L02–I:1, 2. What part of the Law now binds everyone? Natural law.

      This continues from Part L01 (Table of Contents in Part L01) in a series on the instruction of the Law by C. F. W. Walther and Martin Luther. — Walther organizes his essay into a question and answer format. There are four questions, the following is his first Thesis I question: 

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I. What part of the Law now binds everyone in the New Testament?

      1. The law that binds everyone, even in the New Testament, is solely the natural law originally written in the hearts of all people.

      2. Therefore the holy Ten Commandments, which God once revealed through Moses from Mount Sinai, as well as all other laws contained in the Old Testament, insofar as they contain the natural law, are binding on everyone.

What Luther says about the Natural Law, and the Ten Commandments and their relationship to Natural Law: 

• “So it is not only the law of Moses: Thou shalt not murder, commit adultery, steal [i.e. the Ten Commandments], etc., but also the natural law written in everyone's heart, as St. Paul teaches in Romans 2:1.”
• “Now where the law of Moses and the natural law are one, the law remains and is not abolished externally, but becomes spiritual through faith, which is nothing other than fulfilling the law, Rom. 3:28.”
• “For this reason, the image and the Sabbath, and all that Moses set more and above the natural law, because it has no natural law, is free, void and abolished, and is given only to the Jewish people in particular.”
• “Now where the law of Moses and the natural law are one, the law remains and is not abolished externally, but becomes spiritual through faith, which is nothing other than fulfilling the law, Rom. 3:28. For this reason, the image and the Sabbath, and all that Moses set more and above the natural law, because it has no natural law, is free, void and abolished, and is given only to the Jewish people in particular: no different than if an emperor or king made special laws and ordinances in his country, such as the Sachsenspiegel in Saxony, and yet the common natural laws prevail and remain throughout all countries, such as honoring parents, not murdering, not committing adultery, serving God, etc.”
• “Why then do we keep and teach the Ten Commandments? Answer: Because the natural laws are nowhere so finely and neatly written as in Moses.”

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This last statement was such an eye-opener for me as I struggled with the way Luther's Small Catechism treated the Ten Commandments. Why did Luther reword the commandments? Why not leave them the way they were written in Exodus 20? Do Luther's explanations follow the meaning of the Ten Commandments or do they alter them? These questions filled my mind, so much so that I wondered "Why study the Small Catechism? Why not just read the Ten Commandments?" But then Luther explains that the Ten Commandments do speak to the Natural Law. We will learn further about this aspect in the next blog Part L03 on "the New Testament way", not the Reformed way. But before that, an Excursus Part L02a presents a particularly controversial human practice that brought one of Luther's more striking responses.