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Revisiting the Third Use of the Law, Again
Rev. John W. Hoyum
Introduction
To what does the sixth article of the Formula of Concord (FC) commit us? That’s the question – no doubt raised over and over again before – to which I’d like to venture an answer. There is a widespread suspicion that mainline Lutheranism has embraced moral mayhem because of its underlying antinomianism, and that at the root of this antinomianism is a rejection of the third use of the law.1 Without the third use, so the story goes, we are left with a kind of limitless freedom that entitles us to reconstruct human relationships and update sexual norms as culture changes.2 The third use of the law, in this case, is a kind of anti-gnostic mechanism that prevents us from detaching Christian moral conduct from the structure of creation, which itself mirrors God’s goodness. Accordingly, the law is a neutral standard which expresses the moral character of the divine being as the highest good (summum bonum). The law in its effects reveals and accuses sin, but this belongs not to the law’s own essence but to the temporal situation in which divine holiness meets human sinfulness. All this culminates in the contention of Lutheran orthodoxy that the law is eternal (lex aeterna).3
Others have profitably engaged this account of the law’s third use and its entanglement with other topics, especially the doctrine of God and the apparent divergence between Luther and the tradition which succeeded him.4 The rejection of the third use on theological grounds and with respect to Luther’s writings is well-established, in my view. But even so, the confessional question remains, especially for those of us who claim to be confessional Lutherans. Does the rejection of the third use of the law involve the rejection of the Formula as a confessional document for Lutherans today? Instead of rehearsing the arguments about Luther’s doctrine of the law and its difference from the doctrine that emerges in Lutheran orthodoxy, I wish instead to make the case for the Formula’s position to the skeptics of the third use. My contention – contrary to that of both advocates and skeptics – is that subscription to the Formula doesn’t obligate us to adhere to a third use in the strict sense, nor its dubious implications like the lex aeterna.5 First, I will take up the question of confessional subscription today and why it is of enduring importance for Lutherans. Then, I will work with the text of FC VI to make the case that in it there is no third use of the law to be found. Finally, I will conclude with some reflections on what it means to subscribe to this document today.
Confessional Subscription Today
At least two important questions mark the matter of confessional subscription. First, what does it mean to subscribe to a set of confessional documents? Second, to which documents should one subscribe? When it comes to the third use of the law, both of these are in play. Concerning the first, I’d point to the promises made by the ordinand that lie at the heart of the ordination rite. The most convenient place to look is the Occasional Services book attached to the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978). In addition to stating that the Lutheran church holds that the “Holy Scriptures are the Word of God and are the norm its faith and life,” the rite adds that “We also acknowledge the Lutheran Confessions as true witnesses and faithful expositions LBW Occasional Services of the Holy Scriptures.” In turn, the ordinand is asked to pledge that they will “therefore preach and teach in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and these creeds and confessions.”6 This brief promise – “I will, and I ask God to help me”7 – is for all intents and purposes a quia, instead of quatenus, form of subscription. One subscribes because (quia) these Confessions are “faithful expositions” of scripture, not “insofar as” (quatenus) they faithfully confess what the Bible says.8
LBW Occasional Services
The second important question when the third use of the law is up for debate is this: which Confessions are we talking about? This is tricky because the ordination vow doesn’t include any particular list. For this, we have to turn to things like denominational constitutions. It’s not up for debate that the churches descending from the old Synodical Conference subscribe to all the documents of the 1580 Book of Concord, which of course includes the Formula. But for churches like Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) or the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), this is more contested. The reason for this is that both these churches inherit a debate about the extent of the Lutheran confessional writings that extends back into the nineteenth-century. Because of how the Reformation proceeded in Norway and Denmark, those churches accepted only the Augsburg Confession (1530) and the Small Catechism (1529), without signing on for the other documents. Whatever political circumstances led to this situation at the time Herman A. Preus of the Reformation, Herman A. Preus has shown that this by no means involved a rejection of the doctrine of the Book of Concord, particularly among the most conservative Norwegian Lutheran immigrants to the United States.9
But regardless of this history, both LCMC and the NALC subscribe to all of the documents of the Book of Concord. Both constitutions set forth the Augsburg Confession (AC) as the primary Reformation-era document, and LCMC adds the Small Catechism (SC). Yet both constitutions list the other documents of the Book of Concord as well, calling them either “further valid expositions of the Holy Scriptures” (LCMC) or “further valid interpretations of the faith of the church” (NALC). The NALC’s constitution closely follows the verbiage inherited from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), while LCMC’s description of the Book of Concord as scriptural exposition follows the language of The American Lutheran Church (TALC ).
Herman A. Preus
While one might quibble with the vagueness of the word “valid,” taken alongside the unqualified nature of the ordination vow, what we have in both of these constitutions is a fairly strong, and classically Lutheran, understanding of confessional subscription. The practical reality on the ground in these churches is of course another matter entirely. But for those exiles from the ELCA, the retrieval of the Lutheran Confessions is paramount – not least because doctrinal indifferentism and poor discernment of the spirits was one of the root causes of mainline decline among American Lutherans. A return to the Lutheran confessional writings needn’t take the form of casuistry, as if we were dealing with mere canon law. Rather, Lutherans today might learn from these confessions as “charters” of evangelical freedom –setting forth the proper theological foundation to make sure that when we preach and confess, it’s actually the gospel.10
A Reading of FC VI
Having now explored the nature of confessional subscription, I’d like to turn to the text of the Formula to test out what subscription might mean for those who confess this document. The term “the third use of the law” appears twice in FC VI: first in the title, and then in the first paragraph outlining the controversy. Nowhere does the article propose a version of the third use amenable to both parties in the second antinomian controversy that followed Luther’s death. Rather, the article is about the controversy over the third use of the law. The crucial issue is therefore the content of the article, and whether or not it proposes a unique use of the law for Christians. A useful criterion for determining whether there is such a unique use is to specify the recipient of the law’s work. If we hold with Melanchthon in the Apology that “the law always accuses us; it always shows that God is angry,”11 then a third use of the law would be a strange addition to the other two: perhaps there are two accusing uses of the law, but one that doesn’t. Such a use of the law would only be for Christians, since the accusation of the law has been removed only for those declared righteous in Christ. If the law is addressed to Christians insofar as they are sinners, then the third use doesn’t offer a distinct function. Rather, at most, the “third use” clarifies that the law applies to Christians only because Christians remain sinners.
In this sense, the third use of the law – so-called – reiterates that, in this life, believers require the law’s discipline on account of their sin. If the law functions to inform the new creature captivated by the Spirit of what good works should be done, then you would have a discreet use of the law that guides the Christian in sanctification. But the FC never ascribes this kind of thing to the law’s function in the Christian life. Instead, the concordists assert that the law is set forth for sinners. The law is not for the justified, but for the ungodly (1 Tim. 1:9).12 Therefore, “if the problem is that faithful and elect children of God were perfectly renewed through the indwelling of the Spirit in this life, so that in their nature and all their powers they were completely free from sin, they would need no law and therefore no prodding.”13 The problem with antinomianism is that it misunderstands the reality of the simul: the law isn’t for the new nature because the law is written on the heart. To present the law to the Christian renewed by the Spirit would either be redundant or would withdraw confidence in the gospel, since the law always accuses. The present problem is that of sin, not ignorance of the will of God on the part of the new nature, and the Formula clarifies that, because of this ongoing battle, we require the continued discipline of the law.
According to the new nature, the concordists are careful to articulate that “when people are born again through the Spirit of God and set free from the law . . . they live according to the unchanging will of God, as comprehended in the law, and do everything, insofar as they are reborn, from a free and merry spirit.”14 Notice the preservation of spontaneity in this statement: according to the new, reborn nature, the condemnation and accusation of the law is superfluous because the new nature is already “liberated from [the law’s] driving powers and driven by the Spirit of Christ.”15 Why must the law be preached in the church? Aren’t the antinomians right, if this is the case? Though the civil realm must indeed still use the law, it must be preached in the church as well “since believers in this world are not perfectly renewed – the old creature clings to them down to the grave…”16 The concordists note three important reasons why the law must be applied to Christians insofar as they are still sinners: (1) to extract external obedience from them, even if it is merely compulsory; (2) to expose the ongoing quest for false holiness in which the old nature fabricates fake good works; (3) and finally, so that people aren’t deluded about the purity and holiness of the works they do perform.17
The article concludes by reiterating the position of Luther as he articulates it across the Antinomian Disputations: Christians indeed do good works, but not because of the compulsion of the law with respect to the old nature, “but because of the renewal of the Holy Spirit – without coercion, from a willing heart, insofar as they are reborn in the inner person.”18 The old nature indeed remains for now, but not forever. When “the sinful flesh is completely stripped away and people are perfectly renewed in the resurrection,” “they will need neither the proclamation of the law nor its threats of punishment, just as they will no longer need the gospel, for both belong to this imperfect life.”19 In the resurrection, with no sinful flesh, the will of God will be perfectly and completely performed spontaneously in the life of the redeemed.
What is notable about the Formula’s treatment of the third use is the abiding way in which the reality of sin informs the account the concordists set forth. The law’s work –however we might denominate its uses or functions – is directed toward sin which clings to the believer.20 What is absent from FC VI is something like Calvin’s teaching on the third and primary use of the law: “by frequently meditating upon [the law], [the Christian] will be excited to obedience, and confirmed in it…”21 Such a “positive” use of the law is absent from the FC. Moreover, the text of article six preserves the twofold eschatological end of the law as well. First, in faith and according to the Spirit, the Christian is no longer under the law but walks “in” it because the law has been written on the heart.22 And second, the law ends at death when the old nature has been done away with, such that in heaven there will be no instruction necessary. All will be just what God intends for creaturely life.
John Calvin
To What Does This Commit Us?
Regardless of whatever developments mark seventeenth-century scholastic accounts of the law, the main takeaway here is that the position of Luther is by no means ruled out by the Formula. Therefore, I contend that it isn’t necessary on the part of third-use skeptics to dispense with this confessional document on account of its sixth article. The consequences of taking a minimalist approach to the Lutheran Confessions should be clear by now, especially given the entropy of mainline Lutheranism brought on by tragic ignorance of its own heritage. But the renewal of Lutheran confessional commitment needn’t be an exercise in rejecting the clear and consistent teaching of Luther in favor of a Melanchthonian distortion either. Clarity and precision are required when it comes to what this article actually says about the Christian life and the role of the law therein. While this essay will by no means bring to an end the debate about the third use, I think it would be a healthy step forward to make the text of article six something like common ground for both skeptics and advocates.
I’ve sought to briefly elucidate what the sixth article of the Formula does and doesn’t say. A fair bit of anxiety about the third use of the law animates those inheritors of the twentieth-century Luther renaissance who tend to emphasize great discontinuity between Luther and his heirs. Thus, the FC represents a departure from the original teaching of Luther on the two uses of the law by proposing a third that should guide the Christian in the achievement of sanctification. While the emphasis on the cultivation of personal holiness certainly characterizes the spirituality of the era of orthodoxy and later Lutheran pietism, the question of sanctification is entirely absent from article six. If anything, it seeks merely to clarify that the first and second use have a place in the life of the believer, not to drive the new obedience or impart the gifts of the Spirit, but to put the old creature to death. Such a clarification can only benefit those who seek to preach and teach the proper distinction of law and gospel in their pulpits and pastoral care.
Rev. John W. Hoyum is a PhD student in systematic theology at the University of Aberdeen and serves as the pastor of Denny Park Lutheran Church in Seattle, Washington.
Endnotes:
1On the issue of homosexuality, see one especially conspicuous exception to this supposed rule: Gerhard O. Forde, “The Normative Character of Scripture for Matters of Faith and Life: Human Sexuality in Light of Romans 1:16–32,” Word & World 14, no. 3 (1994): 305–314; Forde, “Law and Sexual Behavior,” Lutheran Quarterly 9, no. 1 (1995): 3–22.
2See David S. Yeago, “Gnosticism, Antinomianism, and Reformation Theology: Reflections on the Costs of a Construal,” Pro Ecclesia 2, no. 1 (1993): 37–49.
3For some definitive statements of such a position, see Scott R. Murray, Law, Life, and the Living God: The Third Use of the Law in Modern American Lutheranism (St. Louis: Concordia, 2001); Edward Engelbrecht, Friends of the Law: Luther’s Use of the Law for the Christian Life (St. Louis: Concordia, 2011).
4See Gerhard Ebeling, “On the Doctrine of the Triplex Usus Legis in the Theology of the Reformation,” in Word and Faith, trans. James W. Leitch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1963), 63–78; Werner Elert, “Eine Theologische Fälschung zur Lehre vom Tertius Usus Legis,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 1, no. 2 (1948): 168–170; Forde, The Law-Gospel Debate: An Interpretation of Its Historical Development (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1969); Walter R. Bouman, “The Concept of the ‘Law’ in the Lutheran Tradition,” Word & World 3, no. 4 (1983):413–422; Mark C. Mattes, “Beyond the Impasse: Re-examining the Third Use of the Law,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 69, nos. 3–4 (2005): 271–291; James A. Nestingen, “Changing Definitions: The Law in Formula VI,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 69, nos. 3–4 (2005): 259–270; Nicholas Hopman, “Luther’s Antinomian Disputations and lex aeterna,” Lutheran Quarterly 30, no. 2 (2016): 152–180. On the implications of all this for the doctrine of God, see Steven D. Paulson, “Luther’s Doctrine of God,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, ed. Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, and L’ubomir Batka (New York: Oxford, 2014), 187–200.
5In this way, I seek to recover Werner Elert’s contention that the Formula addresses the question of the third use in general, but makes its way back to the position of Luther in his Antinomian Disputations. See Elert, The Christian Ethos, trans. Carl J. Schindler (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1957), 296.
6Occasional Services (Augsburg: Minneapolis: 1982), 194.
7Ibid., 194.
8For a clear and forceful account of this kind of unconditional confessional subscription from the perspective of the Missouri Synod, see C. F. W. Walther, “Why Should Our Pastors, Teachers and Professors Subscribe Unconditionally to the Symbolical Writings of Our Church,” Concordia Theological Monthly 18, no. 4 (1947): 241–253. For some important background on this essay of Walther’s, especially concerning the Definite Platform of S. S. Schmucker (1855), see Erling Teigen, “Quia Subscription to the Confessions: Examining the Question of Hermeneutical Direction,” Logia 20, no. 2 (2011): 5–13.
9Preus refutes the widespread assumption that the old Norwegian Synod assimilated to the confessionalism of the Missouri Synod for pragmatic reasons. See Preus, “History of Norwegian Lutherans in America to 1917,” Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly 40, no. 3 (1967): 108.
10See Mark C. Mattes and Steven D. Paulson, “Introduction: Taking the Risk to Proclaim,” in The Preached God: Proclamation in Word and Sacrament, by Gerhard O. Forde, ed. Steven D. Paulson and Mark C. Mattes (Lutheran Quarterly Books; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 1–2.
11Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Ap) IV 129; in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2000), 141 [cited henceforth as BC followed by the page numbers.
12FC SD VI 4; BC, 588.
13FC SD VI 6; BC, 588.
14FC SD VI 17; BC, 590
15FC SD VI 17; BC, 590.
16FC SD VI 18; BC 590.
17FC SD VI 19–21; BC 590.
18FC SD VI 23; BC, 591.
19FC SD VI 24; BC, 591.
20See Lowell C. Green, “The ‘Third Use of the Law’ and Werner Elert’s Position,” Logia 22, no. 2 (2013): 27–33.
21John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009), 225.
22See FC SD VI 18; BC, 590.
