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His was not the genuine Lutheranism of Luther, but the modified Lutheranism, then advocated in Europe and Germany generally, notably in Halle and the circles of the Pietists, a Lutheranism inoculated with legalism, subjectivism, indifferentism, and unionism.
It is too dangerous an element; it creates hypocrites and Pharisees. All cast-iron laws and dogmas do. Not that I share the Christian sneer at Jewish legalism. No; much of our so-called ceremonialism is merely the primitive mix-up of everything with religion in a theocracy. The Mosaic code has been largely embodied in civil law, and superseded by it."
I never forgot his words and always felt that in his mind my opinions, even when he sought them, were tainted with legalism.
Pharisaism is at once the logical consummation and the reductio ad absurdum of legalism. It is to the genius of Israel that we owe that practical interpretation of the fundamental principle of supernaturalism, which was embodied in the doctrine of salvation through obedience to the letter of a Law.
From the positive side Philo stands for the spiritual significance of the religion. Judaism, which lays stress upon the law, the ceremonial, and the customs of our forefathers, is threatened at times with the neglect of the inward religion and the hardness of legalism.
The time is limited in most cases, at least, because if the justified Christian is brought to see the need and the possibility of entire sanctification, and yet fails, as so many do, to enter into the blessing, because of unbelief, he is very prone either to backslide, in which case, of course, there will be a cessation of growth, or, like the Galatians, he will submit to the bondage of legalism, and after having begun in the Spirit, he will seek to be perfected in the flesh; in which case Paul's verdict to that beloved church was not ye are growing in grace, but, "ye are fallen from grace."
Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain forms of death, indeed because of certain forms of death death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and worry, competency and desert, death of everything that paganism, naturalism, and legalism pin their faith on and tie their trust to.
But legalism is debarred by its distrust of human nature from trying to control the details of life through any central aim or ideal; and its assumption that all the commandments of the Law are of divine origin, and therefore equally binding upon Man, is obviously incompatible with the conception of a standard of moral worth.
The proof of this statement, if proof be needed, is that legalism, when its master principle has been fully grasped and fearlessly applied, takes the form of Pharisaism, and that it is possible for the Pharisee to "count himself to have apprehended," to congratulate himself on his spiritual achievement, to believe, in all seriousness, that he has closed his account with God.
The notion of a covenant was defined more rigorously; the Law was practically exalted above God, so that the Rabbis even represent the Deity as studying the Law. With this legalism went a spirit of intense exclusiveness and narrow ecclesiasticism.
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