Forde Lives

Stanley Goodspeed: You’ve been around a lot of corpses. Is that normal?
John Mason: What, the feet thing?
Stanley Goodspeed: Yeah, the feet thing.
John Mason: Yeah, it happens.
Stanley Goodspeed: Well I’m having a hard time concentrating. Can you do something about it?
John Mason: Like what, kill him again?
–from The Rock, 1996

Simple question: after the second use of the law kills the sinner, what’s the law going to do now? As Mason said, “Kill him again?”

It used to be said of Hinduism that there were as many gods as there are people^*. I sometimes wonder if that’s how people actually view the “Uses of the Law” in practice.

So the question I have is: how many uses do you need the law to have? People really get exercised about the debate regarding the Third Use. I tend to fall (fairly hard) into the Two Uses Only camp, and from that point of view, I just don’t understand the Third Use of the Law. I mean I grasp the plain meanings of the words, and pretty much understand the Solid Declaration, Article VI. I just don’t “get it.”

The Formula of Concord—in a classic rendering that sets the tone for all future Lutheran policy debates—doing nothing to “definitively settle” anything writes: “In order to explain and definitively settle this controversy, we unanimously believe, teach, and confess that, although truly believing Christians, having been genuinely converted to God and justified, have been freed and liberated from the curse of the law, they should daily exercise themselves in the law of the Lord.”

Yeah. There’s just enough qualifiers in there to render it a little less “definitively settled” than it seems.

What is a “truly believing Christian” as opposed to just a “believing” one?

What does it mean to be “genuinely converted to God & justified” as opposed to “converted and justified”?

And do these post-Luther interpreters turn their back on the original explosive energy of the reformation challenge? (So soon after the old man’s death, natch). If we take seriously Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, I argue we have to reopen this debate. And I mean like, woah. (and fair warning: I aim t’ win)

Thesis 23: The law works the wrath of God, kills, curses, accuses, judges, and damns everything that is not in Christ.

Forde (oh yeah, this blog is in his honor) wrote on that subject in On Being a Theologian of the Cross:

Thesis 23 announces flatly that in spite of all the glorious hot air, God is not ultimately interested in the law. The real consequence of such wisdom is laid bare: The law does not work the love of God, it works wrath; it does not give life (recall thesis 1!), it kills; it does not bless, it curses; it does not give comfort, it accuses; it does not grant mercy, it judges. In sum, it condemns everything not in Christ. (pg. 95)

So yeah. AWESOME.

What, exactly is this so called “Third Use” worth, now? I’m pretty sick and tired of the endless roundelay trying to puff up this 3rd Use garbage. Far as I’m concerned, it’s the theologians of the third use who should be defending themselves. Not the other way around. You guys need to get your poop in a group and explain to the rest of us where you get off saying there’s more than two uses of the law. Because plain reason can see that once the law does its work putting the sinner to death, it can’t touch the person resurrected in Christ.

^* This business about 330 million gods is kind of a wild exaggeration.

So the churches in Germany have declared a Luther Decade, to celebrate the start of the Reformation. It begins with memorializing Martin’s arrival in Wittenberg in 1508 (including sermon by Mark Hanson!). Is it too much to hope this means that in 2018 we get a celebration of the Heidelberg Disputation?

Yeah, don’t hold your breath.

I encourage you to read On Being a Theologian of the Cross now, instead of waiting.

Presumably it also means we have almost twenty years before the big “Schmalkald Articles” celebration? The 2038 Schmalkald Daze fete is going to be tremendous!

Well it’s the political season and in honor of Chris Matthews and his love for the republican candidate for president (Matthews: “He’s kind of like a Martin Luther.”) we who like to think we know a few things about Martin Luther present the following of ways John McCain is not actually that much like Martin Luther, for your edification and enlightenment:
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I found this book called “Luther & Cromwell” at the sem library the other day. It’s from 1850 (and looks like that may be about the last time it was checked out.

Obviously the Stephenson is getting to me if I’ve suddenly got an interest in Cromwell. But if I were more of a church historian I might be interested in drawing up three parallels: Luther, Cromwell, fin de siècle USA.
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