The Proper Function of the Law
by Donavon Riley
Although Andreas Poach and his colleagues were labeled antinomians by many contemporaries they remained adamant in their defense of the law’s proper function, which they believed was in keeping with their professor Martin Luther’s understanding of the law. As students of Luther, Poach and Anton Otto, as well as Otto’s friend Michael Neander, and Andreas Musculus in like manner, were of the opinion that they, and not their opponents, were the true custodians of Luther’s teaching regarding the proper function of the law.
For Poach the law could not function in abstraction but was instead a functional reality, given “for obedience” in order to reveal God’s justice. The law was not a moral code inculcated under the rubric of the Ten Commandments alone. Instead, the law was a “debt we owe” or an “obligation which we must fulfill.” The proper operation of the law in the world, and upon Christians, for Poach was its function as a killer. He wrote, “…the most proper effect of the law is in the revealing and demonstrating of our works, that is, our sins – to accuse, to thoroughly terrify, to kill and to damn.” Thus, “the law is to be taught not for salvation, but for death and damnation.”
In response to Joachim Moerlin and Joachim Westphal’s insistence upon the necessity of the law in salvation, Poach referred to Luther’s Lectures on Galatians, writing, “The works of Christ, which are the fulfillment of the law, are the merit of our salvation. Our works, which ought to have been the fulfillment of the law, do not merit salvation, even if they were the most perfect, as the law requires – which, moreover, is impossible. The reason is that we are debtors to the law. Christ, however, is not a debtor to this law. Even if we most perfectly fulfilled all the commandments of God and completely satisfied the righteousness of God, we would not be worthy of grace and salvation on that account, nor would God be obligated to give us salvation and grace as a debt. He justly demands the fulfillment of his law from us as obedience due him for his creature, who is bound to obey its Creator.”
Poach maintained a distinct understanding of Christ’s work in that he believed Christ Jesus imputed his righteousness to Christians “above and apart from the law.” Peppering his writing with Luther’s vocabulary throughout the correspondence with Moerlin, Westphal, and the others, Poach pressed their definition of the law, emphasizing the functional reality of the law as that which “terrifies, reveals sins, accuses, works wrath, damns and kills,” whereas the gospel, “consoles, reveals the justification of God, defends, works peace, absolves, and vivifies.” Faith, Poach argued, created works spontaneously in the believer apart from any coercion of the law.
Nevertheless, to the extent Poach and his colleagues sought Luther’s understanding of the law throughout the debates, they were unable, even when employing Luther’s vocabulary, to disentangle their theological thinking from the usus legis formula of their opponents. The potency and untamed dynamism of Luther’s understanding of the law was absent from Poach and company as they attempted to construct theological categories around the impasse of an eternally binding lex moralis. Yet in quoting copiously from Luther’s Antinomian Disputations as well as his Galatians lectures during the conflict with Moerlin, Matthias Flacius, Westphal and Abdias Praetorius, Poach, along with Otto, Neander, and Musculus presented their opposition to the third use of the law from a highly defensible position: the distinction between the law and the reality to which the law points.
For their part, Moerlin, Westphal, Flacius, and Praetorius based their argument firmly within a presupposition that the law was the way of salvation. Writing a criticism of Poach’s antinomian opinions, Moerlin stated, “…if obedience to the law is not necessary to salvation, then Christ’s merit is not necessary to salvation” Flacius followed suit by insisting the necessity of the third use of the law. This necessity of a usus tertius legis in the Christian life was two-fold. First, that “…the old creature, like a stubborn, recalcitrant donkey, is also a part of them, and it needs to be forced into obedience to Christ not only through the law’s teaching, admonition, compulsion, and threat but also often with the cudgel of punishments and tribulations until the sinful flesh is completely stripped away and people are perfectly renewed in the resurrection.” Second, “believers…require the teaching of the law regarding their good works, for otherwise people can easily imagine that their works and life are completely pure and perfect.”
What finally flourished in the formula was, in its best moments, a half-truth. Neither party was able to formulate an understanding of the law in keeping solely with the ethic of Luther or the dogmatic of Melanchthon. “For Luther,” as Lauri Haikola wrote, “the absolute law is hidden and cannot be known. The command to Adam not to eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, for example, was not an insight into general ethical principles. Instead of living out his life against the background of a timeless, abstract, philosophical law, man lives in a series of ‘situations of creation’ within the flux of time. Dependent, he must learn what is required of him again and again. Melanchthon’s idea of an absolute law, on the other hand is inevitably transformed by the human mind into mastery of the future, and then into a doctrine of free will.”
The door was opened, and both parties contended over the proper use of the law among Christians, never fully distinguishing the functional reality of the law’s subject from an abstracted eternal moral law, never finessing an adequate function of the law within the happy exchange between the sinful soul and Christ Jesus, the pure bridegroom. For in its proper function, as Gerhard Ebeling wrote, “…the law does not per se become a paedagogues Christum, but: ‘Evangelium facit ex lege paedagogum in Christum.’ That decides the question of the usus legis, whose subject is either Christ or the devil To that extent, it could also be said that faith alone is the subject of the uti lege, because here both the finalis praesumptio and also the finalis dubitation are ruled out. For the right usus legis is, to allow the law neither to be asserted as a means to justification nor as an objection to justification.”
In attempting to separate justification from sanctification the formulators concluded by exalting the law at the expense of the Word, the proclamation of Christ’s victory. In doing so, the third use of the law became a theological scaffolding erected around the proclaimed Word. The fulfillment of the law and the stilling of the divine wrath were reanimated in the triplex usus legis, as a guide for the Christian life in terms of a timeless legal structure. But if it is true that “Christ is the end of the law, that everyone who has faith may be justified” (Romans 10:4) then “it makes little sense to attempt to reintroduce [the law] again after the gospel. To do so would be to fail to recognize the radical nature of the break between the two ages,” the old from the new, the law from the gospel, the flesh from the conscience, Moses from Christ, and the subject of the law from its object.
