Doctrine Of The Two Kingdoms
Martin Luther's doctrine of the two kingdoms (or two reigns) of God teaches that God is the ruler of the whole world and that he rules in two ways.
He rules the worldly or left-hand kingdom through secular (and, though this point is often misunderstood, also churchly) government, by means of law (i.e., the sword or compulsion) and in the heavenly or righthand kingdom (his spiritual kingdom, that is, Christians insofar as they are a new creation who spontaneously and voluntarily obey) through the gospel or grace.
The two kingdoms doctrine is simply another form of the distinctive Lutheran teaching of Law and Gospel. The official book that defines Lutheranism called the "Book of Concord" compiled in 1580 references a sermon by Martin Luther on this from 1528 preached on the 9th Sunday after Trinity in Marburg, that is about the Two Kingdoms or Two Kinds of Righteousness.
In that sermon he states that the wordly (left hand) Kingdom includes everything we can see and do in our bodies. This fully and especially includes whatever is done in the church. This is taught so that it is clear that in the Heavenly (right hand) Kingdom, the only thing that is included there is alone faith in Christ. "Christ alone" and "faith alone" are Lutheran slogans that are reflected in this way.
The biblical basis for this doctrine, as with all Law and Gospel modalities is the distinction St Paul makes in Romans 8 between "flesh/body" versus "spirit/Spirit". Martin Luther's breakthrough moment was his break with the traditional scholastic understanding of this passage. The Scholastics understood flesh vs spirit to be the movement from vice to virtue, from the profane/secular/civil to the sacred/churchly.
Luther saw this contrast instead to be a movement from true virtue, which especially included the sacred and churchly and any righteousness we can do or that is visible, to alone the invisible righteousness of faith in Christ, which in the sermon referenced here he says is "meaningless on earth except to God and a troubled conscience."
Read more about Doctrine Of The Two Kingdoms: On Secular Authority, Response and Influence, In Roman Catholicism
Famous quotes containing the words doctrine of the, doctrine of, doctrine and/or kingdoms:
“There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But the doctrine of the Farm is merely this, that every man ought to stand in primary relations to the work of the world, ought to do it himself, and not to suffer the accident of his having a purse in his pocket, or his having been bred to some dishonorable and injurious craft, to sever him from those duties.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“There was never a man born so wise or good, but one or more companions came into the world with him, who delight in his faculty, and report it. I cannot see without awe, that no man thinks alone and no man acts alone, but the divine assessors who came up with him into life,—now under one disguise, now under another,—like a police in citizen’s clothes, walk with him, step for step, through all kingdoms of time.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)