The word disputation is not commonly used in today’s conversations. A formalized method of debate used for educational purposes, Dr. Martin Luther endorsed the use of disputations to help clarify points of Scripture and to furnish students with the skills necessary to defend the pure Christian doctrines.
Between 1537 and 1540, Luther proposed six sets of theses and participated in several disputations addressing an ongoing controversy regarding the use of the Law in the active lives of Christian believers. Did Christ abrogate the Law? Is it necessary to fulfill the Law for justification? Does repentance exist without the Law? Do believers follow the Law of Moses or Christ’s Law of love? Does the Law exist primarily for unbelievers? Should the Law be taught and preached in the church? These were the kinds of questions that drove the controversy.
Has the controversy of antinomianism been settled or does it still exist? When you hear biblical quotes like, "You are not under the law, but under grace" (Romans 6:14b) in an attempt to discard the Law, how does it align with the full context of Romans 6? When you hear statements like "Love God above all things and love thy neighbor as thyself. It’s very simple. Christ said that. He reduced that whole law down to that,"[1] how does it align[2] with other biblical texts like Matthew 5:17-19 or Galatians 3:17-22?
Where do you stand in this controversy? Are you aligned with Dr. Luther or Master Eisleben?[3] If you are doubtful on where you stand regarding the functions of the Law, please try my quiz to examine yourself. All of the statements in the quiz were extracted directly from the translated records of the antinomian disputation events, some were adapted slightly only for context or readability within the quiz.
Please reply and share if you scored as well as you expected.
[1] Heard in I.A.L.C. sermons preached at Deer River, Minnesota on December 16, 2023 and North York, Wisconsin on November 13, 2023.
[2] "Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:19).
[3] Holger Sonntag, Only the Decalogue is Eternal: Martin Luther’s Complete Antinomian Theses and Disputations (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Lutheran Press, 2008), 107.
A private message I received on this article spawned some interesting related questions. Where should a believer focus his life of faith and love: inwardly or outwardly? Where should he seek an assurance of righteousness? Martin Luther wrote extensively about these topics, here are a couple of excerpts:
In 1520, Luther wrote On the Freedom of a Christian, “A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.” And, “We conclude therefore that a Christian man does not live in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbour, or else is no Christian: in Christ by faith; in his neighbour by love. By faith he is carried upwards above himself to God, and by love he sinks back below himself to his neighbour, still always-abiding in God and His love, as Christ says, “Verily I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” (John 1:51). (For more information, On the Freedom of a Christian is sometimes called Concerning Christian Liberty or A Treatise on Christian Liberty. Copies are widely available, including a public domain edition at Project Gutenberg.)
In 1535, Luther wrote in the Commentary on Galatians, “Let us thank God, therefore, that we have been delivered from this monster of uncertainty… And this is the reason why our theology is certain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience, person, or works but depend on that which is outside ourselves, that is, on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive (LW 26:387).
For some context on Luther’s testimony, in 1524 Thomas Müntzer wrote and delivered his “Princes” sermon, which espoused several false doctrines including the recurring error of an “inward religion” that supposedly confirmed an assurance of salvation through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
This also brought to mind a controversy that occurred around 1550 not long after Luther’s death. Andreas Osiander questioned the nature of a believer’s righteousness before God. He claimed that we are not declared righteous by the external work of Christ, but rather by the internal indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The danger with this error is that it causes us to look subjectively within ourselves for righteousness, instead of looking outside of ourselves at the objective righteousness of Christ. The Lutheran reformers refuted this heresy in the 1577 Formula of Concord Article III.
Also, with regard to the eternality of the moral Law (the Ten Commandments) this passage captures it nicely: “You are near, O Lord, and all Your commandments are truth. Concerning Your testimonies, I have known of old that You have founded them forever” (Psalm 119:151-152).