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Text preparation and translation by BackToLuther using DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft Translate, Yandex Translate. All bold text is Pieper's emphasis. All highlighting, red text, and most text in square brackets [ ] is mine.
The Foundation of the Christian Faith.
The religion inborn in us is the religion of the Law, the opinio legis. According to this religion, which is ingrained in us, we consider God gracious when we see good works or what we consider to be good works in us. But because we still sin a great deal daily, and our conscience, together with the divine law, condemns us, we think that God does not want “to have our grace any more”, as Luther puts it. But against the natural religion which is inherent in us, it must be stated that the Christian religion is not a religion of the Law, but of the Gospel, according to which God has mercy on us men solely for the sake of Christ's perfect merit, regardless of our constitution and works.
In other words: We have our righteousness, with which to be able to stand before God and obey God's will, not to be sought within ourselves but outside ourselves. [Objective!] As we also confess in the Formula of Concord, 92) “all our righteousness is to be sought outside the merits, works, virtues, and worthiness of ourselves and of all men”, totam justitiam nostram extra nos et extra omnium hominum merita, opera, virtutes atque dignitatem quaerendam. It consists in the righteousness of Christ or, what is the same in substance, in the forgiveness of our sins, which Christ has brought about for us and which He promises and bestows upon us in the means of grace ordered by Him. We therefore base our faith on the right foundation only when we, as Luther tends to say, “go out of ourselves” and “over us,” that is, when we believe God's grace on the basis of the objective means of grace which lie outside of us. The means of grace are the safe place determined by God, where poor sinners, a thief and a public sinner no less than Paul, Peter and John can and should find grace and salvation at all times and under all circumstances. Admittedly, the "poured in grace", in the proper Christian sense of the
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holiness and Christian righteousness of life (justitia inhaerens) worked by the Holy Spirit, is also to be understood the determination of the “sign and witness” of our state of grace, 1 John 3:14: “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren”. But this righteousness of life always remains imperfect and therefore does not serve as the foundation of our confidence in the grace of God at the time of the temptation and in the agony of death. Luther points us to the true Christian practice of faith in the words: “Finally no counsel is to be had, unless you give yourself, outside your own and all human comfort, to the Word alone.” 93) By “Word” Luther understands the outer Word of the Gospel and its seal, Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
In the question of the foundation of Christian faith, the special question also surfaced as to how stands the foundation of faith of those Reformed Christians who base their faith in the forgiveness acquired by Christ on the outer word of the Gospel, but know nothing about the sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, as means of forgiving sins. Such Reformed Christians exist because they grew up among teachers who especially fight Baptism and the Lord's Supper as means of grace. Do such Christians now have the whole or only a partial forgiveness of sins? The question then came to a head as to whether the sacraments belong at all to the foundation of faith. The question has already been answered. As certainly as both sacraments are ordained by God for the forgiveness of sins (εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν) [Matt. 26:28], so certainly should Christians base their faith in the forgiveness of their sins on baptism and the Lord's Supper. In other words: Baptism and the Lord's Supper belong to the foundation of the Christian faith according to divine order. Quenstedt: Ad fundamentum pertinent. 94) But the Christians who, out of weakness in knowledge, do not know how to use the sacraments as a means of grace, but at the same time base their faith in God's graciousness on the Word of the Gospel heard or read, do not have only a partial one, but the whole forgiveness of sins, because it is not so that by the mere Word of the Gospel only one third, by Baptism the second third, by the Lord's Supper the third third of sins are forgiven, but it is so that by every species of the means of grace all sins are forgiven. Our Lutheran Confession expresses this, as we have already seen: “The effect of the Word and of the rite is the same [irrespectively, in the heart],” idem est effectus Verbi et ritus. [Apology, XIII (VII) § 5 – BoC here] This is explained in more detail in the preceding passage: “For the outward signs have been set up for this purpose, so that thereby
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94) Systema (1715) I, 355.
the hearts may be moved, even by the Word and outward signs at the same time, that when we are baptized, when we receive the body of the LORD, they may believe that God truly will have mercy on us through Christ,” [after the German text, here in section [4], § 479 here] Would thus the sacraments be superfluous as means of grace, because already the Word of the Gospel promises and appropriates all the forgiveness of sins? So argued Zwingli and his comrades, however, against Luther in order to persuade him to let Baptism and the Lord's Supper go as a means of grace, at least not to argue hard about this point.
In contrast to this, Luther pointed to a twofold point: 95) 1. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are not a human, but a divine order. Whoever declares them unnecessary or useless rises above God. “For whoever asks,” says Luther, “why is it necessary for what God speaks and does, he wants to pass over God, be wiser and better than God.” 2. That God offers and promises one and the same forgiveness of sins acquired by Christ not only through the word of the Gospel, but also through visible signs (verbum visibile) determined by Him, so that He, the gracious God, meets a need of souls. Scripture and experience teach that faith in the forgiveness of sins becomes very difficult for all those who are in living knowledge of their sins. To accommodate this weakness,
God has added Baptism and the Lord's Supper to the Word of the Gospel. Holy Baptism is a private absolution in the name of the baptized person. Likewise, the Holy Supper is no less than an individual acquittal of sin in the name of the communicant, confirmed by the presentation of the body and blood of Christ. Luther's words in the Smalcald articles very emphatically point to this: 96) “The gospel does not give counsel and help against sin in only one way; for God is exceedingly rich in his grace. First of all through the oral Word, in which the forgiveness of sins is preached in all the world, which is the actual office of the Gospel. On the other hand, through Baptism. Third, through the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Fourth by the power of the Keys and also per mutuum colloquium et consolationem fratrum. Matt.18:20: “Ubi duo fuerint congregati” [Matt. 18:20: “where two (or three) are gathered together”] With regard to such Reformed Christians who, out of weakness in knowledge, do not know how to use the sacraments as a medium of justification (εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν), two things can be said:
1. By believing in the Word of the Gospel, they have the forgiveness of all their sins and thus life and happiness. 2. but by not knowing how to use Baptism and the Lord's Supper as a means of justification, they have less support for their faith in the forgiveness
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| Stahl, former Jew, now a Lutheran for the means of grace. |
of sins, as God, in His exceedingly rich grace, has intended for them. It follows from this that the Lutheran Church would act against God's will and order and would commit a robbery of the Christian if, at the insistence of the Reformed and in the interest of an external unification, it wanted to surrender the means of grace character of the sacraments. The “dilettante” [Friedrich Julius] Stahl is right [see Fundament 15] that he finds Luther just as great in Marburg [against Zwingli and Reformed] as in Worms [against the Pope and papists]. Rudolf Kögel, who rebukes Stahl, 97) thus reveals a lesser spiritual and theological knowledge.
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Two Religions, only two
Pieper's "Two Religions" teaching upset modernist "missions" theologians in the LC-MS, e.g. "Walkout" Prof. William Danker. who wanted to claim that Buddhism also teaches a religion of Grace. Of course Danker was deceiving himself, as others who fully understood Buddhism knew that it actually teaches "salvation by works". Pieper was only following Martin Luther who preached on this in his sermons (my emphasis):“Therefore he who has comprehended this revelation and testimony of the Holy Spirit can judge all such doctrine well and correctly and differentiate as follows: There are two types of life and work. The one is my life and work which must be carried out in accordance with the Ten Commandments; the other is that of Christ my Lord, which is recorded in my Creed. My salvation and happiness and all consolation for my conscience depend on the latter.…” — Martin Luther, Am. Ed. 24, Sermons on Gospel of St John Chapters 14-16, p. 296
Pieper never stopped teaching this. He taught it in his textbook Christian Dogmatics, and also taught in one of his "Luther Hour Lectures" that was published posthumously in 1933 in CTM here, here, here, and here. On page 658 he stated "There are only two religions in the world. ... (1) the forgiveness of sins is based upon God’s grace in Christ, ... (2) the other ... entirely or partially obtained by the deed of men." — No, there are not three or three hundred religions in the world, there are only two.
Friedrich Julius Stahl (not Drucker or Warren)
Pieper did not mention Stahl in his Christian Dogmatics, but he certainly gave Stahl high praise in his Das Fundament series. Historians have a hard time trying to figure out Stahl. Encyclopedia Judaica says that "he grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family, but converted to Lutheranism in 1819, seemingly more out of inner conviction than in order to obtain a government post in a Catholic country." Apparently the Jews acknowledge that Stahl was no longer a Jew after his conversion to "inner conviction" Christianity, although they may claim him for their "Jewish race".
I mentioned in an earlier segment that the noted Peter Drucker, who was born into a Jewish family that had converted to a "'liberal' Lutheran Protestant household", considered himself a follower of Stahl. However Drucker did not appear to defend his "liberal Lutheranism" like the great Friedrich Julius Stahl did. Instead one finds that the noted Pastor Rick Warren gained his erroneous theology and methods from him. (see here for summary history)
The more recent well-known Peter Drucker was not like Stahl in spiritual matters for Stahl upheld the Lutheran doctrine in a surprising way, as Franz Pieper praises. Friedrich Julius Stahl upheld the Lutheran doctrine in a surprising way that "wannabe" Drucker ("management by objectives") and Warren ("Purpose Driven Life") do not.
The more recent well-known Peter Drucker was not like Stahl in spiritual matters for Stahl upheld the Lutheran doctrine in a surprising way, as Franz Pieper praises. Friedrich Julius Stahl upheld the Lutheran doctrine in a surprising way that "wannabe" Drucker ("management by objectives") and Warren ("Purpose Driven Life") do not. And I suspect that Stahl never criticized Martin Luther for his writings… against the Jews. — In the next Part 18…
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