Luther and the Positive Use of the Law (original) (raw)
Luther's Attitude Towards the Legal Traditions of His Day
Throughout his carrer as a reformer Luther had to deal with problems posed by the various legal codes that were in force (or that some said should be in force) in the church and state of his day. This article explores Luther's attitude towards Law in General, Roman Law, Germanic Law, Mosaic Law, and especially Canon Law, concernng which there was much more controversy than was the case with the others.
Church History - Comparing Luther and Calvin’s Understanding of the Law and Gospel Dialectic
2023
Luther's view of Law and Gospel has profoundly impacted the development of Protestant theology and contributed to the emphasis on justification by faith alone - the linchpin of his theology and a central tenet of many Protestant denominations. Understanding this dialectic not only helps us decipher Reformation theology, ethics and the very movement itself, it lays the foundation for our own faith today. In this paper, I outline Luther’s perspective of the Law and Gospel dialectic and then compare it with the approach of another Reformer, John Calvin. After which, I will share my views on whose perspective I prefer and why before concluding.
Martin Luther’s Influence on Legal Reforms and Civil Law
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion , 2017
The Lutheran reformation transformed not only theology and the church but law and the state as well. Beginning in the 1520s, Luther joined up with various jurists and political leaders to craft ambitious legal reforms of church, state, and society on the strength of Luther’s new theology. These legal reforms were defined and defended in hundreds of monographs, pamphlets, and sermons published by Lutheran writers from the 1520s to 1550s. They were refined and routinized in hundreds of new reformation ordinances promulgated by German cities, duchies, and territories that converted to the Lutheran cause. By the time of the Peace of Augsburg (1555) -- the imperial law that temporarily settled the constitutional order of Germany--the Lutheran Reformation had brought fundamental changes to theology and law, to church and state, marriage and family, education and charity. Critics of the day, and a steady stream of theologians and historians ever since, have seen this legal phase of the Reformation as a corruption of Luther’s original message of Christian freedom from the strictures of human laws and traditions. But Luther ultimately realized that he needed the law to stabilize and enforce the new Protestant teachings. Radical theological reforms had made possible fundamental legal reforms. Fundamental legal reforms, in turn, would make palpable radical theological reforms. In the course of the 1530s onwards, the Lutheran Reformation became in its essence both a theological and a legal reform movement. It struck new balances between law and Gospel, rule and equity, order and faith, structure and spirit.
Koers - Bulletin for Christian Scholarship, 2005
Writing "new"decalogues: Martin Luther's development of the Pauline-Augustinian tradition of natural law This essay argues in favour of Martin Luther subscribing to the theory of natural law in his theology. An in-depth study of Luther's views on natural law finds support for Brown's thesis that Luther's contribution to the tradition of natural law cannot be taken to form the basis of the theory of divine right prominent in the seventeenth century. Without venturing into the debate on natural law versus legal positivism, it is found that the perspective emanating from Luther's natural law theory has an important political message for mankind as a whole in its implicit warning against positivistic and legalistic perspectives on law because these are apt to lead to confusion, relativism and historicism. Man, according to Luther's view, therefore, has to revert to more fundamental principles (or values), representative of "ideal," "good," or "true," norms for testing manmade law. The more specific implications of Luther's views on natural law for Christians concern an eschatological vision of Christians' involvement and work in God's creation. This vision concerns man's divine appointment to hold office and promote peace in society, and to contribute humbly towards God's involvement in societies suffering from the effects of legalism or torn apart by conflict. Writing "new" decalogues ...
Nemo iudex in causa sua as the Basis of Law, Justice and Justification in Luther’s Thought
Harvard Theological Review, 2007
This article seeks to uphold a consistently legal reading of Luther’s conception of temporal authority. Far from a premature dismissal or milieu-motivated relativization of the reformer’s precepts, it shows that such an analysis need degenerate neither into casuistry nor naïve pre-Enlightenment authoritarianism. Rather, I argue that what drives Luther’s esteem for temporal authority—which he views primarily in light of its social and vocational expression in civil law—is the ancient legal maxim that no one be judge in one’s own case, nemo iudex in causa sua. On this basis Luther proposes a noncasuistic theory of the law and, in so doing, destabilizes the relation between the Christian and temporal authority while at the same time keeping at bay the threat of self-serving individualism and anarchy. I argue, moreover, that the maxim underlies Luther’s conception not only of the political use of the law but also, by exposing its shortcomings, of the law’s theological, accusatory, function. As such, to push the argument further still, I also propose that the maxim may be viewed as the very foundation of Luther’s mature understanding of justification and Christian life. God reveals that he is a righteous judge by consistently not being judge in his own case and so being free to justify humanity. In keeping with the maxim, this in turn makes the believer, as a justified sinner, uniquely able to uphold civil law with a view to according the neighbor justice. In doing so, the believer actually justifies God, who has first justified the believer.
In die Skriflig/In Luce Verbi, 2007
Prof. Johan van der Vyver recently identified a need for a Scriptural foundation of human rights. In this article it is argued that together with their evangelical perspectives, Luther’s and Calvin’s Ciceronian re-interpretation of Thomism produced very important perspectives for establishing the moral context of a Scriptural basis for fundamental rights and duties. The impli- cations of the views of both Luther and Calvin on fundamental duties and justice presuppose a moral context from which is- sues related to human rights can be approached. In that regard the views of Luther and Calvin still have much to contribute towards developing an evangelical approach to human rights.
The impact of the Reformation on legal thought, with special reference to Calvin's work on criminal law, 2018
The spiritual movement of the Reformation emerged in Western Europe in the first half of the 16th century with the aim of bringing about a theological, moral and organisational renewal of the Christian Church. However, this renewal did not remain confined to religion, but extended to other areas of social science. This paper analyses the role of Luther and Calvin in establishing the principles of due process and certain human rights. Calvin, drawing on the religious doctrines of the Reformation, also had a major influence on the understanding of criminal law of the time. The views expressed by the Reformers defined, centuries in advance, not only religion but also certain principles and legal institutions of morality and law, including criminal law.
The justness of love : the essence and status of justice in Luther's theology
2006
Luther's views on justice provide a useful platform of departure for discerning 'points of contact' between Christians and non-Christians on the nature and role of justice in society. The main elements of such 'points of contact' are contained in the principle that the simplest and most important element in moral and juridical discipline is inserted in all human souls by divine Providence because everyone stands in need of it. Justice is the simplest, most basic, and noble idea-every other value possessed by positive law is accidental, accessory and derivative, and the essence of the perfection of laws consists in justice alone. Justice is necessarily present in every human being in whom the tiniest ray of reason shines, obliging every rational being to mutual love and benevolence in all social relations. Justice is not the invention of philosophy or science but a manifestation of the supreme truth, and commands us to acknowledge truth (or justice) as soon as the Holy Spirit reveals it to us. In short: justice, as the supreme value in society, is the manifestation of the supreme truth, namely the duty to love your neighbour as yourself and to promote benevolence as the supreme good in society.
Martin Luther and Religious Liberty
2020
Ramirez, David, P. “Martin Luther and Religious Liberty.” STM thesis, Fort Wayne, Indiana: Concordia Theological Seminary, 2020. 172 pp. Religious liberty is an increasingly important topic in the modern, western world. Unfortunately, evaluations of what Martin Luther believed about religious liberty are varied and disparate. This thesis first analyses how the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod has understood Luther’s stance on matters pertaining to religious liberty. The thesis also engages the contemporary theologian Oswald Bayer on the same subject. Secondly, the thesis traces Luther’s thought on religious liberty chronologically by analyzing pertinent texts, statements, and actions of the reformer. Two works that are given particular attention are On Secular Authority (1523) and Luther’s Commentary of Psalm 82 (1530). It is this study’s contention that the Commentary on Psalm 82 can and should serve as a corrective lens for modern confessional Lutherans’ overreliance on the 1523 treatise when seeking to understand Luther on religious liberty. This thesis demonstrates that from the beginning of his career Luther assumed a cooperative relationship between the civil government and the Church. While Luther’s view of this relationship indeed grew and developed, he was never a supporter of religious liberty. This thesis will show how his expanding definition of punishable blasphemy would lead Luther to call upon the civil government to suppress both idolatrous practices and false preaching. The goal of this study is to set forth Luther’s mature viewpoint on religious liberty so that it can contribute to a deeper appreciation of what the Lutheran reformers were, and were not confessing, specifically in the Augsburg Confession, and in the rest of the Book of Concord so that their testimony aids the Church in her present struggles.
Evangelicals should actively appropriate central themes from the Protestant Reformation that provide a unified structure for faith, life, and proclamation: the nuanced relation between law and gospel. A largely unified (but not woodenly identical) perspective can be learned from a comparison of Martin Luther (1483-1546) with John Calvin (1509-1564). Their significant similarity on these questions established patterns for quality teaching and preaching in the Protestant tradition. The relationship between law and gospel is a hermeneutical/homiletical key to Reformation theology and ethics, both historically to understand the Reformation itself and normatively, setting a pattern to appropriate today. This complementarity offers evangelicals a proven tool for understanding the Bible, for proclamation in church and society, for balanced and authentic pastoral care, and for relating the Christian faith to questions of culture and politics.
Law and Gospel: The Hermeneutical/Homiletical Key to Reformation Theology and Ethics
Martin Bucer Seminary
The key to understand how Martin Luther and John Calvin interpreted and applied the Bible lies in their similar understandings of the relationship between God's moral law and the gospel of Christ. Their approaches can be largely harmonized to provide a balanced and differentiated approach to understanding and preaching the Bible today. This distinction also provides guidance regarding matter of faith and reason, and the relation of faith and public life.
Between Sanctity and Depravity: Law and Human Nature in Martin Luther's Two Kingdoms
Villanova Law Review, 2003
Martin Luther (1483-1546) was one of the great revolutionaries in the Western legal tradition. The Protestant Reformation that he inaugurated produced fundamental changes in legal theory, political organization, church-state relations, marriage, education, and social welfare. These changes were inscribed on the legal and confessional systems of that period. They have had an enduring effect on modern public, private, and criminal law, and on modern ideals of liberty, equality, and dignity. This essay surveys these sweeping changes that Luther's Reformation wrought, and then analyzes more closely the sources of inspiration and integration of these reforms in Luther's famous theory of the two kingdoms.
Luther the Lawyer: The Lutheran Reformation of Law, Politics, and Society
Law and Justice: A Christian Law Review , 2017
The Lutheran Reformation transformed not only theology and the church but law and the state as well. Beginning in the 1520s, Luther joined up with various jurists and political leaders to craft ambitious legal reforms of church, state, and society on the strength of the new Protestant theology. These legal reforms were defined and defended in hundreds of monographs, pamphlets, and sermons published by Luther and his many followers from the 1520s onward. They were refined and routinized in hundreds of new reformation ordinances promulgated by German polities that converted to the Lutheran cause. By the time of the Peace of Augsburg (1555)--the imperial law that temporarily settled the constitutional order of Germany--the Lutheran Reformation had brought fundamental changes to theology and law, to church and state, marriage and family, education and charity.
Luther vs. Calvin on Civil Obedience
From Martin Luther in 1530 to the Canada Truckers’ Convoy of 2022. The duty of obedience (or disobedience) to the civil authority as taught by Luther, William Tyndale, Thomas Cranmer -- and, yes, the truckers -- on the one hand, contrasted with the duty to resist taught by John Calvin, Theodore Beza, the Puritans, and some moderns on the other hand. Included is an analysis of Calvin’s “doctrine of the lesser magistrate,” which is rearing its head again. How should a Christian respond in the face of the rising tide of tyranny and moral insanity in the west? 18 pages plus end notes.