Whether new commandments are given in the Gospel.
Whether new commandments are given in the Gospel.
§ 17. Therefore in this point we cannot stand with the Scholastics, who claim that in the Gospel, which they call “the new Law,” there are given more perfect, severe, and excellent commandments which bring to those who do them true righteousness before God and which have the promise of salvation and eternal life, so that in this way the Gospel differs from the Law in time, promises, commandments, and sacraments. They say that the old Law is the law of fear; the new, the law of love. They claim that the benefit of Christ offered to us through the preaching of the Gospel consists only in that it infuses the disposition [habitum] of grace in us through which we can fulfill the commandments of the Gospel and earn eternal life. Bonaventure, Biel, and others (Sent., 3, dist. 40) [speak] in this way:
[The power of] giving life befits the new Law in three ways: first, formally, by reason of sacramental grace; second, in affection [affectu], by reason of the spiritual love to which the promises arouse [us]; third, in exercise [exercitio], by reason of the repeated good performance of both the commandments and the counsels. But in the old Law the promises were temporal; the precepts, outwardly regulatory; the sacraments, figurative. And thus the promises did not stir one up to spiritual love; the commandments did not direct one to an inner righteousness; the sacraments did not help one to an easier fulfillment of the Law, and thus did not give life, since there instead existed [in the old Law] a revelation of fault and not the assistance of grace, and, consequently, an occasion for concupiscence was given.
Those are their words. They are followed by the Council of Trent (session 6, canon 21): “If anyone says that God gave Jesus Christ to people as a Redeemer whom they should believe and not also as Lawgiver whom they should obey, let him be accursed.”
The Censura Coloniensis (p. 204) writes: “The proper teaching of the Gospel is this: ‘If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments’ [Matt. 19:17].”
Salmeron (Commentar., vol. 4, p. 20): “A summary of that entire Gospel is the statement: ‘Do penance’ [Matt. 3:2; 4:17; Mark 1:15].”
Barradius (Comment. in Concord. evang., vol. 1, bk. 2, ch. 20, p. 73): “If Moses was a lawgiver, why is the name ‘Lawgiver’ removed from the Messiah? The Messiah had a much greater honor than Moses in this regard, for Moses gave the Law to only one people, and the Law which he had received from God came with the intervention of the angels; but the Messiah gave the Law which He Himself established not to one people but to the entire world.”