This is very true and something that Reformed folks don’t quite understand. The Christological difference informs the entire theology. For Luther, just as God communicates himself fully to the humanity of Christ (genus majestaticum) so too in the happy exchange he surrenders himself fully to the believer. Hence, the law’s demand for self-justiification ends because God donates himself in the form of a promise. Unconditional and unilateral promises are always an act of self-donation because the person must give themselves over the fulfillment of the promise. For Calvin and for Barth, God must be distanced from the flesh of Christ because he really can’t give himself over to human being fully in the form of unilateral promise. He can’t, because if he did, the law would end as a basis of divine-human interaction. In some of the current research I’ve been doing I find it interesting how this affects their conception of humanity’s relationship to God prior to the Fall. For Luther in the Genesis commentary, the command not to eat from the tree exists to give humans an external act they can use to channel their gratitude for God’s superabundance of grace. He talks about this as divine liturgy and worship. For the Reformed scholastics, this is part of the “covenant of works.” God gives the command to give humanity as a means of earning their relationship with him. The difference after the Fall is that humans can’t do it any more, so grace is a kind of plan B. It’s not really fundamental to the divine-human relationship. Law is always the default mode of the divine-human relationship.

Greetings Pr McCain,
What Sasse wrote is so true, isn’t it?
I’m continually coming up against this attitude amongst the Reformed today.
I’ve actually changed the title of the blog to ‘What Sasse Says’ from ‘What Sasse Said’, because his writings remain so relevant to our situation.

You might also appreciate the series of posts from Sasse on the Missouri Synod which I’m running at the moment. As I’m sure you know, Sasse held the LC-MS in high regard (as do I).

There indeed is a need to distinguish the particulars between our two traditions. Although I raised an eyebrow at being called “deformed” I’m sure the Lutherans don’t like being thought of by Reformed as an incomplete Reformation. And although we do have our differences, in our sacramentalism, on the 2nd and 4th Commandments, on Limited Atonement, and on some worship principles, I truly see Lutheranism as a strong ally in matters of justification, imputation, confessionalism, Law and Gospel, and Word and Sacrament ministry whenever I see the loopiness of broad evangelicalism, Romanism, Wesleyianism and Liberalism. So although we have our differences, I also know that if the Reformed Church disappeared tomorrow from the earth, the next Sunday I would be in an LCMS Church. Blessings brother.

After the Lutherans spent so much time getting God out of the box the Reformed church tried to stuff Him in a different box.

I’m reminded of Jonathan Swift’s “A Tale of a Tub.” In the story, a father (read “God”) leaves his three sons Peter (read the Pope), Martin (read Martin Luther) and Jack (read John Calvin) each a special coat (read Doctrine) and a Will (read Scripture). The Will states that the brothers are not allowed to make any alterations to the coat, but eventually Peter convinces the others to make all sorts of additions to the coat. When the younger brothers realize that they have done wrong, Martin attempts to methodically remove each of the additions, trying to get the coat back into its original shape while doing as little damage as possible. But Jack zealously rips off the additions to the coat and in the process severely tears it. Peter’s coat (doctrine) remains burdened with all sorts of bells and whistles that were contrary to the will (Scripture), Jack’s is very damaged (shall we say “deformed”?), while Martin’s comes closest to being most like the coat the Father had originally given him.

I see that Carter Lindberg’s (Professor Emeritus of Church History at Boston University School of Theology and not of the LCMS, but pushing for a return to confessional Lutheranism amongst others who call themselves Lutheran) book “The European Reformations” is in recent Second Edition (see other works). I mention this particular book because it is not written specifically for the academic theologian but for a wider audience. I know that he was the Doktor Vater for someone I have respected in confessional Lutheranism and profited from the association. You will note that “Reformations” is in the plural. It not only points out that there was more than one Reformation from the Church of Rome, but the distinctions between them. This work, amongst others, makes no pretense that there are but minor distinctions between Calvinism, then and now, and true confessional Lutheranism and those who are of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession.
The presuppositions of the Reformed are dramatically different from those of the confessional Lutheran persuasion. That is why I personally can’t understand the statement “if the Reformed Church disappeared tomorrow from the earth, the next Sunday I would be in an LCMS Church” unless you actually and truly do not see significant differences and think that it would be so easy to “change coats.” I could not do so. I was raised in the confessional Lutheran tradition (confessions and symbolics) and early in my life had reason to question because of the actions of some who would shed those beliefs to better fit in with others. I then reviewed what I had learned and found over time that I had to hold fast to what I fortunately first learned. I was a confessional Lutheran not just because my family was. My fathers family had become other than Lutheran well before I was born, but he could not accept that and was compelled to be a confessional Lutheran from what he firmly felt to be a right confession. He could not be anything else because his family felt otherwise. He stayed true based upon the sound confessions and would not waffle in that for his own family. He also stood up to those who would try to “water down” our Synod’s commitment to all that is the “UAC” churches. I know that there are those better qualified to comment on this subject, but I am not going to walk away from what I see as sound truths even if I can’t articulate as well others on the subject. We each have a responsibility to make firm commitment to “what we believe, teach, and confess” to help sustain the LC-MS, which has had it troubles at times, in the hope that we will have its solid teaching to pass on to new generations without corruption. It takes a bit of courage and a lot of ongoing work to be heard in a culture that would rather just have a “homogenized” church that makes everyone feel good without any contention when some want to not stay the narrow path, the hard path and not the easy way out.

I’m an LCMS Lutheran layman. Personally, I have found that I enjoy greater kinship with the conservative Reformed than with liberal Lutherans.

I’m Reformed, ditto what Jared said. The confessional Reformed don’t deny that real differences exist. But while we don’t have a united ‘evangelical’ church, there are surely ‘evangelical’ doctrines we share, including the central article of the faith.

Jack: the covenant of works/covenant of grace theology that developed is closely linked to the Law-Gospel distinction. Part of the problem I think is working out what we mean by grace in the pre-Fall world. Strictly speaking, it’s not to do with the forgiveness of sin. It’s worth noting that there are differences in the Reformed tradition here and there are many contemporary Reformed teachers who have indeed questioned the appropriateness of seeing Adam’s situation as a covenant of works. And of course in holding to the pactum salutis before the foundation of the world, I’m not sure the Reformed can be fairly accused of seeing grace as a ‘plan B’.

Stephen- I think that’s a completely fair characterization. Please look at Heinrich Heppe’s Reformed Dogmatics, p. 281-300. He gives about 7 different Reformed scholastics who all say exactly what I said.

I personally don’t know what they teach in your Church- but the Reformed scholastics teach that 1. Eternal life prior to the Fall was earned by performing the works of the law. 2. That the command not to eat of the tree of good and evil was a test whereby Adam and Eve proved that they were worthy to gain eternal life.

The Lutheran difference is the follow. 1. Law prior to the Fall is a channel , not a demand. If Adam and Eve were already righteous, then the law could not positively move them towards God’s favor in the sense of earning something from God. It could only give them an external command to thank God for giving them creation and making them holy. According to Luther, this is the function of the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As you can see, this is the opposite logic to the Reformed scholastics. 2. It could serve as a boundary- in other words, if they stood already in the sphere of divine grace, it could tell them how they could leave it, i.e. by eating from the tree. The point is, that when the law is already fulfilled, the law can’t demand. It can really only do this when it’s unfulfilled. Luther says that when we are perfect in heaven that the law will become an “empty law” (lex vacua).

As a Reformed Christian, I think that there are many similarities between the two traditions. I see our differences as mainly stemming from the fact that we use the law of non-contradiction to get what we perceive as irreconcilable differences out of our theology:

* The Bondage of the Will entails irresistible grace to the elect

* Predestination entails the Perseverance of the Saints

Although we will confess that some things are mysterious, we believe Scripture is more explicit about some issues than others are willing to confess. We also don’t want to give in to the postmodern impulse to say that things that are contradictory are true.

And how wonderful I’ve found the grace of God to be for my soul! It warms my heart to think that Christ came after me when I hated Him, lifted me onto His shoulders, and began to rejoice! I trust that Lutherans would confess the same.

Jack – I’m not denying that Reformed scholastics went in the direction you indicate. The issue surely is the terminology used. Everyone (Reformed scholastics included) affirm that Adam’s situation is given him in God’s love and goodness. Adam is not trying to earn this love. But, the scholastics said, there is a “test” on which depends Adam’s eternally resting in this blessed state. Is that really different from what you say about it being a boundary, how Adam could leave his state?

One problem with the “covenant of works” language for Adam is that it can give the impression that Adam needs to earn God’s favor but that was not the point. The scholastics reserved “grace” for the situation of those in need of salvation (post-Fall). Whether the chosen language was wise is another question – on which I don’t yet have a settled view. Some in the Westminster/Puritan tradition have been prepared to question the traditional language here: e.g. John Murray preferred to speak simply of the “Adamic administration”.