2. Law and gospel in their juxtaposition, or what is common to law and gospel.
Law and Gospel are first of all both the Word of God. The words of the law: "Thou shalt love God thy Lord with all thy heart" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" together with the sentence of condemnation: "Cursed be every man that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law, that he should do them. — These words of the law are the Word of God and the will of God, as well as the word of the gospel, with which Paul and Silas saved the jailer of Philippi from despair: "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. Furthermore: Both, law and gospel, concern all men. As the word of the law, "Ye shall be holy, for I am holy," binds the king as well as the beggar, the cultured man as well as the savage, so there is no man in the world whom the word of the gospel does not concern, which absolves all men from the guilt of sin and condemnation. Finally: Both, law and gospel, are to be taught side by side in the church and by the church until the Last Day.919) The fact that this also applies to the Law is against
918) Quenstedt makes II. 1027 the remark: ln Scripturis evangelio quidem assignatur saepius nomen legis, nunquam vero legi tribuitur appellatio evangelii. [Google] — Baier says III, 342 about the different use of the words law and gospel: Aliquando latius accipiuntur voces, ita ut lex sub suo conceptu evangelium et hoe illam quodammodo complectatur, v. g. quando lex sumitur pro tota Scriptura, Fs. 1, 2, aut specialius pro Scriptura Veteris Testamenti, Ioh. 15:25; 1 Cor. 14:21, denique peculiariter pro scriptis Mosaicis, Lue. 24:44. evangelium quoque interdum latius accipitur pro tota doctrina Novi Testamenti a Christo et apostolis tradita, Marc. 1:14; 16:15; Luc. D, 6. Hic autem accipiuntur vocabula legis et evangelii, quatenus sibi adaequate contradistinguuntur... [Google] Gerhard on different meanings of the words law and gospel: L. de lege, § 3; L. de evang., § 6.
919) Thus, Paul teaches both side by side in the Epistle to the Romans, first very extensively Law (chap. 1:18-3:20) and then very extensively Gospel (chap. 3:21 ff.). The Formula of Concord still reminds (638, 23 [Trigl. 959, Sol. Decl, V, 23 🔗]): "These two sermons have from the beginning of the world been practiced side by side in the church of God ever and always with due distinction."
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Antinomianism, which tried to penetrate the Lutheran Church at the time of the Reformation through Agricola and his followers.920) Antinomism is based on the idea that the knowledge of sin is not to be taught from the law but from the gospel, and that therefore the law does not belong to the church but to the territory of the state, "to the town hall".921) The Lutheran Church rejects this error on all sides in the 5th and 6th articles of the Formula of Concord.
920) Johann Agricola, born in Eisleben in 1492, pastor at the Nikolai Church in Eisleben in 1525, in Wittenberg in 1536, court preacher in Berlin in 1540, died in 1566. — In the Majorist controversy about the necessity of good works, antinomian propositions were represented by the pastors Andreas Poach of Erfurt and Anton Otto of Nordhausen.
921) Some main propositions of Agricola and his followers are: "Repentance is not to be taught from the Decalogue or any law of Moses, but from the wounding of the Son of God (ex violatione Filii) by the Gospel." "Christ says in John that it is not the law but the Spirit that rebuke sin." "Any thing without which the Holy Spirit is given, and men are justified, need not be taught, neither the beginning, nor the means, nor the end of justification." "Those who teach that the law must be preached first, then the gospel, pervert the words of Christ." "The gospel teaches the wrath of God from heaven and at the same time the righteousness that is justified before God, Rom. 1." "The law is not worthy to be called the Word of God." "The Decalog belongs in the council chamber, not in the preaching chair." — Agricola first (1527) attacked Melanchthon's articles of visitation, and ten years later (1537) also banned Luther. He says against Melanchthon: "In the Saxon visitation [is impure]: Because Christ commands that repentance and forgiveness of sins be preached in His name, the Decalog is to be taught." Agricola also opposes Luther in the Nominalelenchus: "In the Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, Luther says that it is the proper office of the law to afflict and terrify the conscience, so that it may the more easily recognize Christ. Such passages are many in the same commentary, which we reject as erroneous, so that the purity of the doctrine may be preserved." — Agricola's "Propositions Disseminated Among Brethren" (Positiones inter fratres sparsae) and other antinomian propositions established by him and his followers are reported in the St. Louis edition of Luther's works, XX, 1624 ff. Luther's six disputations against the antinomians are printed in loc. cit. 1628 ff. The Latin text is found in Erl., Opp. V. a. IV, 424 sqq. Also included here are Luther's writing "Wider die Antinomer" (1539) and "Luthers Bericht von M. Joh. Eislebens falscher Lehre und schändlichen Tat" (1540). St. L. XX, 1610 ff. and 1649 ff. The sermon on the 5th Sunday after Trinity in the Gospel Postil also offers a clear confrontation with Agricola's antinomianism, XI, 1328 ff. From Schlüsselburg's Catalogus, vol. IV belongs here. Sufficient material to assess the dispute is also found in Gieseler, III, 2, 137 ff: Schmid-Hauck, Dogmengesch.4 , pp. 360 ff.
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It cannot be said that anything — either from the theological point of view, or from the natural-reasonable point of view — can be said in favor of the position of Agricola and his followers. They did not want to have the law taught in the Christian Church. But what they wanted to dismiss, they kept under another name. They inserted the law into the gospel. But in doing so, as Luther crudely puts it, they wring the neck of the apostle Paul and put the foremost thing at the back. They made the wrath of God an appendix of the gospel. Luther describes the logical and theological lack of understanding of the antinomians quite accurately when he says:922) "They want to do away with the law and yet teach wrath, which alone the law must do. So they do nothing more, for throw away these poor letters 'L-a-w,' but confirm the wrath of God, which is interpreted and understood by these letters, without wanting to wring St. Paul's neck and put the foremost at the back." "They have devised for them a new method, that one should first address grace, then revelation of wrath, so that the word 'law' may not be heard nor spoken. This is a cat's paw, they like it very well and think they want to pull the whole scripture in and out and become lux mundi with it. This is what they say St. Paul must give in Rom. 1. But they do not see how St. Paul teaches "just contrary", beginning and showing first the wrath of God from heaven, making all the world sinners and guilty before God; then, when they have become sinners, he teaches them how to obtain grace and become righteous, as the first three chapters show powerfully and clearly. And is this also a strange blindness and foolishness, that they think that revelation of wrath is something other than the law, which is not possible; for revelation of wrath is the law where it is known and felt, as Paul says: Lex iram operatur. Have they not then done well to put away the law, and yet teach it, when they teach the doctrine of wrath? But turn back the shoe, and teach us the law according to the gospel, and wrath according to grace." Equally incomprehensible is Agricola's argument that the law is therefore not to be taught because it does not
922) Against the Antinomians, XX, 1618 f.
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convey justification.923) The argument is to be reversed and to say that because the law does not impart justification but teaches condemnation, it is to be preached before the gospel, so that through the gospel the condemnation proclaimed by the law may be annulled. Justification has condemnation by the law as its prerequisite. Luther therefore countered Agricola: "Is this not blindness upon blindness, that he does not want to preach the law without and before the gospel? Surely these are impossibilia. How is it possible to preach about the forgiveness of sins when there are no sins beforehand? How is it possible to preach life, where there is not first death?" "For grace shall war and prevail in us against the law and sin, that we despair not." 924) Luther, therefore, does not go too far when he says that Agricola, with his fight against the sermon of the law, consequently also abolishes the gospel, Christ as the fulfiller of the law, and thus the whole of Christianity. Furthermore: Agricola does not want to have taught repentance from the law, but from the doctrine of the gospel, because only from the gospel can repentance come out of love for God, which is certainly correct. But when he now says about repentance coming from love for God: this is "the first stage of the new birth, the right breathing and blowing of the Holy Spirit. After that it gains a hearty trust in God, he will credit it with its folly": 925), he thus bases trust in God or faith in the forgiveness of sins on repentance arising from love for God, that is, on regeneration and sanctification. With his new "Methodus" he does not save the doctrine of justification, but he turns into Roman ways. If we add that Agricola, with his logical and theological ambiguity, presented himself as the savior of the purity of Christian doctrine 926) and rejected the teachings of the Wittenbergers and especially of Luther as erroneous,
923) Positiones inter fratres sparsae 6-9. St. L. XX, 1625.
924) St. L. XX, 1659, 1656.
925) Kurze Summarien, p. 304: in Schmid-Hauck, p. 361. Agricola's "Kurze Summarien" appeared in 1537, but were suppressed because they were published without censorship. G. Plitt, RE.2 I, 452.
926) Positiones etc.. 13: "That the Christian doctrine may be preserved pure, it is necessary to resist those who teach that the gospel is to be preached only to those whose hearts have been previously frightened and crushed by the law."
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then we understand that Luther sometimes used very sharp language against Agricola and counted his appearance among the "storm winds" by which the devil ever sought to extinguish the light of the gospel that had risen.927) More details of Antinomianism are considered in the following exposition.