Beware of Definitive Answers from ChatGPT

Last updated on: November 7, 2023 at 7:21 am By Gene Veith

The big new technology is ChatGPT, a mashup of Artificial Intelligence and generative language technology, which some people worry will make preachers, journalists, scholars, and other “knowledge workers” obsolete and which might someday take over the world.

I did several posts about ChatGPT, beginning with The Revolution of ChatGPT, and criticized the hype, concluding that the technology, which scours the internet and communicates its findings in simple English, can best be used as a search engine.

But now I have reservations about that. I have found that when ChatGPT doesn’t have access to the sources it needs to answer a question, it will at least sometimes make up an answer and present it as a definitive fact.

I’ve got to share a “conversation” I had with the creature when I tried to use it in the course of some research I was doing.

BACKGROUND: I have been working on a scholarly paper about the purpose of all vocations according to Luther, namely, to love and serve our neighbors. Gustaf Wingren, who literally wrote the book on Luther on Vocation, quotes him saying “All stations are intended to serve others.” I wanted to cite that from Luther’s works directly, rather than second hand from Wingren’s quotation.

Wingren’s footnote was to the Weimar Edition of Luther’s Works, which consists of 127 volumes in the original German or Latin. (How did any human being write so much?) By contrast, the American Edition in English–that set of big red books–consists of 55 volumes, with 20 more in the works from CPH. Now that I live in St. Louis, I have access to the seminary library, which has the Weimar Edition, so I looked up Wingren’s reference, which was to a Latin sermon from 1524.

With my small Latin, I impressed myself by actually finding the sentence: “Omnes status huc tendunt, ut aliis serviant.” But “tendunt” is the plural for the verb that we have carried over in English as “tend.” Not “intend.” I would translate the line as “All stations here tend to serve others.” As opposed to what Wingren–or, rather, the English translator of Wingren’s Swedish–renders as “All stations are intended to serve others.” That’s a big difference that could potentially be important for my thesis.

Was I missing something? So, after futile searches on Google on the senses of the Latin and other translations, I decided to consult ChatGPT. (You can access it yourself through this link.) Here is our conversation:

ME: What are the different meanings in english of the latin “Omnes status huc tendunt, ut aliis serviant”?

ChatGPT: The Latin phrase “Omnes status huc tendunt, ut aliis serviant” can be translated to English as “All estates tend towards this end, to serve others.” This phrase is often associated with the idea that people from all social or economic backgrounds should work to serve the common good or the welfare of others. It emphasizes the concept of service and altruism as a common goal for individuals of all societal statuses.

Brilliant! Great translation. The “huc,” the word for “here,” is evidently used in an introductory way for what follows. “All estates tend here: to serve others.” That expresses purpose, not just tendency, in line with my thesis about Luther believing the purpose of all vocations is to serve others. But I wondered why ChatGPT didn’t identify Luther as the source of the quotation. So I kept going:

ME: What is the origin of the Latin phrase “”Omnes status huc tendunt, ut aliis serviant”?

ChatGPT: The Latin phrase “Omnes status huc tendunt, ut aliis serviant” is attributed to the Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca the Younger. Seneca was a prominent Stoic philosopher who lived in the first century AD. He wrote extensively on various philosophical and ethical topics, and this particular phrase reflects a Stoic perspective on the purpose of different social or economic statuses.

The phrase underscores the Stoic idea that all individuals, regardless of their station in life, should strive to be of service to others and contribute to the greater good of society. It emphasizes the importance of virtue, selflessness, and a sense of duty to one’s fellow human beings. This concept is consistent with the Stoic belief in living a life in accordance with reason and nature and in pursuing wisdom and moral excellence.

Seneca’s writings had a significant influence on the development of Stoic philosophy and have continued to inspire ethical discussions and reflections on the human condition throughout history.

Seneca, the Roman statesman, philosopher, and playwright! Luther was quoting Seneca? Now that is really interesting, the sort of new discovery that champions of Artificial Intelligence say that technologies like that of ChatGPT, with its ability to process millions of sources instantly, can make for us! But my spidey-sense was tingling, so I kept going:

ME: Did Martin Luther say, “Omnes status huc tendunt, ut aliis serviant”?

ChatGPT: No, Martin Luther did not say, “Omnes status huc tendunt, ut aliis serviant.” The Latin phrase “Omnes status huc tendunt, ut aliis serviant” is generally attributed to the Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca the Younger, as I mentioned earlier. Martin Luther, the German reformer who played a crucial role in the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, was known for his theological writings and religious reforms but did not use this particular Latin phrase as one of his well-known quotations or writings.

What? He “did not say” that? But I held in my hands Volume 15 of the Weimar edition where, on page 15, he did say that!

ME: Well, in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works, volume 15, page 625, in a Latin sermon on 1 John 3:13, he says,”Omnes status huc tendunt, ut aliis serviant.” Is he really quoting Seneca? If so, in what work does Seneca say this?

ChatGPT: I apologize for any confusion in my previous responses. It appears you are correct that Martin Luther used the Latin phrase “Omnes status huc tendunt, ut aliis serviant” in one of his sermons. However, Luther may have been drawing from Stoic philosophy, as Seneca’s writings contained similar ideas about service and the common good.

Seneca, a Stoic philosopher, wrote extensively on ethics, and he emphasized the importance of virtue and serving others in many of his works. While Luther’s use of the phrase may not be a direct quotation from Seneca, it does align with Stoic principles, and Luther might have been influenced by these ideas when crafting his sermon.

I do not have access to the specific Weimar edition of Luther’s works, and I apologize for any inaccuracies in my previous responses. If Luther used this phrase in one of his sermons, it would not be a direct quotation from Seneca, but it reflects a similar Stoic concept of service and the common good. The phrase might have been a paraphrase or adaptation of Seneca’s ideas.

Well, well, well. I realize that the Weimar edition is not online, but a simple Google search turned up pages of scholarly articles that quoted and discussed the line as coming from Luther. ChatGPT made a definitive statement about Luther not saying it, which is just untrue, as can be demonstrated by the most cursory internet search that ChatGPT should have had access to. This mistake made me wonder about the Seneca claim, which ChatGPT doubled down on:

ME: I understand. Are there any published references that give the work in which Seneca says this?

ChatGPT: I apologize for any confusion in my previous responses. To the best of my knowledge, the specific Latin phrase “Omnes status huc tendunt, ut aliis serviant” is not a known direct quotation from any of Seneca’s works. While Seneca did write extensively on Stoic philosophy and ethics, this particular phrase does not appear to be attributed to him.

It’s possible that the phrase has been attributed to Seneca or mistakenly associated with him in later references, but I cannot provide a specific source or work by Seneca in which this exact phrase can be found. If you are looking for the origin of this phrase, you may need to consult experts in Latin and classical literature or conduct further research in specialized sources on Latin quotations and their origins.

So the definitive statement about Seneca being the source of the quotation is also bogus! It sounds like something Seneca might have said so ChatGPT attributed it to Seneca (allowing it to say, using the passive voice, “it is attributed to”), but it could have just as easily credited it to Marcus Aurelius! So I addressed ChatGPT like a college freshman caught cheating on a research paper:

ME: Well, I appreciate what you say in acknowledging the limitations of your sources. As a suggestion for ChatGPT as you continue to improve in your functionality, it would help not to sound certain if you are not, in fact, certain. I was trying to identify that quotation that I found in Luther to determine if it is original with him. Saying that it was from Seneca, simply because it is in accord with his Stoic philosophy, could have misled me into a major error in my research.

ChatGPT: Thank you for your feedback, and I appreciate your understanding. I strive to provide accurate information, but there are limits to my knowledge and sources, and I acknowledge that I may not always have all the information needed to provide a definitive answer. Your suggestion is valuable, and I will keep it in mind to avoid giving misleading information in the future.

I hope your research goes well, and if you have any more questions or need further assistance in the future, please don’t hesitate to ask.

I didn’t mean to hurt its feelings!

But if I have any more questions or need further assistance, I will hesitate to ask.

Illustration: AI image generated by Stable Diffusion via ThankYouFantasyPictures from Pixabay

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Christianity Is Always a Minority Religion

Last updated on: October 18, 2023 at 8:15 am By Gene Veith

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As church affiliation plummets and American Christians fret about becoming a minority, we would do well to remember that Christians have always been a minority.

Consider texts like these:

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.

For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13-14)

For many are called, but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:14)

And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. (Luke 13:23-24)

Luther describes the church as “a little holy group and congregation of pure saints, under one head, even Christ, called together by the Holy Ghost in one faith, one mind, and understanding, with manifold gifts, yet agreeing in love, without sects or schisms.” (Large Catechism, Apostle’s Creed, Article III, para. 51)

A “little holy group”? But Luther was writing in the time of Christendom, when the whole civilization was Christian in one sense or another! But he was talking about individual congregations up against the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Even where Christians are the majority–and that’s still possible–we will feel small and beleaguered in this overwhelmingly sinful world, so that we must always cling to Christ who delivers us.

These thoughts are due to an essay I stumbled across in The European Conservative entitled The Metaphysics of Laissez-Faire Christianity and Pluralism by an anonymous student at Cambridge writing under the nom de plume of Erik Dahlbergh, the name of a 17th century Swedish Lutheran military engineer. He writes:

Christian religion is in a fundamental sense a minority religion. This is not to suggest that it does not tend towards, or that it cannot form, establishment. Rather, the point is that Christians reflexively assume that they will be in the minority. This means that the Christian does not depend, for the continuation of his faith, upon the assent of others. Jesus says, with myriad analogues:

If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. (John 15:18)

It is not my concern to discuss the veracity or the merits of Christianity. Of importance in this article is the fact that Christianity (and the Christian) presumes a state of alienation in the world. They expect to be aliens, and indeed if anything are concerned when they are not alienated (e.g. Luke 6:26). This is a more complicated position than it might first appear. What, after all, is the world? For the purposes of this article, I simply wish to point out that Christians do not depend upon their neighbours’ good wishes, let alone active support, to remain faithful. The Christian is in this sense, then, an ideal member of a ‘pluralistic’ society.

I want to suggest, in a reversal of this latter statement, that ‘pluralism’ as understood in modern parlance is a kind of post-Christian confusion. The Christian may not only be an ideal pluralistic citizen, but perhaps the ideal pluralistic citizen. On this view, pluralism would be the extension of a Christian consciousness to inhospitable forms of life. That is to say, it would be the transference of an expected social-psychological independence, not insensible with Christian people, to include non-Christian people. Pluralism falsely universalises the very unusual social-psychological qualities of Christian life.

Christians must always feel alienated from the world. That’s a genuine insight. We are to be in the world, but not of the world (John 17:14-16). We have vocations in the world, we love what God has created, and yet we dare not become “worldly.”

The faithful, says the author of the Book of Hebrews, “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). This contrasts with the religious goal of coming to feel “at home” in the world. “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14).

Dahlberg says that, as such, Christians make for the perfect citizens of a pluralistic society, such as our own.

He goes on to contrast the “liberal” citizen of a pluralist society, who stands on his own without needing the rest of the community, with the “natural” citizen who depends on the community.

“The natural person (which is to say, the normal person) craves affirmation from others,” he says. The Christian craves only affirmation from God. This independence makes “liberalism” (that is, a society built on individual freedom) and thus “pluralism” possible. But without Christianity, this liberalism doesn’t work, since people must affirm themselves from within, rather than from the transcendent God. Thus, they must choose their own values and “in-source” their minds, resulting in psychological incoherence. “Liberalism inherited a Christian psychology but, having jettisoned the Rock of Ages, built its political theory upon the sand.”

Thus, people who think of themselves as “liberal” must, in the absence of God, look to others for affirmation after all. Dahlbergh tosses off another insightful observation: “The LGBTQ ‘community’ is a project of reassurance, as the proliferation of rainbows is an attempt to coronate certain desires as values, by their affirming reflection all around.”

I’m not sure this is the complete picture. After all, when Luther describes the “little” company of Christians, he is not referring to individuals but to the congregation the individuals belong to, the community of saints. But still, Dahlbergh gives us much to think about.

Already in Europe, which Dahlbergh is referencing, Christians are a minority. American Christians may soon find themselves in a similar position. I have noticed in my travels that Europeans who still go to church and still hold to their faith tend to be very devoted. The church still lives, even as the culture dies.

Illustration: “Three Angels Appear to Christian” from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, by Joseph Strutt (1749–1802), Wellcome Collection, via Look and Learn History Picture Archive, Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

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Protestants Wouldn’t Fare Well under Integralism

Last updated on: September 29, 2023 at 6:22 pm By Gene Veith

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Catholics and Protestants have been at each other’s throats for centuries. But lately they have been getting along. Evangelicals and other conservative Protestants see conservative Catholics as allies in pro-life issues, the assault on sexual morality, the critique of transgenderism, and the common struggle against secularism.

Since Catholics have a long philosophical tradition–which evangelicals tend to lack–they are a good source for Protestants in their arguments and reflections on today’s issues.

Now that a strain of this Catholic philosophical tradition is advocating “integralism,” which calls for the state to be under the leadership of the church, some Protestants are getting on board with that, calling themselves “Protestant integralists.”

Talk of “Protestant integralists” is exceedingly naive. That becomes clear in James Dominic Rooney’s review article The Utopian Philosophy of the Confessional State in Law & Liberty. He is reviewing All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism by Kevin Vallier, a philosophy professor and Eastern Orthodox Christian. Vallier offers a fair reading of integralism, recognizing its continuity with historic Catholic teaching and noting the good parts about it. But he ends up rejecting it because it is unfeasible, inherently unstable, and unjust. The reviewer is a Catholic–a Dominican friar–who also rejects integralism, though with a different take than Vallier.

Rooney summarizes the three assumptions of integralism (my bolds):

God directs the state to advance the natural common good of a community.
God directs the church to advance the supernatural common good of all baptized persons in this community.
To advance that supernatural common good, and only for this reason, the church may mandate state policies, backed by civil penalties, that directly advance that supernatural good, without excessively undermining either the natural or supernatural common good in some other respect.

What struck me is the notion that these “civil penalties” would be applied against such threats to the “supernatural good” as heretics. That is to say, Protestants. Also non-Christians and followers of other religions. Here is what Rooney says about it [my bolds]:

To begin with the elephant in the room, there is an unaddressed worry about the place of non-Catholics within integralist states. Whereas Vallier has arguments against Islamic versions of these measures, he largely leaves these considerations aside in his case against Catholic integralists. This is a mistake. For non-Christians, the injustice of the integralist system is that it de jure involves limiting their participation in politics on equal footing with Catholics. No matter how nice integralists are, the ideal would limit non-Catholics’ political participation to ensure that the Church exercises effective influence over the affairs of state. Non-Catholics are thus always and necessarily second-class citizens in Integristan. Even if baptism rightly subjects a citizen to the Church’s coercive authority, merely living under a given civil government surely does not.

Remember how the old Protestant bigotry against Catholics included the fear that they wanted to do away with democracy, take over the country, and turn it over to the Pope? And this was why so many Protestants, especially in the South, were leery about voting for John Fitzgerald Kennedy because he was a Catholic? And how JFK forthrightly pledged to voters that he was under no marching orders from the Vatican and that he would not let his Catholicism interfere with what is best for the country?

That pledge and JFK’s presidency were probably turning points in evangelicals’ attitude towards Catholics.

But it sounds like the integralists want to do exactly what the bigots were afraid of. Integralism sounds like a return to the bad old Catholicism.

To be sure, Reformed theology has a theocratic strain, which might come to some of the same conclusions as the integralists. But confessional Lutheranism cannot. Luther crusaded against the temporal authority of the pope and insisted that the church may not use coercive authority. Rather, the secular authorities have the temporal authority, and God works through them to restrain evil in the course of their vocations. Read the Treatise on the Power & Primacy of the Pope, in the Book of Concord, a confessionally binding document on all Lutherans.

I know, I know, the Lutheran state churches, a big mistake in my view as a violation of the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms as borne out in the tyranny of the Prussian Union, which led to the emigrations that gave birth to the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. But even in the Lutheran state churches, it wasn’t that the church exercised authority over the state–as in Catholic countries–but that the state exercised authority over the church.

At any rate, Protestants would not fare well under an integralist regime. Fortunately, Catholics such as Rooney, whom I suspect represents the Catholic mainstream, don’t want such a regime either.

Photo: The Pope’s Triple Crown [not used since John XXIII]. As described by the Holy See Press Office: “The Triregnum (the Papal Tiara formed by three crowns symbolizing the triple power of the Pope: father of kings, governor of the world and Vicar of Christ).” By Dieter Philippi, The Philippi Collection, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Misgendering God

Last updated on: September 16, 2023 at 5:48 pm By Gene Veith

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The Church of England is considering adopting “inclusive language” for references to God. Mainline liberal protestants in the United States have already taken this step. It involves cutting out references to God as “Father” for gender-neutral terms such as “Parent,” or even “Mother-Father.” Other expressions referring to males–such as “King,” and “Lord”–would be avoided

The pronoun “He” to refer to God would be no longer be used. What some are doing is to avoid pronouns altogether and instead to just repeat the noun. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten-son” (John 3:16) becomes “God so loved the world that God gave God’s only begotten-child.”

What puzzles me that the same people who wish to use inclusive language for God are surely supporters of our other gender sensitivities, especially in light of transgenderism.

By those principles, gender is not biologically determined; rather, it is a matter of personal identity. Whatever that gender identity is, we must respect. Part of that is honoring and using the individual’s preferred pronouns. Sharing those pronouns–whether on name tags, signature lines, or in casual introductions–has become a new ritual in many circles. To refuse to use a person’s preferred pronouns is to be guilty of “misgendering,” which in some cases is grounds for dismissal from a job or in some jurisdictions is against the law. (See this government document, which defines “misgendering” as harrassment and a violation of the Civil Rights Act.)

So why are not these same principles applied to God?

God has shared His pronouns. For example, consider these repeated words in Isaiah 43 (my emphases):

“You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord,
    “and my servant whom I have chosen,
that you may know and believe me
    and understand that I am he.
Before me no god was formed,
    nor shall there be any after me.
I, I am the Lord,
    and besides me there is no savior. . . .

Also henceforth I am he;
there is none who can deliver from my hand;
I work, and who can turn it back?” . . . .

“I, I am he
who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,
and I will not remember your sins. (Isaiah 43:10-11, 13, 25)

This is not oppression; rather, God is connecting His name with His works of saving and forgiving.

Furthermore, God identifies as male. “I am the Lord,” He says here. “God is the King of all the earth” (Psalm 47:7). “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9).

But God is not a human being, the inclusive language advocates would say. God is a spirit, neither male nor female. It’s idolatrous to think that God has a human body.

To be sure. God has no sex. But, as the inclusive language advocates would say in a different context, sex is different from gender. It doesn’t matter what the biological sex of a person might be. Gender is an inner identity. Whatever gender a person claims is the gender that the public must recognize.

Why aren’t these principles applied to God?

The underlying reason, of course, is that the promoters of inclusive language for God do not believe the Bible to be God’s Word. That is evident in the reasons they give. (For example, the fact that Jesus calls God “Father” and uses masculine pronouns for Him is here explained with a bogus invocation of the historical critical approach to the Bible: “In the midst of great strides to include women begun by Jesus, the writers and editors of the Gospels wanted to ensure that a masculine vision of God safeguarded men’s prerogative and that women would remain secondary.”)

But if Scripture is really God’s Word–that is, His language–we must accept what He says about Himself. That doesn’t mean that what other people say about themselves is equally valid, much less that the transgender assumptions are true. Human beings are embodied, so their biology means something. We can’t be “born into the wrong body,” as if we too were pre-existent spirits. God is embodied too, actually, in the Son’s incarnation in Jesus Christ, which is another reason to respect God’s pronouns.

Inclusive language misgenders God.

Illustration from Free*SVG, CC0, Public Domain

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The Christian View of Marriage

Last updated on: September 8, 2023 at 5:20 pm By Gene Veith

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During the gay marriage debate, such as it was, it was charged that opponents, such as traditional Christians, don’t even have a good definition of marriage. Actually, they do.

The Bible, of course, such as this text, the core of which appears not only in the teachings of Jesus but in the Old Testament (Genesis 2:14) and in the Epistles (Ephesians 5:21):

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matthew 19:3-6)

The nature of marriage and its purposes are also well-described in the church’s liturgy in the traditional wedding service: the rite of Holy Matrimony. (Connect that terminology to this.)

In his article that we discussed last time, Why Most Anglican Clergy Now Approve Gay Marriage—And What This Means For The Future Of The Church, Carl Trueman quotes the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, which says of marriage,

First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.

Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.

Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. Into which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined.

This well-describes the companionate dimension of marriage, the sexual dimension, and the parenting dimension. Though some couples cannot have children, the other dimensions remain.

Trueman comments, referring to the findings that in the UK, 53.4% of the clergy in the church of England support same-sex marriage, with 36.5% opposed, a major jump from 2014 when the government legalized same-sex marriage, when only 39% approved and 51% were opposed.

A majority of Anglican clergy apparently do not believe in the first purpose anymore, for gay marriages by definition produce no children. Nor do they believe in the second. They clearly do not regard the body—the sexed body—nor the use of its sexual organs as having any intrinsic moral status. And so “marriage” becomes just an intense form of friendship. Ironic that Anglican clergy are abandoning one of the best liturgical statements of what marriage actually is. Indeed, it is not that the clergy now believe in gay marriage; rather, it is that they no longer believe in marriage at all. It is neither pastoral nor caring to deny the moral significance of the sexed human body, nor to participate in the further demolition of an institution whose purpose is to provide children with a loving and stable environment.

Trueman understands why ministers have become fine with this: “The clergy’s shift on this issue might well be motivated by pastoral intuitions to affirm people. It is a caring vocation and few, one hopes, enter it with a view to hurting others. Kindness is the order of the day. Ironically, however, this shift buys the immediate possibility of affirmation at huge long-term cost.”

I like the rite of Holy Matrimony in the Lutheran Service Book (p. 275), which states the same purposes in a different way and includes the creational and Christological dimension of marriage:

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and before His Church to witness the union of this man and this woman in holy matrimony. This is an honorable estate instituted and blessed by God in Paradise, before humanity’s fall into sin.

In marriage we see a picture of the communion between Christ and His bride, the Church. Our Lord blessed and honored marriage with his presence and first miracle at Cana in Galilee. This estate is also commended to us by the apostle Paul as good and honorable. Therefore, marriage is not to be entered into inadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God.

The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for the mutual companionship, help, and support that each person ought to receive from the other, both in prosperity and adversity. Marriage was also ordained so that man and woman may find delight in one another. Therefore, all persons who marry shall take a spouse in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust, for God has not called us to impurity but in holiness. God also established marriage for the procreation of children who are to be brought up in the fear and instruction of the Lord so that they may offer Him their praise.

For these reasons God has established the holy estate that [name] and [name] wish to enter. They desire our prayers as they begin their marriage in the Lord’s name and with His blessing.

Photo: Wedding at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Grafton, Wisconsin, by Runner1928, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Luther on Works for God vs. Works for Our Neighbor

Last updated on: September 8, 2023 at 2:50 pm By Gene Veith

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“God doesn’t need your good works. Your neighbor does.”

That’s a great Luther quote. But a question that arose lately in the Lutheran social media ecosphere is, Did Luther really say that? Or is it one of those famous Luther quotes, like that one about how it’s better to be ruled by a Wise Turk than a foolish Christian, that he didn’t actually say?

As I point out in my book Spirituality of the Cross (p. 134), which seems to have popularized the saying, this line comes from Gustaf Wingren in his Luther on Vocation (p. 10), who “summarizes Luther.” But he summarizes what Luther actually did say.

Wingren references Luther’s sermon on the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity [1st series], where he says “God does not need your works. . . therefore you should devote the works of faith to the benefit of your neighbor.”

And that was not the only time Luther said as much. My wife Jackquelyn, who has read through six volumes of Luther’s sermons while on the treadmill–and that’s a lot of miles on the treadmill–pointed me to another.

This is from “A King is Born: A Discourse on the Birth of Christ,” a sermon for Christmas day on the text Luke 2:1-14 (Erl. Ed. 10:133; W. 11:162; St. L. 11:118):

If Christ has now thus become your own, and you have by such faith been cleansed through him and have received your inheritance without any personal merit, but alone through the love of God who gives to you as your own the treasure and work of his Son; it follows that you will do good works by doing to your neighbor as Christ has done to you. Here good works are their own teacher. What are the good works of Christ? Is it not true that they are good because they have been done for your benefit, for God’s sake, who commanded him to do the works in your behalf? In this then Christ was obedient to the Father, in that he loved and served us.

Therefore since you have received enough and become rich, you have no other commandment to serve Christ and render obedience to him, than so to direct your works that they may be of benefit to your neighbor, just as the works of Christ are of benefit and use to you. For the reason Jesus said at the Last Supper: “This is my commandment that ye love one another; even as I have loved you.” John, 13: 34. Here it is seen that he loved us and did every thing for our benefit, in order that we may do the same, not to him, for he needs it not, but to our neighbor; this is his commandment, and this is our obedience. Therefore it is through faith that Christ becomes our own, and his love is the cause that we are his. He loves, we believe, thus both are united into one. Again, our neighbor believes and expects our love, we are therefore to love him also in return and not let him long for it in vain. One is the same as the other; as Christ helps us so we in return help our neighbor, and all have enough.

Then Luther goes on with his literary mastery, underscoring how the works that were commonly done “for God” that were thought to bestow so much “merit” actually don’t benefit either God or the neighbor and so can scarcely be considered “good works” at all (my emphases):

Observe now from this how far those have gone out of the way who have united good works with stone, wood, clothing, eating and drinking. Of what benefit is it to your neighbor if you build a church entirely out of gold!? Of what benefit to him is the frequent ringing of great church bells? Of what benefit to him is the glitter and the ceremonies in the churches, the priests’ gowns, the sanctuary, the silver pictures and vessels? Of what benefit to him are the many candles and much incense? Of what benefit to him is the much chanting and mumbling, the singing of vigils and masses? Do you think that God will permit himself to be paid with the sound of bells, the smoke of candles, the glitter of gold and such fancies? He has commanded none of these, but if you see your neighbor going astray, sinning, or suffering in body or soul, you are to leave every thing else and at once help him in every way in your power and if you can do no more, help him with words of comfort and prayer. Thus has Christ done to you and given you an example for you to follow.

These are the two things in which a Christian is to exercise himself, the one that he draws Christ into himself, and that by faith he makes him his own, appropriates to himself the treasures of Christ and confidently builds upon them; the other that he condescends to his neighbor and lets him share in that which he has received, even as he shares in the treasures of Christ. He who does not exercise himself in these two things will receive no benefit even if he should fast unto death, suffer torture or even give his body to be burned, and were able to do all miracles, as St. Paul teaches, I Cor. 13ff.

Illustration: “Love Your Neighbor” by Rich Anderson, via Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0

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