ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q039 JANUARY 2005 CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 LOMBARD, IL 60148 * * * * * This text is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * >> NICK: Lutherans are known for their two-kingdom doctrine when it comes to talking about the church and the state. How should the church relate to society according to the Augsburg Confession? Even more specifically, how does the two-kingdom doctrine affect me as a Christian and a citizen? >> DR. KLAUS DETLEV SHULTZ: Nick, Luther addressed this question a number of times already in his writings prior to 1530. For example, he wrote a tract on the government, whether one should obey the government or not. He also wrote a tract on the question of whether a soldier could also be a Christian. This position of Luther's, that he takes and is reflected in Article 16 on civil obedience, is one that tells us that a Christian is never relieved of civil obligations. Our article here clearly says that a Christian may fulfill all duties in the government. For example, it tells us clearly here that Christians are permitted to hold all civil offices such as to work in low courts to decide matters by imperial and other existing laws, to impose just punishments, to wage war, to serve as soldiers, to make legal contracts, to hold property, to take an oath when required by magistrates, to take a wife and to be given in marriage. This clearly highlights how Lutherans should understand themselves as citizens in this world. They are allowed to fulfill all offices, as long as these do not go against the laws of God. And one law comes to mind here and that is the Golden Rule, to love your neighbor as yourself and to love God above all things. The idea of us Christians being obliged to also fulfill our civil duties goes back to the concept of loving your neighbor. And that love is expressed the best way by doing actually what we are told, of living out our Christian life in this world. We should not retract ourselves as the monks would do when they go to a monastery. That is precisely not what should be done. Christians are demanded to go into the world. Live their Christian being out there, and withstand the temptations and the tests that society puts on them. But very important here is also the concept of vocation. Our article does not specifically speak about vocation here, but it does imply it because if you fulfill all these duties as a magistrate or as a mother or as a teacher or as a farmer, it means that you are, thereby, incumbent of a vocation to which God has called you. You are to fulfill the vocation dutifully. That is, be doing everything that is required within that vocation. And that also implies that a soldier, if he is engaging in war and is protecting his neighbor, he does so out of love, even though it may seem contrary to that when he takes the life of another. This freedom that Luther would say that comes and results from our justification; namely, that we are freed from our sins and that we, thereby, stand above all things in many ways; namely, that we are put directly before Jesus Christ and not subordinate to anything else that wants to distract our relationship and us from Jesus Christ. At the same time, however, such freedom should not be misunderstood. The Anabaptists took that literally and said that we are free now and may do whatever we like. That also led to the peasant revolts. The peasant revolts were understanding that freedom, that spiritual freedom that we have, such as in Galatians 3:28, that that freedom also needs to be expressed in civil rounds. That is a complete misunderstanding, and Luther was, once again, after the peasant revolts in 1524 and 25 asked to clearly draw attention that Christians should also be good servants of the government, obey exactly what they should be told to do and always be obedient to what the government says, unless they are told to do something contrary to God's word. Here we say the rule of the *closeal of Peter says; namely that in Acts 5:29; one should be more obedient to God than to men. One important factor in the history of The Reformation was that Luther, when it came to the civil government, actually relied on it very much when it came to regulating church affairs. You might recall that he had asked Elector John to serve as the guardian and the overseer of the visitations that were held amongst the churches and the congregations during The Reformation. Is Luther, thereby, not confusing the two governments; namely, that where Jesus Christ rules and that what rules the world, or the two kingdoms, we might say. I would consider that the solution Luther took here was one of being totally desperate of finding some ways of regulating church life that now has been relieved of the rulership of the Pope and the bishops and the priests and, thereby, instilling in him the desperate notion that he needs to find someone who can act on behalf of those bishops who had no longer -- who are no longer in the church. So Luther went and approached the ruler of Saxony and asked him to function as a Christian, as a foremost Christian in society. But I think it is an emergency situation that slowly evolved into one of making it a regular one. That is very sad because, thereby, we have what became the state system, and that prevailed in Germany for a long period of time thereby not allowing the church to regulate its own affairs as freely as it would like to, but always be reliant on the state authority to sanction its rulings. But still, despite this fact of calling the territorial ruler the foremost Christian and one upon whom one has to rely to take the church affairs into his hands, I believe that the distinctions between the civil and Christian realm, that of the church, are still maintained in the Augsburg Confession such as Article 16.