Individual comments on the doctrine of the means of grace.
We would like to draw your attention to the following individual points.
In the doctrine of the means of grace, especially in the "question" of whether absolution is to be pronounced conditionally or unconditionally, we are confronted with the fact that one and the same scriptural words are used quite differently, depending on whether the biblical concept of the gospel is held fast or not. We refer to the conditional and imperative sentences of Evangelical content, such as: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," "Believe on the Lord Jesus Lord, and thou and thy house shall be saved," "If thou believest in thine heart that God hath raised Jesus Christ from the dead, thou shalt be saved”.850) Those who have and keep the law in their hearts in these Evangelical doctrines teach and practice as if man must first have faith and first make sure of his faith before he may dare to apply to himself the forgiveness of sins acquired from Christ. In other words, they base the gospel on faith instead of faith on the gospel. They make faith its own object in justification. Consciously or unconsciously, they cherish the thought as if God would be completely gracious to man only when man has fulfilled the condition of faith. In doing so, they consider themselves to be the people who "duly emphasize faith" and "let it come into its own." The effect of this way of teaching "gospel" is that the sinner struck by the law now searches in his heart for faith, but never finds it there, because faith always arises and exists only through the forgiveness of sins existing before faith
850) Mark. 16:16; Acts 16:31; Rom. 10:9.
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through Christ and promised in the gospel. The forgiveness of sins, which exists through Christ and is promised in the gospel, arises and exists. Those who have and hold to the biblical concept of the gospel are quite different. When they have to answer the question, "What must I do to be saved?" they use those Evangelical statements, "He who believes will be saved," etc. not to announce conditions to be fulfilled beforehand, but they use them as they are meant, namely, as a means to provoke and entice faith and to call it forth, in the sense: You do not need to do anything more; just believe; do not look at yourself at all, at your worthiness or unworthiness, not even at your faith;851) God accepts you without all your own doing out of grace for Christ's sake. In other words, they do not refer the inquirer after grace to his faith, but to the object of faith, namely, to Christ in his perfect work of atonement, or, which is the same thing, to the objective promise of grace. Thus the Evangelical conditionals and imperatives are rightly used, namely, in the sense of Christ's words, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you." 852) "Him that cometh to me I will not cast out." 853) By this modus docendi alone, which also alone corresponds to the character of the gospel, faith is wrought in hearts stricken by the law and, where it already exists, is strengthened. By that other way faith is not called forth, but made impossible, because its correlate is withheld from it. Schneckenburger states at this point an essential difference between the Lutheran and the Reformed doctrines. He takes the view that this way of first looking at faith and first making sure of faith before one can consider God to be merciful does not belong in the Lutheran church, but in the Reformed church. He says:854) "The Lutheran pious person does not make his faith itself the object of reflection again, namely as the believer, but all immediate activity of faith is for him that on the object of it, on the divine promise, on grace in Christ. The Reformed
851) As Luther says, in order to get rid of the law, he imagines the matter "as if in his heart there were no quality at all called faith or love. (Corp. Ref. II, 502 sq.)
852) Matt. 11:28.<w:t>853) Joh. 6:37.
854) Comparative Illustration I, 51. 57. 50.
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reflects on his faith itself as his condition, his life-activity." Faith "is regarded by the Reformed as a quality, as a habitus, of which self-certainty is obtainable only by reflective means, namely, by the actions which it expels from itself." "For the contestation of weak faith, the orthodox Lutherans have as the last means of strengthening, not an inner operation and reflection, but always only the Word and Sacrament." This is true.
It should be added, however, that the Reformed way also continually sought to penetrate the Lutheran Church on this point. If Paul Tarnov, as we saw,855) advocated that absolution should be pronounced conditionally, he also made the attempt to base faith on faith rather than on the Gospel. And Carpzov counters the same perversity when he points out that faith, insofar as it justifies, has for its object not the forgiveness of sins assumed, but the forgiveness of sins to be assumed.856) And as far as the Lutheran Church of America is concerned, the Norwegian Synod had to defend against members of other Scandinavian synods the truth that the right use and benefit, but not the essence of absolution, depended on the faith of the man.857) — Finally, it should be remembered that even those who teach rightly of the doctrines of the Gospel are still tempted in practice to base faith on faith. If we have a feeling of faith, we think God is gracious and we want to jump over the walls. If the feeling of faith has diminished, and instead we feel in our conscience the accusations of the law, we consider God ungracious and we want to despair, just as if there were no gospel that promises forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ's righteousness alone. Here the religion of the law, which is inherent in all men, asserts itself in us, according to which we place our confidence in the grace of God not in the "Christ outside us" but in the "Christ in us," in aliquid in nobis, and precisely in faith as a good
855) II, 666.
856) Isagoge in libros symbol. p. 208 sq. The quotation is reported II, 653, note 1531. Cf. also the warning of Hönecke, Dogmatik III, 404. The quotation is reported op. cit. note 1528.
857) L. u. W. 1872, p. 101 ff. [sic! Page # must be in error as this essay does not concern the Scandinavian synods nor the doctrine of absolution; it should be p. 161 ff. which concerns these subjects: L. u. W. 1872, p. 161 ff.]; 1874, p. 138 ff.
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quality, want to found. We then, despite our official orthodoxy, do not think of the Gospel as an absolution spoken to the whole world of sinners, which presents itself as an object to faith, but as a proclamation of conditions, as "a general amnesty on certain conditions", by the fulfillment of which, for our part, God will only be fully gracious to us. In short, we turn the Evangelical conditional and imperative sentences into legal conditional and imperative sentences, and we take God's grace in Christ under lock and key, despite all talk of gospel and faith. This explains Luther's coarse words,858) , with which he advocates the objective validity of Baptism, the Lord's Supper and Absolution: "It is quite another thing to have faith and to rely on faith and thus to be baptized on it. Whoever is baptized on faith is not only uncertain, but also an idolatrous, denied Christian; for he trusts and builds on his own, namely on a gift which God has given him, and not on God's Word" (the promise of grace for Christ's sake) "alone, just as another builds and trusts on his strength, wealth, power, wisdom, holiness, which are nevertheless also gifts given to him by God." — Against this position of Luther's it has always been objected that the Scriptures themselves expressly demand the reflection on our faith and the fruits of faith. Scripture says: "Try yourselves whether you are in faith; test yourselves! Or do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you?"859) Of course, this sermon should also remain in the Church until the Last Day. But at the same time we as Christian teachers should know that we are in a completely different area with this sermon. We do not preach the gospel to frightened sinners by enticing them to believe, but we warn those who want to become carnally secure against this carnal security and against self-deception. In other words, we are then preaching the law by punishing unbelief. "But the gospel is such a sermon, showing and giving nothing but grace and forgiveness in Christ."860) In contrast, the punishment of unbelief and the warning against the same belongs in the law. "The law rebuketh unbelief, when one God’s
858) St. L. XVII, 2213.<w:t>859) 2 Cor. 13:5.
860) Formula of Concord 635, 12. [Trigl. 955, F. C., Sol. Decl., V, 12 🔗]
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Word does not believe."861) "Whoever, then, is well able in this art of separating the Law from the Gospel, set him on high and call him a Doctor of Holy Scriptures."862)
Luther judges that all those who deny the forgiveness of sins through Word and Sacrament, and therefore also especially find the forgiveness of sins through men who handle Word and Sacrament annoying, do not consider God's Word to be God's Word, but respect it as mere human word.863) This judgment might seem unfair at first glance when we consider that the Reformed, for example, strongly emphasize the inspiration of Holy Scriptures. But Luther's judgment proves to be factually correct on closer consideration. It is just two things: to say in theory that the Scriptures are the Word of God, and to hold to this truth in practice. When the Reformed warn with Calvin against wanting to know for certain the will of God from the external word of the gospel, this warning is always based on the thought that the external word of the gospel as it stands in Scripture is not the Word of God. Those who truly believe God's Word to be God's Word certainly do not say that God's will of grace cannot be known for certain from it. Further: if the Reformed deny that sins are forgiven by baptism, this denial is based on the thought that the Word of God, which is at baptism and is expressly for the forgiveness of sins (εις άφεσιν αμαρτιών), is not God's Word. Further, when the Reformed make the charge that the Lutherans, with their doctrine of the forgiveness of sins by the mouth of man, take from God what is God's, this charge is based on the thought that God's Word, when men put it into their mouths and set it on course, is no longer God's Word, but the Word of man. So we will have to admit that Luther judges the situation correctly when he says: "Such thoughts of two keys" (namely, that the forgiveness of sins promised by men in the name of Christ is not God's forgiveness) "come from the fact that God's word is not considered to be God's word, but because it is spoken by men, one looks at it as if it were man's words and thinks that God is high above and far away,
861) A. a. O., 637, 19. [Trigl. 957, F. C., Sol. Decl., V, 19 🔗]
862) Luther. St. L. IX, 802.
863) St. L. XIX, 945; XIII, 2441 and often.
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far, far from such a word as is on earth, gazing up after it into heaven, and writing yet other keys."864) Thus, it is in the doctrine of the means of grace that it really becomes apparent whether we really believe God's Word, which He has given to His Church, to be God's Word. This is the case only if we believe and hold that God Himself is always present in His Word and Himself deals with us men, no matter how and through whom His Word comes to us. "Whether the Word," says Luther, "speak like men, it is not theirs, but God's Word. … Therefore, if you want to have 'forgiveness of sins,' you must not climb up to heaven. … God has put forgiveness of sins in Holy Baptism, in the Lord's Supper and in the Word. Yes, he has taken it into the mouth of every Christian man when he comforts you and promises you God's grace through the merit of Jesus Christ, so that you should accept and believe it no other way than if Christ himself had promised it to you with his mouth. … Because they" ("the fanatical spirits and enthusiasts, Zwinglius, Ecolampadius and their crowd") "snatch away God's Word, they deprive themselves and others who let themselves be persuaded by them of all goods, the forgiveness of sins, baptism, the sacrament, the Lord Christ, and keep nothing of baptism and the sacrament but only the empty shells."865) Admittedly, it must be recognized and confessed here again that "the enthusiast" is still in all of us. To consider God's Word, where and how and by what means it comes to us, as God's Word, that is an art in which we have to learn anew every day. How very different and much more spiritual our Christian life would be if we always took God's Word, which comes to us in so many ways (through reading the Scriptures and Christian books, through public sermons, through intercourse with Christians, etc.), for God's Word with right earnestness! We recognize and lament in this lack, which we find among us, the alienation from God that still clings to us. But to expressly instruct people that they do not take the external Word of God for God's Word, but instead judge from God's will against themselves according to the so-called interior Spiritus illuminatio, that is a seduction into error, which the enemy of the church has set in course through Zwingli, Calvin, Andreas Osiander, Weigel and their followers and has so far kept in course.
864) St. L. XIX, 945.<w:t xml:space="preserve">865) St. L. XIII. 2439 ff.
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In dealing with the doctrine of absolution, the question arises again and again, even within the Lutheran Church: Cui bono? What is the use of absolution, if we teach with all our energy that through this special form of preaching the Gospel nothing more and nothing else is given than every believer already has through the general sermon and promise of the Gospel?866) The objection is in line with several others, for example, the objection that baptism and the Lord's Supper are of no use, since the Christian already has the forgiveness of sins through faith in the mere word of the gospel and thus all the spiritual goods acquired from Christ. Those who raise this objection forget two things. First, they do not consider that the sermon of the gospel in the special form of absolution is Christ's order,867) which is why the Lutheran Confession rightly says that it would be "against God" to dismiss absolution from the church.868) Secondly, they do not consider that this order of Christ is based on a need of souls and does not have the purpose of making the order of means of grace as complicated as possible and taking a legal yoke on the necks of disciples. The factual situation is this: It is difficult to bring a man to true knowledge of his sins. But it is just as difficult to lead a human heart struck by God's law to the knowledge of God's grace in Christ and to maintain it in this knowledge. That is why the Smalcald Articles say that God, because He is "abundantly rich in grace," does not give counsel and help against sin merely in one way (uno modo), but in several ways: through the sermon of the forgiveness of sins in all the world, through baptism, through the Lord's Supper, and also through the power of the keys, as well as through the brotherly intercourse of Christians with one another.869) In the Tenth Synodal Report of the General Synod [1860], two things are explained in detail: first, that through absolution nothing is given that is different and better in content than through the sermon of the Gospel; second, that through absolution, and especially through private absolution,
866) Tenth Synodal Report of the General Synod 1860, p. 4.
867) Joh. 20. 23.<w:t>868) Apol. 185, 3. [Trigl. 281, Apol., VI, 3 🔗]
869) M., p. 319: "Vom Evangelium." [Trigl. 491, Part III, Art. IV 🔗]
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the relationship of the forgiveness of sins to one's own person is made easier for the hesitating sinner.870) In the same report, however, it is also pointed out that both private confession and the binding of confession and absolution with the Lord's Supper
870) pp. 34 f. 37. 54 ff. In the latter place it says: "A parable can make clear the relationship of private absolution to general absolution in the sermon. General absolution through the sermon is like a rich man throwing a mass of gold pieces among a crowd with the intention that each one should receive a gold piece; he who takes it has it. But with private absolution it is like when the rich man's servant presses the gold piece into the hand of a timid person who does not dare to grab it. As here the individual has no better gold piece than the others, so also through the private absolution nothing different and better is given than through the sermon. It is a false distinction that is often made, that in the sermon the treasure of the forgiveness of sins is only proclaimed or even offered, but in the private absolution it is communicated. When Luther addresses the greater certainty of the forgiveness of sins in private absolution, he means nothing more than: It is more difficult for the believer to acquire consolation in the general sermon than in private absolution. … The sacraments also are nothing but a visible word; their content is therefore quite the same as that of the word. That God has ordained, besides the Word, the sacraments in which he deals with the individual, he has taken into account the condition of the believers; for because in the weakness of this life it becomes more difficult for the believer to appropriate consolation when it is proclaimed to me in general to the multitude, therefore God, as Luther says, is not so meager, but has ordained that consolation be offered to the believer in all kinds of ways. In this we see God's wonderful condescension to the weakness of his believers; because he knows how difficult it is for them to grasp the consolation in the general sermon, therefore he has given private absolution, baptism and the Lord's Supper for the individual, so that everyone may know that here I am the person with whom God speaks and acts. … To the objection that one does not understand why private absolution is so emphasized; one would not have to have a mind that could not accept and be comforted by public sermons just as well as by private absolution, it was replied: Then one cannot understand why Lord Christ instituted baptism and Holy Communion in addition to the sermon; for there is no essential difference between these and the sermon either. Then it must be wondered at that Christ, after the resurrection, says: "Tell his disciples and Peter"; then it must also be said that Peter had no understanding, that he could not appropriate the consolation, since it was brought to the apostles in general, to which he belonged; but Peter thought: You are no longer an apostle, therefore the Lord had the consolation brought to him in particular. Our ancients say: "It is not this that makes the Christian scruple whether the world is redeemed, but whether he himself is redeemed, that is, whether the general redemption also concerns him for his person.”
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is only a church order, not a divine one.871) Also with regard to the relationship between general confession and private confession, it is aptly stated there: "Even in general confession, as we use it before Holy Communion, there is in a certain sense a personal confession and a personal appropriation; for there one has before one a certain number of Christians who confess their sins, desire grace, and receive absolution; it is therefore, in regard to personal appropriation, something more than the general sermon, and one must be careful in the sermon about it not to touch God's sanctuary. Even to speak disparagingly of general confession is dangerous; I must not disparage the one in order to exalt the other: rather, let both remain in their high, glorious value." 872)
871) The Apology 185, 5 [Trigl. 281, Apol., VI, 5 🔗]: "Of the telling of sins we have said above in our confession that it is not commanded." There, the Roman "scriptural proof" is examined and rightly declared "foolish and childish." See also Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, p. 393 sqq. — Luther's clear exposition of "three kinds of confession" in his Sermon on Confession and the Sacrament (St. L. XI, 582 ff.): 1. Confession before God. This is so highly necessary that it should not linger for a moment, but go through the whole life of a Christian. It consists in condemning ourselves as worthy of death and hellish fire. By this confession we come before God, that he can no longer condemn us, but must be gracious to us; for if we judge or condemn ourselves, God no longer judges or condemns us. 2. Confession before one's neighbor. This is such a confession: if one has done wrong to his neighbor, he should confess it before him. This confession is also necessary and commanded. If this fruit is not there, faith and the first confession are not righteous either. 3. Confession, "which the pope has commanded, which is done secretly in the ears of the priests". This is not commanded by God. Papists had also invoked Luther to save their confession, because "Luther himself also praises and extols confession". To this Luther replied in a letter to the congregation at Esslingen (St. L. XXI a, 562 f.): "It is true that I have said that it is a good thing to confess. Again, I do not defend fasting, walking, eating meat, celebrating, etc., but so that such things may be done freely and no one who does none may do it as if he must do it in his conscience and in a mortal sin, as the pope rages with his ladders for the blind. … Confess only confidently, fast cheerfully if you want, but do not think that it must be, and [you] do sin if you let it be." Yes, Luther says XI, 722: "To desire absolution is in itself enough confession," because to desire absolution is already so much as "to admit guilt and to confess that you are a sinner."
872)op. cit., p. 58. ?]
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