Chapter X
CHAPTER X: WHETHER THE GOSPEL IS THE PREACHING OF REPENTANCE
§ 105. That concludes our discussion about the evangelical counsels and about the difference between the Law and the Gospel in general. There remains for examination the question whether the Gospel is the preaching of repentance. If this is not explained aptly and suitably, the integrity of the Gospel will be unable to stand together with the difference, which we claim exists, between Law and Gospel.
There are three different opinions of three different sources as to whether the Gospel should be defined as the preaching of repentance. Some embrace an affirmative answer simply and without distinction. Some reject and repudiate this proposition without discrimination. But there are some who use the suitable interpretation and refute a wrong understanding.
We shall set up three classes of those who embrace the affirmative simply and without distinction. The first is comprised of Papist writers. Since they elsewhere distort the true and genuine distinction between the Law and the Gospel, it should seem strange to no one that they defend the affirmative side also in this question. So Bellarmine writes (De justificatione, bk. 4, ch. 2): “Since Christ and all the apostles frighten people while proclaiming the Gospel, and since there is also an article in the Apostles’ Creed, which contains a summary of the Gospel, on the future judgment,1 it is false to say that it is the proper function of the Law to frighten and that this does not pertain to the Gospel.” In the same place he asserts: “Unbelief is properly accused by the Gospel.” Salmeron (Comment., vol. 4, p. 20): “The sum of the entire Gospel is the word ‘Repent!’ From that word not only John but also Christ and the apostles began the Gospel.”
The second class we attribute to the Antinomians, whose leader was Johannes Agricola of Eisleben. In 1538 he began to sow new expressions: “Repentance can be learned more correctly and suitably from the Gospel than from the Law. The Gospel in its most proper and specific use and function is the preaching of repentance along with the preaching of the forgiveness of sins,” etc. Blessed Luther set a strong and solid response against those Eisleben novelties (Jena Latin edition, vol. 1, pp. 517–18; Jena German edition, vol. 7, ff. 370ff.)2 and led their author to recant (the formulary words of which are found in Jena German, vol. 7, f. 292).3 Nevertheless, after the death of blessed Luther, Eisleben returned to his invention and again took up the support of his original error, as is apparent from the preface to his sermon De muliere peccatrice, published in ’62.
The third class consists of the crypto-Calvinists who had taken over the University of Wittenberg, as is clear from the Catechesis and theses of 1570 and 1571, published at the same place, in which the incorrect Antinomian forms of words are defended and in which they very often appeal to the authority of Dr. Philipp [Melanchthon]. This is also clear from the writing of Pezelius which includes the apology regarding the definition of the Gospel [Apologia de definitione evangelii], that it is the preaching of repentance, published in ’71.
** Hemmingius (Syntag. volum. theol., pp. 713–14): “When we say that the Gospel is the preaching of repentance and of the remission of sins in the name of Christ in the apostolic meaning—that is, properly—we understand this as the voice of the Gospel and not, as some contend, as the entire ministry of the Law and the Gospel, as if the preaching of repentance were to pertain to the Law and the preaching of the remission of sins to the Gospel. Those who wish to be dialecticians say, ‘The Law preaches repentance per se, but the Gospel does so according to accident.’ Both statements are absurd. If it pleases them to retain the dialectic distinction, then they should rather say: ‘The Law is the preaching of repentance not of itself, but according to accident. But the Gospel is the preaching of repentance per se.’ ” **
The more recent Calvinists walk in their footsteps, for this is how Ursinus writes (Catech., part 2, p. 139): “On the basis of the third difference between Law and Gospel, the Flacians argue as follows: ‘Commanding is not the province of the Gospel but of the Law. The preaching of repentance is commanding. Therefore the preaching of repentance pertains to the Law and not to the Gospel.’ ” To this argument he responds with a denial of the major premise which, he says, is false if taken in a universal sense.
Bucanus (locus 20, p. 193): “There are two parts of the Gospel: the preaching of repentance and the promise of justification or of the remission of sins.” [Bucanus] again (locus 30, p. 291): “The accusation of sin is of the Law, and it prepares one for repentance or for coming to one’s senses, which is proper to the Gospel in the forgiveness of sins.”
** Paraeus (on the Epistle to the Romans, p. 88): “Nothing seems to prevent us from assigning the revelation of wrath to the Gospel equally along with the revelation of righteousness, for both are the voice of the Gospel. The one justifies those who believe; the other condemns those who do not believe, just as contraries are said to belong to the same discipline.” Tossanus (marginal notes to 1 Tim. 1:11): “The Gospel forbids and rebukes the enumeration of sins no less than the Law.” **