Elertian theme: “Law and Gospel in Lutheran Theology in the 19th Century.” It was published by Luthersiches Verlagshaus.
Baepler and I were there only for the “Sommersemester” ’53. We all enrolled for Elert’s lectures and seminar. He even invited the three of us over for Kaffeeklatsch one Sunday afternoon, since he appreciated that the pioneer of the Missouri Synod, C.F.W. Walther, had been faithful to law/gospel Lutheranism and had even written a book by that title. At that Kaffeeklatsch Elert agreed to write an article for our Concordia Seminary student theological journal, “The Seminarian”–I can still hear him saying, “Das tue ich!”–which was then published when Dick and I returned to St. Louis. Its title: “Lutheranism and World History.” Most likely it is the one and only Elert article that first appeared in English–and probably never in German. He wrote it, of course, in German and we translated it. It was posted 6 years ago as Thursday Theology #29 in the first year of this enterprise. [If interested GO to the Crossings webpage (www.crossings.org) and click on Thursday Theology, December 10, 1998.]
By 1957 all three of us were at Valparaiso University, and were teaching what we had learned, not only to V.U. students, but to the wider Missouri Synod. With Bob Bertram as dept. chair and Gottfried Krodel added to the staff later on, law/gospel Lutheranism became the trademark of “Valparaiso Theology.” So there were 5 of us in one place at one time. We encountered conflict within Missouri, of course, with our teaching and writing. Verbal inspiration and “Evangelischer Ansatz” were not compatible.
This Elertian sort of Confessional Lutheranism, though hardly ever acknowledged as such, was also near the center of the eventual explosion in Missouri in 1973-74 that took place at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and then created “Concordia Seminary in Exile, a.k.a. Seminex. That is, of course, one man’s opinion. Bertram and I were then on the faculty at Concordia–and “Elertian” confessional Lutheranism, already at home there (but hardly majority opinion), got additional support.
The fuse for the explosion was the LCMS national convention in 1973. By a 55% to 45% vote the convention declared the “faculty majority” [45 of the 50 professors at Concordia Seminary] to be “false teachers.” Three false teachings were specified. Two of the three were actually Elert’s own “heresies,” although he was never named. One heresy of the Concordia faculty was called “Gospel-reductionism.” In nickel words: grounding the Bible’s authority on the Gospel itself [ = Elert’s Evangelischer Ansatz] and not on verbal inspiration. The second heresy was on the so-called “third use of God’s law,” a constant hot potato among Lutherans ever since the 16th century. Our “false teaching” on the law’s “third use” was that we opted for Elert’s Gospel-grounded interpretation and not the one the LCMS had supposedly “always” taught.
In his 1972 article on the topic, “Law-Gospel Reductionism in the History of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod.” Schroeder claimed that any who subscribed to the Lutheran Confessions “would hardly take umbrage at anyone using the centrality of the Gospel, even ‘reducing’ issues to Gospel or not-the-Gospel, as his Lutheran hermeneutical key for interpreting the Bible.”
While Schroeder’s description here of the issue basically describes most of those who were allied with him, these “Law-Gospel reductionists,” or “Gospel reductionists” for short, varied somewhat in how they saw the law applying in the Christian life. bLutheran educator Stephen Schmidt, for example, went so far to say that “The Ten Commandments can serve as no guide for Lutheran morality. The law does not serve a gospel function; it can only accuse…” Valparaiso deaconess and professor Gwen Saylor said, “Good works are done by the new person on the basis of faith; there are no objective criteria for goodness…” Robert J. Hoyer, writing in Valparaiso’s Cresset, stated that with the Law’s only purpose being condemnation of rebellious man, “[t]he ethical use of the Law is that rebellion [of man].”
The main thing to note here is the radical distinction made, following Elert, between the old age that is passing away and age to come – the old vs. new creation – a distinction that can certainly be understood in a proper way! For them however, the law is understood in very existentialist terms, as that which by its nature only coerces, accuses, and finally condemns the sinner. The Gospel then created a brand new life of freedom, with the Holy Spirit taking over in leading the Christian. While the law, as understood above, might continue to be needed, any “third use of the law”, where the Christian would be exhorted to live in the law – particularly after receiving Christ’s forgiveness, life and salvation – was decidedly left behind.
Most of these folks would probably have readily signed on to dictum of the late Lutheran theologian Gerhard Forde: “sanctification is just getting used to justification”. And in like fashion, they could have just as easily said that “appreciating the Bible rightly is just getting used to justification”. Summing up the debate as he saw it at the time, Dr. David Scaer put it this way:
“The position of Dr. Preus is that the Scriptures are the cognitive principle in theology, for example, they tell us about Christ. Therefore everything taught in the church must be derived from the Scriptures and ultimately serve Jesus Christ. The position of Drs. [Paul] Bretscher, [Edward] Schroeder, and [Robert] Schultz is that the gospel is the basis of theology and whatever is not contrary to the gospel is permissible in the church. The first position has been labeled legalistic and Calvinistic and the second, gospel reductionism…
In practice, as experience shows, nothing is found contrary to the Gospel…”
Men like David Scaer and Kurt Marquart did not deny that persons often came to faith in Christ without first believing that the whole Bible was God’s word. The point however, was that a distinction needs to be made between such psychological and existential realities and the church’s formal theology, created with the Word of God that has been given to them. And in like fashion, I do not deny that the former LC-MS theologian Matthew Becker is correct when he argues that Elert wanted his ethic to be “grounded in the Decalogue, natural law, the orders of creation, and the gospel” or that he desires to convey that “the law contains both an unchanging element, namely, ‘the eternal will of God’(FCEp. VI, 6), and a transitory/historical element that is affected by the natural and historical orderings/relationships which situate and define human life.”
At the same time, given Elert’s debts to first theologian of the “Erlangen school”, the man Karl Barth considered the greatest “conservative” theologian of the 19th century, Johannes von Hofmann, I am not sure how much any of that matters. Von Hofmann removed the foundations for assertions about law and gospel by denying the Bible was the Word of God, and also, as a student of Hegel, eagerly spoke of a “historical record of God’s communion with humanity” without the baggage of things like “timeless doctrines”. In short then, lots of doctrinal and ethical change, in a variety of ways, is now always a live option. The locus of authority has clearly shifted from the Bible to elsewhere, and however that authority may be construed, it is anything but stable (and yet, of course, we will always assert something, good or not, over and against something else). This is why precisely why Edward Schroeder could tell J.A.O. Preus God’s “immutable will” had to do with the “God’s activity of judging and sentencing sinners that goes on and on,” and not the idea that “God’s rules and activities never change.”
And in Elert’s slim volume Law and Gospel, translated by Edward Schroeder and published by Fortress Press in 1967, we are treated to quite a palette of, I would say, “lawless” ideas enabling “Schwärmeristic” evolution. Here, Elert shows his deference to the idea that Genesis is a myth, going so far to assert that “the same natural law which secures our earthly life also ensures the inevitability of our death[!]”
The Ten Commandments are downplayed, as we cannot get from them “the desired information on all the practical questions of our life” as any “practical conclusions which we would draw form them would still be human conclusions, burdened with the same dubious character as all human decisions.” In our Christian lives, it is always and only the case that “[e]ither the law or the gospel is the end of God’s ways with me, but not both,” for they “are as opposed to one another as death and life”. Attempting further to illustrate that law and promise are “irreconcilably opposed to one another,” he claims that Jesus’ accusers and judges were those “faithful to the law” and commit “a lawful action” This illustrates most fully the curse of “nomological”, that is “lawful existence” that only the cross can reveal… the law itself strikes Jesus down. It, also, we are told, “obscures the promise, conflicts with it, and prevents man from believing it” and “seduces man to take cover behind it”. Finally, it is “in irreconcilable opposition to the forgiveness of Christ,” and demands retribution.The law of God is oppression and wrath, and seemingly little else.
As Ken Schurb has put it “This ‘law’ in the human Urerlebnis [note: “primal experience”] consisted not in the Decalogue as such, but rather in ‘whatever calls us into question before God.’ Seen thus, the law must be retribution. It oppresses human beings, in the nature of the case.” At this point, you can see that the foundations of the Seminex theology more or less indicate that peculiar things are going on with the law – perhaps even a denial of its true nature… Now, however, let’s talk more specifically about exactly what happened because of these faulty foundations… Not just with the third use of the law, but the second and first use as well! We’ll go “3, 2, 1…”
Luther, losing his youthful edge?: Christ the Law no longer terrifies us with death and hell but has become our kind friend and companion… (Weimar: Hermann Boehlau, 1910), X, I, 467.
3… – Denial of the Third Use of the Law
To begin this section, we need to ask just what, really, the third use of the law is. I was recently taken aback by the very understandable and simple claim offered by Matthew Garnett that the law’s third use is that “[it] teaches us how God created us to live”. It in fact reminded me of a paper titled the “The Third Use of the Law in Light of Creation and the Fall,” where the theologian Piotr Malysz points out that the Lutheran Formula of Concord, in its discussion of the controversial topic, does not explicitly say why “God… wills that believers do good works, why he should reward them with temporal blessings, and why the works of the Law should be an indication of salvation.”
Malysz’s paper gives an answer to these questions, and he begins by starting with the right question: what can best explain the admonitions of the Apostle Paul, which he says are not only “staggering” in their “richness of expression,” but are “quite similar to, not to say identical with…the demands of the law”? “Live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (Eph 4:1), be “imitators of God,” and live “a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 5:1-2) – what does this mean? In a sense, we might think the answer is obvious: God has fulfilled the demands of the law for us in Christ, and this is our thankful response.
At the same time, due to controversies that occur here, we must take matters further, and Malysz helps us do just this. He states, for example, that other New Testament admonitions point to a “return to a pre-fall creation.”: “[God’s l]aw,” he says, “as a meaningful reflection of creation’s, structure, though it is misinterpreted by the sinner, remains at its foundation an expression of God’s love, the same love that has freely brought creation into being and shared itself with the creator.” “[A]ll creation,” he says “is now in labor pains as love is being restored into the fabric or our being, as the Law again becomes the essence of our humanity instead of an externally controlling tyrant (Jer 31:33-34).
I agree with everything that Garnett and Malysz say here—thinking that this is extremely helpful background and puts our issue into the proper context—and yet, this is not where I would go when it comes to defining the third use of the law. Instead, for that, I go to the end of the Epitome, or summary, of the article in the Formula of Concord, where it explicitly speaks about: “The Principal Question In This Controversy”. Let’s have a look:
Since the Law was given to men for three reasons: first, that thereby outward discipline might be maintained against wild, disobedient men [and that wild and intractable men might be restrained, as though by certain bars]; secondly, that men thereby may be led to the knowledge of their sins;thirdly, that after they are regenerate and [much of] the flesh notwithstanding cleaves to them, they might on this account have a fixed rule according to which they are to regulate and direct their whole life, a dissension has occurred between some few theologians concerning the third use of the Law, namely, whether it is to be urged or not upon regenerate Christians. The one side has said, Yea; the other, Nay. (emphasis mine)
So what I do not think should be controversial is that right here, in the first words spoken about this issue in the Formula of Concord, we learn that the question is whether or not the Law is to be urged upon “regenerate” Christians. Note first of all, that the issue is not whether or not the law should continue to lead Christians to the knowledge of their sins or kill the Christian’s “old man”, but whether, after conversion, they should be given a “fixed rule” by “which they are to regulate and direct their whole life”. Further, also note that the issue here is not whether the Holy Spirit should be doing this, or whether the believer should be applying the law to himself (i.e. his “old Adam”), even if this is most certainly the case as well. The issue is whether or not Christians should “do this” to other Christians.
As we see from men like Schroeder, Bertram, and Schulz, that in itself is an issue – they adamantly refuse to see this as a use of the law, although they nevertheless they cannot totally avoid what is in the biblical text. Therefore they speak instead of “grace imperatives,” “Gospel imperatives,” “the ‘divine indicative’ of God’s grace,” or the “second use of the Gospel” (Christ’s example) – and talking only about the sufficiency of the new impulses created in the believer. Strangely, in their writings they claim C.F.W. Walther—with his The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel—as one of their allies, when in fact, Walther often spoke like this about what he acknowledged was the law:
“…all true Christians are of such a nature that one can accomplish all kinds of things in them through urgent exhortation. So many preachers accomplish so little in bringing Christians to good works or bringing them away from sinful living because they do not exhort, but rather demand, command, threaten and rebuke. They do not suspect what a powerful weapon they have but do not use. Upright Christians, even if burdened with various weaknesses, do not want to reject God’s word. They want to live for Him Who died for them. They no longer want to serve sin, the world, and the devil. They want to be completely renewed according to the image of God. If they hear in the exhorting preacher the voice of their gracious God, they neither can nor want to oppose it.
I admit that Walther’s words might sound a bit idealistic, but just imagine how they might fall on the ears of a parishioner who held this view:
[T]he Ten Commandments are still in force and do concern us Christians so far as obedience to them is concerned. For the righteousness demanded by the Law is fulfilled in the believers through the grace and the assistance of the Holy Spirit, whom they receive. Thus all the admonitions of the prophets in the OT, as well as of Christ and the apostles in the NT, concerning a godly life, are excellent sermons on, and expositions of, the Ten Commandments…
That is Luther, who evidently understood where Walther was coming from. Consider also these words, also from his 1537 sermons on John’s Gospel:
Formerly I found that I had no delight in the Law. But now I discover that the Law is precious and good, that it was given to me for my life; and now it is pleasing to me. Formerly, it told me what to do; now I am beginning to conform to its requests, so that now I praise, laud, and serve God. This I do through Christ, because I believe in Him, The Holy Spirit comes into my heart and engenders a spirit in me that delights in His words even when He chastises me and subjects me to cross and temptation.
It is quotes like these—and there are a great many—that explain why I am going to define the third use of the Law very simply as “exhorting and encouraging Christians to do God’s law.” What is absolutely critical in this, is that we—preachers and laypersons—must always keep in the forefront, in all of our speaking and doing, that the Gospel is the only power and motivation for such action. The Christian can only eagerly and unhesitatingly say “Amen” to the beauty of God’s law when presented it because of the hold Christ and His loving work have on them.
Unlike men like Schroeder and Bertram, some conservative Lutherans don’t have any trouble speaking about how Christians continue to need the law, but they do take issue with the way I have portrayed the third use of the law. Concerned about the ongoing issues that remain with our sinful nature, they will simply repeat again and again that the “law only accuses” and that Christians should not “domesticate” the law so as to make it “do-able”. For them—rightly noting that the law is never “neutral,” “harmless,” or “just information,” to the Christian—the question is whether or not the third use is just the “first use” for Christians, i.e. the threat of force to restrain sin.
In a sense, it is not, because the Apostle Paul really does talk about the law as if Christians should know, and live, better (see I Tim 1:9) On the other hand, of course it is, because it is, after all, the same law in its essence (the “first use” just uses carrots and sticks exclusively to deal with unrighteousness), and Piotr Malysz, as we have seen, also gives us more help in seeing that.
The main point for them however, is that once you have put someone’s sins away—or perhaps just their sin nature without mentioning concrete sins—should you ever follow-up with the law? They say: “What would be the point? After all, in order to convict someone of their sins, they already had to be instructed in the law, right? Why do you then need to instruct them again, after they have been freed in Christ?”
The simple answer to the question is this: because we follow the example of men like the Apostle Paul, who explicitly tells us to imitate him as he does Christ. The problem, however, has to do with the fact that modern confessional Lutherans are knee-deep in denial about what the law is, and that is the issue that needs to be tackled in our next section. 3, 2…
Loving that dialogue.
2… – Denial of the Second Use of the Law: Seeking “Dialogue” with God
Getting back to Seminex for a minute, according to Kurt Marquart, “[Seminex professor Edgar] Krentz had no illusions about the heart of the problem: ‘Historical criticism produces only probable results. It relativizes everything. But faith needs certainty.’” For the historical critics, such “certainty” is nonsensically obtained in the “Gospel” alone, apart from what they see as the many historically uncertainties surrounding Scripture (including the facts of the Gospel acts). Marquart effectively sums up the core issue with Seminex here, saying that Missouri self-styled “moderates” embraced the Heidelberg professor Edmund Schlink in his view “that the Gospel is the norm in Scripture and Scripture is the norm for the sake of the Gospel’”. Since the believer’s existential experience of the Gospel is presumably solid enough, one need not worry about things like Scriptural infallibility and inerrancy. Hence, “Gospel reductionism”.
I would venture to say that most pastors in the LC-MS, for example, see the problems with this position. As Marquart put it in his very practical way, “A million critical assertions of ‘This is most likely true’ do not add up to one single, simple catechismal confession: ‘This is most certainly true!’”. Surely, however, we would be going too far to insist that at the root of Seminex was a denial of the second use of the law! Didn’t they insist, at least during key moments in the fray, that they believed God’s Ten Commandments were to be upheld?
Well, as I said above, it doesn’t matter. As we have seen above, they followed in the train of men like von Hoffman, Haikola, Elert, and Forde, and those men all either denied that God’s law was eternal, or did not clearly assert that it was. We have already seen above some of the bizarre things that Elert said about God’s law. Whatever Elert ultimately believed about the Ten Commandments, persons like Schroeder insisted that the key is that he points us to “Christ’s Lordship,” and to “what the indwelling Spirit with His imperatives of grace prompts [those connected to Christ by faith] to do.” How could men like Schroeder do otherwise than to downplay things like the Ten Commandments, given that the Bible is not the definitive word of God which can provide any such “fixed rule” that might apply trans-historically and trans-culturally? That it might provide some semblance of what we could call a “heavenly culture”?
That said, that was then, this is now, right? We are better off now, right? Surely, relatively conservative ELCA or NALC Lutherans like Gerhard Forde, James Nestingen, Stephen Paulson, and Mark Mattes do no such thing to erode the certainty of faith through their law and gospel approach, right?
Again, no…. I think Seminex is just the classic example of Satan shooting for too much, too fast. This time around? Probably not. Christian News has lost its influence and not just its editor. And nothing is as obvious this time around. Large doses of poison are already in the bloodstream, and many, many even likely here, have the infection. Even the great LC-MS champion of the third use of the law, Scott Murray, largely “goes with the flow” produced by “Radical Lutherans” and their sympathizers, who in turn may well express sympathy for some of the most liberal elements in the ELCA. For his own part, Murray will, for example, quote Mattes admitting that Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms show “believers… can look at the law as informative, and not solely accusing,” and then, allow this kind of obvious admission to take an increasingly important role in overall theological thinking.
What do I mean? For Murray, the uses of the law, including the third use of the law, no longer have anything to do with humans beings using the law in accordance with God’s will—as stated in the Epitome—but the issue is rather how the law is received. Therefore, the matter of the law’s third use is not something having to do with our activity, something about urging the content of the law, but it is merely about a “third way” the law—however conceived?—is received. Again, Murray himself is undoubtedly concerned about the law being “a fixed rule,” but the issue, for him, is definitely not in any sense the way the law is to be used by human beings,but what the law does. So Murray contends that “‘use’ means reception. Its function revolves around how it is received, not how it is preached or ‘used.’”
I hope you are staying with me here: I submit this plays right into the hands of those who follow in Elert and Forde’s train.
The absolute core issue, as briefly touched on in my paper, “Paradise Regained,” is that Adam and Eve did not find God’s commandment, God’s law, coercive or threatening. Neither, of course, did our Lord as He “grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men”. The point is that the law of God cannot and must not be defined primarily in the sense of coercion (or wrath), as Werner Elert (and of course Gehard Forde) insists that it be: “In the place of the coercive order of the law (and every law is coercive since it entails compulsion) there now prevails between us and God the freedom of the children of God (Gal. 3:23-4:7).” And if we focus on what the Law does in us, and start thinking this is primarily how it should be defined, we will, focused on ourselves, tend to see it as that which brings wrath and coerces us.
Already now, for the Gospel Reductionist or the Radical Lutheran purists, all attempts to teach the law of God are seen as forms of wrath and coercion, because that is the only way the law of God is understood to exist. It does wrath and coercion in human beings.
This creates a big conflict, doesn’t it? In order to illustrate the divide here, I’m going to go back to another great quote from Matthew Garnett, whose In Layman’s Terms podcast I heartily recommend. Regarding this issue of whether or not the regenerate Christian needs the law, he says, very simply: “I’m hard pressed to find a passage of Scripture or anything in our Confessions where the knowledge/ information concerning the Law is downloaded to us in our baptism. Don’t we still need to learn God’s law?”
Indeed. And here we must respond, that while the law might always in some sense accuse—or, more technically, the usus didacticus (instructive use of the law) is always the usus elenchticus (accusatory use of the law)—it commands what is good for our good and the good of others. It especially does not always coerce, or, at the very least, is not experienced as coercion (since we are so concerned to speak about what the law does and not what it is). Ideally, in us more and more, it should not be experienced as coercion.
Of particular interest here is not only the fact that God created the world the way He did to run according to certain set limits—where we want to be “in the groove” as Concordia Seminary prof. Joel Biermann says—but also that he created certain lasting “orders of creation” as well. As we know all too well today, the world not only finds things like the Ten Commandments oppressive, but also ideas like the “orders of creation.” This of course, includes the idea that male and female are distinct orders created by God, and that children are the blessed fruit of their marital union. It also includes, of course, the idea that men and women have complementary roles, including the very popular notion (yes, I jest) that man is the head of the woman (see I Cor. 11:3) and woman his “helpmeet”.
Some of the arguments for the “orders of creation” are bad and unbiblical arguments. During World War II, Werner Elert’s colleague Paul Althaus famously argued in ways he should not have regarding the “German race”. That said, most all of the arguments against the “orders of creation” have nothing to commend them. Again, Edward Schroder comes into play here, as he was eager to speak of “The Mutability of the Orders of Creation” – from which he jumped into arguments for the ordination of women into the pastoral office (later on he made the same arguments about ordaining those involved in stable gay unions). Interestingly, Schroeder again found Werner Elert’s theology amenable to his own efforts as he argued for a concept of “God’s ordering” (he preferred this phrase as opposed to the “orders of creation”) that was not so much like a “traffic cop,” where issues of hierarchy as well as moral rules are involved, but more akin to the order found in a “baseball game,” where all the positions and rules are seen as existing on a more equal basis.
Things get really interesting when we see how a modern day follower of Elert and Forde, Nicholas Hopman, handles the idea of God’s law. Writing at the Cresset, Hopman is more than happy to use the analogy of traffic rules when speaking about the Ten Commandments, where he explains that something like the third commandment, regarding Sabbath keeping, underscores the provisional nature of God’s commandments. Hopman is happy to give some credit to the law, noting that we must in some sense remain “law people” because if we do not, we will do damage to our bodies… In saying this he invokes the importance of good order and the Golden Rule, which he then equates with the human convention of traffic lights and laws (something for which, I note, there may well be an alternative, or divergent, solution).
Do you see what happens here? With illustrations like these, which certainly are helpful in conveying some true ideas, the emphasis is nevertheless no longer on how God freely made His creation to function a certain way and for our good, but there now is more “freedom” regarding how to think about God’s law—and what freedom in Christ “really means”. In short, the impression is given – at least by phrases and illustrations like these – that the law is perhaps not so eternal after all. Even if many of these theologians also do not necessarily want to introduce all manner of moral license. In any case, it does not help matters when Hopman goes on to say: “[our] freedom includes freedom from the law”, and, citing Vitor Westhelle, adds, “This freedom allows us to engage in a dialogue with the law.”
Of course “dialogue” with the law is exactly the thing sinful man wants – at least, that’s better than having a King. For he never sees limits and constraints driven by the love which created all, but rather coercion and the desire of one to lord it over the other!
Which, by the way, many might think I am clearly doing with this paper! In any case, back to Seminex again for a moment – you know most all of them gave the impression they were against any discipline in their church, right? You know, even if it is very uncomfortable to do so, we really should talk more about this matter of discipline.
For the fact of the matter is that the denials go much deeper yet… 3, 2, 1…
No discipline. The Church lusting after the world:“[O]ne’s confidence is scarcely strengthened in certain would-be leaders and ‘pioneers’ who gleefully chase after almost every new theological miniskirt that chances along…” — Horace Hummel
1… – Denial of the First use of the Law: the Denial of Church Discipline
In this section, we will build off of what we talked about above, and speak to the matter of church discipline. And here, I submit we need to keep in mind the wider context of discipline, which certainly can and should be understood more broadly in the context of education. And here, we must keep in mind that all education clearly cannot be seen as a form of coercion.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that coercion is key when it comes to the first use of the law. And here, for our purposes today, is the crux of the matter: in order to get to the point where one can effectively use the first use of the law in a church context, as regards church discipline—where curbs are undoubtedly going to be present for both the first and second tables of the law—one will also, leading up to this, use the third use of the law.
In other words, with pastoral concern in mind, one will try to guide the erring consciences of Christians in, as they say, “an evangelical manner”. Truly, one does not even want to think about coercion or force, for one really just wants the other to say “Amen!” to the concerns about truth that are expressed!As we saw above, Walther attempted to put this into practice in that quote from his excellent book chapter “The Requirements of Public preaching” in his Pastoral Theology, which was used to train most all of the LC-MS pastors in the nineteenth century.
If one says, “No I won’t use the law that way,” in the context of preaching or teaching then I submit that they will probably not do so in church discipline either… which also means you won’t really use the first use of the law in the church either… (now, the idea that the first use of the law is not really for Christians becomes convenient for them!)
So, what is the answer? To talk about that, we need to get into the weeds a bit again…
In the Old Testament the first use of the law was something that God’s assembly took part in in a big way, at times acting as judge, jury, and sometimes, executioner as well. This is because in the Old Testament there was nothing like the distinction which Jesus made between His people and worldly governments, with His teaching that we should “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and God’s what is God’s”. In the New Testament, God’s people are primarily understood as a spiritual people that extends beyond particular places and times, and this, of course, prompts Luther’s treasured distinction between the “two kingdoms”. The “kingdom of the right” is primarily identified with Christ’s church, which is a spiritual entity that reigns by God’s word and sacraments, and especially by God’s word of Gospel. On the other hand, the “kingdom of the left” is primarily identified with worldly or secular authorities, and these, using reason and the sword, or force, will also administer, to a greater or lesser extent, God’s law in order to keep order and curb gross outbursts of human sin.
At the same time however, there is also a sense in which God’s holy church also has a “Kingdom of the Left” aspect. The Church rules primarily with the Gospel, but Christ’s ministers are also to lead when it comes to discipline in accordance with the Word of God, in conformity with the council that He has given us in the Scriptures though His Holy Apostles. This, of course, is the matter of church discipline, and in the case of disciplining ministers of the Word, doctrinal discipline.
In the Lutheran Confessional writings, Martin Luther wrote that proper excommunication “excludes those who are manifest and impenitent sinners from the sacrament and other fellowship of the church until they mend their ways and avoid sin.” For the Lutherans, the goal of excommunication was like that of the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians, chapter 5: that such impenitent sinners be “absolve[d]… if they are converted and ask for absolution.” Presupposed, of course (or this should be the case!) is a loving heart that longs for reconciliation with the lost coin, lost sheep, and lost son (Luke 15). And, make no mistake about it, when it comes to granting mercy and grace, the church imitates her Lord. As Hebrews 4:15 says: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin…” (emphasis mine). In practice, this means that the church should humbly (see Gal. 6:1) call sin “sin”, make it easy for the guilty to confess, and keep appropriate consequences, while speaking well of those brothers and sisters in Christ who repent.
The response of many during the Seminex days was to insist on the point that agreement in the Gospel was enough and that the government of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod was only meant to function as an “advisory body” after all. “Synod isn’t church!” they said. After all, don’t congregations matter?
Such arguments however, fall down in light of the fact that the Synod’s original Constitution upholds the Lutheran Confession, which assumes the authority of the Scriptures as God’s Word, and makes provision for the discipline of its members at the Synodical level. What sense does it make to say, on the one hand, that everything you do is based on the Bible as God’s written word, and then to deny that it is and to expect no discipline when you do not freely and willingly remove yourself, being truthful about what you not only believe, but teach and confess? No wonder they do not like the third use of the law!
In any case, their position is clearly anti-historical not to mention unethical, and I, personally, have difficulty understanding how they could have ever thought otherwise. Daniel Preus has helpfully cataloged some incidents of discipline that occurred at the Synodical level in the 19th century in his paper “Church Discipline in Early Missouri and Lutheran Identity”. Walther’s Pastoral Theology also has a number of short chapters providing detailed advice about how to handle the matters within the congregation and beyond. Discussing passages in I Cor. 6:1-8 and I Tim. 5:20, passages which discuss publicly rebuking congregational members (and not expecting repentance!) instead of formally excommunicating them, Walther states that if these passages are not observed, “church discipline may be overdone, and, contrary to the Gospel, the whole life of the congregation may be turned into a life of constant discipline, [a life] under the Law”.
True enough! And going right along with this, does anyone take pleasure in the activity of church or doctrinal discipline – or at least believe they should take pleasure in it? Still, how can the church do without it? What Horace Hummel said during the doctrinal turmoil of those days cannot be denied:
“The LCA is a perfect example of what happens when one abandons all possible thought of discipline, refuses to state what is being rejected as well, and appeals to the ‘adequacy of the historic Confessions’ or simply to ‘Gospel’: these become code words for anything goes; in practice anything contrary to the Gospel simply will never be found.”
Again, ultimately, this whole issue of the third use of the law and Seminex is about the matter of the validity of authority in the Scriptures, and with this authority in the church and church discipline. We might think that it is good and right and salutary for parents to do their best to administer discipline in the home, but the church? God no. You can’t trust those leaders. My point is this: So what? So what if you can’t? That doesn’t mean that those who are in positions of authority should not do everything in their power to rule well, to judge rightly, to correct and admonish, and if need be excommunicate. This should be par for the course. Even in the Missouri Synod, with its “advisory body” nature and all. Obviously, there must be a way to discipline, excommunicate, etc.
A final concern in this section that I want to address has to do with Matthew Becker’s complaint that, with the LC-MS and its concerns about doctrinal discipline, it seems doctrine is turned into law. Here is how I would respond. The fact of the matter is that all doctrine, law and gospel, is life. In one sense we simply receive the Gospel, as this is our passive righteousness before God. That said, in another sense we are also commanded to believe the Gospel, and this, according to our new nature, we gladly do. We don’t just receive the Gospel, but we eagerly, by God’s grace, pursue and take it.
Because, again, there is give and take in the creation God has made. Therefore, I would put matters this way: it is only through the Gospel that we can live not under, but in, the Law. This, believe it or not, is how Scripture praises works in “such a way as not to remove the free promise”. Without some understanding like this, you cannot be sure the Gospel you preach is really the Gospel. Law definitely does not have the last word, but it is always the context in which the “last word” occurs.
This is the context in which we incessantly focus on the doctrine of justification – for ourselves, those precious to us, and beyond.
Legalist!
Surprise! The Same Problems Exist Today
What, around the time of Seminex, was the main concern about the theology of Werner Elert, whose influence we have discussed today?
In 1972, David Scaer’s main critique of Elert was that his “’Law-Gospel’ principle hung suspended in theological thin air” based as it was on culture and existential experience instead of Scripture as its ground. In his book about the anatomy of the Seminex explosion, Kurt Marquart quotes the more conservative Erlangen theologian Herman Sasses: “Sasse’s judgment of Elert was: ‘There are excellent paragraphs in Elert’s Dogmatics. But his doctrine on Holy Scripture is terribly weak.’” What I would like to point out briefly is that the admission of Seminex professor Edgar Krentz about the “historical-critical method”—namely that it “tends to freedom from authority—might just have something to do with hostility to God, and hence His law as well. Maybe, in the “Battle for the Bible,” the whole point was that old Adam wanted law and gospel to be controlled by, to submit to, historical criticism? All “neutrality” here is an illusion, for our reason is, by nature, at war with God.
In close competition with Paul’s words in Romans 1, the Psalmist perhaps summed it up the best, in a passage whose relevance increases daily:
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, 3 “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2)
Yes, indeed, “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?”
The ultimate problem we have with the law of God is anyone using it on us. Phrases I’ve seen used by seemingly conservative Lutheran theologians:
God’s law is not a window through which we inspect other people’s sins, but a mirror to reveal our own
You may use your conscience to guide your behavior. You may not use your conscience to guide my behavior
For Luther, the Old and New Adam, or Eve, are clearly bound in a life and death struggle within each person
Note how in that last one how even the fact that Christians are saints and sinners at the same time is being abused, as a theology is now emerging which is applying it to human beings in general. We have some big problems here…
What to do? Fight. In the Spirit, and Recognize the Role of Flesh and Blood
First of all, the battle is internal, in all of us.
We who are Scripture-believing Confessional Lutherans now have it in our DNA to put up with the second use of the law. We even know that this condemnation is not just vs. abstract sinners, but gets very concrete: God even demands we be right internally through and through, not hating, lusting, or coveting. What really grates on us though—all of us at this or that time!—is another human being attempting to actually guide us. Trying to correct us. Even gently. That, after all, means that they want to change our behavior, either through persuasive appeals (3rd use of the law) or worse, even coercion (1st use of the law).
And, going along with this first battle, I imagine most of us, at least every now and then, find ourselves doubting and despising God’s word. Yes, it is inerrant, but how much do you read it? And just how easily can skepticism of the Scriptures as God’s very word be disentangled from hostility towards Him and His law? Not too easily, I suggest! In any case, tying this in with the other Seminex battle yet again, when a method can be established that can question any and all biblical facts, this makes it easier to take this approach towards God’s law as well.
And what is the other battle we must face? We who know we are sinners and struggle with just this kind of stuff too: with doubt, skepticism, and even hatred of God’s Holy Word?
The other battle is in the church.
I will tell you what many opposing this message will say… “Who cares?”
After all, chances are that you, being here at this conference today, are a legalist. You have all kinds of bad habits that show you do not really know Jesus, or at least, do not know Him well.
Do you just want to learn how to be a better father and mother, husband and wife, God’s way? That’s legalism! Or worse, do you believe, full stop, that God expects you, through the power of His Holy Spirit given you in the Gospel of free grace, to fulfill His law? Do you think that God is striving for persons who take utter delight in direction, even commands, that result in His and our pleasure? Even if you have doubts about it is this something you believe you should believe – and do so with increasing ferocity? When Luther said that one can’t be a Christian if one doesn’t make assertions, do you think that that statement applies to this topic?
More so, do you think this is something that pastors in our Synod – nay, the Church of Christ – should believe? And that if they don’t believe this, they should certainly not be pastors? Should not teach in the church? If they do not believe and confess that God expects Christians to fulfill His law, do you think that they should be removed by church authorities?
If this is you, the follower of Werner Elert or Gerhard Forde may well conclude you have abandoned the Gospel. You are a simply a legalist just like that awful Synodical Conference. Some with influential voices will oppose you, carrying on the mantle of true Lutheranism, and will make sure that the Reformation continues. Roman Pelagianism, semi-Pelagianism – this Judaizing legalism – must not get a foothold. The choice, here, I am sorry to say, appears stark.
I am afraid many minds, many influential minds, are made up. It doesn’t matter how much you insist you sin against all of God’s commandments and are saved by and love the Gospel. How much you long to speak only of Christ’s grace and mercy to those consciences terrified by the Law of God. They will not believe you, or at least trust you: you, after all, are a legalist.
This, basically, sums up the crux of my topic for today. This, in a nutshell, is the crux of the issue when we speak not only of Seminex and the third use of the law, but the Missouri Synod and the third use of the law today.
Which way, Lutheranism? “The greatest ‘danger’ to the Gospel is the Law.” – Edward Schroeder, summing up Elert as he understood him.
Conclusion…
As I stated at the outset, what we saw in the 1960s and 1970s regarding issues of the third use of the law was just the tip of the iceberg. An overall hatred of the law of God and what theologians have called “natural law” itself was at issue. In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul teaches, in line with everything that we know about very young children by the way, that sinful man in some sense knows God by the things that have been made (Rom. 1:19-21) – and also knows what is right and wrong (Rom. 1:32, 2:14-15) – but suppresses the truth in unrighteousness (this fact, by the way, underscores why Divine revelation always needs to accompany the natural knowledge of God).
This, of course, does not mean human beings, on their own, are capable of achieving the knowledge that is eternal life – and with that, proper fear, love, and trust in the Triune God – but it does mean that they are culpable for their sin. Despite the fact that Romans explicitly says God has made this clear to humankind, in many theological accounts today any real knowledge is denied and any real culpability of man is either downplayed or goes unmentioned.
This kind of thing itself is suppression of the truth about man’s knowledge of the truth! What about confessional Lutherans? Well, competing with this natural law teaching among us is, as Scott Murray has pointed out, a teaching about the law where God “appears as a raging and non-rational power, intend[ing] merely to burn down human pretensions to self-justification.” In this kind of intellectual environment, Murray explains that “[t]he question can never be the meaning or the justice of the law, only its terrifying result of bringing God’s wrath into the world. Under this schema the law… [has] the appearance of arbitrariness…”. He helpfully states that “where law only as an outbreak of divine wrath can be countered, the chances for an informative function of the law become far better.”
I would say that, in one sense, my entire presentation today has been an exercise in the third use of the law. I have sought to exhort and encourage you in what you know to be true about God, His creation … about what is truly right and good, is real and lasting. It is trans-historical and trans-cultural knowledge (and knowledge that makes the most sense in the light of the Gospel). As Luther put it, only the Decalogue, which syncs perfectly with the natural knowledge of God and natural law, is eternal, before and after our entrance into God’s Kingdom.
And truly, in the end, even the Bible’s own “historical framework,” contended about in the “Battle for the Bible,” works hand in hand with law and gospel. Is Paul’s statement that God “has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” a statement of law or gospel? Clearly, it will function as both: Gospel assurance to the believer, and frightful confrontation to the unbeliever. Furthermore, given that we are sinners and saints, such a statement may both comfort and terrify the believer as well, given the circumstance.
Seminex professor W. Bartling spoke of not being able to “bear the burden of Scriptural infallibility…” Is it just possible that the root of such angst is not so much the validity of “Scripture’s historical framework” as much as it is the fact that infallibility goes hand in hand with authority, and that, deep down, all of us want Marcion’s judgment-and-hell-shunning God of grace as opposed to the “Full Monty” of the true God, as exemplified in both His law and gospel? How much easier and comforting for us to have God’s law and “the hidden God”—that is, the God we construct for ourselves—to go hand-in-hand…
Maybe even now, in our flesh, we hate the Bible because we hate God’s law because we hate the truth, and yes, ultimately, The Truth. Give us “another Jesus”! (I Cor. 11).
Are you in some ways bothered by all of this? Has my presentation disturbed you? Not because it has been inaccurate or unscholarly, but because it leaves you unsettled and directly challenges you? Because it seeks to remove security blankets you have hitherto relied on? Well, are you willing to consider that this is exactly what should be happening? Are you willing to consider that your conscience in these matters has been poorly formed, even seared?
Well then, consider this: ultimately, all the things I am talking about, all the practices and habits I am saying need to happen among us because of the knowledge God has given us, exists for people like you. And they exist for persons like me too (because I also am often quite unsettled by God’s law and the way I respond to it!). Terrified by the law, terrified by God’s judgment, terrified by the very record of God’s ongoing judgment in history in the Bible, we indeed will, like Luther, “[urge] Christ against Scripture” and urge Christ against God’s law—rightly understood—for we never do stop living from the doctrine of justification, from that absolutely critical “time of grace”. God means for all persons to come to a knowledge of the truth in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as He saves us not only from sin, death, and the devil, but from ourselves.
And, what then, finally, is the place of the third use of the law? The third use of the law exhorts those who know peace with God to pursue sanctification. And what is sanctification, what is Christian growth, if it is not the desire to rightly adorn God’s glorious gospel with the works, in line with the Ten Commandments, that befit it? And more… what is sanctification, if not sharing God’s burning desire to create Christians, to create a church, that hunger—more than anything else in the world –to rightly and reverently exalt Christ, meaning to eagerly proclaim the Good News to those who, chastened by His eternal law, are ready to hear God’s “for you” for them – and live!?
It seems appropriate to close with a quote from Robert Preus“…when false doctrine is tolerated, terrible things happen in the church: people are deceived, lives are hurt, friendships and relationships destroyed.”
So, vote “yes” for the third use of the law.
Better: Pray. Pray for the Missouri Synod and Christ’s Church. Pray that the medicine of immortality would revive the body. Pray for the remnant of Confessional Lutheranism – not coterminous with the Missouri Synod of course. Because it looks to me like Confessional Lutheranism is on the verge of leaving not just the West, but America, forever.
As I stated at the outset, what we saw in the 1960s and 1970s regarding issues of the third use of the law was just the tip of the iceberg. An overall hatred of the law of God and what theologians have called “natural law” itself was at issue. In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul teaches, in line with everything that we know about very young children by the way, that sinful man in some sense knows God by the things that have been made (Rom. 1:19-21) – and also knows what is right and wrong (Rom. 1:32, 2:14-15) – but suppresses the truth in unrighteousness (this fact, by the way, underscores why Divine revelation always needs to accompany the natural knowledge of God).
This, of course, does not mean human beings, on their own, are capable of achieving the knowledge that is eternal life – and with that, proper fear, love, and trust in the Triune God – but it does mean that they are culpable for their sin. Despite the fact that Romans explicitly says God has made this clear to humankind, in many theological accounts today any real knowledge is denied and any real culpability of man is either downplayed or goes unmentioned.
This kind of thing itself is suppression of the truth about man’s knowledge of the truth! What about confessional Lutherans? Well, competing with this natural law teaching among us is, as Scott Murray has pointed out, a teaching about the law where God “appears as a raging and non-rational power, intend[ing] merely to burn down human pretensions to self-justification.” In this kind of intellectual environment, Murray explains that “[t]he question can never be the meaning or the justice of the law, only its terrifying result of bringing God’s wrath into the world. Under this schema the law… [has] the appearance of arbitrariness…”. He helpfully states that “where law only as an outbreak of divine wrath can be countered, the chances for an informative function of the law become far better.”
I would say that, in one sense, my entire presentation today has been an exercise in the third use of the law. I have sought to exhort and encourage you in what you know to be true about God, His creation … about what is truly right and good, is real and lasting. It is trans-historical and trans-cultural knowledge (and knowledge that makes the most sense in the light of the Gospel). As Luther put it, only the Decalogue, which syncs perfectly with the natural knowledge of God and natural law, is eternal, before and after our entrance into God’s Kingdom.
And truly, in the end, even the Bible’s own “historical framework,” contended about in the “Battle for the Bible,” works hand in hand with law and gospel. Is Paul’s statement that God “has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” a statement of law or gospel? Clearly, it will function as both: Gospel assurance to the believer, and frightful confrontation to the unbeliever. Furthermore, given that we are sinners and saints, such a statement may both comfort and terrify the believer as well, given the circumstance.
Seminex professor W. Bartling spoke of not being able to “bear the burden of Scriptural infallibility…” Is it just possible that the root of such angst is not so much the validity of “Scripture’s historical framework” as much as it is the fact that infallibility goes hand in hand with authority, and that, deep down, all of us want Marcion’s judgment-and-hell-shunning God of grace as opposed to the “Full Monty” of the true God, as exemplified in both His law and gospel? How much easier and comforting for us to have God’s law and “the hidden God”—that is, the God we construct for ourselves—to go hand-in-hand…
Maybe even now, in our flesh, we hate the Bible because we hate God’s law because we hate the truth, and yes, ultimately, The Truth. Give us “another Jesus”! (I Cor. 11).
Are you in some ways bothered by all of this? Has my presentation disturbed you? Not because it has been inaccurate or unscholarly, but because it leaves you unsettled and directly challenges you? Because it seeks to remove security blankets you have hitherto relied on? Well, are you willing to consider that this is exactly what should be happening? Are you willing to consider that your conscience in these matters has been poorly formed, even seared?
Well then, consider this: ultimately, all the things I am talking about, all the practices and habits I am saying need to happen among us because of the knowledge God has given us, exists for people like you. And they exist for persons like me too (because I also am often quite unsettled by God’s law and the way I respond to it!). Terrified by the law, terrified by God’s judgment, terrified by the very record of God’s ongoing judgment in history in the Bible, we indeed will, like Luther, “[urge] Christ against Scripture” and urge Christ against God’s law—rightly understood—for we never do stop living from the doctrine of justification, from that absolutely critical “time of grace”. God means for all persons to come to a knowledge of the truth in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as He saves us not only from sin, death, and the devil, but from ourselves.
And, what then, finally, is the place of the third use of the law? The third use of the law exhorts those who know peace with God to pursue sanctification. And what is sanctification, what is Christian growth, if it is not the desire to rightly adorn God’s glorious gospel with the works, in line with the Ten Commandments, that befit it? And more… what is sanctification, if not sharing God’s burning desire to create Christians, to create a church, that hunger—more than anything else in the world –to rightly and reverently exalt Christ, meaning to eagerly proclaim the Good News to those who, chastened by His eternal law, are ready to hear God’s “for you” for them – and live!?
It seems appropriate to close with a quote from Robert Preus: “…when false doctrine is tolerated, terrible things happen in the church: people are deceived, lives are hurt, friendships and relationships destroyed.”
So, vote “yes” for the third use of the law.
Better: Pray. Pray for the Missouri Synod and Christ’s Church. Pray that the medicine of immortality would revive the body. Pray for the remnant of Confessional Lutheranism – not coterminous with the Missouri Synod of course. Because it looks to me like Confessional Lutheranism is on the verge of leaving not just the West, but America, forever.
What, around the time of Seminex, was the main concern about the theology of Werner Elert, whose influence we have discussed today?
In 1972, David Scaer’s main critique of Elert was that his “’Law-Gospel’ principle hung suspended in theological thin air” based as it was on culture and existential experience instead of Scripture as its ground. In his book about the anatomy of the Seminex explosion, Kurt Marquart quotes the more conservative Erlangen theologian Herman Sasses: “Sasse’s judgment of Elert was: ‘There are excellent paragraphs in Elert’s Dogmatics. But his doctrine on Holy Scripture is terribly weak.’” What I would like to point out briefly is that the admission of Seminex professor Edgar Krentz about the “historical-critical method”—namely that it “tends to freedom from authority—might just have something to do with hostility to God, and hence His law as well. Maybe, in the “Battle for the Bible,” the whole point was that old Adam wanted law and gospel to be controlled by, to submit to, historical criticism? All “neutrality” here is an illusion, for our reason is, by nature, at war with God.
In close competition with Paul’s words in Romans 1, the Psalmist perhaps summed it up the best, in a passage whose relevance increases daily:
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, 3 “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2)
Yes, indeed, “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?”
The ultimate problem we have with the law of God is anyone using it on us. Phrases I’ve seen used by seemingly conservative Lutheran theologians:
God’s law is not a window through which we inspect other people’s sins, but a mirror to reveal our own
You may use your conscience to guide your behavior. You may not use your conscience to guide my behavior
For Luther, the Old and New Adam, or Eve, are clearly bound in a life and death struggle within each person
Note how in that last one how even the fact that Christians are saints and sinners at the same time is being abused, as a theology is now emerging which is applying it to human beings in general. We have some big problems here…
What to do? Fight. In the Spirit, and Recognize the Role of Flesh and Blood
First of all, the battle is internal, in all of us.
We who are Scripture-believing Confessional Lutherans now have it in our DNA to put up with the second use of the law. We even know that this condemnation is not just vs. abstract sinners, but gets very concrete: God even demands we be right internally through and through, not hating, lusting, or coveting. What really grates on us though—all of us at this or that time!—is another human being attempting to actually guide us. Trying to correct us. Even gently. That, after all, means that they want to change our behavior, either through persuasive appeals (3rd use of the law) or worse, even coercion (1st use of the law).
And, going along with this first battle, I imagine most of us, at least every now and then, find ourselves doubting and despising God’s word. Yes, it is inerrant, but how much do you read it? And just how easily can skepticism of the Scriptures as God’s very word be disentangled from hostility towards Him and His law? Not too easily, I suggest! In any case, tying this in with the other Seminex battle yet again, when a method can be established that can question any and all biblical facts, this makes it easier to take this approach towards God’s law as well.
And what is the other battle we must face? We who know we are sinners and struggle with just this kind of stuff too: with doubt, skepticism, and even hatred of God’s Holy Word?
The other battle is in the church.
I will tell you what many opposing this message will say… “Who cares?”
After all, chances are that you, being here at this conference today, are a legalist. You have all kinds of bad habits that show you do not really know Jesus, or at least, do not know Him well.
Do you just want to learn how to be a better father and mother, husband and wife, God’s way? That’s legalism! Or worse, do you believe, full stop, that God expects you, through the power of His Holy Spirit given you in the Gospel of free grace, to fulfill His law? Do you think that God is striving for persons who take utter delight in direction, even commands, that result in His and our pleasure? Even if you have doubts about it is this something you believe you should believe – and do so with increasing ferocity? When Luther said that one can’t be a Christian if one doesn’t make assertions, do you think that that statement applies to this topic?
More so, do you think this is something that pastors in our Synod – nay, the Church of Christ – should believe? And that if they don’t believe this, they should certainly not be pastors? Should not teach in the church? If they do not believe and confess that God expects Christians to fulfill His law, do you think that they should be removed by church authorities?
If this is you, the follower of Werner Elert or Gerhard Forde may well conclude you have abandoned the Gospel. You are a simply a legalist just like that awful Synodical Conference. Some with influential voices will oppose you, carrying on the mantle of true Lutheranism, and will make sure that the Reformation continues. Roman Pelagianism, semi-Pelagianism – this Judaizing legalism – must not get a foothold. The choice, here, I am sorry to say, appears stark.
I am afraid many minds, many influential minds, are made up. It doesn’t matter how much you insist you sin against all of God’s commandments and are saved by and love the Gospel. How much you long to speak only of Christ’s grace and mercy to those consciences terrified by the Law of God. They will not believe you, or at least trust you: you, after all, are a legalist.
This, basically, sums up the crux of my topic for today. This, in a nutshell, is the crux of the issue when we speak not only of Seminex and the third use of the law, but the Missouri Synod and the third use of the law today.
No discipline. The Church lusting after the world:“[O]ne’s confidence is scarcely strengthened in certain would-be leaders and ‘pioneers’ who gleefully chase after almost every new theological miniskirt that chances along…” — Horace Hummel
1… – Denial of the First use of the Law: the Denial of Church Discipline
In this section, we will build off of what we talked about above, and speak to the matter of church discipline. And here, I submit we need to keep in mind the wider context of discipline, which certainly can and should be understood more broadly in the context of education. And here, we must keep in mind that all education clearly cannot be seen as a form of coercion.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that coercion is key when it comes to the first use of the law. And here, for our purposes today, is the crux of the matter: in order to get to the point where one can effectively use the first use of the law in a church context, as regards church discipline—where curbs are undoubtedly going to be present for both the first and second tables of the law—one will also, leading up to this, use the third use of the law.
In other words, with pastoral concern in mind, one will try to guide the erring consciences of Christians in, as they say, “an evangelical manner”. Truly, one does not even want to think about coercion or force, for one really just wants the other to say “Amen!” to the concerns about truth that are expressed! As we saw above, Walther attempted to put this into practice in that quote from his excellent book chapter “The Requirements of Public preaching” in his Pastoral Theology, which was used to train most all of the LC-MS pastors in the nineteenth century.
If one says, “No I won’t use the law that way,” in the context of preaching or teaching then I submit that they will probably not do so in church discipline either… which also means you won’t really use the first use of the law in the church either… (now, the idea that the first use of the law is not really for Christians becomes convenient for them!)
So, what is the answer? To talk about that, we need to get into the weeds a bit again…
In the Old Testament the first use of the law was something that God’s assembly took part in in a big way, at times acting as judge, jury, and sometimes, executioner as well. This is because in the Old Testament there was nothing like the distinction which Jesus made between His people and worldly governments, with His teaching that we should “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and God’s what is God’s”. In the New Testament, God’s people are primarily understood as a spiritual people that extends beyond particular places and times, and this, of course, prompts Luther’s treasured distinction between the “two kingdoms”. The “kingdom of the right” is primarily identified with Christ’s church, which is a spiritual entity that reigns by God’s word and sacraments, and especially by God’s word of Gospel. On the other hand, the “kingdom of the left” is primarily identified with worldly or secular authorities, and these, using reason and the sword, or force, will also administer, to a greater or lesser extent, God’s law in order to keep order and curb gross outbursts of human sin.
At the same time however, there is also a sense in which God’s holy church also has a “Kingdom of the Left” aspect. The Church rules primarily with the Gospel, but Christ’s ministers are also to lead when it comes to discipline in accordance with the Word of God, in conformity with the council that He has given us in the Scriptures though His Holy Apostles. This, of course, is the matter of church discipline, and in the case of disciplining ministers of the Word, doctrinal discipline.
In the Lutheran Confessional writings, Martin Luther wrote that proper excommunication “excludes those who are manifest and impenitent sinners from the sacrament and other fellowship of the church until they mend their ways and avoid sin.” For the Lutherans, the goal of excommunication was like that of the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians, chapter 5: that such impenitent sinners be “absolve[d]… if they are converted and ask for absolution.” Presupposed, of course (or this should be the case!) is a loving heart that longs for reconciliation with the lost coin, lost sheep, and lost son (Luke 15). And, make no mistake about it, when it comes to granting mercy and grace, the church imitates her Lord. As Hebrews 4:15 says: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin…” (emphasis mine). In practice, this means that the church should humbly (see Gal. 6:1) call sin “sin”, make it easy for the guilty to confess, and keep appropriate consequences, while speaking well of those brothers and sisters in Christ who repent.
The response of many during the Seminex days was to insist on the point that agreement in the Gospel was enough and that the government of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod was only meant to function as an “advisory body” after all. “Synod isn’t church!” they said. After all, don’t congregations matter?
Such arguments however, fall down in light of the fact that the Synod’s original Constitution upholds the Lutheran Confession, which assumes the authority of the Scriptures as God’s Word, and makes provision for the discipline of its members at the Synodical level. What sense does it make to say, on the one hand, that everything you do is based on the Bible as God’s written word, and then to deny that it is and to expect no discipline when you do not freely and willingly remove yourself, being truthful about what you not only believe, but teach and confess? No wonder they do not like the third use of the law!
In any case, their position is clearly anti-historical not to mention unethical, and I, personally, have difficulty understanding how they could have ever thought otherwise. Daniel Preus has helpfully cataloged some incidents of discipline that occurred at the Synodical level in the 19th century in his paper “Church Discipline in Early Missouri and Lutheran Identity”. Walther’s Pastoral Theology also has a number of short chapters providing detailed advice about how to handle the matters within the congregation and beyond. Discussing passages in I Cor. 6:1-8 and I Tim. 5:20, passages which discuss publicly rebuking congregational members (and not expecting repentance!) instead of formally excommunicating them, Walther states that if these passages are not observed, “church discipline may be overdone, and, contrary to the Gospel, the whole life of the congregation may be turned into a life of constant discipline, [a life] under the Law”.
True enough! And going right along with this, does anyone take pleasure in the activity of church or doctrinal discipline – or at least believe they should take pleasure in it? Still, how can the church do without it? What Horace Hummel said during the doctrinal turmoil of those days cannot be denied:
“The LCA is a perfect example of what happens when one abandons all possible thought of discipline, refuses to state what is being rejected as well, and appeals to the ‘adequacy of the historic Confessions’ or simply to ‘Gospel’: these become code words for anything goes; in practice anything contrary to the Gospel simply will never be found.”
Again, ultimately, this whole issue of the third use of the law and Seminex is about the matter of the validity of authority in the Scriptures, and with this authority in the church and church discipline. We might think that it is good and right and salutary for parents to do their best to administer discipline in the home, but the church? God no. You can’t trust those leaders. My point is this: So what? So what if you can’t? That doesn’t mean that those who are in positions of authority should not do everything in their power to rule well, to judge rightly, to correct and admonish, and if need be excommunicate. This should be par for the course. Even in the Missouri Synod, with its “advisory body” nature and all. Obviously, there must be a way to discipline, excommunicate, etc.
A final concern in this section that I want to address has to do with Matthew Becker’s complaint that, with the LC-MS and its concerns about doctrinal discipline, it seems doctrine is turned into law. Here is how I would respond. The fact of the matter is that all doctrine, law and gospel, is life. In one sense we simply receive the Gospel, as this is our passive righteousness before God. That said, in another sense we are also commanded to believe the Gospel, and this, according to our new nature, we gladly do. We don’t just receive the Gospel, but we eagerly, by God’s grace, pursue and take it.
Because, again, there is give and take in the creation God has made. Therefore, I would put matters this way: it is only through the Gospel that we can live not under, but in, the Law. This, believe it or not, is how Scripture praises works in “such a way as not to remove the free promise”. Without some understanding like this, you cannot be sure the Gospel you preach is really the Gospel. Law definitely does not have the last word, but it is always the context in which the “last word” occurs.
This is the context in which we incessantly focus on the doctrine of justification – for ourselves, those precious to us, and beyond.
2… – Denial of the Second Use of the Law: Seeking “Dialogue” with God
Getting back to Seminex for a minute, according to Kurt Marquart, “[Seminex professor Edgar] Krentz had no illusions about the heart of the problem: ‘Historical criticism produces only probable results. It relativizes everything. But faith needs certainty.’” For the historical critics, such “certainty” is nonsensically obtained in the “Gospel” alone, apart from what they see as the many historically uncertainties surrounding Scripture (including the facts of the Gospel acts). Marquart effectively sums up the core issue with Seminex here, saying that Missouri self-styled “moderates” embraced the Heidelberg professor Edmund Schlink in his view “that the Gospel is the norm in Scripture and Scripture is the norm for the sake of the Gospel’”. Since the believer’s existential experience of the Gospel is presumably solid enough, one need not worry about things like Scriptural infallibility and inerrancy. Hence, “Gospel reductionism”.
I would venture to say that most pastors in the LC-MS, for example, see the problems with this position. As Marquart put it in his very practical way, “A million critical assertions of ‘This is most likely true’ do not add up to one single, simple catechismal confession: ‘This is most certainly true!’”. Surely, however, we would be going too far to insist that at the root of Seminex was a denial of the second use of the law! Didn’t they insist, at least during key moments in the fray, that they believed God’s Ten Commandments were to be upheld?
Well, as I said above, it doesn’t matter. As we have seen above, they followed in the train of men like Von Hoffman, Haikola, Elert, and Forde, and those men all either denied that God’s law was eternal, or did not clearly assert that it was. We have already seen above some of the bizarre things that Elert said about God’s law. Whatever Elert ultimately believed about the Ten Commandments, persons like Schroeder insisted that the key is that he points us to “Christ’s Lordship,” and to “what the indwelling Spirit with His imperatives of grace prompts [those connected to Christ by faith] to do.” How could men like Schroeder do otherwise than to downplay things like the Ten Commandments, given that the Bible is not the definitive word of God which can provide any such “fixed rule” that might apply trans-historically and trans-culturally? That it might provide some semblance of what we could call a “heavenly culture”?
That said, that was then, this is now, right? We are better off now, right? Surely, relatively conservative ELCA or NALC Lutherans like Gerhard Forde, James Nestingen, Steven Paulson, and Mark Mattes do no such thing to erode the certainty of faith through their law and gospel approach, right?
Again, no…. I think Seminex is just the classic example of Satan shooting for too much, too fast. This time around? Probably not. Christian News has lost its influence and not just its editor. And nothing is as obvious this time around. Large doses of poison are already in the bloodstream, and many, many even likely here, have the infection. Even the great LC-MS champion of the third use of the law, Scott Murray, largely “goes with the flow” produced by “Radical Lutherans” and their sympathizers, who in turn may well express sympathy for some of the most liberal elements in the ELCA. For his own part, Murray will, for example, quote Mattes admitting that Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms show “believers… can look at the law as informative, and not solely accusing,” and then, allow this kind of obvious admission to take an increasingly important role in overall theological thinking.
What do I mean? For Murray, the uses of the law, including the third use of the law, no longer have anything to do with humans beings using the law in accordance with God’s will—as stated in the Epitome—but the issue is rather how the law is received. Therefore, the matter of the law’s third use is not something having to do with our activity, something about urging the content of the law, but it is merely about a “third way” the law—however conceived?—is received. Again, Murray himself is undoubtedly concerned about the law being “a fixed rule,” but the issue, for him, is definitely not in any sense the way the law is to be used by human beings,but what the law does. So Murray contends that “‘use’ means reception. Its function revolves around how it is received, not how it is preached or ‘used.’”
I hope you are staying with me here: I submit this plays right into the hands of those who follow in Elert and Forde’s train.
The absolute core issue, as briefly touched on in my paper, “Paradise Regained,” is that Adam and Eve did not find God’s commandment, God’s law, coercive or threatening. Neither, of course, did our Lord as He “grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men”. The point is that the law of God cannot and must not be defined primarily in the sense of coercion (or wrath), as Werner Elert (and of course Gehard Forde) insists that it be: “In the place of the coercive order of the law (and every law is coercive since it entails compulsion) there now prevails between us and God the freedom of the children of God (Gal. 3:23-4:7).” And if we focus on what the Law does in us, and start thinking this is primarily how it should be defined, we will, focused on ourselves, tend to see it as that which brings wrath and coerces us.
Already now, for the Gospel Reductionist or the Radical Lutheran purists, all attempts to teach the law of God are seen as forms of wrath and coercion, because that is the only way the law of God is understood to exist. It does wrath and coercion in human beings.
This creates a big conflict, doesn’t it? In order to illustrate the divide here, I’m going to go back to another great quote from Matthew Garnett, whose In Layman’s Terms podcast I heartily recommend. Regarding this issue of whether or not the regenerate Christian needs the law, he says, very simply: “I’m hard pressed to find a passage of Scripture or anything in our Confessions where the knowledge/ information concerning the Law is downloaded to us in our baptism. Don’t we still need to learn God’s law?”
Indeed. And here we must respond, that while the law might always in some sense accuse—or, more technically, the usus didacticus (instructive use of the law) is always the usus elenchticus (accusatory use of the law)—it commands what is good for our good and the good of others. It especially does not always coerce, or, at the very least, is not experienced as coercion (since we are so concerned to speak about what the law does and not what it is). Ideally, in us more and more, it should not be experienced as coercion.
Of particular interest here is not only the fact that God created the world the way He did to run according to certain set limits—where we want to be “in the groove” as Concordia Seminary prof. Joel Biermann says—but also that he created certain lasting “orders of creation” as well. As we know all too well today, the world not only finds things like the Ten Commandments oppressive, but also ideas like the “orders of creation.” This of course, includes the idea that male and female are distinct orders created by God, and that children are the blessed fruit of their marital union. It also includes, of course, the idea that men and women have complementary roles, including the very popular notion (yes, I jest) that man is the head of the woman (see I Cor. 11:3) and woman his “helpmeet”.
Some of the arguments for the “orders of creation” are bad and unbiblical arguments. During World War II, Werner Elert’s colleague Paul Althaus famously argued in ways he should not have regarding the “German race”. That said, most all of the arguments against the “orders of creation” have nothing to commend them. Again, Edward Schroder comes into play here, as he was eager to speak of “The Mutability of the Orders of Creation” – from which he jumped into arguments for the ordination of women into the pastoral office (later on he made the same arguments about ordaining those involved in stable gay unions). Interestingly, Schroeder again found Werner Elert’s theology amenable to his own efforts as he argued for a concept of “God’s ordering” (he preferred this phrase as opposed to the “orders of creation”) that was not so much like a “traffic cop,” where issues of hierarchy as well as moral rules are involved, but more akin to the order found in a “baseball game,” where all the positions and rules are seen as existing on a more equal basis.
Things get really interesting when we see how a modern day follower of Elert and Forde, Nicholas Hopman, handles the idea of God’s law. Writing at the Cresset, Hopman is more than happy to use the analogy of traffic rules when speaking about the Ten Commandments, where he explains that something like the third commandment, regarding Sabbath keeping, underscores the provisional nature of God’s commandments. Hopman is happy to give some credit to the law, noting that we must in some sense remain “law people” because if we do not, we will do damage to our bodies… In saying this he invokes the importance of good order and the Golden Rule, which he then equates with the human convention of traffic lights and laws (something for which, I note, there may well be an alternative, or divergent, solution).
Do you see what happens here? With illustrations like these, which certainly are helpful in conveying some true ideas, the emphasis is nevertheless no longer on how God freely made His creation to function a certain way and for our good, but there now is more “freedom” regarding how to think about God’s law—and what freedom in Christ “really means”. In short, the impression is given – at least by phrases and illustrations like these – that the law is perhaps not so eternal after all. Even if many of these theologians also do not necessarily want to introduce all manner of moral license. In any case, it does not help matters when Hopman goes on to say: “[our] freedom includes freedom from the law”, and, citing Vitor Westhelle, adds, “This freedom allows us to engage in a dialogue with the law.”
Of course “dialogue” with the law is exactly the thing sinful man wants – at least, that’s better than having a King. For he never sees limits and constraints driven by the love which created all, but rather coercion and the desire of one to lord it over the other!
Which, by the way, many might think I am clearly doing with this paper! In any case, back to Seminex again for a moment – you know most all of them gave the impression they were against any discipline in their church, right? You know, even if it is very uncomfortable to do so, we really should talk more about this matter of discipline.
For the fact of the matter is that the denials go much deeper yet… 3, 2, 1…
Part 5 tomorrow:
1… – Denial of the First use of the Law: the Denial of Church Discipline
Luther, losing his youthful edge?: Christ the Law no longer terrifies us with death and hell but has become our kind friend and companion… (Weimar: Hermann Boehlau, 1910), X, I, 467.
To begin this section, we need to ask just what, really, the third use of the law is. I was recently taken aback by the very understandable and simple claim offered by Matthew Garnett that the law’s third use is that “[it] teaches us how God created us to live”. It in fact reminded me of a paper titled the “The Third Use of the Law in Light of Creation and the Fall,” where the theologian Piotr Malysz points out that the Lutheran Formula of Concord, in its discussion of the controversial topic, does not explicitly say why “God… wills that believers do good works, why he should reward them with temporal blessings, and why the works of the Law should be an indication of salvation.”
Malysz’s paper gives an answer to these questions, and he begins by starting with the right question: what can best explain the admonitions of the Apostle Paul, which he says are not only “staggering” in their “richness of expression,” but are “quite similar to, not to say identical with…the demands of the law”? “Live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (Eph 4:1), be “imitators of God,” and live “a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 5:1-2) – what does this mean? In a sense, we might think the answer is obvious: God has fulfilled the demands of the law for us in Christ, and this is our thankful response.
At the same time, due to controversies that occur here, we must take matters further, and Malysz helps us do just this. He states, for example, that other New Testament admonitions point to a “return to a pre-fall creation.”: “[God’s l]aw,” he says, “as a meaningful reflection of creation’s, structure, though it is misinterpreted by the sinner, remains at its foundation an expression of God’s love, the same love that has freely brought creation into being and shared itself with the creator.” “[A]ll creation,” he says “is now in labor pains as love is being restored into the fabric or our being, as the Law again becomes the essence of our humanity instead of an externally controlling tyrant (Jer 31:33-34).
I agree with everything that Garnett and Malysz say here—thinking that this is extremely helpful background and puts our issue into the proper context—and yet, this is not where I would go when it comes to defining the third use of the law. Instead, for that, I go to the end of the Epitome, or summary, of the article in the Formula of Concord, where it explicitly speaks about: “The Principal Question In This Controversy”. Let’s have a look:
Since the Law was given to men for three reasons: first, that thereby outward discipline might be maintained against wild, disobedient men [and that wild and intractable men might be restrained, as though by certain bars]; secondly, that men thereby may be led to the knowledge of their sins;thirdly, that after they are regenerate and [much of] the flesh notwithstanding cleaves to them, they might on this account have a fixed rule according to which they are to regulate and direct their whole life, a dissension has occurred between some few theologians concerning the third use of the Law, namely, whether it is to be urged or not upon regenerate Christians. The one side has said, Yea; the other, Nay. (emphasis mine)
So what I do not think should be controversial is that right here, in the first words spoken about this issue in the Formula of Concord, we learn that the question is whether or not the Law is to be urged upon “regenerate” Christians. Note first of all, that the issue is not whether or not the law should continue to lead Christians to the knowledge of their sins or kill the Christian’s “old man”, but whether, after conversion, they should be given a “fixed rule” by “which they are to regulate and direct their whole life”. Further, also note that the issue here is not whether the Holy Spirit should be doing this, or whether the believer should be applying the law to himself (i.e. his “old Adam”), even if this is most certainly the case as well. The issue is whether or not Christians should “do this” to other Christians.
As we see from men like Schroeder, Bertram, and Schulz, that in itself is an issue – they adamantly refuse to see this as a use of the law, although they nevertheless they cannot totally avoid what is in the biblical text. Therefore they speak instead of “grace imperatives,” “Gospel imperatives,” “the ‘divine indicative’ of God’s grace,” or the “second use of the Gospel” (Christ’s example) – and talking only about the sufficiency of the new impulses created in the believer. Strangely, in their writings they claim C.F.W. Walther—with his The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel—as one of their allies, when in fact, Walther often spoke like this about what he acknowledged was the law:
“…all true Christians are of such a nature that one can accomplish all kinds of things in them through urgent exhortation. So many preachers accomplish so little in bringing Christians to good works or bringing them away from sinful living because they do not exhort, but rather demand, command, threaten and rebuke. They do not suspect what a powerful weapon they have but do not use. Upright Christians, even if burdened with various weaknesses, do not want to reject God’s word. They want to live for Him Who died for them. They no longer want to serve sin, the world, and the devil. They want to be completely renewed according to the image of God. If they hear in the exhorting preacher the voice of their gracious God, they neither can nor want to oppose it.
I admit that Walther’s words might sound a bit idealistic, but just imagine how they might fall on the ears of a parishioner who held this view:
[T]he Ten Commandments are still in force and do concern us Christians so far as obedience to them is concerned. For the righteousness demanded by the Law is fulfilled in the believers through the grace and the assistance of the Holy Spirit, whom they receive. Thus all the admonitions of the prophets in the OT, as well as of Christ and the apostles in the NT, concerning a godly life, are excellent sermons on, and expositions of, the Ten Commandments…
That is Luther, who evidently understood where Walther was coming from. Consider also these words, also from his 1537 sermons on John’s Gospel:
Formerly I found that I had no delight in the Law. But now I discover that the Law is precious and good, that it was given to me for my life; and now it is pleasing to me. Formerly, it told me what to do; now I am beginning to conform to its requests, so that now I praise, laud, and serve God. This I do through Christ, because I believe in Him, The Holy Spirit comes into my heart and engenders a spirit in me that delights in His words even when He chastises me and subjects me to cross and temptation.
It is quotes like these—and there are a great many—that explain why I am going to define the third use of the Law very simply as “exhorting and encouraging Christians to do God’s law.” What is absolutely critical in this, is that we—preachers and laypersons—must always keep in the forefront, in all of our speaking and doing, that the Gospel is the only power and motivation for such action. The Christian can only eagerly and unhesitatingly say “Amen” to the beauty of God’s law when presented it because of the hold Christ and His loving work have on them.
Unlike men like Schroeder and Bertram, some conservative Lutherans don’t have any trouble speaking about how Christians continue to need the law, but they do take issue with the way I have portrayed the third use of the law. Concerned about the ongoing issues that remain with our sinful nature, they will simply repeat again and again that the “law only accuses” and that Christians should not “domesticate” the law so as to make it “do-able”. For them—rightly noting that the law is never “neutral,” “harmless,” or “just information,” to the Christian—the question is whether or not the third use is just the “first use” for Christians, i.e. the threat of force to restrain sin.
In a sense, it is not, because the Apostle Paul really does talk about the law as if Christians should know, and live, better (see I Tim 1:9) On the other hand, of course it is, because it is, after all, the same law in its essence (the “first use” just uses carrots and sticks exclusively to deal with unrighteousness), and Piotr Malysz, as we have seen, also gives us more help in seeing that.
The main point for them however, is that once you have put someone’s sins away—or perhaps just their sin nature without mentioning concrete sins—should you ever follow-up with the law? They say: “What would be the point? After all, in order to convict someone of their sins, they already had to be instructed in the law, right? Why do you then need to instruct them again, after they have been freed in Christ?”
The simple answer to the question is this: because we follow the example of men like the Apostle Paul, who explicitly tells us to imitate him as he does Christ. The problem, however, has to do with the fact that modern confessional Lutherans are knee-deep in denial about what the law is, and that is the issue that needs to be tackled in our next section. 3, 2…
Tomorrow, part 5:
2… – Denial of the Second Use of the Law: Seeking “Dialogue” with God
I am going to start with the event of Seminex and work backwards. Actually, I’ll do better than that. I’ll start with a good chunk of relatively contemporary words (from 2004) from one Edward Schroeder, one of the major representatives of the Seminex contingent, as he reflected back on his earliest days as a theology student. Here are some rather salacious tidbits (for some of us at least) about his days at seminary in the 1950s, and how what he experienced there led directly to Seminex:
In the early 1950s in the Luth. Church-Missouri Synod [LCMS] Jaroslav Pelikan, young professor at Concordia Seminary (St. Louis), was recommending to us students that if we wished to escape Missouri’s “hang-up” with Verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures, we should go to Erlangen and study under Elert. Elert’s 2 volume “Morphologie des Luthertums” [literally: The Morphology of Lutheranism], was “epoch-making”–he said–with its presentation of the “Evangelischer Ansatz” [“Gospel-grounding”] for Lutheran confessional theology.
So three of us students “went to Erlangen” for the academic year 1952-53. Bob Schultz, already graduated from Concordia, became Elert’s doctoral candidate. Baepler and I were only half-way through Concordia, but had finagled scholarships to go to Germany for the year. Elert died before Schultz finished his work. He attended Elert’s funeral. Elert’s colleague, Paul Althaus, took over as his “Doktorvater.” Bob’s dissertation (written in German, of course) was a flat-out Elertian theme: “Law and Gospel in Lutheran Theology in the 19th Century.” It was published by Luthersiches Verlagshaus.
Baepler and I were there only for the “Sommersemester” ’53. We all enrolled for Elert’s lectures and seminar. He even invited the three of us over for Kaffeeklatsch one Sunday afternoon, since he appreciated that the pioneer of the Missouri Synod, C.F.W. Walther, had been faithful to law/gospel Lutheranism and had even written a book by that title. At that Kaffeeklatsch Elert agreed to write an article for our Concordia Seminary student theological journal, “The Seminarian”–I can still hear him saying, “Das tue ich!”–which was then published when Dick and I returned to St. Louis. Its title: “Lutheranism and World History.” Most likely it is the one and only Elert article that first appeared in English–and probably never in German. He wrote it, of course, in German and we translated it. It was posted 6 years ago as Thursday Theology #29 in the first year of this enterprise. [If interested GO to the Crossings webpage (www.crossings.org) and click on Thursday Theology, December 10, 1998.]
By 1957 all three of us were at Valparaiso University, and were teaching what we had learned, not only to V.U. students, but to the wider Missouri Synod. With Bob Bertram as dept. chair and Gottfried Krodel added to the staff later on, law/gospel Lutheranism became the trademark of “Valparaiso Theology.” So there were 5 of us in one place at one time. We encountered conflict within Missouri, of course, with our teaching and writing. Verbal inspiration and “Evangelischer Ansatz” were not compatible.
This Elertian sort of Confessional Lutheranism, though hardly ever acknowledged as such, was also near the center of the eventual explosion in Missouri in 1973-74 that took place at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and then created “Concordia Seminary in Exile, a.k.a. Seminex. That is, of course, one man’s opinion. Bertram and I were then on the faculty at Concordia–and “Elertian” confessional Lutheranism, already at home there (but hardly majority opinion), got additional support.
The fuse for the explosion was the LCMS national convention in 1973. By a 55% to 45% vote the convention declared the “faculty majority” [45 of the 50 professors at Concordia Seminary] to be “false teachers.” Three false teachings were specified. Two of the three were actually Elert’s own “heresies,” although he was never named. One heresy of the Concordia faculty was called “Gospel-reductionism.” In nickel words: grounding the Bible’s authority on the Gospel itself [ = Elert’s Evangelischer Ansatz] and not on verbal inspiration. The second heresy was on the so-called “third use of God’s law,” a constant hot potato among Lutherans ever since the 16th century. Our “false teaching” on the law’s “third use” was that we opted for Elert’s Gospel-grounded interpretation and not the one the LCMS had supposedly “always” taught.
In his 1972 article on the topic, “Law-Gospel Reductionism in the History of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod.” Schroeder claimed that any who subscribed to the Lutheran Confessions “would hardly take umbrage at anyone using the centrality of the Gospel, even ‘reducing’ issues to Gospel or not-the-Gospel, as his Lutheran hermeneutical key for interpreting the Bible.”
While Schroeder’s description here of the issue basically describes most of those who were allied with him, these “Law-Gospel reductionists,” or “Gospel reductionists” for short, varied somewhat in how they saw the law applying in the Christian life. bLutheran educator Stephen Schmidt, for example, went so far to say that “The Ten Commandments can serve as no guide for Lutheran morality. The law does not serve a gospel function; it can only accuse…” Valparaiso deaconess and professor Gwen Saylor said, “Good works are done by the new person on the basis of faith; there are no objective criteria for goodness…” Robert J. Hoyer, writing in Valparaiso’s Cresset, stated that with the Law’s only purpose being condemnation of rebellious man, “[t]he ethical use of the Law is that rebellion [of man].”
The main thing to note here is the radical distinction made, following Elert, between the old age that is passing away and age to come – the old vs. new creation – a distinction that can certainly be understood in a proper way! For them however, the law is understood in very existentialist terms, as that which by its nature only coerces, accuses, and finally condemns the sinner. The Gospel then created a brand new life of freedom, with the Holy Spirit taking over in leading the Christian. While the law, as understood above, might continue to be needed, any “third use of the law”, where the Christian would be exhorted to live in the law – particularly after receiving Christ’s forgiveness, life and salvation – was decidedly left behind.
Most of these folks would probably have readily signed on to dictum of the late Lutheran theologian Gerhard Forde: “sanctification is just getting used to justification”. And in like fashion, they could have just as easily said that “appreciating the Bible rightly is just getting used to justification”. Summing up the debate as he saw it at the time, Dr. David Scaer put it this way:
“The position of Dr. Preus is that the Scriptures are the cognitive principle in theology, for example, they tell us about Christ. Therefore everything taught in the church must be derived from the Scriptures and ultimately serve Jesus Christ. The position of Drs. [Paul] Bretscher, [Edward] Schroeder, and [Robert] Schultz is that the gospel is the basis of theology and whatever is not contrary to the gospel is permissible in the church. The first position has been labeled legalistic and Calvinistic and the second, gospel reductionism…
In practice, as experience shows, nothing is found contrary to the Gospel…”
Men like David Scaer and Kurt Marquart did not deny that persons often came to faith in Christ without first believing that the whole Bible was God’s word. The point however, was that a distinction needs to be made between such psychological and existential realities and the church’s formal theology, created with the Word of God that has been given to them. And in like fashion, I do not deny that the former LC-MS theologian Matthew Becker is correct when he argues that Elert wanted his ethic to be “grounded in the Decalogue, natural law, the orders of creation, and the gospel” or that he desires to convey that “the law contains both an unchanging element, namely, ‘the eternal will of God’(FCEp. VI, 6), and a transitory/historical element that is affected by the natural and historical orderings/relationships which situate and define human life.”
At the same time, given Elert’s debts to first theologian of the “Erlangen school”, the man Karl Barth considered the greatest “conservative” theologian of the 19th century, Johannes von Hofmann, I am not sure how much any of that matters. Von Hofmann removed the foundations for assertions about law and gospel by denying the Bible was the Word of God, and also, as a student of Hegel, eagerly spoke of a “historical record of God’s communion with humanity” without the baggage of things like “timeless doctrines”. In short then, lots of doctrinal and ethical change, in a variety of ways, is now always a live option. The locus of authority has clearly shifted from the Bible to elsewhere, and however that authority may be construed, it is anything but stable (and yet, of course, we will always assert something, good or not, over and against something else). This is why precisely why Edward Schroeder could tell J.A.O. Preus God’s “immutable will” had to do with the “God’s activity of judging and sentencing sinners that goes on and on,” and not the idea that “God’s rules and activities never change.”
Thou changest not abide with me?
And in Elert’s slim volume Law and Gospel, translated by Edward Schroeder and published by Fortress Press in 1967, we are treated to quite a palette of, I would say, “lawless” ideas enabling “Schwärmeristic” evolution. Here, Elert shows his deference to the idea that Genesis is a myth, going so far to assert that “the same natural law which secures our earthly life also ensures the inevitability of our death[!]”
The Ten Commandments are downplayed, as we cannot get from them “the desired information on all the practical questions of our life” as any “practical conclusions which we would draw form them would still be human conclusions, burdened with the same dubious character as all human decisions.” In our Christian lives, it is always and only the case that “[e]ither the law or the gospel is the end of God’s ways with me, but not both,” for they “are as opposed to one another as death and life”. Attempting further to illustrate that law and promise are “irreconcilably opposed to one another,” he claims that Jesus’ accusers and judges were those “faithful to the law” and commit “a lawful action” This illustrates most fully the curse of “nomological”, that is “lawful existence” that only the cross can reveal… the law itself strikes Jesus down. It, also, we are told, “obscures the promise, conflicts with it, and prevents man from believing it” and “seduces man to take cover behind it”. Finally, it is “in irreconcilable opposition to the forgiveness of Christ,” and demands retribution.The law of God is oppression and wrath, and seemingly little else.
As Ken Schurb has put it “This ‘law’ in the human Urerlebnis [note: “primal experience”] consisted not in the Decalogue as such, but rather in ‘whatever calls us into question before God.’ Seen thus, the law must be retribution. It oppresses human beings, in the nature of the case.” At this point, you can see that the foundations of the Seminex theology more or less indicate that peculiar things are going on with the law – perhaps even a denial of its true nature… Now, however, let’s talk more specifically about exactly what happened because of these faulty foundations… Not just with the third use of the law, but the second and first use as well! We’ll go “3, 2, 1…”
theology like a child 