The Indicative and Imperative Nature of Faith and New Life

This is a section out of my senior thesis on sanctification. What it addresses is the seemingly conflicting scriptural portrayal of rebirth and renewal as being, at one time, solely the work of God, and at another, an imperative placed on man to conform to God's will. It is a matter of resolving indicative and imperative. Various Lutherans have addressed this issue, namely, Paul Althaus, Helmut Thielicke, Adolf Köberle, and to a certain extent, David Scaer. Helmut Thielicke, though, is the one who really hits the nail on the head in the first volume of his Theological Ethics. I have previously written on this topic in my post The Word, Communication, and Sanctification.

We heard a little on this topic from Paul Althaus in the post Althaus on Faith and Command. There are a couple of things in his portrayal that are not quite correct. 1) Althaus talks of: "Insofar as it is God's gift." When talking of indicative and imperative, we cannot say: insofar as it is indicative/ insofar as it is imperative. We have to affirm that it is, at the same time, fully indicative and fully imperative. 2) Another problem with Althaus' portrayal is that he talks of rebirth and renewal (faith and new life) as being, from the standpoint of God, indicative, and from the standpoint of man, imperative. Indicative and imperative is not a matter of perspective, as if man simply acts and thinks as if it were all his work, while in reality it being solely the work and fruit of God. Paul makes it clear that when man acts in autonomy from acknowledgment of his total reliance on God's grace, he acts in rebellion to God. We hear from Paul:

"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:12-13).

"So, then, it is not of the one willing, nor of the one running, but of the One showing mercy, of God" (Rom. 9:16).

God tells us: "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9).

When God says "weakness," he does not mean, those who are especially deficient in themselves, rather those who recognize that without Christ, the Vine, they can do nothing (John 15:5). But we, at the same time affirm, "[We] can do all things through him who strengthens [us]" (Phil. 4:13). When we look at the subject of Christ's beatitudes compared to, say, the Pharisees, the difference is not that the Pharisees are stronger, etc., rather, it is the poor in spirit, the mourning, the meek who recognize their total dependence on God's grace, this is why they are called blessed; we are all πτωχοι, literally, beggars in spirit, and yet, in this, we are blessed!

The Lutheran understanding of faith is a perfect example of the indissoluble connection of indicative and imperative. Emil Brunner writes: "The Word of God and the word of faith are inseparable. It is not God who believes but I myself who believe; yet I do not believe of myself, but because of God's speech." (Man in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology, trans. Olive Wyon (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2002), 67.) Faith is at one and the same time completely the work and fruit of the Spirit of God, working through the Word, and yet, it is also my response to God's Word, God's claim on me. Faith is never, whether at the outset, in the midst, or at the end, a fruit of anything that is in me, and yet it is I who believe, it is I who say "yes." The Formula of Concord can even say that we "accept the offered grace." (SD Art. II, Par. 83) This is not inappropriate language if, and only if, the relation of indicative and imperative are understood correctly.

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The Indicative and Imperative Nature of Sanctification

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Faith, Fellowship, and Command

The basis of Adam and Eve's fellowship with God and the role of the command not to eat from the tree raises interesting questions for us as believers. Just what, exactly, establishes our fellowship with God? To observe the command not to eat from the tree, and to observe the result that occurred from the eating from that tree, one might come to believe that the status of man's relationship with God has an ethical basis.

The result of such musings has corrupted a true understanding of what it means to receive life from God. We begin to talk about Adam and Eve's moral capabilities; we say: "posse non peccare et posse peccare," that is, they had the ability not to sin and the ability to sin. We begin to talk of their powers. We begin to talk of a donum superadditum, a superadded grace that gave Adam and Eve certain moral capabilities. All of this points, even if it is denied, to an understanding that life in pristine communion with God is established on an ethical basis. It is to talk of what Adam and Eve could or could not do to remain in their relationship with God, thus making man, not God, the source of the communion between them.

Many problems arise from this understanding. First of all, it makes moral capability into a substance and power that man has in himself. This raises a troubling question: If Adam and Eve's ability to remain in a proper relationship with God was determined by their nature, something they had in themselves, why didn't God make their natures stronger so that they could resist the temptations of Satan? And, if God had done this, what implications does this have for free will? I first puzzled over this, oddly enough, when reading Milton's Paradise Lost.

One of two conclusions become clear, 1) this is an inadequate understanding of fellowship with God and another must be looked for, or 2) we chalk it up to a divine mystery.

The answer, I believe, is sitting right under our noses, and that is, God's grace through faith. Specifically, the Lutheran understanding of faith. Faith is the only way we can uphold that 1) Fellowship with God is completely a gift from God, 2) uphold that Adam and Eve had free will, and 3) It was not Adam and Eve's nature that determined if they continued to have fellowship with God.

If this were otherwise, a few Lutheran teachings would be compromised. One thing this would mean is that sanctification would have to be, whether we like it or not, to whatever extent, a matter of a gratia infusa, an infused grace. It would be a grace that would be instilled in us that would correct and heal our natures and make them strong enough at a certain point so that we could return to the pristine fellowship with God that Adam and Eve enjoyed. It would be a grace that we, as we grew in moral capacities, would be weaned off of so that we could stand on our own two feet before the face of God. This would also mean that, as man's nature is healed, he would begin to be able to believe in God by his own power; faith would, at a certain point, no longer remain monergistic. These things would not only be true of the consummation of our restoration with God, it would also be true of the sanctification process this side of the grave.

1:

Paul Althaus writes:

"Human ethics can never play the role of securing or preserving man's position before God. This position is something given to him by God's love; it is not earned, nor can it be earned. And this is true not only at the outset, but always; God's saving grace is always prevenient grace. Ethical righteousness as a pathway to salvation is not only an impassible, but also a forbidden, pathway. For to follow this pathway would be to surrender the relationship of childlike trust."

Althaus tells us that to make our thinking and action the determining factor of our status before God is to fall into the same sin of Adam and Eve; he writes: "It is an expression of his sin, indeed of the basal sin by which he fell and continually falls away from trusting faith in God's love."

If fellowship with God is a gift, then, according to a Lutheran understanding, it can only be received with the open hands of faith; it cannot be enacted and/or preserved through our action. If fellowship with God was enacted and/or preserved through our action, it would cease to be a gift from God. Therefore, fellowship with God is a matter of faith, not of ethics.

Written into this gift of fellowship with God is the shape of the divine life before God, man, and the rest of creation. This is not a condition placed on top of fellowship with God (e.g. Yes, you have fellowship with God, but you must also do. . . if you desire to remain in this fellowship), rather, it is an expression of what it means to live in meaningful and self-giving relationships, reflective of God's own self-giving. It is not even a give and take situation; the life of self-giving is an outflowing of God's own love towards us. There is no disjunction here; God's love toward us is the same love that is expressed through us back towards God, neighbor, and in faithful stewardship of God's creation. In the pristine state of fellowship with God, there is no distinction between indicative and imperative. The gebot (command), as Althaus states, "is present as the reverse side of the offer [Augebot] with which the eternal love of God originally encounters man. Love's offer says: God wants to be for me; he wants to be my God. He has created me as man, and this means, for personal fellowship with him--for participation in his life in the partnership of love. Just as he, my God, freely gives himself to me, so he calls me also, in his offer, to free self-giving. Thereby he calls me to be his image. Such is his love."

In man's pristine state, there is no distinction between what God wills and accomplishes towards us (indicative), and what he wills and desires from us (imperative); all is wrapped up in the single and undivided will of God towards us, that is, the gift of divine fellowship with him and the rest of creation. As David Scaer writes:

"The law in its earliest expression is a positive statement of God's relationship to the world and the world's relationship to God. In this form the law is more indicative than imperative. It is more description than it is requirement. To say it better, in this form the law's imperative nature and the indicative of God's and man's relationship to each other are perfectly harmonized. . . The distinction between indicative and imperative is theologically unjustifiable for saints as saints." (“Sanctification in Lutheran Theology,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 49, no.
2-3 (1985), 186.)

In his pristine state, man's recognition of God's love towards him in creation, his promise to sustain and provide for his life, and the promise of fellowship with himself and with fellow man is no different than man's recognition that God, in his commands for us, desires only our blessing and benefit. Althaus writes: "Thus the command promises life; it is a commandment eis zoen (Rom. 7:10). It calls me into life with God; that is, into freedom. . . and into love, which is true life." Therefore, to question and reject God's commandment not to eat from the tree is to question and reject the life God offered them. David Scaer writes:

"He was prohibited from stepping out of this positive relationship with God. But this prohibition is not arbitrarily superimposed on man to test him, but was simply the explanation or description of what would happen to man if he stepped outside of the relationship with God in which he was created. The indicative was its own imperative. . . By stepping outside of the created order, man brought calamity upon himself. The act provided its own consequences. In attempting to become like God he placed himself outside a positive relationship with God, so that now God was seen as the enemy placing unjust demands upon him." ("The Law and the Gospel in Lutheran Theology," Logia 3, no. 1 (1994), 30.)

Consequently, to reject God's command is to reject God himself, to question whether God has the best intentions for us. It is fundamentally an expression of a lack of faith, a lack of trust in God's love and care for us. The fall of man is not a reflection of a default in the nature of man, and thus in God's ability to create, but rather affirms the fact that as beings that are created free, we have a question that is ever before of us: whether we will have faith in God's gracious favor and will towards us (both indicative and imperative), or whether we will reject God's favor and will.

2:

Piotr Malysz writes:

"Humans are created to love God, their fellow man, and God’s gift of creation. By definition, they are social and vocational beings, relating to others in such a way as to further their good through God appointed means. In so doing, they surrender their being in all its individualism only to gain it back, in, with and through the being of another. Only by receiving and giving can they realize their humanity. Only thus can they be human beings.

"It has already been indicated that love consists in self-giving. Naturally there can be no love under coercion. Thus with its origin in the divine love, human existence is one of freedom. God did not create automatons but beings that were beautiful, interesting and worthwhile for their own sake—individuals with the capacity, of their own free will, to reflect the love received. A loving relationship by nature implies an option for un-love. Love as self-giving implies the possibility of rejection. It is in this context of what love is that the presence in the garden of the tree of knowledge of good and evil finds its purpose. To Adam and Eve was entrusted all that God had created with the exception of one tree, of which they were expressly forbidden to eat. In negative terms, the tree presents itself as an alternative to God's love; it makes the possibility of choosing un-love, or self-love, a real one. In positive terms, it underscores the free and self-giving character of the divine-human relationship, pointing to the centrality of love in the constitution of man. From man's perspective, it makes love possible. Finally, it points to the fundamental significance of trust as an inseparable aspect of love. Adam and Eve knew their creator intimately in his self-sharing. All they were and all that they had came from him. It would seem there surely was a significant basis for trust. And yet, incomprehensibly but in how familiar a way, they gave credence to the serpent's deceitful promise." ("Third Use of the Law in Light of Creation and the Fall," Logia 11, no. 3 (2002), 13.)

He writes: "There can be no love under coercion." As beings that are created free, there must always be the possibility to reject God's offer of the divine life. This is not ethically determined but rather reflects the necessity of freedom to mark relationships of self-giving love. For this reason the imperative must always remain. Althaus writes:

"The command is grounded wholly in the offer; it is wholly borne by God's gift to us. It is this gift that stands at the beginning: God's wanting to be for us. The offer, not the command, is primary. But precisely because this is an offer made in love--love that seeks me as a person--this offer, this gift, necessarily (with the necessity of God's love) becomes also a summons. God cannot be my God in a saving way unless I let him be my God. Otherwise the nature of the personal relationship, as God himself intends it, would be contradicted. He calls me to trust him above all things."

The option for un-love must always remain a real one; we cannot be and remain truly human, living in a meaningful relationship with God if, for whatever reason, we are not able to reject God and his love. This is what separates us from the rest of God's creation, it is what makes our expressions of love toward God and neighbor meaningful.

It might be objected, here, that this means nothing else than that fellowship with God is ultimately determined by man's decision to accept God in faith or reject him, thus making fellowship ethically determined. This objection, though, is a misunderstanding of faith, and how it is created and sustained.

3:

If Adam and Eve's power and ability to remain in fellowship with God is something that was written into man himself, into his nature (posse non peccare), the posse peccare would be either a deficiency of that nature or would be its own (negative) power and ability. To say such is to misunderstand what nature is. It is true that man has a heart, mind, and will whose intentionality determines whether we are slaves to sin or are sons of God, the question is where does the quality of heart, mind, and will come from? Was the quality of Adam and Eve's heart, mind, and will, something that they had located in themselves, written into their very natures at creation? If so, it is hard not to come to the conclusion that the fall was a product of a qualitative deficiency in Adam and Eve's nature, and thus a deficiency in creation itself.

All of this is to misunderstand the character of the life Adam and Eve received from God. If fellowship with God is determined by a qualitative nature inherent in Adam and Eve, it can only be continually realized by Adam and Eve's autonomous moral exertion. Creation and fellowship with God can no longer be a gift that is received. Even if fellowship was originally a gift, through creation, its continued realization would be determined by man alone.

Roman Catholic theology has avoided an implication that there was something deficient in the nature of man by making a distinction between the image of God and the likeness of God. The image of God is seen as the faculties identified with man's rational capacities. The likeness of God was a donum superadditum, a super added gift given to man up and above his nature that made him capable of remaining in his pristine relationship with God. Saint Augustine writes: "Man was, therefore, made upright, and in such a fashion that he could either continue in that uprightness—though not without divine aid—or become perverted by his own choice." Even this, though, implies that something was lacking in man's creation. It paints a type of synergistic understanding of fellowship with God--partly man's naturally given abilities, partly God's divine gift. On the other hand, what this avoids is an understanding that man was not given enough "stuff" to remain in pristine bliss; what this upholds is that man alone is at fault for the fall of mankind.

It is this author's opinion that pristine fellowship with God never devolves from being pure gift into being continually realized only through autonomous moral action. And as gift, as with all of God's divine giving, it can only be received with the open hands of faith. Emil Brunner writes:

"Human existence was originally disposed for the reception of this gift, not for meeting an obligation by means of our own efforts. It is thus that we come to understand ourselves once more--our being according to the Imago Dei-- in the light of the New Testament, since we are renewed unto this image, through the Word that gives, through the self-sacrificing love of God, through a purely receptive faith." (Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology, trans. Olive Wyon (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2002), 104.)

What we call man's "nature" in pristine bliss is not something that is self-realized as something he has in himself, rather, it is only realized through relation to God's continual self-giving love. Brunner writes:

"Man ought not to understand himself in the light of his own nature, nor should he regard himself as due to 'something,' but that he must understand himself in light of the Eternal Word, which precedes man's existence, and yet imparts Himself to him. Man possesses--and this is his nature-- One who stands 'over-against' him, One whose will and thought are directed to him, One who loves him, One who calls him, in and from and for: love. And this One who confronts man, and imparts Himself to him, is the ground of man's being and nature." (77)

We mentioned earlier man's heart, mind and will. It is true that in paradise our parents' heart, mind, and wills were directed toward and were in complete harmony with God's will. It is also true that man's heart, mind, and will, in his fallen state, is directed toward sin and is in complete contradiction to God's will. We agree, therefore, that both man in pristine bliss and man in his fallen state has a heart, mind and will. What is the distinction between these things? Is it a matter of moral energies? Was it a matter of Adam and Eve's heart, mind, and will being more powerful than a fallen heart, mind, and will? It is a matter of determining if these "moral energies" were something that man had in himself, in his nature, or if they were the continual gift of God's grace working through the Word, accepted through faith.

The Reformed theologian, G. C. Berkouwer, writes against this understanding of a self-enclosed nature, without relation to God's work:

"Every view of man which sees him as an isolated unity is incorrect. There have frequently been attempts to draw a picture of man through an elaborate and detailed analysis of man an sich, in himself, whereby man's relation to God was necessarily thought of as something added to man's self-enclosed nature, a donum superadditum, a "plus factor." But the light of revelation, when dealing with man's nature, is not concerned with information about such a self-enclosed nature; it is concerned with a nature which is not self-enclosed, and which can never be understood outside of its relation to God, since such a self-enclosed nature, an isolated nature, is nothing but an abstraction. The relation of man's nature to God is not something which is added to an already complete, self-enclosed, isolated nature; it is essential and constitutive for man's nature, and man cannot be understood apart from this relation." (G.C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God, trans. Dirk Jellema (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1984), 22-23.)

As such, God grace does not add to nature, nor does it discredit nature (two things a donum superadditum admits), rather, God's grace constitutes true nature as it was intended. The correct understanding of man's heart, mind, and will in pristine bliss tells us that their qualitative nature was not found as existing in man himself, but as coming through God's gracious will towards us, received through faith.

This is no less true of faith itself. The gift of faith does not add to nature, nor does it discredit nature, rather, true nature can only be received through this same gift of faith:

"Faith is not a gift in the sense of a donum superadditum added to human nature as a new organ. This would mean that an unbeliever is less of a human than a believer. Such a notion is the result of cutting off faith from total concreteness of human life. It may seem to honor the miracle of this gift the more, but actually it does injustice to the gift itself. Faith is neither a newly created human organ nor a new substance which is infused into the level of human existence. If it were, it would be scarcely distinguishable from the Roman donum superadditum. We cannot get at grace by compiling a studied list of anthropological data. The whole man beginning at his heart. . .is embraced by this immutable and miraculous divine grace. This is the miracle of the Spirit that remains indescribable although the attempts to describe and define it are legion. Istead of calling faith a new organ or a donum superadditum, the work of the Holy Spirit has been described as the great change of course from the way of apostacy to the way of the true God." (G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Justification, trans. Lewis Smedes (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979), 191.)

This is what distinguishes fellowship with God that is based on ethics and fellowship which is based on grace received through faith. Far from being a matter of ethical powers inherent in man, the issue becomes a matter of whether man is directed toward, and thus receives his life from, God in faith, or whether he turns away from God due to mistrust and lack of faith. The former is the gift and fruit of God's grace alone, the latter is the fruit of man's mistrust and misunderstanding of God's nature as love.

The latter is not a fault in nature, rather, it is the rejection of nature, the life Adam and Eve received right from the mouth of God. Emil Brunner writes:

"Man's being as man is both in one, nature and grace. The fact that man is determined by God is the original real nature of man; and what we now know in man as his 'nature' is de-natured nature, it is only a meagre relic of his original human nature. Through sin man has lost not a 'super-nature' but his God-given nature, and has become unnatural, inhuman. To begin the understanding of man with a neutral natural concept--animal rationale-- means a hopeless misunderstanding of the being of man from the very outset. Man is not a 'two-storey' creature, but--even if now corrupted-- a unity. His relation to God is not something which is added to his human nature; it is the core and ground of his humanitas. That was Luther's revolutionary discovery." (94)

Growth in sanctification that will be consumated in heaven is a growth in grace; it is not a growth of human nature so that, eventually, man no longer needs God's grace. The closer we grow towards God, the more we forsake "our own" powers and rely more and more on God's grace. Brunner writes: "The maximum of [man's] dependence on God is at the same time the maximum of his freedom, and his freedom decreases with his degree of distance from the place of his origin, from God." (263) We hear from William Lazareth: "Our growth is by way of God’s grace and not by our works; we grow theonomously more and more (and not autonomously less and less) in our total dependence on God’s unmerited favor." And again: "The more we grow, the more dependent we become on the gifts granted by the ethical governance of the indwelling Holy Spirit, who always accompanies the church’s holy Word and blessed sacraments." (Christians in Society: Luther, the Bible, and Social Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 201; 211.)

This is the only way that fellowship with God can remain gratia purum, pure gift. Once fellowship with God is turned into something that is determined by something man has in himself, with his own action and thinking, fellowship no longer remains gift. Just like Adam and Eve, it would be a matter of saying: Now that you are saved (created, for Adam and Eve) by grace, now retain this restored fellowship with God by works. On the other hand, as a gift, the option for its rejection remains a real one. To reject the gift is to turn away from God's will--whether indicative or imperative. To reject and break God's commandment was to reject God himself and his will for Adam and Eve's lives in fellowship with him. In breaking the commandment, Adam and Eve express their lack of trust that God's will for them has their best interests in mind. It is a turning away from childlike trust in God's promises, and a placing of their faith in the "serpent's deceitful promise." This is the only way to understand God's will for mankind; it is either accepted in childlike faith that it seeks only my life, or it is treated with suspicion and must be explained away through theological schemes and formulas.

Lutheran Quote of the Day: Althaus on Faith and Command

Here are some more statements from Paul Althaus. I will respond to them in my final post on the law. The focus is on the relation of faith and the law.

"In the beginning, in the primal state from which we all derive, is the divine command [Gebot]. It is present as the reverse side of the offer [Augebot] with which the eternal love of God originally encounters man. Love's offer says: God wants to be for me; he wants to be my God. He has created me as man, and this means, for personal fellowship with him--for participation in his life in the partnership of love. Just as he, my God, freely gives himself to me, so he calls me also, in his offer, to free self-giving. Thereby he calls me to be his image. Such is his love.

"God's offer, therefore, is at the same time a summons, an appeal, and a command: namely, that I should let him be what he, in his love, wants to be--my God. The command is grounded wholly in the offer; it is wholly borne by God's gift to us. It is this gift that stands at the beginning: God's wanting to be for us. The offer, not the command, is primary. But precisely because this is an offer made in love--love that seeks me as a person--this offer, this gift, necessarily (with the necessity of God's love) becomes also a summons. God cannot be my God in a saving way unless I let him be my God. Otherwise the nature of the personal relationship, as God himself intends it, would be contradicted. He calls me to trust him above all things. This is offer (promissio) and at the same time summons, commands, and call.

"It might well be asked whether it is advisable, from a theological point of view, to designate this appeal of God which accompanies his gracious offer to man by the word "command"--whether the connotations of this term are sufficiently distinct from those of "law." Emil Brunner speaks in this connection of God's "claim on man," or his "summons": "Man cannot receive the love of God save through being commanded to accept it, and in being claimed by God." Our use of the term "command" corresponds to the usage in I John 3:23, where in faith in the name of Jesus Christ is indicated as the content of "God's commandment." According to John, the gospel of Jesus Christ is at one and the same time a gospel and a commandment. This is to say that faith, although it is won from man by God's love, is nevertheless also man's personal act, in and through which he gives, and must give, God the glory (Rom. 4:20). It is in this respect that faith is obedience (Rom. 1:5, 10:3). The notion of "command," then, corresponds to a basic element in the gospel; and if the term is appropriate here, then it surely appropriate also to describe God's original relationship to man. However, we shall find it useful to substitute the word "appeal" or "summons" for "command" from time to time, in order to indicate all the more clearly the contrast with law, and to remind ourselves of the original meaning of divine command as the reverse side of God's offer.

"Thus the command promises life; it is a commandment eis zoen (Rom. 7:10). It calls me into life with God; that is, into freedom from the world, and into love, which is true life. So the command itself is a memorial of God's love for me.

""Command": this implies that another will confronts me, which puts my own will under claim. There is not as yet any opposition between the two, but there clearly is a duality. Unity between God's will and my own is something that has to be realized, over and again; it is not presupposed. The command is a word that stands over me, a word spoken to me. My situation, therefore, is that of one who has to ask, who has to listen, for a word which I myself cannot speak. The fact that God's will confronts us as command is not a condition that arises through sin, or on account of sin; it is an ordinance of the Creator. For God is my Lord. What exists "in the beginning," in the primal state [Urstand], is not a mystical oneness with God, nor an identity of will, but rather a duality: a duality, however, that in every moment is in the process of becoming a unity. But this "becoming a unity" takes place only in obedience. The command does not originate after the fall; it exists already before the fall." (The Divine Command: A New Perspective on Law and Gospel, trans. Franklin Sherman (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 8-10.)

"Man, however--and this is another feature of life under the law--fails to understand this situation. He conceals from himself that character of law as a strange word of God--its negativity, its secondary and prohibitive character, its meaning as a sign and shadow of our own past and continuing sin. He thinks that he can use the law in a positive way. The very law which in its form is an expression of the rejection and loss of salvation, and hence of man's state of hopelessness, is treated by man as if it were a means of salvation. He vainly imagines that through fulfilling the law he can repair his shattered relationship to God, that he can become righteous before God. He treats the law, in Luther's word, as justificatrix, as justifying.

"But this is not only a complete misinterpretation of the situation, as illusion (for no one, given the covetousness of the human heart, has been able, since man's fall from fellowship with God, to fulfill God's law), this very effort is itself further sin against God. Indeed, it is the repetition of the primal sin by which man fell away from God, namely, the effort to live before God by something other than God's own love, the love that precedes all our acting. This constitutes a misinterpretation not only of man's situation as sinner, but also of God's godhood and of man's creaturehood. God is God, and wills to be God--that is, to be solely and absolutely the Creator; the Creator not only of our existence but also of the worth and value that we have before him. Because God is God, the only possibility of man's living before him and having some significance in his sight derives from God's own free, unearned, unmerited favor. It is not only the sinner who is wholly dependent upon grace; the same is true of the righteous man--if there is or could be such. To deny this was and is the sin of the pharisee.

"The effort to recommend oneself to God and put oneself right before him by one's own achievements is blasphemy, as Luther put it plainly. It is an attack on the divine majesty of him who is and wills to be always the Creator, not only of our natural life, but also of our place as children in his house. Human ethics can never play the role of securing or preserving man's position before God. This position is something given to him by God's love; it is not earned, nor can it be earned. And this is true not only at the outset, but always; God's saving grace is always prevenient grace. Ethical righteousness as a pathway to salvation is not only an impassible, but also a forbidden, pathway. For to follow this pathway would be to surrender the relationship of childlike trust. This way can only serve inevitably to confirm again and again man's inevitable sinfulness. From beginning to end, it is an expression of his sin, indeed of the basal sin by which he fell and continually falls away from trusting faith in God's love." (The Divine Command, 16-17)

"Basically, to be sure, the Christian, in faith, is at one with God's loving will and rejoices in it. There is nothing he desires more ardently than that God's good and gracious will should be done in us and through us. But this basic oneness of my will with what God wills must become a matter of concrete experience in an ever new enacting of this oneness. The basic surrender must be expressed in ever new concrete acts of surrender. For the duality remains, the otherness and newness of the concrete will of God in contrast to my human expectations and desires. Again, this becomes plain to us in the figure of Jesus Christ. Even for him who as the Son lived in an unbroken fellowship of love with the Father, "my will" and "thy will" were two different things, as the prayer in Gethsemane reveals. Even though throughout his life he was of one will with the Father, nevertheless in every concrete instance he had to become one with the particular will of the Father, moving to such unity from the duality of "my will" and "thine." The fact that this was so even in Jesus' case demonstrates that this basic duality, this distinction between what we ought to do and what we ought to do and what we wish to do, is not as such to be attributed to, or regarded as an expression of, the sinfulness of our will. Rather it is given in and with the very fact that Creator and creature, Father and son, Lord and servant stand over against one another. Although Jesus "knew no sin," God's will still confronted him as an other--not implying that he was a sinner, but only that he too stood under God as his Lord. God's will is an "other" not only vis-a-vis our sinful desires, but also vis-a-vis our natural desires as creatures. . .This becomes especially clear when God's will calls on us to suffer. It is not the Creator's will that anyone should deliberately wish for suffering and death, weakness and failure. Nevertheless, God may sometime ask this of us, as he did of Jesus. (The Divine Command, 36-37)

In our opinion, this juxtaposition [between indicative and imperative] is an expression of the peculiar character of all human existence before God, and hence also of Christian existence. Paul's words in Philippians reflect this same duality: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you, both to will and work for his good pleasure" (2:12f.). This means (1) we know that faith, and with it, the new life, remains always God's gift; and yet (2) we know always that we are called and are responsible to have such faith and to walk in this newness of life. Our being Christians is at every moment a gift of God, and likewise in every moment, from our standpoint and with respect to us, a task. Insofar as it is God's gift, we may and must describe our state as Christians as a state of being, which now simply operates and out of the power of God brings forth "fruit." This is a matter of the indicative. But faith and the new life--which from God's standpoint constitutes a state of being--are from the human standpoint only realized in that we are called day by day to act in accordance with the new manner of life i.e., to live in faith and love. Here the imperative element appears. It is not the case that we simply live and act as new creatures; rather, we are constantly called anew into this newness [N.B. This is where I feel Forde's understanding is lacking. Forde seems to see sanctification merely as an indicative process almost distinct from human experience. The duality of wills--God's and my own--, being confronted with God's Word, and the imperative nature of our fellowship with God is what is missing in Forde's understanding. On the other hand, I don't quite think Althaus resolves indicative and imperative satisfactorily either.] What we have the privilege of knowing as a state of being, insofar as t is God's gift, is realized over and again (in accordance with the way God has made us as persons) only as an act required in this moment.

"We may speak of fruits, whose appearing may be taken for granted if we are thinking of the faithfulness of God (I Thess. 5:23 f.; I Cor. 1:8 f.). He has begun a good work in us and will bring it to completion (Phil. 1:6). It is he who makes me fruitful. But this trust in God does not abolish our own responsible character as persons, nor does it negate God's challenge to us, which calls for a response in continually new acts of decision.

"Thus our Christian life stands at all times under the double aspect of being and act, gift and assignment. The "being" is really only in terms of personal "act." But the very act demanded of us, we beg and receive from the faithfulness of God. It is this faithfulness on which the continuity of the new life is based.

"All this is true of faith as well, as we have already indicated. It too bears this double character. God effects faith in me; and yet the New Testament presents also the imperative: "Only believe!" (Mark 5:36; Luke 8:50). "Have faith in God!" (John 14:1). Faith itself is the object of an appeal, an imperative.

"We conclude, therefore, that the relationship between faith and works is not a causal one. Faith in not, from the human perspective, a state of affairs that simply works itself out in such a way as to lead with causal inevitability to the new life as its "fruit." This could not be the case, since I am continually called to have faith, and not to persist in unbelief. Faith itself stands under the same imperative as does action. It exists only in ever-repeated enactment. This enactment, however, takes place in terms of concrete deeds, of works. [Althaus is simply wrong here. Works do not enact faith or make it "concrete." Works may flow from faith and may be the natural outcome of faith, they do not, however, enact faith.] So it is not a relationship of causality that prevails between faith and the new life, but rather a relationship of immanence. As we have already stated, works do not follow from faith; but, rather, faith lives in works, in attitude and action.

"Therefore, if the new life of the Christian is pictured as "fruit," this must not be taken to imply an ethical automatism in the believer. Faith does not lead to action by virtue of a psychic compulsion. Such an interpretation would be a misuse of the image of fruit. This image can only serve to indicate the inherent necessity with which the gospel, as grasped by faith, presses to deeds of love." (The Divine Command, 40-42)

"In his Small Catechism, Luther describes faith as the source of life in obedience to God's commands by beginning the explanation of the first commandment: "We should fear and love God, and as a result. . ." In his Treatise on Good Works and in the Large Catechism he describes how faith does what the commandments say we ought to do and thereby fulfills. He demonstrates that the actions forbidden by individual commandments flow from mistrust of God and unfaith in Christ; similarly, he shows that it is faith that produces the righteous works which they command." (The Ethics of Martin Luther, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), 15.)

Lutheran Quote of the Day: Althaus on Law and Command in the New Testament

This is a very interesting look into New Testament terminological usage. I think there is something to be said for Althaus' conclusion, here, that the writers of the New Testament are making theological distinctions by making terminological distinctions. What do you guys think?

"A distinction between command and law such as the one proposed cannot be derived from the inspection of the terms as such; this we freely admit. The distinction has a synthetic, not an analytic, character. According to customary religious language (based on the Bible), the law of God consists in a given number of commandments. A commandment is a part of the law. Thus, so far as their contents are concerned, "law" and "command" or "commandments" are synonymous. This is Paul's usage, for example, in Romans 7:7 ff. Likewise the Lutheran confessional writings use the term lex and praecepra interchangeably.

"But we can see already in the New Testament the beginnings of a terminological distinction. It is true that there seem to be no signs of this in Paul. "The law" is for him "holy," and "the commandment is holy and just and good" (Rom. 7:12), no doubt for the reason that its content is the eternal, permanently valid will of God for man. Thus the apostle can summarize the very purpose of God's saving deed in Jesus Christ in such terms as these: "that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." The Christian life involves fulfillment of the law, through love; love is "the fulfillment of the law" (Rom. 13:10; Gal. 5:14). Indeed, since love to neighbor is the real meaning of the law, in all its various commandments, the same Paul who finds in Christ the end of the law (Rom. 10:4) can speak, paradoxically, of the "law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2). He speaks of himself as ennomos Christon, "under [literally 'in'] the law of Christ" (1 Cor. 9:21). Here the term "law" is retained, to be sure, but only in order to express all the more sharply the contrast with the Jewish and Judaistic notion of law. Insofar as the term law is used at all, an element of continuity is implied (Jesus does not, according to Paul, bring any new law); but at the same time, the phrase "the law of Christ" implies a basic transformation. If anyone is in Christ, the new has come (II Cor. 5:17); as the law of Christ, therefore, the law is something new. Paul no longer lives "under the law," but neither does he live "without the law"; rather, he lives "in the law," namely, the law of Christ. He lives in the law because he lives in Christ. And what is true of him is true of all Christians (Gal. 5:18; Rom. 6:14, 8:2).

"Paul gives further evidence of the great transformation that has taken place in that when he deals with the question of norms for the life of the Christian and of the church, he very seldom refers to the law, and then only in a secondary way (I Cor. 9:8f., 14:21, 34). In the ethical chapters of the letter to the Romans (chaps. 12 ff.), the term law does not occur, except at the one place already mentioned (13:8 ff.), and there Paul, in effect, substitutes for it the command to love as its equivalent. Neither is there any mention of the law in the letters to the Thessalonians or in II Corinthians. Instead, Paul speaks in his admonitions to the believers of "the will of God," just as Jesus had spoken of "the will of my Father" (Matt. 7:21, 12:50, cf. 6:10). Not that this formula is original with Christianity; the phrases "to do the will of God" or "to do the will of the Father in heaven" were familiar to the Palestinian synagogue. Nevertheless it is significant that Paul in these passages seems to make it a point to avoid using the term "law." Thus in Romans 12:2, he sums up the whole body of Christian ethical insight as a matter of "proving what is the will of God" (cf. Col. 1:9). In I Thessalonians 4:3, he writes that the sanctification of Christians is "the will of God," as is the rejoicing always, praying constantly, and giving thanks in all circumstances (5:18). Closely related to this, or even synonymous with it, is the notion of what is "acceptable to God" or "pleasing to God" (e.g., Rom. 12:1f.; Col. 3:20).

"The use of terms in the deuteropauline literature is similar. In Ephesians, the law appears only as "the law of commandments and ordinances" which Christ has abolished (2:15). Elsewhere in the epistle we find, as in Paul, references not to the law but to the "will of God" (5:17, 6:6), or "what is pleasing to the Lord" (5:10). The situation is no different in I Peter: the term "law" is completely lacking; the writer refers instead to "the will of God" (2:15, cf. 3:17, 4:19). As to the book of James, one sign of its special position in the New Testament is that it does speak of a fulfilling or keeping of the "law" (2:8 f.). Surely it is not by chance that Paul, in his remarks on the relations of Jewish and Gentile Christians in I Corinthians 7:19, speaks not of "the law," but of "the commandments": "Neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God." In the Book of Hebrews, similarly, the term "law" is used only to refer to the Old Testament law; as for Christians, they are to "do the will of God" (10:36, 13:21).

"We have seen thus far that in practically all the passages which deal with the question of norms or the Christian life, the term "law" is avoided. The implication of this is clear: a distinction is being made between God's eternal will, on the one hand, and "the law" on the other.

"The Johannine usage is still more consistent and terminologically explicit. In the Gospel of John, "law" always signifies the law of Moses. God's will (or Christ's will) for the believers, like God's will for Christ himself, is invariably designated by the term "commandment," never by "law" (see especially John 10:18, 13:34, and repeatedly in chaps. 14 and 15). Likewise in the Johannine epistles, the term nomos is entirely lacking; the mark of true Christian faith is rather "keeping the commandments" of God or of Christ. John does speak, just once, of "keeping the law," but here he is referring to the Jews: "Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law" (John 7:19). The phrase "keeping the law" is never used with reference to Jesus' disciples. The same is true in the Book of Revelation: the term nomos does not occur at all. Christians are designated as "those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus" (Rev. 12:17), or "those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus" (14:12). We see, then, that John makes a strict terminological and theological distinction between law and commandment. The law was given by Moses (John 7:19), or by God through Moses (1:17), and it was given only to the Jews; but now God gives--both to his Son and through him-- the commandments.

"Thus we do have some basis in New Testament usage for our proposal that a theological distinction be drawn between "law" and "command." What impels us to make this proposal is the same factor that seems to underlie the consistent Johannine usage, namely, the fact that the "law," as Paul delineates it in contrast to the gospel, is not precisely the same as the eternal, unalterable will of God for man. Rather, the law must be seen as one limited and temporary form of this eternal will--a form that in Jesus Christ has been superseded and abolished. It does not matter what term is used to refer to this permanent will of God, as distinguished from the law. What is important is whether this needful distinction is in fact made, and is clearly expressed in the terminology employed. Some other word than "command" could very well be used to designate the will of God as distinguished from the law. But there is much to be said for following the Johannine usage. We shall accordingly refer to God's will for man, insofar as this is not identical with its form as law, as the divine "command.""

-Paul Althaus, The Divine Command: A New Perspective on Law and Gospel, trans. Franklin Sherman (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 3-7.

Lutheran Quote of the Day: David Scaer on the Law

This is an extended quote from an older article by David Scaer. I think it expresses well some of my own thoughts on the topic. Namely is the topic of the spirit and the flesh, new man and old man. Forde does not address this issue at all, but this is really how the Christian's interaction with the law is presented in Scripture, especially in Paul (Cf. Rom. 7). The fact that the Christian, at one and the same time, both delights in and hates the law does not mean that man himself is the arbiter of how he reacts to the law. This is what Forde was most concerned about, that is, that man would put himself above the law, and thus dispose of it with either his thinking or actions; it would be a premature translation into the eschaton. An understanding of flesh and spirit, and with this the third use of the law, does not imply that man's positive disposition to the law is something that is determined by something "inside" of man, rather the disposition of the spirit, and the third use is clearly depicted as the work of God. If anything, Paul's depiction of the spirit and the flesh in Romans 7 shows how little he himself had over his interaction with the law, but at the same time, Paul also acknowledges that the Christian is critically engaged in and personally aware of how the Spirit is working himself out in our spirit. With Forde's desire to make it clear that man had no role in translating himself into the new age, he also disposed of man himself and the dynamic and very personal experience of what it means to be a Christian and to be confronted with God's Word. His interpretation of the third use of the law is telling in this regard. Gerhard Forde's most vocal complaint against the third use is the idea that the Christian can somehow use the law in a third way. This, though, is clearly a misunderstanding of the third use of the law. Article VI, of the Formula of Concord makes it clear that it is not man who uses the law in a third way, but rather the Holy Spirit (SD VI, 3; 12). It is the Holy Spirit that leads and instructs and guides. All other mention of teaching and instruction in Article VI is clearly shown as not pertaining to the third use of the law (SD VI, 9; 20; 21; 24. See my post on The Third Use of the Law).

III.

"The Formula, in presenting the Lutheran position on the Third Use of the Law, uses Biblical references which refer to the Scriptures in their totality and not only those passages speaking specifically about the Law. Both Psalm 1 (SD VI, 4) and 2 Timothy 3:15-17 (SD VI, 14) are used to demonstrate the Law's validity in the life of the Christian, though both passages refer to the Scriptures in their totality, not simply to the written Law. Psalm 1 speaks about the man who delights in the Books of Moses and the 2 Timothy 3:15-17 passages speaks about the total inspiration of the Scripture and not just the Gospel. Just as Lutherans see the entire Scripture as inspired, so they see the entire Scriptural message, both Law and Gospel, as applicable to the life of the Christian. The Formula sees in 2 Timothy 3:15-17 a direct Biblical command to apply the Law in the life of the Christian (SD V I, 14). Underlying the concept that the Law is made applicable in the life of the Christian through the Scriptures is the Lutheran understanding that the Scriptures in all its parts, both Law and Gospel, are inspired and that these Scriptures are directed to man in the state of sin. The Scriptures are God's written word, necessitated by the fall into sin and directed to man in this fallen condition. Natural Law, sin, and Scriptural inspiration are related to each other.

"Man by the fall into sin was no longer capable of properly comprehending the Law as it originally was part of creation. He followed after that Law, but he fulfilled its requirements only inadequately at best and in every case the Law became his accuser. As a religiously created being, man is compelled by his inherent religious nature to search after God, but these searches are doomed to failure (Apol. IV, 22-25, 40). God through His mercy sent the prophets and later the apostles to proclaim salvation in Jesus Christ. But before the proclamation of salvation could be made, the Law as first found in nature had to be restated in such a way that man in his perverted state could fully comprehend what God had always been setting forth in the natural Law. Both the prophets and the apostles redirected the Law specifically against man's unregenerate nature. They came first to proclaim the Law as a mirror of man's sins, i.e., its second use. Though God condemns through the Law, His proclamation of the Law through His prophets and apostles belongs to God's overall plan of mercy since man by the Law is properly prepared for the Gospel. The Spirit's inspiration of the prophets and apostles embraces not only the words of the .Gospel but also of the Law. The Formula makes no qualitative difference between the Spirit's origination of the Gospel and that of the Law. Both the Law and the Gospel proceed from the Spirit's inner being. Both are His products.

"The person who claims the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit and rejects the Law as revealed in the prophets and the apostles is, in fact, rejecting the Holy Spirit by rejecting His work. Whoever claims a working of the Spirit for his life apart from the prophets and apostles is a fanatic (SD XII, 30). The Holy Spirit has given both the Law and the Gospel and He is responsible for their inscripturation. The Law is valid in the life of the Christian if for no other reason than that it originates with the Spirit and He has caused it to be written in the Holy Scriptures. There are, of course, other reasons for the Law's validity in the life of the Christian. Nevertheless, the Lutherans saw the Law as part and parcel of the special divine revelation. Those who rejected the Law did not only have a faulty concept of the Law itself but of divine revelation and of the Scriptures themselves. Also connected with the concept of the Third Use of the Law was the Lutheran anthropology, the doctrine of man.

IV.

"The Formula reflected the Lutheran view of man as living under the Law in four different conditions: the original created state of moral innocence, the fallen state of sin, the state of regeneration, and the final state of resurrection. The Law in its third function is directed to man in the state of regeneration. Seeing man in these four different phases is essential for a fuller understanding of the Lutheran view of the Law and particularly its Third Use. The Lutheran view dismisses the idea that the Law undergoes any change as it is the expression of God's immutable will (FC SD VI, 15). The four different situations are accounted for by man's differing relationships to God and thus also to the Law. Man, as he is a sinner. can only envisage the Law with prohibitions and penalties as a negative intrusion into his life. It is difficult for man to imagine the original state of moral innocence in which he found positive direction for his life in the Law. In this original condition he needed neither prophet nor Scripture since man's communion with God's creation was itself participation in God's revelation. In the sinless condition man viewed nature and God's revelation as one entity. No special revelation beyond nature was needed. Man in moral innocence needed no Law as a curb for the gross manifestations of evil or for a reflection of his own sin. He needed no special direction of the Law as nature provided a constant, regular communication of the Law. Only in the fallen state is the original positive function of the Law replaced by negative prohibition. Law, understood originally as a description of man's positive relationships to God, to his fellow men, and to his environment becomes with the entrance of sin a negative description of man's broken relationships to God, his fellow men, and his environment. In the first condition, the indicative was merged with the imperative. The Law served as a description of what man was and what he was to do and what he, indeed, could do. There was no tension between what man did and what man could, must, and should do. Now in the state of sin what man must do and should do is not what he can do and does do. The Law becomes a compelling and restraining force against man's rebellious nature. What man once did naturally he is now forced to do against his will. The unregenerate man hates the performance of the Law with an intensity comparable to the first man's love for its performance. The sinner cannot remain morally neutral to the Law. He performs the Law which he hates and he knows that failure to perform its requirements brings penalties. Where he fulfills the Law, he is goaded by the promise of rewards and threats of its punishments. The Law makes the sinner's life miserable (SD VI, 19).

"When the sinner becomes a Christian, the Law begins to take on a new, different character for him. His new condition as a Christian means a new relationship with God and His Law. The Law in this Third Use is addressed to the sinner who has become a Christian but still remains in part under the control of sin (SD VI, 9). Understanding the Law in this Third Use is predicated on understanding the Lutheran view of the regenerate Christian.

"Essential to Lutheran anthropology is the internal strife within the Christian. He is tom between that part of him which wants to obey God's will and the part that feels more comfortable with the older ways of sin. Though this internal struggle is never over in this life, the promise of victory is assured in the resurrection. Several terms express these two opposing forces within the Christian. The part belonging to God is designated as the inner man, the Spirit's temple, and the regenerated man, the man who has been born again (FC SD VI, 5). The part which resists God is designated as the old Adam, the flesh, and in other Lutheran writings the old man. The Law of God remains one and immutable, but as it approaches the Christian, its positive directions apply to the converted part and its negative prohibitions with the threats of punishments are directed to the unregenerated condition.

"The Christian only so far as he is regenerated is free from the threats and curses of the Law (SD VI, 23) and he recognizes this Law as God's will for his life (SD VI, 12). The Formula uses picturesque language in describing the Christian's response to the Law. In this renewed condition he "does everything from a free and merry spirit" (SD VI, 17). Such good works are motivated by the Holy Spirit and flow from faith, but they are all in accordance with the Law, which is also the Spirit's product (SD VI, 12). Works flow from faith as water comes from a spring, but these works flow down channels established by the Law. This positive direction of the Law without prohibition or fear of punishment is what is essentially meant by the Third Use of the Law.

"Law as a positive direction in the life of the Christian is both a restatement of the original paradisical condition and a preview of the future state of glorification. In Paradise man knew the Law of God perfectly and rejoiced in it. Also in the final state of glorification man will not need or hear the negative aspects of the Law. So even now the regenerate man hears the Law of God, rejoices in it with his inner being, and performs it without thought. of reward. His only motivation is that he wants to please God.

"Law understood in this Third Sense as positive direction and guidance in the life of the Christian presupposes the Gospel. In each of its uses the Law is both didactic and imperative. It is not constructed to change man from a sinner to a saint and cannot effect regeneration. The Spirit's working through the Gospel is the cause of regeneration. But the Gospel presupposes the Law. just as the Law in the life of the Christian presupposes the Gospel. The Gospel is the proclamation that Jesus has fulfilled the Law's demands and suffered its penalties in man's stead. This message alone effects regeneration. The Law is the skeleton on which the life and death of Jesus is sketched out. The skeleton of the Law as it is framed in the Gospel message comes to the sinner having its structures completely filled out by Jesus. The Law's negative demands have been satisfied in Jesus so that its force becomes positive in the life of a person who has faith in Jesus. The Law's unfilled requirements have been fulfilled in Jesus. Christ has divested the Law of its negative requirements and He presents it to Christians as positive direction.

"But the Law which comes as positive direction to the regenerate part of the Christian also comes with its negative prohibition to the Old Adam (FC SD VI, 17, 18, 19). Part of the Christian is never converted. He resists believing that God has fulfilled the Law in Jesus Christ. The old man left unchecked would eventually bring man to final ruin and destruction According to Lutheran theology the unregenerate self must be forced and coerced with threats of the Law. The unregenerate part of a Christian is on the same level as the unconverted who "are driven and coerced into obedience by the threats of the law" (FC SD VI, 19). Not only does he fight against fulfilling God's Law, but when he does finally comply with the divine prohibitions in an external sense he becomes a hypocrite as he thinks he has fulfilled God's requirements and earned for himself salvation (FC SD VI, 21). To keep the unregenerate part of man under control, the Christian pastor must preach the negative aspects of the Law. Such works coerced by the preaching of the Law to unregenerated man, even if he is a Christian, have no validity before God for salvation. But the Christian, so far as he is regenerate, performs works from faith which are acceptable to God. These conform to the Law and God finds these acceptable. Though such works are always imperfect, they are acceptable to God because they me performed from faith which is centered in Christ Jesus and not from threats of the Law (FC SD VI, 23).

"It is the preaching of the Law and not the Gospel which alerts the Christian to the tension within himself. The same Law which is an expression of God's will in the life of the Christian remains a severe condemnation on his unregenerate nature. This tension, a dualism within the Christian, finds its real cause not in the Law but within the Christian himself. The work of the new man committed to Christ is countered by the old man who only gives up the struggle at death. Underlying the Lutheran concept of the old man is the Lutheran doctrine of original sin. The man who is totally unregenerate is brought struggling and kicking to faith. When a new life has been created, he continues to struggle, kick, and fight against God. The old man is not to be handled in a gentle and kindly way and then treated to the good news of salvation, but he is to be forced and threatened by the Law. The Formula puts it strongly (SD VI, 24):

For the Old Adam, like an unmanageable and recalcitrant donkey, is still a part of them and must be coerced into the obedience of Christ, not only with the instruction, admonition, urging and threatening of the law, but frequently also with the club of punishment and miseries, until the flesh of sin is put off entirely and man is completely renewed in the resurrection.

"In this life there is no hope for an end to the conflict. The Christian can revert to hypocrisy by believing that he is by himself fulfilling the Law perfectly or he can abandon the Law and become a libertine. But then he is no Christian. The hope for fulfillment in the Christian is not in this life but in the resurrection. Then he will need the preaching of neither the Law nor the Gospel, for he will be in God's presence. In heaven, the Third Use of the Law will be perfectly realized. There Christians "will do His will spontaneously without coercion, unhindered, perfectly, completely, and with sheer joy, and will rejoice therein forever" (FC SD VI, 25). Even in the final condition, it is not the nature of the Law that has changed but rather that man has become totally regenerated."

- David Scaer, “Formula of Concord Article VI. The Third Use of the Law,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 42, no. 2 (1978), 149-154.

Law, Gospel, and Eschatology in Gerhard Forde

Gerhard Forde's understanding of law and gospel is partly determined terminologically, partly eschatologically. I've been pouring over what Forde has written and I must admit that much of what he says is highly convoluted and abstract. Many of his distinctions seem arbitrary at best, though, overall, they express many of his broader concerns of how man lives under the gospel and how man lives under the law.

First off, we should address what Forde sees as the content of the will of God. It might be said that Forde didn't see the "content" in a quantitative sense but rather in a qualitative sense. He was wary of seeing the will of God as an eternal set of prescriptions. "At no time, according to Luther, does man possess full knowledge of the divine will, but only a knowledge of the law appropriate to his actual historical situation. This is true both of man in his original state and in his fallen state." (The Law-Gospel Debate (Minneapolis, Minn: Augsburg Publishing House, 1969), 176.) While this may be true for man who is perfectly righteous, I don't feel this is beneficial understanding of the content in this fallen age. As Paul Althaus makes clear, man as he exists in a paradisical state fulfills God's will in an infinite number of ways; but man in his fallen state is continually thinking up, and acting out new ways of blaspheming God's name. The reality of this, it might be said, is the reason for the need of a law that is explicated such as it is in Scripture. Forde writes: "The entire law is summed up in the First Commandment, which demands a qualitative subjection of man to God in faith and love. No quantitative measurable limit can be set for the fulfillment of such a law." (Law-Gospel, 187) As far as this might be true, this does not mean that an explicated law is not still as validly God's eternal divine will as an ethic summed up under the First Commandment. I will go out on a limb here and say that stealing will never be part of God's divine will. Therefore, and this is what to a large extent Article VI of the Formula of Concord is concerned with, man in his fallen state, with his fallen heart and fallen mind, should apply himself to God's Word where he will find the definite shape of God's will for him. Under Forde, this begins to be more subjective.

For Forde, this content of God's will, whatever it may be, is not yet law. God's will only becomes law when it confronts sinful man. This is where terminological considerations come into play. For Forde, "law" may not even need any true content, rather, "Law is anything which frightens and accuses "the conscience." The bolt of lightening, the rustling of a dry leaf on a dark night, the decalogue, the "natural law" of the philosopher, or even (or perhaps most particularly) the preaching of the cross itself-- all or any of these can and do become the voice of the law." (Law-Gospel, 177) The reason for this is that Forde wanted to keep the term "law" with a completely pregnant definition as that which is contrasted with the "gospel." This in itself is not a problem. Althaus makes a fairly convincing case that the New Testament itself engages in making terminological distinctions between "law" and what the law demands, that is, its content. (Paul Althaus, The Divine Command: A New Perspective on Law and Gospel, trans. Franklin Sherman (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 3-7.) The problem with Forde is that his desire to keep a purely existential understanding of law is not coupled with an understanding of how God's will has a positive impact on the Christian in the outward expression of God's work of sanctification. To understand this we need to move from terminological to eschatological considerations.

Gerhard Forde places the law-gospel dialectic into an eschatological, before-and-after scheme. Now, this is not incorrect as far as how he defines law. The law, as "that which accuses sinners," is of temporal validity. Paul's existential depiction of the law and gospel is a reflection of this. The problem for Forde comes in in how these "two ages" relate and come about in the lives of believers. This is all closely tied to his understanding of sanctification. Forde liked to see things in wholes: either law or gospel; total judgement or total grace; this age or the next; death or resurrection; indicative or imperative; nothing or all; law (existentially understood) or fulfillment. For Forde things don't come in "parts." Let's hear some examples of this:

"From this point of view the way of the sinner in sanctification, if it is a movement at all, is a movement from nothing to all, from that which one has and is in oneself to that which one has and is in Christ. Such a movement can never be completed this side of the grave. Nor could it be a continuous movement through increasing degrees of approximation. Rather each moment, each encounter with the shock of divine holiness, could only be at once both beginning and end, start and finish." (“Eleventh Locus: The Christian Life,” In Christian Dogmatics, Vol. 2, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, 391-470 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 431.)

"There is no “system” as such which can distinguish between the ages or can provide a continuous transition from this age to the next. Only the death and resurrection of Christ, the act of judgment and grace, is "the way."" (Law-Gospel, 223)

"In the church the believer comes to understand his existence in terms of two ontological determinations of his being, being “in Adam” and being “in Christ.” This corresponds exactly, of course, to the dialectic of the two ages." (Law-Gospel, 225)

"The progress for Luther has in mind is not our movement toward the goal but the goal's movement in on us. Imputed righteousness is eschatological in character; a battle is joined in which the totus iustus moves against the totus peccator." (The Christian Life, 435)

"The decalogue remains eternally in the sense that the reality demanded remains, but not as law. Here the distinction is between reality (res) and law, but not between the essence of law and the office of law. The term “law” applies only to the “office,” and not to the res." (Law-Gospel, 184)

For Forde, it is either law in the old age or fulfillment in Christ in the new age. The problem with this is that this is not reflective of how life actually works. By this, I don't only mean that this is not how we perceive it working but also how it actually works. Forde continually asserted that the new life was a death and resurrection. The problem I see in Forde is in his depiction of how this "reanimation" takes shape.

"Thinking theologically about the dialectic involves the fact that this act is at once total judgment and total grace. The fact that it is total judgment means that there can be no attempts on man's part to translate himself prematurely into the new age either by his action or by his thinking. Man's acting and thinking in this life remain and acting and thinking in this age, under the eschatological limit. The fact that it is also total grace means that man can be content to allow his acting and thinking to remain as it is, totally in this age; he can trust in Christ entirely for the gift of the new age." (Law-Gospel, 223-224)

Forde believes that "the eschatological possibility is made a present possibility only through faith in Christ." (Law-Gospel, 185) Because of this, acting and thinking on the Christian's part is and remains an acting and thinking in this age. This places into question how the Christian plays any role in participating in the new age. And consequently what role the law (understood as to its content) plays in the life of the Christian qua Christian. Forde writes:

"Law cannot be reintroduced after the end, for the end means perfect fulfillment. A perfect lover would not need laws about what to do. A perfect Christian would not need to be told what was right or wrong. One must hold out for that vision lest law conquer all. The day when all will be “written on our hearts” is the center of the biblical promise." (The Christian Life, 449-450)

It should be noted that by "end" Forde does not mean necessarily the end of the age, he means, including this, the new age which comes even "now." If it is the new age then it comes completely; there can be no "partly new age/partly old age." It is for this reason that Forde was so skeptical of any attempt at "redeeming" the law in this age; if we are dealing with it with our thinking and action then we are dealing with it in this age, if it is the new age, it is simply fulfilled. This is reflected in how Forde saw sanctification, as sanctification would obviously be participating in the new age. We read:

"There is no calculation, no wondering about progress, morality or virtue. There is just the doing of it, and then it is completely forgotten. The right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing. Good works in God’s eyes are quite likely to be all those things we have forgotten! True sanctification is God’s secret." (“A Lutheran View of Sanctification.” in Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification, ed. Donald L. Alexander (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1988), 30.)

Any of our own conscious attempts at bringing about sanctification would be a "false eschatology," as Forde would call it. It would be an attempt by our own powers to bring about something that simply happens by grace. Therefore one just preaches law and gospel, bringing death and new life, and we just sit back and "trust in Christ entirely for the gift of the new age." This is not only an incorrect understanding of sanctification but it is also an incorrect understanding of how God's will confronts us. In fact, it completely dissolves any idea that God's will confronts us in the new age because it is either law or reality (res), fulfilled. It is a confusion of indicative and imperative (See my post: The Word, Communication, and Sanctification). By making the new age and sanctification completely indicative, one does not then understand the communicative basis of our existence as being creatures before our Creator. The will of God always stands as an "other." Not that we in a paradisical state will not have the same will as God, rather, God's Word is always something that needs to be conformed to in faith; it is a matter of faith. Paul Althaus writes:

""Command": this implies that another will confronts me, which puts my own will under claim. There is not as yet any opposition between the two, but there clearly is a duality. Unity between God's will and my own is something that has to be realized, over and again; it is not presupposed. The command is a word that stands over me, a word spoken to me. My situation, therefore, is that of one who has to ask, who has to listen, for a word which I myself cannot speak. The fact that God's will confronts us as command is not a condition that arises through sin, or on account of sin; it is an ordinance of the Creator. For God is my Lord. What exists "in the beginning," in the primal state [Urstand], is not a mystical oneness with God, nor an identity of will, but rather a duality: a duality, however, that in every moment is in the process of becoming a unity. But this "becoming a unity" takes place only in obedience. The command does not originate after the fall; it exists already before the fall." (The Divine Command, 9-10)

This does not mean that our existence before God has an ethical basis, but rather it primarily has its basis in faith; it a question of whether or not I will trust God's Word in faith, or whether I will reject that Word. Forde's understanding of the new age, law, and sanctification would never be able to admit this. Forde would not be able see how this could fit into a scheme of salvation as total grace, a total gift. Forde writes:

"It is misleading to say that the command which confronts man is in its basic content nothing other than the gospel. To be sure, if the res to which the law points is realized in the gospel, then there is a sense in which this is true. But when the eschatological framework is missing the statement is misleading. The eschatological dialectic cuts through the underlying Ritschlian moralism." (Law-Gospel, 198)

For Forde it is simply either res, "realized in the gospel," or it is moralism. Kurt Marquart argues against this type of thinking, where sanctification becomes merely an unthinking action, and man becomes an automoton:

"Sometimes we are told that sanctification is best left to itself, that conscious attempts to please God lead to hypocrisy, and that if we just preach the Gospel, sanctification will happen automatically. No, we are not automata. We have a renewed will, which “is not idle in the daily practice of repentance but cooperates in all the works of the Holy Spirit that He accomplishes through us” (Formula of Concord, SD, II,88, p. 561). If being branches in the True Vine (St. Jn. 15) means that like plants we have no conscious intentions, but simply produce fruit “automatically,” then the same applies to the Vine Himself. And that is as absurd as saying that since Christ is the Way and the Door, He is as indifferent as ways and doors are to who is passing over or through them! This pseudo-biblical argument is exactly parallel to that of the old antinomians, who argued that Christians will do the right things “without any teaching, admonition, exhortation, or prodding of the law, . . . just as in and of themselves the sun, the
moon, and all the stars follow unimpeded the regular course God gave them once and for all”
(FC, SD,VI,6, p. 588).

"Clearly the New Testament exhortations to love and good works require conscious effort,
not unthinking, automatic compliance with inner instincts! Thus St. Paul begs the Roman
Christians by the mercies of God (which he had expounded in the preceding 11 chapters) to
present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, as their “reasonable worship”
(Rom. 12:1). And of himself he writes: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is
ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in
Christ Jesus” (Phil.3:13,14, NIV). No automatism or somnabulism (sleep-walking) here!" ("The Third Use of the Law as Confessed in the Formula of Concord")

Forde recognized that this could be the result of his understanding. We read:

"There is also the danger that speaking of Christ as the “end” of the law (and thus of this age) will become almost exclusively a kind of negative theology, a kind of “negative theology of glory” in which it is difficult to give positive content to the new life in this age." (Law-Gospel, 215)

"But if man's acting and thinking remain acting and thinking in this age, then the problem arises of how the new age takes on any kind of positive reality in this age." (Law-Gospel, 224)

"The greatest danger for the eschatological view that speaks of the death of the old and the resurrection of the new is that the idea of the “new person” can all too easily become a mystical theologoumenon without substance, something the theologian calls on to solve all dogmatic problems. That, no doubt, is what those who insisted on the “third use” of the law were most afraid of: the “reborn” Christian who does not know what to do and is cast on his or her own feelings or autonomy. The new being, however, is to be incarnated in down-to-earth fashion in the concrete calling of the Christian. In that battle—in the calling in this world, in the flesh-- the law of God is ultimately not an enemy or an emasculated guide but a true and loved friend. For one should make no mistake about it: The law of God is to be and will be fulfilled. It will not be fulfilled, however, by our powers, but only by the power of the righteousness of God given in faith." (The Christian Life, 452)

This last quote is about as positive and descriptive as Forde ever gets concerning the shape of the new age. He even uses the term "law"! But the last sentence, "It will not be fulfilled, however, by our powers, but only by the power of the righteousness of God given in faith," and the rest of what Forde has written on this topic leads one to see the new age, the new person, fulfillment, as a mere abstraction, a "mystical theologoumenon without substance."

Lutheran Quote of the Day: Yeago on Luther on Genesis, all in Hütter

This is from a wonderful essay by (the now defected) Reinhard Hütter called, "The Twofold Center of Lutheran Ethics: Christian Freedom and God's Commandments." I thought this would be a good intro into my upcoming section on the different Lutheran positions on the continued relevance and place for the law in the lives of believers. Both what Luther says and what Yeago says in response, I agree with. I would only offer a slight tweak in emphasis: While the interpretation of the tree is a good one, it is not the only "historical form" (as Yeago would say) by which God ordered Adam's life. Adam was put in the garden to "work it" and "keep it" (Gen. 2:15); God "commands" him concerning the tree (2:15); Adam was in charge of the animals (2:19-20); God created Eve to help Adam (and logically thus, Adam helped Eve), and they were to serve each other as man and wife (2:20-25). From all this I would argue that man was created to live in a communion of self-giving; in worshipping God in service and faithfulness, and in serving each other and God's creation. The command concerning the tree does, though, have a type of arbitrariness to it (in the good sense). That is, by not eating from it, Adam does not benefit creation, nor neighbor, nor God (in that we can never "benefit" God). In keeping the commandment concerning the tree, Adam and Eve, rather, give God the only thing we can ever offer him: loving faithfulness to his Word.

"In interpreting Genesis 2, Luther states:

"And so when Adam had been created in such a way that he was, as it were, intoxicated with rejoicing toward God and was delighted also with all the other creatures, there is now created a new tree for the distinguishing of good and evil, so that Adam might have a definite way to express his worship and reverence toward God. After everything had been entrusted to him to make use of it according to his will, whether he wished to do so for necessity or for pleasure, God finally demands from Adam that at this tree of knowledge of good and evil he demonstrate his reverence and obedience toward God and that he maintain this practice, as it were, of worshipping God by not eating anything from it. [From LW 1:9]

"David Yeago rightly draws the following consequence:

"The commandment is not given to Adam that he might become a lover of God by keeping it; Adam already is a lover of God, "drunk with joy towards God," by virtue of his creation in the image of God, by the grace of original righteousness. The commandment is given, rather, in order to allow Adam's love for God to take form in a historically concrete way of life. Through the commandment, Adam's joy takes form in history as cultus Dei, the concrete social practice of worship... The importance of this cannot be overstated, particularly in view of conventional Lutheran assumptions: here Luther is describing a function of divine law, divine commandment, which is neither correlative with sin nor antithetical to grace; indeed, it presupposes the presence of grace and not sin. This function of divine commandment is, moreover, its original and proper function. The fundamental significance of the law is thus neither to enable human beings to attain righteousness nor to accuse their sin, but to give concrete, historical form to the "divine life" of the human creature deified by grace... The commandment is given originally to a subject deified by the grace of original righteousness, a subject living as the image of God; it calls for specific behaviors as the concrete historical realization of the spiritual life of the deified, God-drunken human being. What happens after sin comes on the scene is simply that this subject presupposed by the commandment is no longer there,; the commandment no longer finds an Adam living an "entirely divine life," "drunk with joy towards God," but rather an Adam who has withdrawn from God who believes the devil's lies about God and therefore flees and avoids God. It is precisely the anomaly of this situation that causes the commandment to become, in Luther's terms, "a different law" (alia lex). [David Yeago, "Martin Luther on Grace, Law, and Moral Life: Prolegomena to an Ecumenical Discussion of Veritas Splendor," in The Thomist, 62 (1998), 176-178.]"

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-Reinhard Hütter, "The Twofold Center of Lutheran Ethics: Christian Freedom and God's Commandments," In The Promise of Lutheran Ethics, ed. Karen L. Bloomquist and John R. Stumme, 31-54 (Minneapolis, Minn: Fortress Press, 1998), 42-43.