Luther is famous for the polarized distinction between law and gospel. In hyper simplified form, the distinction is grammatical: law is a command/imperative and gospel is an indicative. While Luther, or some heavy-hitting Lutheran theologians might massage it differently, this is the way Lutheran law-gospel is taught. And yet, at the same time, it's not as crude as it may sound. Lutherans are (mostly) aware it's not the literal syntax. The imperative "Take this gift" is in most cases hardly burdensome and not something one would usually consider a command. And it's this paradigm that is Luther's most important theological paradigm. To be crystal clear, Melanchthon (Luther's lieutenant) makes it clear in his Defense of the Augsburg Confession for the articles on justification:
All Scripture ought to be distributed into these two principal topics, the Law and the promises. For in some places it presents the Law, and in others the promise concerning Christ, namely, either when [in the Old Testament] it promises that Christ will come, and offers, for His sake, the remission of sins justification, and life eternal, or when, in the Gospel [in the New Testament], Christ Himself, since He has appeared, promises the remission of sins, justification, and life eternal.
For most of my time as a Christian, I've found this approach extremely reductionist and hard to believe. I never had the panic Luther had about how a sinner could find a gracious God and never saw the Law as some ruthless meat grinder of souls. It's not to say that I rely on myself for salvation or think I'm doing quite good on my own (I've had a number of "dark nights of the soul"). It's simply that this approach never made sense (except in an attenuated, and rather contorted) of what's in scripture. What the Reformed call "the third use of the law" (God's law is for your spiritual development) seemed a very natural reading and Paul never seemed so far off from the Gospels or other apostolic authors. When Luther thundered about how the church stands or falls upon justification by faith alone, I blink. When I've heard Lutherans explain that Christ's "Be perfect as my Heavenly Father is perfect" is an elaborate trap for the self-righteous, I scratch my head. Pop-lutheranism is perhaps even more devilish, reveling in the incoherent god who creates irrational animals who are trapped in their own delusions of grandeur (when every page of the Bible refutes this; perhaps it's why pop-lutheranism is a kind of gateway drug for atheism). It's simply not persuasive.
What's interesting is how Luther found himself unable to predict St. Paul's logical turn in the allegory of Sarah and Hagar. In his Commentary on Galatians, Luther is exegeting the passage in Galatians 4 and admits he got stumped:
A little while ago Paul called Mount Sinai, Hagar. He would now gladly make Jerusalem the Sarah of the New Testament, but he cannot. The earthly Jerusalem is not Sarah, but a part of Hagar. Hagar lives there in the home of the Law, the Temple, the priesthood, the ceremonies, and whatever else was ordained in the Law at Mount Sinai.I would have been tempted to call Jerusalem, Sarah, or the New Testament. I would have been pleased with this turn of the allegory. It goes to show that not everybody has the gift of allegory. Would you not think it perfectly proper to call Sinai Hagar and Jerusalem Sarah? True, Paul does call Sarah Jerusalem. But he has the spiritual and heavenly Jerusalem in mind, not the earthly Jerusalem. Sarah represents that spiritual Jerusalem where there is no Law but only the promise, and where the inhabitants are free.To show that the Law has been quite abolished, the earthly Jerusalem was completely destroyed with all her ornaments, temples, and ceremonies.(Luther, Commentary on Galatians, 4.25)
Such is apparent in the way Jews handled themselves in the Hellenic era. Some Jewish apologists tried to compare their Torah to the nomos of a Greek city-state (regulating its cult, customs, and culture). The Letter of Aristeas is, in part, a demonstration of the superiority of the Jews on Greek terms. A Macabbean High Priest will write to a Spartan king and claim they have common ancestry (and thus should be allies). Philo, an exemplar of a highly educated and sophisticated Egyptian Jew, would deployed Hellenic literary method to allegorize Torah in a way that made it comparable (but superior) to Homer and other Greek literature. These are only a few examples.
The difference between the Law and the Gospel is that in the Law there is the letter, in the Gospel, there is grace. [...] The first was given because of transgression, the latter for the sake of justification. The Law shows sin to the ignorant, the Gospel helps the one who acknowledges sin, so that it may be avoided. [...] The commandments are held in the Law, the promises are consummated in the fulness of the Gospel.This sounded very much like Luther and so I dug up the full citation. The following is from the rest of the passage:
The difference between the Law and the Gospel is that in the Law there is the letter, in the Gospel, there is grace. The Law holds a shadow, the Gospel, a form. The first was given because of transgression, the latter for the sake of justification. The Law shows sin to the ignorant, the Gospel helps the one who acknowledges sin, so that it may be avoided. The Law shows sin to the ignorant, the Gospel helps the one who acknowledges sin, so that it may be avoided. The Law scolds those given to disgraceful actions, the Gospel frees sinners by means of their own goodness. The Law decreed retaliation, the Gospel commanded praying for our enemies. The Law, with free rein to marriages, ordered people to increase and procreate, the Gospel urged continence. In the Law, only the circumcision of flesh is preached, in the Gospel, there is baptism, cleansing heart and body. In the Law, the kingdom of Canaanites and the promises of temporal things are contained; in the Gospel, eternal life and the kingdom of heaven is promised. In the Law, the leisure and rest of the Sabbath is practiced, in the Gospel, the 'Sabbath rest' is considered to be in Christ, who said (Mt 11.28-29) Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you...and you will find rest for your souls. In the Law, food from unclean animals is forbidden; in the Gospel, in the body of Christ (that is, in his holy people), whatever is signified through those unclean animals is now allowed in the behavior of people. In the former, oblations of flesh and blood are offered from sacrificed animals, in the later, the sacrifice of the flesh and blood of Christ is offered, prefigured by those animals. There, Passover is celebrated with the flesh of a lamb, here our Passover is the sacrificed Christ, who is the true immaculate Lamb. There, the Neomeniae, that is the beginnings of the new moon, are celebrated; here, the new creation in Christ is accepted, as Paul says (2 Cor 5.17) For anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things have passed away, and behold all things have been made new.
What more? In the Law, deeds signifying future events were announced figuratively; in the grace of Gospel Truth, the things which had been announced are fulfilled. Likewise, in the Law, commandments and promises were written, but the commandments order people to fulfill or keep the Law, though the promises (concealed by the symbols of the sacraments) were preaching the future evangelic grace. The commandments are held in the Law, the promises are consummated in the fulness of the Gospel. The Gospels fulfill the Law, and the fullness of the Testaments fulfills the significance of what was begun. Likewise, the Law provided nothing very fully. It only showed sin, but did not take it away. Under its terror, it caused people to be reduced to salves and thence the apostle taught that the earlier populace had a spirit of severity. The Gospel, however, in its arrival removed the cruelty of the Law; sins, which the Law punished through its spirit of severity, the Gospel alleviated through its spirit of adoption. It brought back its children from salves, it presented to everyone the love of fulfilling the Law, and even if from that time it committed what needed to be punished, it gave forgiveness through that same spirit of adoption; it offered a model for acting well and infused the helping spirit so that what it taught was able to be done. The legal precepts which were given to that people are not called good in comparison to better laws, since they do not accomplish what they order; the grace of the Gospel, which orders something external, gives aid so that it is accomplished internally. In the testimony of Ezekiel it is said (Ez 20.25) I gave them laws which were not good. Certainly, by them, some harmful things are permitted to be done by people with weaker understanding, just as when God permitted the greed of the Israelites to be sated by the spoils of the Egyptians. Because the carnal populace would leave the practice of vengeance, the Law permits carnal people to repay evils, which the Gospels forbids to stronger people. Therefore they are not called good since, compared to the Gospel, the precepts of the Law are known to be inferior. Before the coming of our Redeemer, the pagan populace did not comply with the Law, as it was not yet understood in a spiritual sense. The commands of the Law were heavy and harsh in accordance with the letter, and so the Law was scorned. The grace of the Gospel came and restrained the austerity of the Law, and joined the gentile people to it (Isidore of Seville, Book of Differences, 31) [The above brackets are from the translation, not my own]
This way of juxtaposing, which doesn't deny a formal element of truth to Luther's paradigm, is precisely what the NPP (especially N.T. Wright) picked up on. We may quarrel with parts of the above (perhaps with Isidore's appeal to continence vs. marital bliss, though this is not as off as we today might think), but it is, in the main, continuous with Paul's thought. The point is made even more when Isidore distinguishes between faith and works:
Faith and work differ as follows. From faith, the possibility of good work begins; from work, faith itself is perfected. Work is preceded by faith; faith is consummated by deeds.
Works before faith are not at all beneficial. A person who does not know the very Author of salvation (or denies that he is the author) is able to do nothing to turn from evil and do what pertains to salvation. Likewise, faith without works is in no way useful. A person who scorns God in his work cannot please God through faith. Because of this, according to James, (Jas 2.26) faith without works is dead; and, according to Paul, (cf. Rom 4; Heb 11) work without faith is vain. [One of them praises striving for faith, the other praises works.] Paul preaches that, before faith, a work is in no way good. James says that faith is of no avail without good work. Through this, according to Paul, works preceding faith are of no benefit; according to James, subsequent works are greatly beneficial. James says (Jas 2.21) Abraham our father was justified by works. Paul says (Rom 4.3) Abraham puts his faith in God, and this faith was considered as justifying him.
What then? Do they both demolish themselves? God forbid! Each builds us up. According to Paul, Abraham deserved being justified by faith; according to James, he was pleasing because of his deeds when, having been tested, he did not refuse to sacrifice his son. (Isidore, 33). [The above brackets are from the translation, not my own]
What's interesting is not some anti-Reformation polemic, which thus justifies medieval scholasticism or Tridentine theology or something.. Rather it shows the bankruptcy of the law-gospel hermeneutic. Instead, these juxtapositions flow from the good to perfect in the covenant. The Old is "old" not because of chronology, but because it had a temporary symbolic arrangement to placed the post-Adamic world under interdict. It was part of the sons of Adam move from good to perfect, from flesh to spirit. The Torah was not given to rattle someone's conscience or give someone a moral panic, but to condemn the cursed world-order where satan reigns. The "newness" of the New is from its eternal originality, manifestation of God's glory through man's concurrence with the Logos to spread the Garden across creation and prepare for the New Jerusalem. The New covenant represents the cosmic fruition: man, the cosmic priest, sanctifying creation upon the altar. It's about the eternal gift between God and His creation.
From this vantage, the juxtaposition of not Sinai and Jerusalem, but earthly and heavenly Jerusalem, makes complete sense. The earthly city was to mirror the heavenly, the regime of the Spirit first appearing in symbolic shadow through the earthly city of men. It's not that the Temple, priesthood, sacrifices, etc. are done away with, but completed. The eternal realities begin to manifest in place of the shadows. The gracious economy of never ending giving and receiving is at hand. Christ's Temple and Altar in the Heavenlies are not done away with, but eternally manifest as man's perfected flesh is offered to God, who then gifts us with it in even greater capacity. We should appreciate Luther's honesty, but not double-down on a mistake.
*I've read Lutherans write like this when they defend the Old Perspective on Paul. It's kind of mind-blowing when you think about it. The huffing and puffing of overthrowing centuries of tradition was precisely what Roman hierarchs hurled at Luther:
How can you criticize the papacy? How can you criticize our dogma? You are a simple monk, a mere bible teacher perched in a remote corner of Christendom! How dare you come to us with your speculations and accuse us of error!
The fact that dyed-in-the-wool confessionalists make the same claims tells me more about them than the authors they criticize.
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