The Third Use of Law John Warwick Montgomery In 1528 — only a decade after the posting of the Ninety-five Theses — Erasmus asserted that "the Lutherans seek two things only — wealth and wives (censum et uxorem)" and that to them the Gospel meant "the right to live as they please" (letter of March 20, 1 528, to W. Pirkheimer, a fellow humanist). From that day to this Protestants have been suspected of antinomianism, and their Gospel of "salvation by grace through faith, apart from the works of the Law" has again and again been understood as a spiritual insurance policy which removes the fear of hell and allows a man to "live as he pleases." Sanctification Twice Desanctified The claim that Protestantism is essentially antinomian seemed to have an especially strong basis in fact in the nineteenth century. Industrialization and urbanization brought about social evils which were overlooked and rationalized by many professing Protestants. Inevitably a reaction occurred, and in the social-gospel movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries one encounters a textbook illustration of what Hegel called the antithesis. In its fear that Protestantism had become ethically indifferent, the social-gospel movement of Washington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch identified the Christian message with social ethics. From an apparent justification without sanctification, the pendulum swung to a "sanctification" which swallowed up justification. In their eagerness to bring in the kingdom of God through social action and the amelioration of the ills of the industrial proletariat, the social gospelers generally lost track of the central insight of the Reformation: that the love of Christ must constrain the Christian, and that we can experience and manifest this love only if we have personally come into a saving relationship with the Christ who "first loved us" (I John 4:19) and gave himself on the cross for us (I Peter 2:24). World War I burst the optimistic bubble of the social gospel; no longer
did there seem to be much assurance that human beings had the capacity
to establish a sanctified society on earth. But the reductionist biblical
criticism with which the social-gospel movement had allied itself did
not die as easily. So loud had been the voices of modernism against a
perspicuous, fully reliable Scripture that in the most influential Protestant
circles it was believed that a return to a propositional biblical ethic
could never take place. The result was (and is, for the movement is by
no means dead) an existential ethic.
The Protestant existentialists do not of course go to the length of the
atheist Jean-Paul Sartre, who says in Existentialism and Human Emotions,
"There are no omens in the world." But when Sartre follows this assertion
with the qualification that even if there were omens (as the Christian
believes), "I myself choose the meaning they have," he comes very close
to the approach of the contemporary Protestant existentialist. The latter,
unable to rely (he thinks) on a biblical revelation which is objectively
and eternally definitive in matters ethical, must himself "choose the
meaning" of Scripture for his unique existential situation. In practice
he agrees with Simone de Beauvoir when she says that man "has no need
of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals" (The Ethics of Ambiguity).
Right or wrong is never determined absolutely in advance; the Bible is
not a source of ethical absolutes it is rather the record of how believers
of former times made ethical decisions in the crises of their experience.
What distinguishes the Christian ethic from the non-Christian, in this
view? Only the motivation of love. The Christian has experienced God's
love, and so is in a position to bring that love to bear upon the unique
existential decisions he faces. This existential approach, at root highly
individualistic, has in recent years been given a "group discussion" orientation
by such writers as A.T. Rasmussen, who, in his Christian Social Ethics
(1956), asserts that existential decision should take place in "the higher
community of God," where "Christian discussion" serves as "the channel
through which the Holy Spirit moves in the dialectic or give-and-take
of genuine spiritual intercourse to provide ethical guidance."
The contemporary existential ethic in Protestantism is a second instance
of desanctifying sanctification, for it inevitably devolves into ethical
relativism. Sartre, when asked advice by a young man who, during World
War II, was torn between a desire to join the Free French Forces and a
feeling that he should stay in France to take care of his mother, could
only say, "You're free, choose, that is, invent." Likewise, the Protestant
existentialist can never appeal to absolute law; he can only say, "You're
free, choose to love." But what does this mean in concrete terms? Theoretically
it can mean "anything goes" — an antinomianism indeed — for each existential
decision is unique and without precedent. Thus the housemother in Tea
and Sympathy who committed adultery out of self-giving (agape?)
love in order to prove to a student that he was not incapable of heterosexual
relationships, cannot be condemned for her decision. As for Rasmussen's
ethic of social existentialism, one can see that it merely compounds the
problem on the group level. George Forell has well characterized this
approach as "inspiration by bladder control," for the person who stays
longest in the group discussion is frequently the one whose "responsible
participation" determines the "contextual and concrete" ethic of the moment.
The absence of an eternal ethical standard either in individualistic or
in social existentialism totally incapacitates it for promoting Christian
holiness.
Answer of Classical Protestantism
In the Protestantism of the Reformation, antinomianism is excluded on
the basis of a clear-cut doctrine of the Law and a carefully worked-out
relation between the Law and the Gospel. The Reformers assert, first of
all, that no man is saved on the basis of Law. As the Apology of the
Augsburg Confession puts it: Lex semper accusat ("The Law
always indicts"). Whenever a man puts himself before the standard of the
Law — whether God's eternally revealed Law in the Bible or the standard
of Law written on his own heart — he finds that he is condemned. Only
the atoning sacrifice of Christ, who perfectly fulfilled the demands of
the Law, can save; thus, in the words of the Apostle, "by grace are ye
saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
not of works, lest any man should boast" (Eph. 2:8, 9). Three Uses of the Law But God's Law as set forth in Scripture, remains valid. Indeed, the Law
has three functions (usi): the political (as a restraint for
the wicked), the theological (as "a paidagogos to bring us to Christ"—Gal.
3:24), and the didactic (as a guide for the regenerate, or, in Bonhoeffer's
words, "as God's merciful help in the performance of the works which are
commanded"). Few Protestants today dispute the first and second uses of
the Law; but what about the third or didactic use? Do Christians, filled
with the love of Christ and empowered by His Holy Spirit, need the Law
to teach them? Are not the Christian existentialists right that love is
enough? Indeed, is it not correct that Luther himself taught only the
first two uses of the Law and not the tertius usus legis?
Whether or not the formulation of a didactic use of the Law first appeared
in Melanchthon (Helmut Thielicke [Theologische Ethik] and others
have eloquently argued for its existence in Luther's own teaching; cf.
Edmund Schlink, Theology of the Lutheran Confessions), there
is no doubt that it became an established doctrine both in Reformation
Lutheranism and in Reformation Calvinism. One finds it clearly set out
in the Lutheran Formula of Concord (Art. VI) and in Calvin's
Institutes (II, vii, 12 ff.). It is true that for Luther the pedagogic
use of the Law was primary, while for Calvin this third or didactic use
was the principal one; yet both the Lutheran and the Reformed traditions
maintain the threefold conceptualization.
An Essential Doctrine
The Third Use is an essential Christian doctrine for two reasons. First,
because love — even the love of Christ — though it serves as the most
powerful impetus to ethical action, does not inform the Christian as to
the proper content of that action. Nowhere has this been put as well as
by the beloved writer of such hymns "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say" and
"I Lay My Sins on Jesus"; in his book, God's Way of Holiness,
Horatius Bonar wrote:
Secondly, the doctrine of the
Third Use is an essential preservative for the entire doctrine of sanctification.
The Third Use claims that as a result of justification, it is a nomological
fact that "if any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things are
passed away; behold, all things are become new" (II Cor. 5:17). A man
in Christ has received a new spirit — the Spirit of the living God — and
therefore his relation to the Law is changed. True, in this life he will
always remain a sinner (I John 1:8), and therefore the Law will always
accuse him, but now he sees the biblical Law in another light — as the
manifestation of God's loving will. Now he can say with the psalmist:
"I delight in Thy Law" and "0 how I love Thy Law!" (Ps. 119;cf. Ps. land
19). Only by taking the Third Use of the Law — the "law of Christ" (Gal.
6:2) — seriously do we take regeneration seriously; and only when we come
to love God's revealed Law has sanctification become a reality in our
lives. Ludwig lhmels made a sound confession of faith when he wrote in
Die Religionswissenschaft der Gegen wart in Selbstdarstellungen:
"I am convinced as was Luther that the Gospel can only be understood where
the Law has done its work in men. And I am equally convinced that just
the humble Christian, however much he desires to live in enlarging measure
in the spirit, would never wish to do without the holy discipline of the
tertius usus legis." The answer to antinomianism, social-gospel
legalism, and existential relativism lies not only in the proper distinction
between Law and Gospel, as C.F.W. Walther so effectively stressed, but
also in the proper harmony of Law and Gospel, as set forth in the classic
doctrine of the Third Use of the Law.
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