 is simply justice, justice practiced cooperatively. It is justice that really arrives at those who are in need of them. The citizen is called to turn to his neighbour in the reality of God's justice. Through this call he becomes free to see the need of his neighbour and the justice that is prepared for him.
[9] Luther's view of political institutions falls into line with this understanding. Political institutions "are God's larvae, allegories…which shall all contain Christ."3. God's justice in Christ encompasses the worldly institutions, transforms them and makes them instruments of his justice to reach humankind. God rules in the political world through the institutions, just as he rules the hearts with his word. The justification that the human being receives passively and the call that instills cooperation in citizenship both originate in God's all-encompassing word. Hence not only living under the lex Christi but also living in political orders means, for Luther, to live under God's judgment and justice.
[10] This line of Luther-exegesis connects to names like Dietrich Bonhoeffer4, Ernst Wolf5, Oswald Bayer6, and Hans G. Ulrich7, among others, and questions any reading of Luther that tears the spiritual and the worldly regiment apart, or lets them collapse into each other. The reduction of God's claim on the human being to the spiritual leads to a politics that regards the worldly orders as in a state of entelechy, or it regards the freedom of the Christian as a habitus with which he would be free to act responsible in a world bereaved of God's governance. Both lines of reading Luther are anchored in Lutheran traditions, but, as I will show, they cannot refer to Luther himself.
[11] Luther's (re)discovery of the institution of citizenship and of a political ethics of the iustitia civilis is often noted, even within political ethics. It often fails to see Luther's impulse for political ethics, however, when it holds that Luther freed ethics and a worldly realm from God's rule. On the contrary, Luther's citizen is someone who contradicts the course of worldly powers by acting on account of God's presence in his word, in the cry for justice, and by witnessing how the civic institutions are drawn into God's governance of the world. Contemporary political ethics reduces the citizen to a sole witness to law, to values, morals or conventions. In contrast Luther tells us the citizen witnesses to God's justice, a justice that reaches into the political realm in manifold ways most notably through good works. It seems overdue that political ethics rediscover Luther's full view of the institution of citizenship and with it good works of the iustita civilis.
[12] Such an argument can only be sketched in brief in the space here but three brief explorations must suffice. 1) A few more remarks on the Christological hermeneutics of good works by reference to the character of vocation and to Luther's Christological anthropology. 2) A closer look at Luther's ethics of citizenship as the political form of life in which good works are practiced in cooperation with God and the neighbour. 3) Some attention to contemporary conceptions of the citizen and political power as institutionally located and communicatively achieved, in contrast to Luther's view. This section closes with suggestion about the systematic place of good works within political ethics.
[13] Good works are there for every human being just as God's reconciliation in Christ is there for all of humankind. This public character of the call to do good works is rooted in the reality of God's justice for all of humankind. It becomes articulate in his word. This does not mean that this call is universally heard, but it is time and again heard by someone through whose good work the universality appears. The good work is the arrival of God's justice at a distinctive place in a distinctive time for a distinctive person. In this distinctiveness the universal will of God is revealed.
[14] The universality and particularity of good works originate in God's word which is external to the human being. The citizen who is called to do good works does not have to be a Christian in the confessional sense. Indeed, he can be anything, or less than anything, like a Samaritan. God's justice reaches into the world through mouths and hands that it calls to service. In doing so, God's verbum externum (external word) makes all people equal. According to Luther, God's Word calls the human being in a twofold direction. It calls him to turn to God and to expect everything from him, and it calls him to turn to his neighbour to sooth his need. Luther thus distinguished between an inward and an outward directedness of each human being.8 The inward human being is the human being as he is called by God's word to live with God in Christ and to receive everything from him. The outward human being is the human being as he is called by God's word to live a political life with his neighbour and to convey to him the justice and care that he needs. The shapes of this call are manifold, but Luther's paradigm is preaching. God makes himself heard Sunday mornings just as he preaches through the mouths of those who yearn for justice.
[15] Good works are possible and real extra muros ecclesiae, not because they are the possibility of human beings, but because they are the possibility of God who makes human beings instruments to reach into the world. Hence the visible, social existence of the Church is not the exclusive presupposition of good works.. However, the Church is the paradigmatic place where good works are named as God's works, and where the Gospel is witnessed as God's presence among humankind-- that fact would otherwise remain hidden. The visibility of the Church is hence necessary as witness to God's salvific action and call. Her job as creatura verbi is to witness how good works are drawn from the flesh into the Spirit, so that they witness to God's world-maintaining care.9
[16] Both the Church and those who do good works are called to life in the presence of God's justice. This call creates a certain type of person and a specific community wherever it is heard. Hence the political ethics that I trace here will not be unfolded in a Church/State or Church/World topology. Instead, I will focus on the citizen as a witness within a given society. The focus is on a person who is called to do good works as a witness to a justice, a peace and a liberty to which he or she is called. That is, the focus is not on the laws and habits of the society, but within those laws and habits. Within society the Church is constituted by God's presence in his word and one word with two simultaneous directives. One calls people out of the society to become fellow citizens with the saints. (Ephesians 2:19) The other simultaneously calls people into society to become fellow citizens of humankind, to become co-operators of the iustitia civilis. This aspect distinguishes Lutheran political ethics from a more Augustinian political ethics in avoiding the habitual distinction between a group of saints (civitas Dei) and one of laymen (civitas terrena). God cares simultaneously for the new and for the old humankind. He expresses his kingdom with his word, in calling people to be saints and citizens.
[17] There are tasks to do within society, and these tasks are not irrelevant for the new humankind. The wall between God's new world and this old world is paper thin. The Church witnesses that good works that happen anywhere on earth happen to glorify God's presence among his creatures. She gives good works their name: it is the name of the Lord. And she gives humanity its name, as the unjust who are granted righteousness. His works that become articulate through his Word unite humankind in its godlessness and in its salvation. The church's question is hence whether political action witnesses to God's reality, to his justice and to his peace, or to human possibilities of justice and peace.
[18] God's Word communicates a peace, a justice and a reconciliation that has become the reality of humankind in Jesus Christ and is ready to be discerned through political action that is formed by the need of the other. Attempts of political theory to find the origins of political action such as the approaches of virtue ethics, of communicative action, and so forth only explain empathy, solidarity and communication as answers to prevalent human possibilities and capabilities.. They are but derivates of a political ethics that witnesses to the reality of the new humanity as fulfilled in Christ. As Luther understands it, political ethics really originates in the call to act with and for others. This is a call that liberates from a self-centered ethics and guides people to discern the reality of peace, reconciliation, forgiveness and justice in a non-reconciled world that yearns for this reality. Such liberating call is a call to citizenship. Lutheran political ethics puts the citizen and his witness on the agenda of political ethics.
[19] What is the story of this witness? How does the citizen appear in the public forum? What is the context in which he is called to act politically? Lutheran ethics is not about an individual who decides to make an appearance, but about a liberation of the human being that takes place within the political realm. It is a liberation to act for others within political institutions. The citizen is called into a political existence that witnesses to the reality that becomes present in Christ. In this story of ethics the question of why people should be moral does not disappear, but becomes part of a story that aims at overcoming moralistic appeals to all other sources including the functionalistic understanding of institutions. In this story God is at work in the just society, the iustitia civilis.
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