This article continues my look at the Magdeburg Confession.

Disobedience vs. Political Resistance
One of the things that puzzles me about the Magdegurg Confession is that its authors wrote as if there were only two options facing them when the Emperor decreed the restoration of Roman Catholic worship practices: obedient acceptance of the law or active political resistance, even to the point of taking up arms.

Many Lutherans today seem to be making the same assumption. For example, this description of the Magdeburg Confession is found on the the Web site of The Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty:

“475 years ago, Magdeburg, Germany, was under siege by her own emperor, Charles V. It was the last Lutheran city remaining in Germany only four years after the death of Martin Luther. At issue was the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. The highest authority in the land was demanding that the city churches re-institute Roman worship practices.

“The city officers faced a difficult choice. Should they abandon the scriptural doctrine and practice restored by the Lutheran Reformation? Or should they take up arms against the God-ordained temporal authority? The pastors and theologians of the city penned the Magdeburg Confession to instruct the city councilmen of their God-given duty.

“The Magdeburg Confession articulated a biblical understanding of the relationship between church and state that influenced the world for centuries to come. Its principles were invoked by English reformers and influenced the founding of America.”¹

Notice that taking up arms against the temporal authority is seen as the only alternative to obeying that authority. But there is another option, which is in fact uniformly illustrated in the New Testament by the apostles and by Jesus himself: simple disobedience without political resistance. When prohibited to preach and teach, Jesus and the apostles of course continued preaching and teaching the Gospel, but they did not organize any political movement to try to change the government or to depose unfriendly authorities—they were willing to go to jail for disobeying the authorities, trusting their lives to God whether they were, in earthly terms, free or bound. When faced with evil, the Christian response is prayer, continued proclamation of the Gospel, and faith in God that His purposes will be accomplished in His own time and way. The way is not fleshly and political but spiritual (John 18:36; 2 Corinthians 10:3).

Church and State
It can be further noted that abortion, infanticide, prostitution, homosexuality, and gladiatorial games featuring bloody fights to the death were were all permitted by the laws of the Roman Empire in the New Testament era. Also, Emperor worship had been promoted since the death of Julius Caesar (42 B.C.), was institutionalized in the days of Augustus (27 B.C.), and was eventually made mandatory for a time under Decius (250 A.D.) for the purpose of persecuting Christians and putting them to death. These evils of the State were surely as grievious as the law restoring Roman Catholic worship practices in the time of the Magdeburgers, or as the laws promoting abortion and homosexuality today. Yet the New Testament doesn’t tell the Church to organize politically to resist these evils, as the Magdeburgers did in 1550 and as do many today. It contains no admonitions to resist the State politically or to change the laws of the State by deposing the existing authorities and putting into authority others who would eliminate thse evils and enact moral laws instead. Promotion of such activity is foreign to the tenor of the New Testament, and I believe it is plainly foreign to Luther also. He writes, in commenting on Galatians 5:1, that the freedom for which Christ has set us free is spiritual, not the kind obtained through human laws:

“It is a spiritual freedom, one to be preserved in the spirit. It is not that heathen kind, which even the pagan Persius knew was not enough. It is freedom from the Law, but in a way contrary to what usually takes place among men. For it is human freedom when laws are changed without effecting any change in men, but it is Christian freedom when men are changed without changing the Law.”²

Politics is not a part of the business of the Church as Church because it involves changing only the laws of a nation—it cannot change hearts. It is well and good to work in the left-hand kingdom for the reversing of bad laws and the establishment of good laws, but to make this any part of the business of the Church is to misunderstand its mission, and to confuse political liberty with spiritual liberty. The gospel of Christ brings spiritual liberty to people regardless of the political liberty they enjoy, and regardless of the kind of laws and government their nation has.

Again, Luther writes in his Commentary on Psalm 2,

“...it is the devil’s constant concern and tireless undertaking to confuse this kingdom with the kingdoms of the world and to make a worldly king out of Christ, who is a teacher of consciences. And the pope, a special tool of Satan, has rejected Christ entirely insofar as He is a teacher, and has seized the sword. In fact, the keys which Christ has given to the church he has turned to a political end. The fanatics or sectarians are deceived by these same thoughts and take over affairs of the state. For they abolish previous governments and introduce new customs and new usages. They think that this is the special fruit of the Gospel... But these absurdities arise from another kind of ignorance, namely, ignorance about the kingdom of Christ. For because they do not distinguish between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdoms of the world, they make Christianity a matter of changing certain externals.”³

Both the pope and the fanatics are wrong in thinking that the Gospel can be turned to a political end, not recognizing that in doing so they’ve lost the focus on changing hearts with the gospel of God’s grace in Christ, moving it instead to the changing of externals, which in the end do not matter in regard to eternal life. This is why Article 28 of the Augsburg Confession flatly states, “...the two authorities, the spiritual and the temporal, are not to be mingled or confused.” Apparently many Lutherans today think this position is an outmoded relic of the early Luther, in need of replacement after his death, but not so long ago our Lutheran teachers understood well its enduring truth and its necessity as an important plank in Luther’s teaching that distinguishes it from both Roman Catholic and Reformed theology, ultimately going back to the proper distinction between Law and Gospel. Francis Pieper, the author of a doctrinal work, Christian Dogmatics, recognized as a standard in the LCMS down to today, wrote,

“...the Lutheran Church, so far as it remains true to its principles, teaches no social activity aiming at the establishment of a theocracy by demanding, for instance, that the state embody the Christian religion in its Constitution and attend to its enforcement. On the contrary, the Lutheran Church warns against this mingling of Church and State. The Augustana says: ‘Let it [the Church] not break into the office of another; let it not transfer the kingdoms of this world; let it not abrogate the laws of civil rulers; let it not abolish lawful obedience; let it not interfere with judgments concerning civil ordinances or contracts; let it not prescribe laws to civil rulers concerning the form of the Commonwealth.’ (Trigl. 85, XXVIII, 13)... Making religion a concern of the State, as is done in a theocracy, agrees with Roman and Reformed teaching, but is contrary to the Lutheran doctrine.”⁴

Of the Reformed in particular, Pieper also writes,

“...this Reformed reformation of Church and State...actually constitutes a continuance in the teaching and practice of Rome and tends to convert Christianity into work-righteousness trimmed with Christian frills... Seeking to build the Church by the use of the powers of the State leads to work-righteousness because the powers of the State, even with rigorous enforcement, never transmit the grace of God in Christ, faith, and the Holy Spirit, but at best achieve an outward piety that does not rise above the province of the Law and externalism.”⁵

Pieper further notes,

“...the mingling of State and Church is a characteristic of the Roman and Reformed Churches, but is rejected on principle by the Lutheran Church.”⁶

And,

“The Lutheran Church advocates neither democracy nor oligarchy nor monarchy, but simply acknowledges the existing form of government as God’s order.”⁷

Natural Law
In addition to the Magdeburger’s view of Church and State, which seems to me to contradict Luther and the Augsburg Confession, there's the matter of the use made of natural law by the Magdeburgers, which also seems to me to veer into territory which wouldn’t be approved by Luther. But I will leave this until the next time...