Structure in Psalm 56

This psalm has more frontmatter than most: an indication of the person who to whom it is directed; of the melody; of a Davidic connection; of the genre, a miktam, whatever that is; and a historical setting for the text.

Aside from the frontmatter, the song divides neatly into five sections; sections two and four are a sort of refrain or chorus, which separates section one from section three, and section three from section five.

The reader would expect this refrain to be identical in its two occurrences, but in fact there are slight differences. The first instance (verse 4 in English translations, verse 5 in the BHS) reads (in most recent translations, i.e., NIV, ESV, etc.):

In God, whose word I praise,
In God I trust; I will not be afraid.
What can mortal man do to me?

The second occurrence (verses 10 and 11 in English, verses 11 and 12 in the BHS) reads:

In God, whose word I praise,
In the Lord, whose word I praise;
In God I trust; I will not be afraid.
What can man do to me?

Most of the differences are visible in the English, but some reference to the Hebrew Vorlage is merited. Already in the first line of the refrain, which appears to be the same in both instances, according to English translations, there is a difference in the original Hebrew text.

In the first occurrence of this line, there is attached to the noun ‘word’ a masculine singular third person possessive suffix. In the second occurrence, the suffix is absent. In a literal rendering, this might appear like this:

(1) In God, I praise His word …
(2) In God, I praise [the] word …

The word ‘the’ is placed in brackets, because there is no definite article in the text at this point. To render it into English with no article at all would be to render it into intelligibility. It could arguably be rendered with an indefinite article, but it would be unclear what ‘I praise a word’ would mean. So, while adding the definite article is indeed an emendation, it seems difficult to make sense of the text without some amendment. Of course, as a matter of practice, it is best to arrive at a meaning for a text which requires no emendation, but in the present case, that seems impossible. Any future scholar who might provide such a meaning “deserves the love and thanks of man and woman,” as Thomas Paine wrote in a different context.

Which type of meaning might the author have hoped to communicate by omitting the possessive suffix? Perhaps to establish not only that God’s Word is His Word, but also to establish that it is the only (perfect and infallible) Word. By omitting the possessive, and not replacing it with an article, the author might be establishing ‘Word’ as a proper noun. English usage might offer analogous situations. The church speaks of the “ministry of Word and Sacrament” without any article in front of ‘Word’ and likewise of “let Scripture interpret Scripture” without any article. The author ensures that the reader does not assume that because the Word is “His Word,” there remains a possibility that there would be other “words” (their word, our word, my word, your word, etc.). Rather, “His Word” is “Word” ubiquitously, to the extent that even a definite article is unnecessary. There is no definite article before the name, e.g., of a city: Jerusalem, Berlin, Vienna, Chicago. Likewise, there is no definite article in front of “Word,” because God’s Word is not only without equal, it is also without anything even vaguely comparable.

The divergence between the first and second instances of the refrain grows when the second instance adds an entirely new and additional line. This new line repeats the second instance’s first line, i.e., without the possessive suffix, but replaces ‘God’ with the Tetragrammaton. This could be approximated as:

In YHWH, I praise [the] word …

What did the psalmist intend to express by adding this line to the second iteration of the refrain? Perhaps, as the intensity of the song builds, by shifting from the impersonal job title of ‘God’ and moving to ‘YHWH’ as a proper noun, i.e., a personal name, the psalmist hoped to indicate a stronger relationship between the reader and the Lord.

The addition of this line poses a second question: What was the difference in melody between the first and second occurrences of the refrain? A small change in vocabulary or grammatical structure would not usually necessitate a change in melody, but the addition of an entire line would require the reconfiguration of the musical setting for this part of the Psalm.

The next line in the refrain is the same in both instances: “In God I trust; I will not be afraid.” No investigation is necessary.

Some interpreters link this line to the next, reading “I will not be afraid of … ” and changing the next line from a question into a sort of relative clause.

The final line of the refrain contains a significant change of vocabulary:

(1) What can flesh do to me?
(2) What can man do to me?

The change from ‘flesh’ to ‘man’ is clearly intentional, and in the mind of the psalmist, significant. ‘Man’ can probably be read here without reference to gender, because if the psalmist had intended to denote specifically males, he would have used the Hebrew word ish instead of adam, so ‘man’ can be read here as ‘mankind’ or ‘humanity’ and as a general reference to human beings of both genders in general.

Perhaps the author uses ‘flesh’ to denote physicality: physical attacks by one’s enemies, as well as the weaknesses and temptations which arise from being a physical being with a body. The word ‘man’ would then refer to a broader set of dangers posed not only by humans or to humans in physical ways, but also in spiritual, psychological, political, social, cultural, and other ways.

By use both ‘flesh’ and ‘man,’ the psalmist is ensuring that his reference is not understood as narrow, but rather as broad: There are many types of danger and trouble, physical and non-physical, and the psalmist invites the reader to forsake the fear of all of them. This text brings to mind Luther’s words:

Nehmen sie den Leib,
Gut, Ehr’, Kind und Weib:
Laß fahren dahin,
Sie haben’s kein’ Gewinn,
Das Reich muss uns doch bleiben.

The psalmist, in a time of trouble and danger, sees his rescue coming from God’s Word and from God’s close relationship to him. He resolves to resist fear, even though it arrives in many different forms, and he resolves to put his trust in God.

Structure in Psalm 134

One of the shortest Psalms, this piece for choir and soloist nonetheless presents several structural features. Leaving “a song of ascents” aside as a title rather than part of the work proper, most commentators scan it as six lines or three couplets. This assessment can be left standing with the proviso that the middle couplet’s two lines interact with each other in a more involved way than either the first or third couplet.

The vocabulary is dominated by the word “Lord” which appears five times, more than any other word. This word is conspicuous not only in its frequency, but in its location. Consider its placement in the lines:

Come, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord,
who stand by night in the house of the Lord!

Lift up your hands to the holy place
and bless the Lord!

May the Lord bless you from Zion,
he who made heaven and earth!

If one tampers with the scansion a bit, one might also read:

Come, bless the Lord,
all you servants of the Lord,
who stand in the house of the Lord
by night.

Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord!

May the Lord bless you from Zion,
he who made heaven and earth!

When asking whether such adjustments are at all reasonable, one notes that the positioning of “by night” after “Lord” is found in the Hebrew Vorlage, and that Hebrew meter in general is less strictly confined to syllables and rhymes, and includes a sort of “meter of ideas” which arranges, e.g., two concepts in each of the two lines of a couplet in order to “balance” the ideas in a way analogous to the way one might balance syllables.

The revised scansion makes more obvious how the word “Lord” might function as a way to end most of the lines. In terms of the music — this Psalm, like most or all Psalms, was probably composed as a performance piece — the word “Lord” might have had a whole note, coming after a series of quarter notes, or be metrically distinguished in some other way. Likewise, the word may have landed on the tonic in terms of pitch, giving a sense of finality, or it may have had a relatively high or relatively low note, or been in some other way distinctive.

The word “holy” has no preposition such as “in” or “toward” in the Hebrew Vorlage, and is a noun which can mean holiness or sanctuary. This poses a challenge for any translator.

The first two couplets are clearly in the second person plural, and the final couplet is in the second person singular. One can easily envision the first two couplets being sung by a soloist, and the final couplet by a choir.

Given the pilgrimage title of the Psalm, the soloist would be the traveler approaching the Temple, exhorting and encouraging the Temple staff, who ensured that worship never ceased, but continued all day and all night. The choir would be the Temple staff, bestowing a blessing on the pilgrim after his long journey.

Some commentators have hypothesized that the final couplet referred to a group, and that the second person singular was used to indicate that the pilgrims had such a unity among themselves that they might well be addressed in this way. This could allow for the possibility that two choirs were used, one singing the first part of the Psalm, and other singing the second part.

The first two couplets contain four verbs, all in the imperative: bless, stand, lift, bless. The final couplet contains a verb with the force, if not strictly the form, of a jussive (bless) and simple indicative verb (made).

Structure in Psalm 107

While the first line of this Psalm contains a second person imperative verb, the remainder of the work is free of any second person forms, whether verbs or pronouns. This work is at its core, then, neither a prayer, addressed to God, nor an exhortation, addressed to the Psalmist’s fellow Hebrews. It is a teaching Psalm, and a reasonable argument could be made to include it into the category of wisdom literature.

Psalm 107 has a clear structure. Verses 1 through 3 form an introduction, and verses 33 through 42 form the first part of a conclusion, and verse 43 is the second part of the conclusion.

The introduction explains that God has “redeemed from trouble” and “gathered” his people, and a third-person jussive tells the reader that the people should thank God for his salvation.

Between the introduction and the conclusion, the body of the Psalm is cyclic and goes through four iterations. Each iteration, and the subparts within the iteration, is clearly marked by identical stock phrases. New cycles begin at 107:4, 107:10, 107:17, and 107:23 with the word “some” in the ESV, but in Hebrew, the initiation of a new cycle is more subtle. Each of the four cycles begins with a plural: three times it is a plural verb and once it is a plural adjective. While understated, it is nonetheless a reliable marker, and this becomes clear after multiple readings.

The first part of each cycle describes a difficult situation in which a group of people finds themselves. The second part of the cycle begins with “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.” This sentence is identical in each of the four cycles, and leaves no doubt that it is marking the beginning of the second part of the cycle. After this is a narrative of deliverance, narrating how God saved the people from the situation.

The third and final part of each of the four cycles begins with “Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man!” After this is another third-person jussive, more particular to the first two parts of the cycle, indicating the specific nature of the rescue for which the people should be thankful.

The first part of the conclusion lists different ways in which God saves; the second part of the conclusion is again a jussive, this time singular, ascribing wisdom to whomever meditates and reflects on God’s salvation.

Psalm 107 displays a deliberate and highly structured organization, almost all of it in couplets, and many of those couplets manifesting the typical parallelism which one associates with Hebrew poetry.

The author uses the jussive frequently; he is telling us about the way things ought to be. This is one piece of data to support the assertion that this Psalm might belong in the category of wisdom literature.

Psalm 107 was presumably, like most or all Psalms, a performance piece set to music. The structual features of the text here noted are suggestive of how the structural features of the music might have sounded.

The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars: Allusions to False Gods

In the Tanakh there are nine occurrences in which the words ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ and ‘stars’ appear in the same sentence. Tangentially, there is one occurrence in which ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ and ‘constellations’ appear in the same sentence, with ‘constellations’ being a synonym for ‘stars’ (II Kings 23:5).

“The sun, the moon, and the stars” is used idiomatically to mean ‘everything’ or ‘anything’ in twentieth and twenty-first century English. This is not the case in Hebrew.

In the New Testament, there are five occurrences in which ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ and ‘stars’ appear in the same sentence.

While these words in English are simply nouns which refer to astronomical bodies, in Hebrew they were simultaneously names for the idols worshipped by the neighboring pagan nations which surrounded Israel. This placed the authors of the Tanakh into tricky situations: In Genesis, the author uses a circumlocution, referring to the “greater light” and the “lesser light” in order to avoid using the words ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ which are actually the names of heathen gods.

Moses uses these three astronomical terms as a circumlocution to indicate idolatry in general (Deuteronomy 4:19).

Although the authors needed to use care to avoid inadvertently seeming to acknowledge the pagan deities, the semantic fields of these Hebrew words also enabled the authors to construct linguistic slights which insult those idols.

The dynamic of these three words is similar but fainter in the New Testament, the Greek words being less directly connected to the mythological Gods. When Matthew quotes Jesus as saying that “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven,” the meaning is not eschatological, as is often supposed, but rather deals with the destruction of the Temple (Matthew 24:29). He explains that this astronomical collapse will occur “after” 70 A.D., when the Roman army plundered Jerusalem. Given that the sun, moon, and stars are not significantly different now than what they were two thousand years ago, a literal physical interpretation of this text is not plausible. What then might Jesus have meant?

It is arguable that Jesus is referring to the decline of the polytheistic mythological systems which were ubiquitous and which were, for the most part, the only alternative to the Judaism of the first three decades of the first century. For practical purposes, at the time, if one wasn’t a follower of the Hebrew God, then one embraced belief systems of the ancient world, all of which acknowledged some set of gods and goddesses. The Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Babylonian, Hindu, Celtic, and other ancient cultures each had their own distinctive mythologies, all of which had, however, at least these two features in common: they were polytheistic, and they lacked a fervent devotional relationship between the individual and a deity. Their rituals were widely observed, but did not reflect a personal piety.

Following the day of Pentecost, in the mid-30s A.D., faith in Jesus spread rapidly, and millions of people abandoned the polytheistic mythologies. The speed and ease with which individuals walked away from those religious systems is expressed in Christ’s statement that the sun was darkened, the moon gave no light, and the stars fell.

It is plausible to assert that in history, rarely or never have so many people discarded a religion or a belief system so quickly and with so little hesitation.

Jesus is reported as using this phraseology in Luke 21:25, where, like the Matthew instance, it occurs in a transition between Christ’s discussion of the destruction of the Temple and his discussion of the end of this world. Many commentators see this remark in Luke as eschatological, but it possibly, plausibly, and even persuasively can be read as applying to high rates of conversion to Christianity in the decades immediately after the Temple’s destruction.

From where did Jesus get this imagery? One source is probably a text (II Kings 23:5) in which King Josiah worked to free the nation from paganism:

He deposed the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem; those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and the moon and the constellations and all the host of the heavens.

In this text, one sees clearly how “sun, moon, stars,” with ‘constellations’ substituting for ‘stars,’ can easily be read as referring to idols. Why the substitution was made is a question for a separate investigation, but the synonymy is clear enough.

Likewise, a couplet from a hymn (Psalm 148:3) alludes to heathenism’s false gods:

Praise him, sun and moon,
praise him, all you shining stars!

The Psalmist performs two tasks at once: first, the couplet is part of a longer listing of all aspects of creation praising God; second, the couplet demotes the idols, which, far from being gods, are creations made by God, and far from being praised, praise Him.

Likewise, Isaiah uses (13:10) these three astronomical words in his description of the judgment and downfall of Babylon. This can be read as not only the physical destruction of the city and empire, but also the discrediting of their idols, which are revealed to be null and void.

In like manner, Ezekiel (32:7) uses a similar structure in discussing the downfall of Egypt. Joel (3:15) does the same in describing the downfall of “the nations” (Tyre, Sidon, Philistia, et al.) which had behaved badly toward the kingdom of Judah, although there is a possible eschatological reading of this couplet. Not only do these nations fall, but their gods are revealed to be nothing.

Jeremiah (31:35) indicates that the sun, moon, and stars are subject and subservient to God, and implies, as Genesis (1:14-15) more explicitly states, that these astronomical bodies are to serve mankind by marking times and seasons, and that humans therefore do not serve them.

Analysis of the following is left as an exercise for the reader:

Elsewhere in the Old Testament, this vocabulary triad appears to be used not in reference to pagan deities (cf. Genesis 37:9, Ecclesiastes 12:2, Joel 2:10).

In the New Testament, too, not every time these three words appear together is a reference to false gods (cf. I Corinthians 15:41; Revelation 8:12, 12:1).

Semitic Semantic Syntactic Structures in Luke: Parallelisms in the Visitation

Although the disciples and evangelists composed the text of the New Testament in Greek, they were influenced by the idioms and structures of Hebrew and Aramaic. Certain structures can be identified as Hebraisms or Semiticisms, translated literally into Greek, creating phrases which would be non-idiomatic for native speakers of Greek in the first century.

One of the core features of Hebrew poetry is parallelisms structured as couplets. In its simplest form, this is two lines of poetry in which the second line echoes the meaning of the first. Consider Psalm 25:4

Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
Teach me your paths.

And Numbers 23:8

How can I curse whom God has not cursed?
How can I denounce whom the Lord has not denounced?

Generally, this repetition of meaning is not accompanied by any phonological similarities between the two lines. The second line needn’t sound like the first line in order for the couplet to qualify as an example of Hebraic parallelism. Indeed, in the majority of examples, the second line usually doesn’t sound like the first.

Readers who are familiar with, e.g., poetry in English or German will need to unlearn the habit of counting syllables and looking for metrical patterns, or listening for rhymes. Those features are rare in Hebrew poetry.

The authors of the New Testament carried this structure into Greek. Parallelisms can be found in many of the NT books, e.g., Matthew 6:24

For either he will hate the one and love the other,
Or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

Surprisingly, Luke, in his Gospel and in Acts, shows traces of this habit, even though many scholars hypothesize that he was a gentile.

If indeed Luke was a gentile, he may have unconsciously picked up the habit of parallelism through immersion in a Semitic linguistic environment; or perhaps he deliberately used the structure in his writing.

Other scholars suggest that Luke was not a gentile, but a Jew raised in a Greek-speaking community, perhaps in Syria. Many of these Hellenized Jews adopted lifestyles quite different from the Jews in Israel, and lifestyles quite similar to the Greeks and Romans. Yet they were exposed to the Tanakh, i.e., to the Old Testament, as they read the Septuagint. In this scenario, Luke would have picked up the habit of parallelism from the LXX.

Whether Luke was a Jew or a gentile, and whether his use of parallelism is intentional or unwitting, clear examples are found in his Gospel and in Acts. Different editions and translations are inconsistent in whether they mark these parallelisms as poetry by line breaks. Often, the parallelisms are printed as normal prose, hiding the fact that they are poetic.

These verses from chapter one (1:32-36) of Luke’s Gospel, in which the angel Gabriel speaks, are printed as prose in many editions, but they are clearly Greek clauses which follow the rules of Hebrew poetry:

He will be called the Son of the Highest;
And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David.

And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever,
And of his kingdom there will be no end.

And

The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
And the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age;
And this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren.

In the Magnificat (1:1:46-55), Mary replies to the angel, and her words are likewise often constructed in parallel couplets:

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

Mary also expresses herself in another type of parallelism, in which the second line in the couplet is not a direct repetition of the idea in the first line, but rather an extension or development of the first line, or a re-framing of the first line’s idea by showing this idea from another perspective:

He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

God has “shown strength” in the first line; this “strength” is detailed and amplified when we learn that it was shown in the course of scattering.

The couplet which immediately follows shows parallelism by a sort of double negation:

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estates.

To “bring down the mighty” is to “exalt the humble” — the two are mirror images of each other; they are complementary shapes, like a bronze casting and the mold in which it was cast. The next couplet has the same schema:

He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.

Each couplet speaks of God’s action toward the powerful and the vulnerable. The two couplets themselves form a sort of meta-parallelism and a chiastic structure. The first couplet begins with God’s action toward the powerful and moves to His action toward the vulnerable; the second couplet treats the two in reverse order.

Chiasmus on the level of a two-line couplet, as well as larger chiastic structures which can include many lines, work well with Hebraistic parallelism, and are often found in Scripture generally, but not often in Luke.

Even if Luke was a gentile, and even if he composed his text in Greek, both of which seem likely, his composition is still shaped, consciously or unwittingly, by the semitic literary structures which he must have frequently encountered.

Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Realms: Dual Citizenship

A microscopic percentage of the world’s population holds dual citizenship. Although the topic of dual citizenship is popular in casual conversation, few people have it. Many people mistakenly believe that they have dual citizenship. It can be established only by the appropriate paperwork from two separate countries.

For those who truly have dual citizenship, it has both advantages and disadvantages. Travel is easier with two passports. Dual citizens have twice as many civil rights as other people. But they are subject to being drafted into two armies instead of one, and sometimes have to pay more taxes, because they are paying to two countries.

By analogy, many people have a spiritual form of dual citizenship. Martin Luther explained that there are two domains: the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. These two realms both lay claim to a person’s life. Having already received a legal status from a worldly kingdom, people owe taxes and obedience. Having already received eternal salvation from God, people owe thanks and praise to God, and kindness to one’s fellow human being.

Just as a person with two nationalities carries two passports, so spiritually a person wears two hats: simultaneously living and working in the Kingdom of God and in the kingdom of this world, as Erwin Mülhaupt writes:

Ein gläubiger Christ gehört hier auf Erden zugleich beiden Reichen an, so wie ein Christ zugleich Kirchengemeinderat und Polizist, zugleich Vater und Lehrer, zugleich Christ und Richter sein kann.

A Christian moves back and forth between the two roles. In a time of worship, he is humble and does not coerce others; in his worldly role, perhaps as an employee of a governmental regulatory agency, he imposes his decisions on others. Quoting Luther (WA 39 II, pg. 81, line 17), Mülhaupt points to the fact that the Christian in both realms is a subordinate — a subject in the etymological sense — to an authority:

So hat auch ein Christ »zweierlei Bürgerrecht, in dem er im Glauben Christus untertan ist, dem Kaiser aber mit seinem Leib.«

This recalls Luther’s dictum in Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, where he explains that “A Christian man is the most free master of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.”

This paradox served Luther in that text as he explored Christian living; a similar paradox serves in the investigation of the two realms. It is a paradox, not a contradiction, because it can be systematically sorted into consistent applications, as Mülhaupt notes:

Das ist kein Widerspruch, weil ein Christ nicht nur bei seinesgleichen, sondern auch unter den härteren Bedingungen des weltlichen Regiments zu Dienst und Liebe verpflichtet bleibt.

The doctrine of the two kingdoms prevents any pattern of Christians withdrawing from the world, although this doctrine serves other purposes as well. The doctrine pushes the Christian into the worldly realm and demands that he take action there. Luther is steering away from monasticism and asceticism. Avoiding the world is bad enough, but it’s even worse when it is done in alleged obedience to God. The Christian is called not only be in the world, but to do something there, as Mülhaupt reports:

Gott will keine Weltflucht und keinen Rückzug auf die eigene Innerlichkeit, namentlich nicht aus angeblich religiösen Gründen.

Luther offers (WA 40 III, pg. 207, lines 30ff) a list of prophets whom God sent into political and economic situations, to speak to, and interact with, the government’s leaders. That such leaders were princes and kings in the past, and presidents and prime ministers in the present, makes no difference. God uses His people to steer the events of history; to this end, they must be involved in worldly matters.

Those who withdraw from the world, Luther writes (WA 57, part 2, pg. 107, line 10), fail to love allegedly for the sake of love: they fail to be pious, claiming that isolation is piety.

Thus the doctrine of the two realms gets to the core of the Gospel: it shows Christians how, when, and where to show true charity, whether in the Kingdom of God or the kingdom of this world, as Mülhaupt concludes:

Die Pflicht zur Nächstenliebe gilt in beiden Reichen. Was sollte hieran zu überholen sein?

This doctrine seems, at first glance, confined to politics and government, but it unfolds to shape all aspects of the life of faith.

Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Realms: Both Kingdoms Are Necessary

Martin Luther explains his ‘doctrine of the two realms’ by explaining the unique and peculiar features, both of the kingdom of this world, and of the kingdom of God. He continues by examining the interplay between the two, and explains why both are necessary, why both can and must complete each other, and why neither is sufficient by itself. The two realms complement each other.

Erwin Mülhaupt notes that Luther first advocates a clear distinction between the two realms and second summarizes the tasks of each: the kingdom of God is to make people pious, and the kingdom of this world is to establish peace and oppose evil deeds:

Beide Regimente sind nötig, beide müssen und können sich ergänzen, keines ist für sich allein genug. Daher der berühmten Sätze Luthers in seine für die Zweireichelehre grundlegenden Schrift ‘Von weltlicher Obrigkeit, wie weit man ihr Gehorsam schuldig sei’ 1523: ‘man muß die beiden Regimente mit Fleiß unterscheiden und beide bestehen lassen, eines, das fromm macht, das andre, das äußerlich Frieden schafft und bösen Werken wehrt.

The word ‘theocracy’ has caused much trouble over the centuries. To unravel the confusion, it helps to remember that what is commonly called a ‘theocracy’ is actually an ecclesiocracy or a hierocracy. God is perfect. The church, its leaders, and its individual members remain flawed, imperfect, and sinful. Luther rejects the idea of any kind of ecclesiocracy or hierocracy — i.e., he rejects that which is commonly called a ‘theocracy’ because it is not “God’s reign” despite what the name literally implies.

What Luther envisions is perhaps a cosmic version of the concept of ‘check and balance’ or ‘separation of powers’ as the reader is familiar with it from history. Neither the realm of this world nor Christ’s kingdom is to have dictatorial powers, because neither is perfect. Because Christ is perfect, it may seem counterintuitive to say that Christ’s kingdom is imperfect. But Christ has welcomed into His kingdom people who are both sinful and sinners.

Luther clearly rejects the idea of all power being concentrated in a single organization or person, as Erwin Mülhaupt explains:

Luther lehnt also eine Ein-Reich-Lehre ab, ob es die Lehre von einem Reich mit dem Papst an der Spitze ist oder von einem Reich mit einem Politiker an der Spitze.

Each of the two spheres is in some sense limited or incomplete. Luther reminds the kingdom of this world that it cannot create faith and love by means of laws, violence, and administration — which are its only instruments — and therefore cannot create a paradise on earth. He reminds the spiritual kingdom that it cannot, with its means, bring about order, peace, justice, and prosperity.

Erwin Mülhaupt poses a rhetorical question: Is it obsolete to remind each of the two kingdoms to remain in its assigned role? To stay in its lane?

Er mahnte vielmehr das geistliche Regiment daran, daß es mit seinen Mitteln allein Ordnung, Frieden, Recht, Wohlstand nicht erreichen kann, und umgekehrt das weltliche Regiment daran, daß es mit Gesetz Gewalt und Organisation keinen Glauben und keine Liebe schaffen und also niemals ein Paradies oder das Reich Gottes auf Erden erreichen kann. Frage: ist es überholt, in dieser Weise sowohl das geistliche Regiment oder die Kirche als auch das weltliche Regiment oder die Politiker bescheiden an ihre Grenzen zu erinnern, weil ‘keins ohne das andre gnug ist in der Welt?’

Luther had already preemptively answered ​​Mülhaupt’s question. The worldly realm, by itself, produces mere hypocrisy, because even if it issues decrees which correspond exactly to God’s own commands, the people cannot be properly pious without the Holy Spirit in their hearts, even if they do the most magnificent works. In Christ’s realm, by itself, evil is unrestrained, because the world can neither accept nor understand Christ’s kingdom, as Luther writes:

Denn ohne Christi geistliches Regiment kann niemand fromm werden vor Gott durchs weltliche Regiment. So geht Christi Regiment nicht über alle Menschen, sondern allezeit gibt es der Christen am wenigsten und sie sind mitten unter den Unchristen. Wenn nun weltliches Regiment oder Gesetze allein regiert, da muss eitel Heuchelei sein, wenn’s auch gleich Gottes Gebot selber wären, denn ohne den heiligen Geist im Herzen wird niemand recht fromm, wenn er auch die feinsten Werke tun mag. Wenn aber das geistliche Regiment allein regiert über Land und Leute, da wird der Bosheit der Zaum abgenommen und aller Büberei Raum gegeben, denn die gemeine Welt kann es weder annehmen noch verstehen.

In this way, Luther arrives at his conclusion, that both realms are necessary.