Critical Theory and the Problem of Grace

What Luther's Law & Gospel framework helped me see about Critical Theory

TL;DR: After reading books on Critical Theory and months immersed in Lutheran Law & Gospel theology through the Iowa Preachers Project, I realized something: Critical Theory often functions much like Luther’s understanding of the Law. At its best, it names injustice, exposes sin, and reveals where individuals and institutions fall short. In that sense, it is valuable and even necessary. But like the Law, it cannot save. It cannot forgive. It cannot offer grace. My concern is not that CRT identifies racism or structural injustice—often it does so quite effectively. Rather, my concern is that it can become a never-ending cycle of “do more” with no clear sense of redemption or enoughness.

CRT is the law

Over the past year, among many other books and topics, I’ve spent a fair amount of time reading works on Critical Theory, anti-racism, disability theology, and related subjects. Along the way, I’ve found myself both appreciating and questioning what I was reading.

Then this past week, while attending the Iowa Preachers Project in Charlottesville, Virginia, something clicked.

What if Critical Theory functions much like Luther’s understanding of the Law?

If so, that might explain both why I find it so valuable and why I sometimes find it so exhausting.

It tells us what is wrong.

It names injustice.

It reveals where we fall short.

But can it offer grace?

A Crash Course in Law & Gospel

This past week I was in Charlottesville, VA for the last in-person gathering of the 2025-2026 Iowa Preachers Project.

Being a part of the project has been a powerful experience, if only because I’ve frankly felt for a long time that I didn’t know what I was doing there, but now at the end I think, simply put, God did.

Additionally, I received quite the crash-course on the concept of “Law & Gospel,” a thoroughly Lutheran concept, which I, having little-to-no Lutheran theological background, really struggled to grasp at first.

The Iowa Preachers Project (IPP) is led by Dr. Ken Jones (The Undomesticated Preacher), a retired professor from Grandview University in Des Moines, IA and Reformation scholar, so while the IPP is itself quite ecumenical in participants, its theology is strongly undergirded by Lutheran theology and especially Law & Gospel.

For those unfamiliar, like me, with the concept, I’ll do my best to explain it here simply. And, for my Lutheran or Law & Gospel readers, please forgive me if I’m not getting it quite right. I do welcome your feedback and insights.

But, drawing from Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation from 1518, the Law & Gospel concept is perhaps best and most simply explained in thesis 26:

“The law says ‘do this,’ and it is never done. Grace says, ‘believe in this,’ and everything is already done.”

Let me also add this. My only real exposure (if you could call it that) was during my Baptist upbringing and college years, where the Law was regularly discounted. Baptists certainly had (and still have—seeing the news about the SBC banning female pastors) their own version of “law,” but within my sphere of Baptists, there certainly was a bit of antinomianism, to use a big word correctly (I think).

To say it bluntly, the Law & Gospel concept does not dismiss the Law. It simply recognizes that the Law cannot save.

Again, from Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, thesis 1 states:

“the law of God, the most salutary doctrine of life, cannot advance people on their way to righteousness, but rather hinders them.”

In short, the Law cannot save.

And that’s where something clicked for me.

What Law Does

In past Substacks, I’ve explored and interacted with concepts from Critical Theory, beginning with a book titled Critical Dilemma, which while I found intriguing, I felt went too far in frankly a sort of antinomianism.

What I want to suggest here is that Critical Theory (and I’m going to use that as an umbrella term for related concepts such as Critical Race Theory, anti-racism, Queer Theory, and others) functions very much like Law.

And I mean that as both a compliment and a critique.

I say that because Law is not without value.

Jason Micheli, again assuming I understand him correctly, argues that the Law is quite good because it points to our need for a Savior. Basically, it shows how it is impossible for us to justify ourselves. I think this is what Luther gets at in thesis 18, that “certain people must utterly despair of [their] own ability before they are prepared to receive the grace of Christ.”

In my time with the IPP, I’ve heard the Law described as a “curb” that keeps us from driving off the road.

In their book Law and Gospel: A Theology for Sinners (and Saints), McDonald, Richardson, and Zahl talk about the Law being a good thing.

They write that the Law points out that something is amiss. And when the Law is preached, “we must listen” (46).

CRT as Law

So for instance, in another recent book I read, Black and Catholic, which examines structural racism within the Roman Catholic Church in America, author Tia Noelle Pratt observes:

“Societal systems, whether religious or secular, are organized to create, maintain, and perpetuate the power structures of their founders and successors of the same ilk.” (103)

And again:

“The sociological structure of the U.S. Catholic Church is white and racist. As discussed throughout the following chapters, the church’s structure was constructed this way in order to protect and perpetuate whiteness as the fundamental core of the church.” (12)

What I’m trying to say is that in many respects Critical Theory functions like Law—it names how we should live with one another and identifies where we fall short.

Pratt, using an anti-racist or Critical Race Theory framework, details quite clearly that the Roman Catholic Church is not living up to its own professed beliefs.

It is falling short.

That CRT is able to do this is ultimately a good thing in my opinion.

Again, I go to the words of Disabling Leadership by Draper, Michel, and Mae:

“We do not fear or demonize critical studies, nor do we end in deconstruction alone, but rather we use critical studies to help us describe the kingdoms of this world that will fall before the kingdom of God.” (20)

Author and professor George Yancey has also acknowledged that anti-racism rightly names systemic and structural injustice.¹

To again borrow from McDonald, Richardson, and Zahl:

“the Law commands that we love perfectly.” (62)

The Problem of “Do More”

The problem is not that CRT identifies injustice.

The problem is that identifying injustice is not the same thing as redemption.

What Yancey points out is that anti-racism often functions as a kind of law (my words), in that it ends up saying, a la Luther, “do this and live.”

But law, if I’m understanding Luther’s thesis 2 correctly, cannot do that.

And, even worse perhaps, human works which “always appear attractive and good... are ...likely to be mortal sins.” (thesis 3)

Again, McDonald, Richardson, and Zahl write:

“Whether or not an utterance can be called law depends on how it is heard, not how it is meant.” (18)

And:

“Perhaps it is enough to say that the Law reveals that we need to be forgiven; the Gospel announces we have been forgiven. Full stop.” (65)

So this is really it.

While CRT is good in that it names where we have done wrong and need to be forgiven, it offers no forgiveness other than “keep doing this” in hopes that you might live because, ultimately, as my friend, colleague, and fellow IPP graduate Dennis Sanders says:

“there is no grace.”

Remember thesis 26:

“The law says ‘do this,’ and it is never done.”

And again, from McDonald, Richardson, and Zahl:

“As with all law-based barometers of self-worth ... there is no ‘enough.’” (66)

A Small Example

Let me add one recent example.

Recently, a reader posted a comment on one of my posts questioning why I would be against gerrymandering to counter gerrymandering elsewhere.

“The stakes are too high” was essentially this person’s argument.

The commenter advised me to read voices of color, especially from the Black Church tradition.

When I replied that I actually had read some voices, I was then directed to read more voices, (most of whom I actually have read) and especially CRT-type voices.

Though I refrained from engaging in the conversation further, it felt very much like Law to me.

There was no “enough.” Only more.

Read more.

Do more.

Learn more.

As Yancey has pointed out, it can begin to feel like “do as I say.”

No grace.

Law Can Diagnose. The Gospel Can Redeem.

Again, I want to be careful here and not throw the baby out with the bathwater, sort of like I felt the authors of Critical Dilemma ultimately did.

Rather, what I’m trying to say is that Critical Theory, valuable as it may be as Law, cannot save us, and I think it is sometimes assumed to be capable of such.

But like the Law, when it becomes apparent that one can never fully live up to its standards, people eventually throw up their hands—not necessarily because they reject justice, but because they experience only condemnation and never grace.

And if we know anything about the Gospel, it is this:

“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)

Should we sin so that grace may abound? God forbid (Romans 6).

Should we knowingly participate in racist structures because we are forgiven?

Absolutely not.

But at some point, people want good news. People need good news.

And again from McDonald, Richardson, and Zahl:

“The Gospel is... Good News because it addresses our plight with rescue, deliverance, salvation, and redemption.” (47)

So in the end, I think CRT is important and valuable.

To write it off entirely would be a mistake.

Like the Law, it often tells the truth.

It exposes injustice.

It names sin.

It reveals where individuals and institutions fall short.

But as Draper, Michel, and Mae remind us:

“critical studies alone does not sow the seeds of new life.” (19)

Critical Theory can diagnose.

The Gospel can redeem.

1. https://churchandmain.org/episode/the-good-and-bad-of-dei-with-george-yancey-episode-231