1040.According to Gogarten

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According to Gogarten (Luthers Theologie: 51),
... das Erste Gebot, wie Luther es versteht, [ist1 nicht ein Gebot wie aIle anderen. Denn der, der in ihm spricht, ist nicht nur und durchaus nicht in erster Linie einer, der gebietet, sondern del', der gibt, und zwar sich selbst, indem er sich Init seinem schopferischen Wort und darmn in der Fillle seines gottlichen Wesens dem Menschen zuwendet. Das meint Luther, wenn er in einer Glosse zu dem Ersten Gebot aus dem Jahre 1530 hochst paradox sagt, dieses sei inso£ern recht eigentlich das Erste Gebot, weil nichts in ihm geboten werde. Es sei die VerheiBung, die die QueUe alIer VerheiBungen ist und das Haupt aller Religionen und aller \Neisheit, und es begreife das Evangelium und Christus in sich ([WA] 30 II, 358, 2).
But if the promise that is "the source of all prOlnises," and so on, is God's
promise in the First Commandment, "I am the Lord your God"; and if this
promise already belongs to, because the First COlmnandlnent is constitutive of,
the lex naturalis/lex naturiE, then every human being has always already received
this primal promise in standing under the natural law. But, then, are we not to
infer that what Luther expressly says of the promise made in baptism already
applies, &nd has to apply, to this primal promise?
UJust as the truth ofthis divine promise, once promised over us, continues until death, so our faith in it ought never to cease, but to be nourished and strengthened until death by the continual remembrance of this promise made to us in baptism.... [T]he truth of the prOlnise once made remains steadfast, always ready to receive us back with open arms when we return (LW, 36: 59).
It seems ever clearer to Ine that what Luther says already in his Lectures
on Romans-that even the heathen would have been saved had they simply
stayed with and worshiped God as God had manifested Godself to them and to
all human beings-is anything but an isolated statement that can be safely
ignored. It is, in fact, an early statement of a view that COlnes to expression again
and again, attesting the extent to which Luther, in his way, understood the
Christian understanding of human existence in something like what Maurice
would call its full "length and breadth."
6 Nlarch 2010