Nope. This isn’t about James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain”. That song maps the ups and downs of his life over about two years. A girl he knew who committed suicide, his career spiraled by drug addiction, and his recovery from that in a mental hospital (songfacts.com). This isn’t about that song but about my raining on The Fire and the Staff by Klemet Preus.
I have heartily recommended this 2004 work, and I still do. I stand by my remark, somewhere in these blogs, that had I read this in the first five years of my ministry it would’ve saved my sanity. But something always bugged me. It was Bondage of the Will.
I read in 2005, “What about the Ten Commandments? Don’t they tell us what to do for God? The word commandments is unfortunate. We should call them the ten statements or the ten principles or, better, the ten descriptions of God’s children. They aren’t even imperatives. They are descriptions of those people whom God controls. God says to His people, ‘You will not kill. You will not commit adultery. You will not steal.’ He’s describing us” (204). Preus goes on to illustrate this with a moving tale of his father, Dr. Robert Preus, being called to the school because Klemet was accused of disrespecting a teacher. Dr. Preus said, “’My son is not disrespectful. He will not show disrespect’…Dad did not give me an order. He described me” (Ibid.).
I’ve used this example in Adult Confirmation and I think in sermons and certainly in Bible Classes, but something bothered me. I found what in Luther’s Bondage of the Will. “It is well known, that the Hebrews frequently use the future indicative for the imperative: as in Exod. XX. 1-17. ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ and in numberless other instances of the same kind. Otherwise, if these sentences were taken indicatively, as they really stand, they would be promises of God; and as He cannot lie, it would come to pass that no man could sin; and then, as commands, they would be unnecessary” (Cole, Henry, translator, emphases his, 152).
Here’s the real rub. The Book of Concord refers to or quotes Bondage of the Will some 10 times. Not all of Luther’s writings are confessional documents, we don’t subscribe to them, or vow to teach according to them. Thank God! However, when the Book of Concord quotes one of his writings or references one authoritatively, that makes it a confessional document. (I think this is how Sasse puts it.)
I’m aware, taught this no less than by Dr. Robert Preus himself, that we are not bound to the exegesis of the Lutheran Confessions any more than we are to bound to garlic rendering a magnet inert. Fire and Staff does not specifically say what Luther in the above quote says should not be said, but in saying the Commandments are not imperatives but descriptions, i.e. indicatives, it is contradicting him.
I would not want to see Fire and Staff be snuffed or broken, but should it be corrected? I think so, but as I don’t know Hebrew and, truth be told, not so fluent with the grammar of my own English, greater linguists, theologians, and scholars have to be consulted. If I run across a faithful reconciliation between Fire and Staff and Bondage of the Will, I will amend this post. I really don’t want to be right here.
