5. The Actual Agreement of All Christians in the Article of Justification.
In the Christian church, as Luther often reminds us, there are strong and weak, wise and foolish. Not all Christians have reached the same degree of knowledge of Christian doctrine. ' It has been pointed out repeatedly that Orthodoxy and membership in the Christian Church do not coincide. ') But there is one point on which all Christians are in complete agreement, in the article on justification, that is, in the belief that by the grace of God, for Christ's sake, they will obtain forgiveness of sins without any merit of their own. This faith is found in the heart of even the weakest Christians, because it is through this faith that a person becomes a Christian. A Christian does not become a man by believing that there is a God—even the unbelievers know this, Rom. 1:19—, nor by believing that God created the world and rules it—even this is not completely unconscious to the heathen, Rom. 1:20—, nor by believing that God rewards the good and punishes the evil— this knowledge is also still due to the heathen, Rom. 1:32; 2:14-15—, not even by striving to do good and leave evil according to the testimony of conscience—this
striving is also still found among the heathen, and yet they have no hope, Eph. 2:12—, not even by believing in the "history of Christ", that Christ is the Son of God and died and rose again—the devils also believe this, Matth. 8:2—: but a Christian becomes a member of the Christian Church only when he completely despairs of his own morality under the terrores conscientiae and by believing, through the action of the Holy Spirit, the "effectus" of the "history of Christ," namely, that his sins are forgiven for Christ's sake, thus believing for his person the article of justification. This is how all prophets taught and all children of God believed at the time of the Old Testament. '**) So teach the apostles of the New Testament, and so believe all Christians of the New Testament until the last day.!4°) All people who do not have this faith, but seek justification before God from their own works, are under the curse, '*© thus extra ecclesiam; they are "either Jews or Turks or Papists or heretics," as Luther puts it. '* So also believe
name all who believe in him shall receive forgiveness of sins. Luther, St. L. XII, 491 ff. Likewise, Paul consistently argues for the ducotoobvn OEdv yapic Epyw@v vOLOV from the Old Testament, Rom. 3:4; Gal. 3:6-29. Cf. also Luther on the protevangelium, Gen. 3:15, St. L. I, 230 ff. The self-deception of the exegetes, who call upon their exegetical meticulousness when they want to understand by the "seed of woman", Gen. 3:15, not the individual person of Christ, but only "the offspring of woman in general", is strange. It is, after all, a generally accepted principle, which cannot be completely disregarded even in "scientific" exegesis, that the predicates define the subject more precisely. But now the woman's seed Gen. 3:15, which is 814 WN qDIw> [HEBREW], says that it is the overcoming of the devil, that is to say, the removal of the guilt of sin that had come upon men through the temptation of the devil (Jn 12:31 ff.; 16:11). This predicate compels us to understand by the female seed not the offspring of woman in general, but the individual female seed, Christ. The same must be said with regard to the "seed of Abraham", and we must absolve the Apostle Paul from "rabbinical" exegesis (Meyer, Gal. 3:16). Cf. Philippi's excursus on chapter 4 of the Epistle to the Romans.
Christians. The children of God of the New Testament all find faith, because éx miotews vioi ABpadu Gal. 3:7.
all God's children who are trapped under the Papacy. Contrary to the Pope's prohibition, they trust only in God's mercy in Christ and not in the "poured out grace". '48) Thus, even in their hearts and before God, some teachers who in their writings and theological disputations add human works to the article of justification, as Luther and Chemnitz also remind us. '4 Agreement in the doctrine of justification is the "one meaning" in which "all Christianity on earth" is received by the Holy Spirit."!*5° That Christians of all times and places are in complete agreement in the Article of Justification is described by Luther (XII, 494 f.) in this context: "That we have forgiveness of sins by faith, other than for Christ's sake, is what the fathers and prophets and all the saints believed from the beginning of the world, and what Christ and the apostles taught and preached afterward, commanding them to carry and spread throughout the world, and also still to this day and at the end the unanimous mind and attitude of the whole Christian Church, which has always been united and all have believed, known and disputed this article, is that only in this Lord of Christ's name is forgiveness of sin obtained and received, and in this faith have been justified and saved before God." By fully adhering to every deviation from the niotei ywpic Epyov vopov Luther and the Lutheran Church do not represent a party issue, but are the mouth of all Christianity on earth.
pontifices aut nonnutii theologi ac monachi docuerunt remissionem peccatorum.. per nostra opera et novos cultus quaerere, qui obscuraverunt Christi officium et ex Christo non propitiatorem et iustificatorem, sed tantum legislatorem fecerunt: mansit tamen apud aliquos pios semper cognitio Christi. [Google]
De iustificatione, p. 144: Haec pauca [from the writings of the fathers] ideo annotavi, ut ostenderem, doctrinam nostram de iustificatione habere testimonia omnium piorum, qui omnibus temporibus fuerunt, idque non in declamatoriis rhetoricationibus nec in otiosis disputationibus, sed in seriis exercitiis poenitentiae et fidei, quando conscientia in tentationibus cum sua indignitate vel coram ipso iudicio Dei vel in agone mortis luctatur. [Google]
Apology, 151, 268 [Trigl. 225, Art. II, 268]: Scimus ea, quae diximus, consentanea esse scripturis propheticis et apostolicis... et universae ecclesiae, quae certe confitetur Christum esse propitiatorem et iustificatorem. [We know that what we have said is consistent with the prophetic and apostolic scriptures... and with the whole church, which certainly confesses that Christ is propitiator and justifier. ]