Martin Luther Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Antinomian controversy=== [[File:LutherPulpit.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Pulpit of St Andreas Church, [[Eisleben]], where [[Johannes Agricola]] and Luther preached]] Early in 1537, [[Johannes Agricola]]—serving at the time as pastor in Luther's birthplace, Eisleben—preached a sermon in which he claimed that God's gospel, not God's moral law (the Ten Commandments), revealed God's wrath to Christians. Based on this sermon and others by Agricola, Luther suspected that Agricola was behind certain anonymous [[Antinomianism|antinomian]] theses circulating in Wittenberg. These theses asserted that the law is no longer to be taught to Christians but belonged only to city hall.<ref>Cf. Luther, ''Only the Decalogue Is Eternal: Martin Luther's Complete Antinomian Theses and Disputations,'' ed. and tr. H. Sonntag, Minneapolis: Lutheran Press, 2008, 23–27. {{ISBN|978-0-9748529-6-6}}</ref> Luther responded to these theses with six series of theses against Agricola and the antinomians, four of which became the basis for [[disputation]]s between 1538 and 1540.<ref>Cf. Luther, ''Only the Decalogue Is Eternal: Martin Luther's Complete Antinomian Theses and Disputations,'' ed. and tr. H. Sonntag, Minneapolis: Lutheran Press, 2008, 11–15. {{ISBN|978-0-9748529-6-6}}</ref> He also responded to these assertions in other writings, such as his 1539 [[open letter]] to C. Güttel ''Against the Antinomians'',<ref>Cf. ''Luther's Works'' 47:107–119. There he writes: "Dear God, should it be unbearable that the holy church confesses itself a sinner, believes in the forgiveness of sins, and asks for remission of sin in the Lord's Prayer? How can one know what sin is without the law and conscience? And how will we learn what Christ is, what he did for us, if we do not know what the law is that he fulfilled for us and what sin is, for which he made satisfaction?" (112–113).</ref> and his book ''On the Councils and the Church'' from the same year.<ref>Cf. ''Luther's Works'' 41, 113–114, 143–144, 146–147. There he said about the antinomians: "They may be fine Easter preachers, but they are very poor Pentecost preachers, for they do not preach ''de sanctificatione et vivificatione Spiritus Sancti'', "about the sanctification by the Holy Spirit," but solely about the redemption of Jesus Christ" (114). "Having rejected and being unable to understand the Ten Commandments, ... they see and yet they let the people go on in their public sins, without any renewal or reformation of their lives" (147).</ref> In his theses and disputations against the antinomians, Luther reviews and reaffirms, on the one hand, what has been called the "second use of the law," that is, the law as the Holy Spirit's tool to work sorrow over sin in man's heart, thus preparing him for Christ's fulfillment of the law offered in the gospel.<ref>Cf. Luther, ''Only the Decalogue Is Eternal,'' 33–36.</ref> Luther states that everything that is used to work sorrow over sin is called the law, even if it is Christ's life, Christ's death for sin, or God's goodness experienced in creation.<ref>Cf. Luther, ''Only the Decalogue Is Eternal'', 170–172</ref> Simply refusing to preach the Ten Commandments among Christians—thereby, as it were, removing the three letters l-a-w from the church—does not eliminate the accusing law.<ref>Cf. Luther, ''Only the Decalogue Is Eternal'', 76, 105–107.</ref> Claiming that the law—in any form—should not be preached to Christians anymore would be tantamount to asserting that Christians are no longer sinners in themselves and that the church consists only of essentially holy people.<ref>Cf. Luther, ''Only the Decalogue Is Eternal'', 140, 157.</ref> Luther also points out that the Ten Commandments—when considered not as God's condemning judgment but as an expression of his eternal will, that is, of the natural law—positively teach how the Christian ought to live.<ref>Cf. Luther, ''Only the Decalogue Is Eternal'', 75, 104–105, 172–173.</ref> This has traditionally been called the "third use of the law."<ref>The "first use of the law," accordingly, would be the law used as an external means of order and coercion in the political realm by means of bodily rewards and punishments.</ref> For Luther, also Christ's life, when understood as an example, is nothing more than an illustration of the Ten Commandments, which a Christian should follow in his or her [[vocation]]s on a daily basis.<ref>Cf. Luther, ''Only the Decalogue Is Eternal'', 110.</ref> The Ten Commandments, and the beginnings of the renewed life of Christians accorded to them by the sacrament of [[Lutheranism#Baptism|baptism]], are a present foreshadowing of the believers' future [[angel]]-like life in heaven in the midst of this life.<ref>Cf. Luther, ''Only the Decalogue Is Eternal'', 35: "The law, therefore, cannot be eliminated, but remains, prior to Christ as not fulfilled, after Christ as to be fulfilled, although this does not happen perfectly in this life even by the justified. ... This will happen perfectly first in the coming life." Cf. Luther, ''Only the Decalogue Is Eternal,'', 43–44, 91–93.</ref> Luther's teaching of the Ten Commandments, therefore, has clear [[Eschatology|eschatological]] overtones, which, characteristically for Luther, do not encourage world-flight but direct the Christian to service to the neighbor in the common, daily vocations of this perishing world. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. 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