Pugnat Fides

On the Law’s validity in the Church:

     Here the law has its necessary and abiding place in the preaching of the church as well as in the lives of its members. It serves not in the construction of the new man but in the destruction of the old. It must incessantly tell us that we lie when we say we have no sin. It incessantly exercises its “proper function” since it is “always accusing” and since it never can be anything else but that. To be led by the Spirit means not only to be led by Christ, but also to be driven to him, since we are constantly in anguish by reason of the law’s incessant accusations. The “proper function” of the law is, in the language of the old dogmaticians, the usus elenchticus, its function in “exposing” our sin and “convicting” us of sin, and therefore also always the usus paedagogicus which drives us to Christ.
     In order to achieve this goal Christ himself also carries on his “strange work,” his opus alienum, whereby (in the well known words of the Formula of Concord) he “takes the law into his own hands and explains it spiritually; thus he reveals his wrath from heaven over all sinners and shows how great this wrath is. This directs the sinner to the law, and there he really learns to know his sin, an insight that Moses could never have wrung out of him.” Without this spiritual exegesis provided by Christ, the law, says Luther, leads either to the securitas of the Pharisees or to desperatio, to doubting God, to the paralyzing fear of death. But when Christ then moves on to his proper office of speaking the word of forgiveness, the diabolica desperatio is transformed into an evangelica desperatio; man’s doubting of God is transformed into his doubting of himself, and the dire plague of “security” becomes the daring certainty of faith.

-Werner Elert. Law and Gospel

On The Question of the Law’s “Third Function”:

      The Formula of Concord approaches the issue from Melanchton’s perspective, but phrases its answer with much more precision then he. One might summarize its position as follows: the question of the need for an informatory function in the (unattainable) ideal case of a perfect saint is answered in the negative, but in view of the actual situation of the regenerate the answer is affirmative. However, the possibility of the law’s being purely informatory is categorically denied.
      Notice how the Formula treats the ideal case. “If believers and the elect children of God were perfectly renewed in this life through the indwelling Spirit in such a way that in their nature and all its powers they would be totally free from sins, they would require no law, no driver. Of themselves and altogether spontaneously, without any instruction, admonition, exhortation, or driving by the law they would do what they are obligated to do according to the will of God.” This never occurs, however, for in this life the faithful are not completely renewed. The old Adam still infects their nature and all its internal and external powers and consequently they invariably also need the law. For what purpose? Surely not in order to empower and induce them to fulfill it, since that power comes only from the Holy Spirit. Nor do they need it as mere information. Instead the Holy Spirit “employs the law to instruct the regenerate out of it and to show and indicate to them in the Ten Commandments what the acceptable will of God is. . . . He also admonishes them to do these, and when because of the flesh they are lazy, negligent, and recalcitrant, the Holy Spirit reproves them through the law. . . . [For] to reprove is the real function of the Law.”  Not for a moment does the Formula of Concord forget the fundamental Pauline-Lutheran understanding of the law already apparent in the text of the decalogue; namely, that it is always a law of retribution and that even when instructing the regenerate it cannot cease to be just that.
     We have here admittedly a double usage of the term “regenerate.” On the one hand, it designates that person who “is born anew by the Spirit of God and is liberated from the law,” whose life is, to be sure, “comprehended in the law,” but who is “no longer under law but under grace.” In this man “there is now no condemnation”–the Formula of Concord knows this too. On the other hand, it applies this term to the man who despite his regeneration still lives in internal conflict, “for the Old Adam, like an unmanageable and recalcitrant donkey, is still part” of him. This is man in his factual earthly existence, who still, even when pardoned, remains a pardoned sinner. The regenerate man in the first meaning of the term stands in indissoluble personal union with the old Adam. In terms of personhood, they are identical. They represent not two parts but two facets of one and the same personality. This duality is not to be viewed as though in essence man were partly a sinner and partly not a sinner, for in terms of empirical data no such thing as a sinless regenerate person exists. Rather, this duality is grounded in the fact that the regenerate man stands under God’s scrutiny, who condemns him according to the law but pardons him according to the gospel. If I look at myself, said Luther, then all is flesh, i.e., all is sin. “If I look at Christ, I am completely holy and pure, and I know nothing at all about the Law.”
     According to this view of Luther’s, which corresponds exactly with the Pauline perspective, the moment never arrives in the life of the Christian when the law has nothing more than an informatory significance for him. When we look to Christ, the law has absolutely no validity. On the other hand, when we look to ourselves, it is indeed valid, yet not in the sense that we only need to ask it what we ought to do, but rather that it constantly pronounces also upon Christians the verdict of God which makes sinners out of us. But this then also represents the constant anguish [Anfechtung] of our conscience, the temptation either to securitas or to desperatio, which we must relentlessly counteract by faith in the gracious promise of the gospel. Even for the Christian, the law is always and only Anfechtung. To this extent the irreconcilable opposition of law and gospel remains also for the Christian.
     If the notion of a “third use of the law” is understood in purely informatory terms, then we shall have to agree with the Scandinavian and Finnish theologians who have pronounced the doctrine of a third use incompatible with the Lutheran understanding of law and gospel. If we still wish to continue to use the concept in theology, it must be applied as it is in the Formula of Concord only for answering the question of the realm of the law’s validity, but not for indicating a special function of the law. The third use of the law then designates its significance for the regenerate in his earthly empirical existence, but not in some imagined earthly perfection which does not exist. In the earthly empirical life of the regenerate the law constantly exercises also the usus theologicus. It steadfastly convicts him of his sin.

-Werner Elert. Law and Gospel

“One errs if he thinks he can preach the Law in such a way that it does not accuse but only guides. It might be possible that it serve as a guide, but it always accuses. Accordingly, the “third use” (or “third function”) of the Law (FC VI) is best explained in this way: the Law is indeed to be preached to Christian congregations in this world because the Christian who is living in the time of the overlapping aeons is simul justus et pecator, “simultaneously saint and sinner.” Because he is peccator–sinner–he still needs to hear the Law, to curb his behaviour and to accuse him of his sin. The notion that, with justification all taken care of and conveniently out of the way, one can forget the old man and preach the Law in a way so as to make it function as the preacher chooses to “use” it, so that there comes about an independent “third use” which guides the new man in the doing of good works, is foreign to Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. Such a notion involves a hopeless oversimplification that can be held to only if one avoids deeper meditation (or even self-examination) on the nature of the Christian person as simul justus et peccator and on the nature of nomos as a relationship to God in which lex semper accusat. Awareness of answerability eventuates in an awareness of being out of a right relationship to God and of being totally unable to get into a right relationship. Paul says it succinctly (3:20): “through Law is recognition of Sin.” 

– Jonathan Grothe. The Justification of The Ungodly p.g. 164-165

Forward to Georg Rhau’s Collection, “Symphoniae iucundae.” 

I, Doctor Martin Luther, wish all lovers of the unshackled art of music grace and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ!I truly desire that all Christians would love and regard as worthy the lovely gift of music, which is a precious, worthy, and costly treasure given to mankind by God.The riches of music are so excellent and so precious that words fail me whenever I attempt to discuss and describe them… In summary, next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. It controls our thoughts, minds, hearts, and spirits…Our dear fathers and prophets did not desire without reason that music be always used in the churches. Hence, we have so many songs and psalms. This precious gift has been given to man alone that he might thereby remind himself that God has created man for the express purpose of praising and extolling God.However, when man’s natural musical ability is whetted and polished to the extent that it becomes an art, then do we note with great surprise the great and perfect wisdom of God in music, which is, after all, His product and His gift; we marvel when we hear music in which one voice sings a simple melody, while three, four, or five other voices play and trip lustily around the voice that sings its simple melody and adorn this simple melody wonderfully with artistic musical effects, thus reminding us of a heavenly dance, where all meet in a spirit of friendliness, caress and embrace.A person who gives this some thought and yet does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God, must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.

“For all the agreement between them–extending even to the confession of predestination–there was from the very beginning an important difference between the German and the Swiss Reformation… Historical researches into the characteristic difference between the two in recent years have clearly demonstrated that underlying the split is a difference of principle… The difference seems to be conveyed best by saying that the Reformed Christian thinks theologically, the Lutheran anthropologically. The Reformed person is not content with an exclusively historical stance but raises his sights to the idea, the eternal decree of God. By contrast the Lutheran takes his position in the midst of the history of redemption and feels no need to enter more deeply into the counsel of God. For the Reformed, therefore, election is the heart of the church; for Lutherans, justification is the article by which the church stands or falls. Among the former the primary question is: How is the glory of God advanced? Among the latter it is: How does a human get saved? The struggle of the former is above all against paganism–idolatry; that of the latter against Judaism–works-righteousness. The Reformed person does not rest until he has traced all things retrospectively to the divine decree, tracking down the “wherefore” of things, and has prospectively made all things subservient to the glory of God; the Lutheran is content with the “that” and enjoys the salvation in which he is, by faith, a participant. From this difference in principle, the dogmatic controversies between them (with respect to the image of God, original sin, the person of Christ, the order of salvation, the sacraments, church government, ethics, etc.) can be easily explained.”

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 1:176-177.

“In his atonement Jesus destroyed the power of sin, yet sin will cling to us until his return. He has destroyed Satan in principle, but this victory will not be consummated until the Lord’s return. Oscar Cullmann compares this to the distinction between D-day and V-day in World War II. On D-day Allied troops entered France, in principle dooming the Third Reich. But it took many months of bitter fighting before the Nazis surrendered on V-day, victory day. The cross was like D-day, and Jesus’ return will be like V-day. We live between the times, always in the tension of the already but not yet; and during that time there are many battles to be fought.”

– John Frame, Salvation Belongs To The Lord (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2006), 311.