Bellarmine’s opinion about the distinction of Law and Gospel.
Bellarmine’s opinion about the distinction of Law and Gospel.
§ 59. Bellarmine (De justif., bk. 4, chs. 3–4) follows in the footsteps of these men and sets out eight differences between Law and Gospel. Before these are investigated, two things must be noted: (1) Not even in one of them does he mention the free promise of Christ and His benefits and of our reconciliation with God. (2) He takes “Gospel” to mean the entire doctrine which Christ and His apostles preached, as is clearly concluded from [his] preceding chapter 2. Just as we do not deny this general meaning of “Gospel” in its proper place, so also we say that this is not the proper and specific meaning, which we proved earlier [§§ 7, 13–28].
(I) So, then, Bellarmine asserts that the first difference between Law and Gospel is that which is between an unfinished teaching and a perfected teaching:
For since the Scripture of the two Testaments contains three things: mysteries, promises, and commandments—that is, things to be believed, hoped for, and done, to which faith, hope, and charity correspond—so also in all three the teaching of the Gospel and of the apostles is far better than the teaching of the Law and the prophets. As regards the mysteries of faith, the doctrine of the Old Testament teaches the unity of God clearly, [but] the trinity of persons and the incarnation of the Word only obscurely and incompletely in order to foreshadow them rather than to explain them. On the other hand, the doctrine of the New Testament teaches and explains all these very clearly.
We respond. The perfection of a doctrine is determined on the basis of either the thing itself or the manner of teaching it. As concerns the thing itself or the mysteries of faith, the doctrine of the Old Testament is not at all imperfect. In fact, it teaches the same fundamental articles of faith which Christ and the apostles repeat in the New Testament. In regard to the manner of teaching, we admit that some mysteries of faith are expressed more clearly and lucidly in the New Testament than in the Old, but this takes nothing away from its real perfection, because this involves clarity rather than perfection, the manner of learning rather than the things to be learned themselves. Thus Augustine (De civit. Dei, 16, ch. 26) rightly says, “The Old Testament is the concealment of the New; the New is the revelation of the Old.” He repeats the same ideas in De catech. rudib. (ch. 4) and in many other places: “The New Testament is hidden in the Old; the Old lies open in the New.” Here pertains what they say Dr. Luther used to say in many of his sermons: “The New Testament seems to me to be the sun from which the moon of the Old Testament receives its light.”