Luther on law and grace

David Yeago offers a stimulating discussion of Luther’s views on gospel and law in a 1998 article in The Thomist. Yeago challenges modern Luther interpreters who suggest that Luther, in antinomian fashion, separated grace from moral order, arguing instead that Luther completely integrates the two: “The morality that grace terminates, the law that the gospel overcomes, is precisely and specifically a moral order alienated from grace, a morality which is therefore alienated from the true end of human existence and can only issue in the twin evils of presumption and despair. Far from being indifferent to good and evil, order and disorder, the bestowal of God’s grace through the gospel is for Luther the only true formation of the human heart, that which alone sets the heart truly in order.”