The Bonhoeffer Reader

41. Theological Position Paper on the Primus Usus Legis

733 1. [See Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, 270–272; Gassmann et al., Historical Dictionary of Lutheranism, 178–179.] 2. [DBWE 16:584, n. 1.] 41. Theological Position Paper on the Primus Usus Legis DBWE 16:584–601 Justification by grace through faith, arguably the central doctrine of the Lutheran theological tradition, leads directly into discussions about the use or purpose of “the law.” That justification is through faith rules out the idea that the law’s purpose is to prescribe the works by which people justify themselves. Rather, the law forces them to despair at their very inability to do so, and thereby drives them into the gracious arms of Christ, who has fulfilled the law for them. In addition to this spiritual or theological use, the law also has a civic or political use, namely the maintaining of order and restraining of sin in society. While Luther himself usually discussed only these two uses, the generations after him often added a third, where the law functions as a guide for living the Christian life. Thus Bonhoeffer inherited a tradition of speaking about three uses of the law, which the Lutheran confessions ordered thus: civic, theological , and moral. To speak of the first use of the law (primus usus legis), then, is to discuss the law’s civic use.1 In response to the first reports of the deportation of the Jews, a Confessing Church council charged a committee with drafting a statement on the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Bonhoeffer, who sat on that committee, prepared this position paper on the broader question of preaching the law, specifically the first use of the law.2 This paper reflects his concern that the Lutheran confessions’ presentation of the first use was open to being read in terms of natural law and therefore liable to misinterpretation in the direction of “a false theology of the orders.” Against this, he was intent to emphasis the revealed nature of the law by closely tying it to the gospel. The first use of the law has its origin and goal in the gospel. The Bonhoeffer Reader 734 584 585 3. [“. . . The following abbreviations are used below by Bonhoeffer: CA = Confessio Augustana (Augsburg Confession); AC = Apology of the Augsburg Confession; Smalc. Art. = Smalcald Articles; LC = Large Catechism; FC = Formula of Concord, which consists of two parts: Ep = Epitome; SDec = Solid Declaration; and NT = New Testament . . . ,” DBWE 16:584, n. 1.] 4. [“. . . In the present text, the page and paragraph enumerations and the abbreviations for individual texts follow the 2000 Fortress Press edition of Book of Concord . . . ,” DBWE 16:584, n. 1.] The Doctrine of the Primus Usus Legis according to the Confessional Writings and Their Critique. 1. The concept of the usus legis is found in the headings to the section of the FC3 de tertio usu legis, translated “Concerning the Third Use of the Law,” and also in the Solida declaratio VI/1 in the Latin text; in the German text instead of the concept of usus we find that of the “benefit” of the law. In the Epitome we read that the law of God “has been given to people for three reasons” (corresponding to the Smalcald Articles, “Concerning the Law,” page 311.4). From this we infer that the question regarding the subject of the usus, namely, whether it is God or the preacher, is, of course, not explicitly determined but nevertheless is to be answered with the sense that the subject is God. Epit. 7 also supports this: “Therefore, for both the repentant and the unrepentant, for the reborn and those not reborn, the law is and remains one single law, the unchangeable will of God. In terms of obedience there is a difference only in that those people who are not yet reborn do what the law demands unwillingly, because they are coerced (as is also the case with the reborn with respect to the flesh). Believers, however, do without coercion, with a willing spirit, insofar as they are born anew, what no threat of the law could ever force from them.” Accordingly, the concept of the usus legis dare not mislead us into thinking primarily of different forms of preaching—that is, forms of using the law on the part of preachers —under different circumstances; but rather it has to do first with different effects of the one single law. In reference to their subject, these effects are to be understood equally as the free working of...