6. The Harmfulness of Erring in the Doctrine of Justification.
. Whoever is wrong in his heart about the doctrine of justification in general, that is, who trusts before God in his own morality, works, etc., in order to obtain the forgiveness of sins, is always so wrong that he is thereby excluded from membership in the Christian Church. "You have lost Christ, those who would be justified by the law, and have fallen from grace", Gal. 5:4. Of course, the quality of faith, whether it is weak or strong, does not matter. Even the weak faith is counted towards righteousness. But faith, as Chemnitz reminds us, must not err in relation to its object. '5 It must rely solely on the grace that is present through Christ and promised in the Gospel, and must not also trust in works. Any distribution of the trust of the human heart is excluded. The Apology rightly says (114:33 [Zrigl. 163, Art. III, 33]): "And if anyone thinks that faith can rely both on God and on his own works, he certainly does not understand what faith is". '5*) To justify this, the Apology adds: "For the frightened conscience is not satisfied with its own works, but must cry out for mercy, and can be comforted and lifted up only by the Word of God". "Whenever Scripture speaks of faith, it means faith built on pure grace." (97, 56 [Trig/. 136, Art. IV [II], 56]) Grace and
Christian Book of Concord, p. 16 ff.
verum illud objectum [namely mediatorem in promissione gratiae], quamvis languida,.fide apprehendit, vel saltem conatur et expetit apprehendere, tunc vera est fides et iuistificat.
heart at the same time; either the law or Christ must give way. But if you are of the opinion that Christ and the trust in the law can dwell together in the heart, then you should know for certain that it is not Christ but the devil who dwells in your heart, who under the figure of Christ accuses and frightens you and demands the law and the law's work for righteousness. The right Christ, as I have said shortly before, does not confront you for your sins, neither does he command you to trust in your good works. works as the reason for the membership among God's people cannot be combined, but are mutually exclusive opposites, Rom. 11:6: si 6& yapitt obdkétt && Epyov Ensi 1 yaptc. Israel, which tried to combine the factors that exclude one another, namely, to combine works with grace, did not get what it was looking for. Gratia, nisi gratis sit, gratia non est. Gratia non est gratia ullo modo, si non sit gratia omni modo. [Grace, unless it is gratuitous, is not grace. Grace is not grace in any way unless it is grace in every way.] (Augustine.) Of course, Christians, in so far as they still have oapé on them, are still being challenged, as by other sins, by the trust in their own works. But they remain victors in this challenge, or they would cease to be Christians. The inner adherence to the sola gratia, that is, to the article of justification, and the adherence to the Christian state and to God's people coincide in fact. And as the erroneous article of justification makes no connection with Christ and the Christian Church, so also with all Christian knowledge. The doctrine that God forgives sin by grace for the sake of Christ's merit through faith without human works forms the differentia specifica of the Christian religion. Whoever has abandoned this doctrine has thereby given up the ability to distinguish between true and false religion, between Christianity and paganism. '4) He considers all religions to be essentially equal. Just as in the Lat all religions are essentially the same, inasmuch as they seek to reconcile the Godhead through their own actions and humanly conceived sacrifices and services. '45°), Only the Christian religion is different. But it is
as reason can judge, and these are common to all people, as they find by nature (omnes gentes), Papists, Jews, Mohammedans, heretics, etc. They cannot come higher than that Pharisee in the Gospel (Luke 18:11 ff.); they do not recognize Christian justice or that of faith. For the natural man does not hear anything of what God is (1 Cor. 2:14), the like (Rom. 3:11): "There is not he that understandeth; there is not he that inquires of God", etc. Therefore there is no difference different in that it teaches justification without all human doing through faith in Christ, as Chemnitz says that this article discernit ecclesiam a reliquis omnibus gentibus et superstitionibus.. All that remains is worthless bickering about the diversity of works through which one erroneously wants to turn to God's grace. '°° Rome's fight against the lodges, for example, is completely pointless, insofar as both teach justification from their works. So, too, as far as Christian doctrine is concerned, all Protestants who, like Kirn, for example, want to include "the transformation of humanity" in the reconciliation with God and thus actually teach the Roman fides formata, are fighting senselessly against Rome. '*°) After the article on justification has been abandoned, all other articles of the Christian religion, such as the articles on the Trinity and on the divinity of Christ, and in general the whole "history of Christ" will be believed by us in vai, if we do not at the same time "effectum historiae believe", "videlicet hunc articulum, remissionem peccatorum, quod videlicet between a Papist, a Jew, a Turk, and a heretic [Kerzer]. The persons, places, customs, services, works, and worship are different, but they all have the same reason, the same heart, the same delusion and thought. A Turk has exactly the same thoughts as a Carthusian, namely: If I do this or that, I have a merciful God; if not, he is angry with me. There is no middle ground between human labor and the knowledge of Christ; if it is obscured, it is the same whether you are a monk or a heathen".
other about religion and worship, since both claim to have the true religion and the right worship.... For they all have this conceit: If I do this work, God will have mercy on me; if I do not, he will be angry with me.
under the Pope, only that they bring new names and new works, but the matter remains the same; as the Turks do other works than the Papists, the Papists do other works than the Jews, etc. But no matter how much more apparent, greater, more difficult works the one does than the other, the essence remains the same; only the nature is different, that is, the works are different only by outward appearance, in fact and truth they find works, and those who do them do not find Christians but are and remain works saints, whether they are called Jews, Mahometists, Papists or Anabaptists, etc.". per habeamus gratiam, iustitiam et remissionem peccatorum" [that is to say, this article, the remission of sins, by which we may have grace, righteousness, and the remission of sins], as the 20th article of the Augsburg Confession recalls [Zrigl. 55, A. C., Art. XX, 23]. Luther is right to warn Christendom: "Even if someone outwardly correctly confesses the articles of the Trinity and of the person of Christ: if, in addition, he is caught in the delusion that his own works are necessary to obtain the grace of God, he is no less separated from Christ and from the grace of God in Christ than the Turk who mocks the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. '4°) In spite of his outward confession to all other articles, he lives in the world without the certainty of grace and without hope of salvation, because the certainty of grace and the hope of salvation can only be found dtkawiiévtEc I niotews [justified by faith’] (Rom. 5:1 ff). Nor does he use the means of grace (Gospel, baptism and the Lord's Supper) as means of grace, that is, as a means of offering the forgiveness of sins, but only as a means of stimulating such moods, deeds and moral changes, through which he thinks he is acquiring a right to the grace of God. Neither can he do good works, because good works, as Luther reminds us, are only done from heaven, namely only as a sacrifice of thanksgiving for the fact that we already have heaven through faith in the "material achievement" of Christ (propter satisfactionem a Christo praestitam). Neither does he worship the true God, but he practices idolatry like some heathen who worships wood and stone; for there is no such God who forgives sin for much or little "ethical" performance and takes it to heaven. '5?) The Scriptures
has lost its light and is vain darkness, so that one no longer understands anything properly, and cannot avoid any error or false teaching of the devil. And though the words of faith and Christ are kept, as they are found to remain in the papacy, there is no fundamental article in the heart, and what remains is vain foam and uncertain persuasiones or conceit or a painted, coloured faith. Col. 630: "Where this knowledge is gone, it takes everything with it, and after that you may lead and confess all articles as the papists do, but it is not seriousness nor right understanding, but as one gropes in the darkness and hears a blind man speak of the color he has never seen.
justification does not recognize God and is an idolater. Therefore it is the same when a person turns to the law again afterwards as when he returns to the service of idols: it comes out the same, is a book closed with seven seals to all deniers of the Christian doctrine of justification, because the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, according to their explicit declaration, teach only the article "that through his [Christ's] name all who believe in him receive forgiveness of sins".!4°° Therefore, all teachers who do not know the article of justification and who do not teach pure, that is, without the admixture of human works, are also deceivers, and they do not build the Christian Church, but destroy it." 46 This is the harmfulness of error in the doctrine of justification!