usus politicus<\/em> of the law doesn\u2019t mark \u201ca particular preserve not touched by the gospel.\u201d He needs to emphasize this because \u201can unduly abridged reference to Luther\u2019s doctrine of the two kingdoms\u201d can give the opposite impression. Such versions of two-kingdom theology rest on \u201cdistinctions, and particularly the distinction between law and gospel.\u201d <\/p>\nWannenwetsch argues that Luther\u2019s teaching on three created estates of church, politics, and economics aims to bring out \u201cthe connection between the different forms of life, a connection which in the doctrine of the two kingdoms threatens to disappear in the distinction between the two.\u201d A statement from one of Luther\u2019s later works makes this clear: \u201cfaith and the state of being a Christian is so free a thing that it is bound to no estate, but is above all estates, in all estates, and through all estates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luther reflects the \u201cReformation fusion of the previously accepted fundamental difference between the spiritual and worldly estates (politics and economic life) in the single \u2018estate\u2019 of Christian life now,\u201d which \u201coccasions a new perception of the way the estates belong together. For they now no longer denote mutually exclusive forms of life., They are the different fields in which faith and love must prove themselves. Now everyone belongs to every worldly estate because everyone belongs to the spiritual one. No one can escape the politia<\/em>, no one may despise the oeconomia<\/em>. The Christian citizen is a citizen of the Church, a citizen of his household and a citizen of his city all in one; and this being so, every Christian inescapably lives politically. There can be no private existence for Christians.\u201d<\/p>\nLuther argues that this expresses the view of Scripture, \u201csince it show that there is nothing holy which does not find a place in politics or economics\u201d (the Latin is quod nullus sanctus unquam extiterit, qui non versatus fuerit vel in Politia, vel Oeconomia<\/em>). Luther\u2019s teaching on the estates thus \u201cintroduces a strong counter-emphasis to the doctrine of the two kingdoms.\u201d<\/p>\nAll this is part of Wannenwetsch\u2019s exploration of Luther\u2019s liturgical theology, his endorsement of a form of \u201cpolitical worship,\u201d a term that Wannenwetsch uses to undermine any strong two-kingdom theory. According to his reading, Luther offers both an ethics of divine command and an ethics of worship, but he brings them together inseparably: \u201cHis commandment ethics is an ethics anchored in worship, not a pure commandment ethics.\u201d Luther\u2019s initial assault on the Catholic church marginalized liturgy in the narrow sense and emphasized that all of life is worship; as he found he had to engage the \u201cleft\u201d wing of the Reformation, he renewed his emphasis on \u201cthe importance of worship in its external form.\u201d In his later work, he synthesized the two themes: \u201cIt is doubtless true that the foremost and highest worship is to preach and listen to God\u2019s Word, to administer and receive the sacraments, and so forth, these being the works of the First Commandment among the ten. But yet the works of the other commandments do also all of them serve God: namely to honour father and mother, to live patiently, chastely and virtuously. For whoever lives thus serves and worships God thereby\u201d (quoted 61). Following the general Christian tradition, Luther placed ethics within a \u201cliturgical, life-forming context\u201d (61).<\/p>\n
The ethics that springs from worship is, Wannenwetsch says, a political ethics \u201cin so far as it does not treat individual themes along the lines of applied ethics, but sees the task of ethics as a whole as a political one.\u201d He fills out this point pneumatologically, citing Scripture rather than Luther. Worship has a \u201cpublic and political character\u201d since it occurs in the Spirit: \u201cThe biblical tradition makes it clear that God\u2019s Spirit does not act merely in the private sphere; it is directed in every case towards public life, towards its formation and regeneration. Its ecstatic effect must not by understood solely in its psychological repercussions on the individual; it is always at the same time a political phenomenon.\u201d When people are gripped by the Spirit in Scripture, they are \u201cbeside themselves.\u201d and so \u201cforced to become public figures\u2014not infrequently against their will\u2014and built up a specific public around themselves.\u201d In the Spirit, judges as prophets no longer belong to themselves \u201cbut are claimed by the Spirit for a public task\u201d (65-66).<\/p>\n
As the Spirit inhabits worshipers in worship, and drives them into their activities within the estates, the gospel infuses political and economic life. Luther aside, a biblical pneumatology militates against a strong two-kingdoms distinction as much as a doctrine of three estates.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bernd Wannenwetsch (Political Worship, 63\u201365) denies that in Luther\u2019s theology politics and economics \u201ccount as being a preserve of the law.\u201d The usus politicus of the law doesn\u2019t mark \u201ca particular preserve not touched by the gospel.\u201d He needs to emphasize this because \u201can unduly abridged reference to Luther\u2019s doctrine of the two kingdoms\u201d can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,93,1691],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liturgy","category-luther","category-two-kingdoms"],"yoast_head":"\n
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