Nature and Institution: Luther's Doctrine of the Three Orders

146 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY
The precise meaning of the statement in the Confession that
"even the godless may have much about them that is holy without
being saved thereby" 127 is elucidated by this commentary on Psalm
127. The intended distinction and attribution of heathen (although
divinely ordained) humanity, and the salvation brought by Jesus
Christ, is effected in the commentary on Psalm 127 by the way in
which Luther approaches the scheme of the four causae. 128
Insight into the material and formal cause of social life and the
arts, in short, the exercise of reason, is conceded to Aristotle, Demosthenes,
and Cicero. 129
This praise, however, is not unqualified. 130 It is their failing—as
it is the failing of all the godless—that they desire to be themselves
the efficient cause and the final cause to create and perfect economy
and politics. "This, however," says Luther, "is not for you";
yours is but to "be an instrument." 131 But anyone who is not content
to be God's instrument and mandatary, anyone who is not
satisfied with the ascribed "judicial and governmental dignity of a
political animal," 132 corrupts and perverts, by his arrogance and
ingratitude, the exercise of the reason given to him. A homo politicus
like Cicero spoke and acted well, but not when he wished to glorify
himself by his actions, saying "Haec ego feci. Ex hoc: feci, vere
fiunt feces." 133 "Yet [the heathens'] actions do not issue from the
heart purely and simply, for the sake of God, but they search for
some other [i.e. their own] end because they lack a real faith in
and a true knowledge of God." 134
But even if the godless do not fear or love God, they cannot
extinguish and obscure in every respect the reason instituted by
the creation, the Word of blessing. On the contrary, they fulfill the
second table of the decalogue so brilliantly that they "indeed at
times appear holier than Christians." 135
As this makes clear, Luther perceives the relationship between
general and Christian humanity, between natural and theological
ethics, as a thoroughgoing conflict. 136 As of Luther's anthropology,
we can say of Luther's social ethics "that it presents itself in the
form of a controversy between the philosophical and the theological
positions." 137 The conflict is not resolved as it is in the relative
autonomy and immanence of Thomistic social ethics, in which
nature is elevated and perfected by grace, or by the transcendental