LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

64 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW IX
It is a matter of common knowledge, patent and unconcealed, what very
perilous events and troublesome disturbances took place in our beloved
German fatherland shortly after the Christian death of that enlightened
and pious person, Dr. Martin Luther, and how in this anguished situation
and amid the disruption of well-ordered government the foe of mankind
bestirred himself to scatter his seed of false doctrine and discord and to
bring about destructive and scandalous division in churches and schools
so that he might thereby adulterate the pure doctrine of God’s Word,
sever the bond of Christian charity and agreement, and in this way hold
back and perceptibly impede the course of the holy Gospel. 34
If the formal and material principles are misused, by placing them in
opposition to one another, one of two errors results.
If the formal principle is placed against the material principle, for
example, by appealing to the formal principle to the exclusion of the
material principle, the result is legalism. The commands of the Law are
placed upon the same level as the promises of the Gospel, and perfection of
life is placed upon the same level as perfection of doctrine. In effect, the
formal principle is turned into a material principle, and salvation is made
dependent upon obedience to the demands of Scripture. This inevitably
involves a distortion of the Gospel. What can happen all too easily is that
questions of church fellowship are determined on the basis of the Law, by
matters of life and behaviour, rather than by matters of faith and doctrine, on
the basis of the Gospel. This error is characteristic of Evangelicalism, and of
Pietism.
On the other hand, if the material principle is urged against the formal
principle, it is thereby turned into a formal principle. This is exactly what
has happened, as a result of the application of the so-called “christological
principle”, in liberal Lutheranism. This principle is used to distinguish
within Scripture between that which is accepted as God’s Word and that
which is not regarded as God’s Word. Thus it can happen that certain parts
of Scripture are accepted as God’s Word, on the grounds that they “inculcate
Christ”, while other parts of Scripture are relegated to an inferior position,
on the grounds that they are peripheral to the “Christ principle”. Hence, one
may insist that only the doctrinal content of Scripture is God’s Word, and
therefore inerrant, while certain peripheral parts of Scripture may be
considered not to be God’s Word, and therefore not inerrant.
Against this heresy, Luther maintained that the whole of Scripture
“urges Christ”. For him, the “Christ principle” decided, not between that
within Scripture which is God’s Word and that within Scripture which is not
God’s Word, but between that which is God’s Word, and therefore
Scripture, and that which is not God’s Word, and therefore not Scripture.
34 Tappert 3f.