Category Archives: Martin Luther

The Early Aristotelianization of Reformed and Lutheran Theology

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Barth on the stillbirth of the Protestant Reformation. He underscores a reality that I have been, we have been writing about for years, in regard to the scholasticism Reformed and Lutheran. That is to note, the reception of the Aristotelian mantle that had, ironically, brought to formation the very Church, and her doctrina, that Luther was seeking to reform. Unfortunately, very early on in the second and third generation reformers (on both the Reformed and Lutheran sides) imbibed the theological categories that had originally led to the status of the Roman Church that Luther and others believed needed to be reformed from within.

Face to face with the difficulty of both schools, the Reformed no less than the Lutherans, made a formal borrowing at this point from a philosophy and theology which had been re-discovered and re-asserted at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuriesā€”the philosophy of Aristotle and the theology of Aquinas. The borrowing consisted in the adoption and introduction of a specific terminology to describe the two partners whose activities are understood and represented in the doctrine of the concursus [accompanying] in terms of a co-operation, the activity of God on the one side and that of the creature on the other. The concept which was adopted and introduced was that of ā€œcause.ā€ For it was by developing the dialectic of this concept that they both effected the differentiation of themselves on the one side and the other, and also decided the difference which already existed at this point within the Evangelical faith itself. This, then, is the controlling concept for the form assumed by Evangelical dogmatics in this and in all kindred topics.[1]

This theological arrangement, ended up thrusting people back upon themselves (as TF Torrance phrases it frequently), by thinking of a God-world relation from within a competitive frame. God above, the great decretal ā€œcauser,ā€ and the human below, the striver attempting to meet the conditions of Godā€™s causal-ness (this sounds something like what we see in a Federal or Covenant theology). In this frame we end up with a bilateral, yet asymmetric, relationship between God and humanity, such that God decrees certain things to obtain, whilst the elect of God must discern these things, and again, meet the conditions of the decree; of the covenant of works released through the so-called covenant of grace.

The aforementioned reflects just one example of how this ā€˜causalā€™ based relationship gets formulated and expressed. For Barth this would be a theology of the decretum absolutum (absolute decree of predestination, from within a classically construed Reformed theology, in particular). The Lutherans have their own expressions of this type of decretal theology. For a contemporary example see Jordan Cooperā€™s work.

[1] Karl Barth,Ā Church Dogmatics III/3 Ā§49 [098] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionĀ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 97.

The Vultures Have No Knowledge of God’s Kingdom: Living in the Theology of the Cross

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forĀ we walk by faith, not byĀ sight . . .[1]

It is certain that man must utterly despair of his own ability before he is prepared to receive the grace of Christ. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the Ā»invisibleĀ« things of God as though they were clearly Ā»perceptible in those things which have actually happenedĀ« (Rom. 1:20; cf. 1 Cor 1:21-25), he deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross. A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is. That wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened.[2]

Above we have both the Holy Spirit/Apostle Paul and Martin Luther underscoring the same thing. That is, the Christian, in the far country of this world, in this in-between time, doesnā€™t see, doesnā€™t endure, doesnā€™t know, lest it be by seeing the things that are unseen; the things re-created in the blood drenched soil of the cross of Jesus Christ. It is when the seed falls into the ground and dies that new life, a new creation comes into existence. The vision the Christian operates from comes from this new order of the apocalyptic and disruptive reality of God become man in Jesus Christ. The profane has no quarter here. This seems radical, foolish and weak even, but indeed, it is the via crucis. When daily life, even at its deepest possible reality, is understood as the measure and boundary of what and who can be known, all that we end up with is a superficial and immanentist knowledge of things. But the reality of the world, as Barth says, the reality of the external world (i.e., creation) is the inner life of the covenant bonded between God and humanity in the hypostatic union of God the Son with humanity in the visceral and concrete humanity of the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ. The Christian reads reality from this type of unio mystica (ā€˜mystical unionā€™), which indeed is not of this world, even while being fully and freely for it.

If the Christian misses this most basic insight, then they will be well on their way to living a highly disillusioned life as a Christian. They will attempt to force things into place that are impossible to force, simply because the ultimate ground of reality is in fact a Miracle. And yet, this isnā€™t an abstract ethereal thing; i.e., as has already been noted, it is grounded in the concrete of Godā€™s life for the world in the flesh and blood humanity of Jesus Christ. This ought to lead the knower into the realization that they sit in a vulnerable place, as if a newborn babe thrown to the side of the road in its motherā€™s afterbirth, waiting either to be eaten alive by the circling vultures, or instead, to be picked up, dressed in swaddling cloths, put to rest in the manger, and finally ascended to the right hand of the Father. It is indeed this radical. The vultures have no quarter in the kingdom of God.

[1] Holy Spirit and the Apostle Paul, II Corinthians 5.7 (Macedonia: GNT, 55/56 AD).

[2] Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation 1518.

What is Love? Against the Cultural and Psychological Conceptions in the Church

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Helmut Thielicke makes an excellent observation as he engages with the ā€œconscienceā€ as that is distilled in the epistle to the Romans. He notes that there really is no such thing as an autonomous conscience. For Thielicke the conscience, as understood biblically, is either going to be ā€œriddenā€ by a fallen broken human nature, or it is going to be ridden and shaped by Godā€™s triune life; there is no via media or Swiss neutral ground. And it is within this understanding, which we might say is the Pauline understanding, wherein Thielicke will argue that the point of contact between God and humanity is not resident within a native (to an abstract personā€™s) conscience, but instead it is only as God in Christ circumscribes our humanity with His; it is only as Christ condemns sin in His body for us that we come to have the capaciousness to know and be for Him.

Thielicke writes:

We see here at the same time the consequences of Roman Catholic anthropology, which we have already discussed in some detail in connection with the doctrine of the imago Dei. If the human person is not understood in relationship, but instead is given ontic autonomy as the bearer of demonstrable components of nature and of ontic substances of grace, then loving with oneā€™s whole heart can no longer be understood personally in terms of existence in fellowship with God. It has to be understood instead as the ontically demonstrable content of the heart, as a psychodynamic state of being filled with loving impulses. The ontology of man leads at once to psychology, and indeed to a theological-speculative kind of psychology. Once we enter upon this path, we cannot avoid the conclusion that in terms of psychical structure manā€™s ā€œinfirmityā€ā€”i.e., the fact that soul is necessarily filled with shifting contents, with varied impressions and desires as well as with tasks and duties which claim our attention and devotionā€”manā€™s ā€œinfirmityā€ is completely incompatible with his being totally filled with love for God. Love for God as a psychical ā€œcontentā€ then enters at once into competition with other potential contents of the soul. In any case loveā€™s claim to be total is wholly illusoryā€”until these competing contents of the psyche are eliminated in the uninterrupted and undeflected vision of God in the life to come. Thus the command to love loses its unconditional character the moment we enter the ontological-psychological plane of thought. For on that level it is no longer possible to grasp the personal category of love.

It is precisely at this point that we can find help in the formulation of Luther whereby the subject of faithā€”in this context we may with equal propriety say: the subject of loveā€”is a ā€œmathematical pointā€ [punctum mathematicum]. Luther uses this extreme formulation to combat the fatal psychologizing of faith and love. He refuses to regard the subject of faith and love as merely an extended psychical tract filled with diverse forces and aspirations. There is thus no place for such questions as whether we are supposed to believe or to love at every single moment of our lives, or how such permanence is to be understood psychologically. Faith and love are characterized by their object, not by the psychical accomplishment of believing and loving. I confess him who loved me, and I believe in him who has given me his promises.

Thus the life of piety has as its goal not that all our time should be filled up with ā€œconsciousā€ faith and love, i.e., with conscious acts of believing and loving, so that everything else is dismissed from our minds as we move to at least approximate that total filling of the psyche. On the contrary, Luther recommends periods of prayer and devotion merely as ā€œsignsā€ that my time is under God, not as devices for filling up my timeā€”at least partiallyā€”with thoughts of love and faith. The object of my faith , Godā€™s love and righteousness, is still effectively present even when I ā€œfeelā€ nothing, even when I am ā€œemptyā€ or terrorized by doubt.[1]

As Thielicke presciently identifies (along with Luther): as the root goes, so goes the tree. If the root is rotten, the tree will be rotten. If the root is healthy and vibrant, the tree will be healthy and vibrant. You will notice that Thielicke is really critiquing the Roman Aristotelian (and insofar as that is picked up in Post Reformed and Lutheran orthodox theology) categories of thinking of grace in terms of habitus (disposition and its habituizing), and as substance and qualities. In other words, he is critiquing the Thomist synthesis wherein grace becomes its own independent substance resident in an abstract self-possessing humanity. He is rightfully arguing that when such categories are deployed, in regard to thinking about an ostensible notion of Godā€™s grace, that the person under such notion-izing is flittering about in an inward curved movement of the soul upon the soul in a striving attempt to make their innards, their ā€˜feelingsā€™ somehow correspond with what they speculate, what they perceive to be Godā€™s love, Godā€™s affection, Godā€™s feeling. But according to Thielicke, to use a Torrancean (TFT) phrase, ā€œthis is only to throw the person back upon themselves.ā€

What Thielicke is offering as the alternative to the aforementioned is the biblical reality wherein humanity, and its conscience therein, is understood to be grounded in an alien conscience; but one that has been brought into union with us, insofar that God in Christ has brought us into union with Him, and His vicarious humanity for us. The problem that Thielicke vis-Ć -vis Luther is identifying is that the human propensity is to constantly think itself as the prius to all else; so the ā€˜turn to the subjectā€™ that modernity has sophisticated for human consumption.

There are multiples of implications to all of the aforementioned, particularly as we think about the state of the Christian church in the West (and elsewhere). We can immediately see the effects of what happens when the church ingests a psychologized self wherein people, Christians in their spirituality, are reduced to performing for themselves and others. When genuinely triune love is not what constrains us, as that is truly actualized for us in Christ, then all that we ultimately have is a love within the ā€˜accidentsā€™ of our being that we can strive to produce and express in ā€œsacrosanctā€ efforts to demonstrate that while we were yet sinners we died for Christā€™s sake. That is to say, as Thielicke has: that when love is thought of in philosophical rather than personalist terms what we necessarily end up with is a self-driven and cultivated notion of love that is not necessarily at the core of our beings coram Deo (before God).

[1] Helmut Thielicke,Ā Theological Ethics: FoundationsĀ (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 342ā€“43.

St. Martin Luther, the Christian Humanist Against the Glory Theologians

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Definitions are important; if for no other reason but to understand what something means. Context provides meaning, and thus definition, for words; whether that is in sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books, so on and so forth. When attempting to understand where a particular theologian lies, as far as classification, within the alternative types of being a theologian, it is important that we get a handle on the definitions used to ascertain that. In the medieval period, generally, a theologian could be classified as a scholastic theologian, or a Christian humanist; or potentially, both, depending on the way someone enters into the reconstruction of said history. There are general markers that broadly characterize a scholastic theologian from a Christian humanist theologian. 1) A scholastic theologian was, methodologically, committed to the dialectical methodology. This methodology entailed a presentation of: a) thesis, b) antithesis, c) synthesis. Beyond its formality, more materially, the scholastic was often an Aristotelian, and later, after Thomas Aquinasā€™ synthesis of Aristotle with Christian dogmatics, a Thomist. 2) A Christian humanist theologian was typified by an attempt to ad fontes (go back to the sources, behind the layers and accretions of beliefs the scholastics had developed), with a focus on understanding the original biblical languages (so getting beyond Latin); and by way of methodology, the Christian humanist didnā€™t necessarily attempt to synthesize ideas. The humanist believed, by reference to their set of literary and linguistic and historical tools, that they could arrive at a scenario, when deciding on the validity and soundness of this or that theological loci, that the theologian should be able to say: Yes or No.

The above is the world that Martin Luther, and the magisterial reformers in general, were birthed into. There is argument on whether or not Luther was more scholastic or more humanist in his approach. For my money, Luther, fit more broadly, within the school of the Christian humanists (we could refer to Lorenzo Valla here to underscore the genesis of the humanist way). Some would argue that to drive too hard of a wedge between the scholastics and the humanists in the late medieval and early reformation period, would be to engage in presenting a false dilemma. These folks would prefer that we understand that these ā€œschoolsā€ were not as nice and tidy as we might make them today; that there was an organic crossover between the schools, materials, and methods of the two camps. Be that as it may, Brian Gerrish, via Charles Parteeā€™s engagement, believes Luther fits the Christian humanist, or even the biblical humanist classification; as both a theologian and reformer of the Latin church.

Brian A. Gerrish raises ā€œthe possibility that perhaps Luther may be, indeed should be, classed with the so-called ā€˜Biblical Humanistsā€ [sic] A sounder basis for excluding Luther, not from humanism in general, but from the notion of Christian philosophy in particular, is the fact that Luther insists that philosophy and theology should be carefully distinguished. Luther sees philosophy as the theology of the heathens. With this understanding Luther is less interested in studying philosophy with appreciative intent than others.[1]

Theologically, we might suggest that Lutherā€™s infamous theologia crucis (ā€˜theology of the crossā€™) fits well with the Christian or Biblical humanist orientation. It rejects the philosophical and speculative measures deployed by the theologians of glory, and instead focuses on the concreto of Godā€™s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ; particularly as the character of God is given full magnification in the Sonā€™s ā€œobedience of death, even unto death on the cross.ā€ The theology of the cross, repudiates speculating about a God up yonder, and entrenches itself within the Light of Light of God that is given for the world in Godā€™s life for the world, in the person of God for the world in Jesus Christ.

This type of orientation, as the one we have just ostensibly observed in Luther, is present in someone like John Calvin; and beyond, into the modern period, we see this mood picked up by folks like Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance, respectively. It is this orientation that has drawn me to such theologians. I am, broadly speaking, a proponent of a form of Chrisitan humanism, as described in this post; and as illustrated by a suggestive proposal with reference to St. Martin Luther. So let it be written, so let it be done.

[1] Charles Partee, Calvin and Classical Philosophy (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1977), 12-13.

Luther Against the neo-Thomists and Performance Based Salvations

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Performance based theories of salvation continue to plague the evangelical Protestant landscapes. Whether that be funded by a Reformed background (inclusive of Reformed proper, and Arminianism et al.), or Lutheran (either orthodox, and/or mainstream). When people are offered a notion of God wherein He is understood as a juridical God, one who relates to the world through a covenant of works/grace, or other like frameworks, at which point law-keeping sublimates grace into its image, those under this specter live a life of deep angst, always wondering if they are going to finally measure up (or persevere) unto the final reward: eternal life. What a sad state of affairs; this is not what Martin Luther was aiming toward when he protested against the scholastic theology of his Roman day. Luther internalized, unlike many, in fact, the requirements of a preparationist soteriology, wherein he was in a constant state of pilgrimage, striving towards the final merit of salvation; that is through deep introspection, and flagellation of his physical body. He believed God, under the conditions set forth by an Aristotelian-ly conceived notion of God (actus purus), hated him. He thought this because he felt the deep ditch between his own sinfulness up against the Holy God. And within this frame his only hope was to cooperate with God, through the means of grace dispensed by the Holy Roman Catholic church, to the point that he might finally assuage Godā€™s judgment by somehow achieving the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The problem with Lutherā€™s system though, and that of the late medieval/scholastic church, is that there was never a time where this type of assurance of achievement could ever be reached. And so, Luther tormentuously labored under this great weight of despondency and failed effort before the God who hated him (or thatā€™s how Luther felt).

So, when Luther was encouraged by his father in the faith, Johann von Staupitz, to read the New Testament for himself in Greek, Luther was introduced to the strange new world of the Bible/NT (to borrow a phrase from Barth). Here he came to understand that the Christian could only be found righteous before the living God as that person was in participation with, in union with the risen Christ. Luther came to understand that he could do absolutely nothing to achieve this righteousness; that his good works, and self-flagellation could never bring him any closer to eternal life. Because of the breath of Holy Scripture, Luther, over against the scholastic theology of his Augustinianism, came to realize that he could only rest in the grace of God alone, that was stood in by faith alone in Christ alone. Once he was struck with this lightning bolt of revelation, as it were, his fears and anxieties melted away, only to be replaced with a boldness before the living God, the church, and the world; to the point that Luther would stare down the barrel of the Holy Roman gun of the papacy itself.

From a materially theological point of view Luther came to understand that he had to stand up against the Thomist/Aristotelian anthropology and soteriology that had led him, and so many others in the society, into the dregs of the belief that God was angry and hated him and them. Simeon Zahl writes the following with reference to this Luther[an] theological milieu:

More specifically, from Luther onwards Protestants have argued that one of the chief problems with the sort of model articulated in neo-Thomist soteriology is that it is fundamentally overoptimistic about Christian ethical transformation. The Protestant argument against a soteriology focused on the ontological infusion in the Christian of sanctifying grace is that, for all its intellectual elegance and coherence, it simply does not work very well in practice, and certainly not well enough to function as the core dynamic through which salvation comes about. Protestant spirituality is traditionally focused very substantially, especially where salvation is concerned, on what we might call the ā€œrhetoric of passivity.ā€ What I mean by this is the sense that much of the force of the Christian message is precisely its efficacious protest, in and through the work of Christ, against the natural human tendency to freight our day-to-day actions and feelings with soteriological or crypto-soteriological significance. It is just this freighting, basic to the neo-Thomist vision, that Martin Luther found punishing and terrifying rather than inspiring or transformative or productive of meaning.[1]

Precisely because of the retrieval movement underway within, mostly, evangelical Reformed theology, many Christians in the churches, unbeknownst to them, are being hampered by the recovery of the very theological themes that Luther et al. was attempting to thwart with reference to thinking God under the conditions set forth by Thomas Aquinas, and his reception among Post Reformed orthodox theologies.

All the aforementioned to state: the original Protestant, Martin Luther, had no intention of starting a reformation that would ultimately stillbirth, by collapsing back into the very Thomistic/Aristotelian themes he felt so burdened and tortured by. Luther desired that all would finally be set free from the stringencies provided for by thinking of God in terms of the Big Brain in the Sky, who also happened to be the Great-Law-Giver in the sky, with no grace or mercy for the fallen and bruised reeds of the world. Luther attempted to perform for his salvation, just as the Pharisee, who became an Apostle, Paul was attempting to do under his own distorted understanding of appeasing God through law-keeping (even if the conditions between Lutherā€™s theological times and Paulā€™s were not exactly parallel).

Christian, if you are feeling like a Luther, beat down by false doctrines of God, undone by performance and law-based understandings of salvation; take heart! The Christ has come to not only declare, but to in fact be the Good News of great joy, of great peace, for the whole world. His is a life of absolute and immediate grace that brings the wayfarers into the heavenly throne room, where the burden is light. Jesus, as Luther came to understand, has already performed Godā€™s salvation for us. The call, in light of this reality, is to simply rest in the finished work and person of God in Jesus Christ; for He is indeed, Godā€™s salvation for you, for me, for the world-wide. When youā€™re tempted to look inward, know that Christ went inward for us, that we might finally look upward to the very being of our life in Godā€™s being in becoming for us in the concrete humanity of Jesus Christ. Throw off every hindrance that would seek to bog you down in the liable of the devil; and finish, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit who has become for you, through the vicarious humanity of Christ, Godā€™s guarantee of salvation come, and coming again.

[1] Simeon Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 116 kindle ed.

The Lutheran Connection with TF Torrance: The Kerygmatic Christ as the Concentration

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The Gospels of the New Testament witness all present Jesus via His historicity, and the facts of His life as they unfolded in particular frames of reference. John the evangelist ended his Gospel with the quip, ā€œAnd there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one,Ā I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.ā€ Clearly, Jesus was a historical personage, but this is not how the Christian has come to know Him at a first order; nor is it the way that the Evangelists of the Gospels present Him. They, all along the way, were hard pressed to see past the ā€˜veil,ā€™ so to speak, of Christā€™s humanity; indeed, His ā€œhistoricity,ā€ His ā€œflesh-and-blood-nessā€ made Him so vulnerable to be mis-taken, that His disciples themselves mis-took Him for most of their time with Him. There were those rare moments, Matthew 16, and Peterā€™s confession, and Matthew 17, the Mount of Transfiguration, come to mind, where they seemed to be ā€˜getting it,ā€™ but then His kenotic flesh hid His glorified personhood from them once again. It wasnā€™t until after the Spirit came, who Jesus said would bear witness to Him, and teach them many things (cf. Jn 14ā€”16; 20 etc.), about just who and what Jesus was, and remains as the Son of David and the eternal Logos. The Spirit taught the Evangelists that Jesus, in His person, is the Deus absconditus (hidden God) who is Deus revelatus (revealed God). In other words, the Evangelistsā€™ offer a depth-dimensional interpretation of who Jesus is and what He is about in regard to the eternal purposes of God made historical and concrete in the particularity of the scandal of Godā€™s cross.

Thomas Torrance offers a profound word on this reality, in regard to the ā€œJesus of faithā€ as that relates to the ā€œJesus of history.ā€ He points out that to know the Christ, for the Christian, is to first know the Son of God made human (and thus historical) for us. He presses the notion that when we are confronted with Jesus, we are confronted with a way to think both history and eternity together, but to think it from the eternity of God for the world such that that eternity is freely shaped by His election to be God with us (Immanuel) rather than against us. Torrance writes:

All this means that any Christological approach that starts from the man Jesus, from the historical Jesus, and tries to pass over to God, and so to link human nature to God, is utterly impossible. In fact it is essentially a wrong act: for it runs directly counter to Godā€™s act of grace which has joined God to humanity in Christ. All Attempts to understand Jesus Christ by starting off with the historical Jesus utterly fail; they are unable to pass over from man to God and moreover to pass man to God in such a way as not to leave man behind all together, and in so doing they deny the humanity of Jesus. Thus though Ebionite christologies all seek to go from the historical Jesus to God, they can make that movement only by denying the humanity of Jesus, that is by cutting off their starting point, and so they reveal themselves as illusion, and the possibility of going from man to God is revealed as likewise illusory.

No, it is quite clear that unless we are to falsify the facts from the very start, we must face with utter and candid honesty the New Testament presentation of Christ to us, not as a purely historical figure, nor as a purely transcendental theophany, but as God and man. Only if we start from that duality in which God himself has already joined God and man, can we think God and humanity together, can we pass from man to God and from God to man, and all the time be strictly scientific in allowing ourselves to be determined by the nature of the object.[1]

Interestingly, it isnā€™t just the Reformed, like Torrance who thinks this way about the approach of the Christian vis-Ć -vis the Christological reality as that relates to a knowledge of God, and thus everything. Both Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, as Eberhard Juengal identifies, offer similar thinking with reference to thinking God in Christ not purely as a datum of history, but a dandum of Godā€™s free gift of Himself for the world. Luther writes:

He gives utterance not only to things [res], but also to the use [usus] which things are to be put to. For many preach Christ, but in such a way that they neither recognize nor express his ways and his miracles . . . Ā as do most of those preachers who only preach the stories of Christ, when they are preaching at their best. But it is not Christian preaching when you preach Christ only from a historical point of view; that is no proclaiming the glory of God. But this is: when you teach that Christā€™s story refers to its usefulness for us as believers unto righteousness and salvation. That is [then], that he accomplished all not for himself, but for us by the will of God the Father, so that we may know that everything that is in Christ belongs to us.[2]

The connection between what Luther is getting at and Torrance isnā€™t one-for-one, but the basic premise between the two is significant. The point: that attempting to think Jesus Christ from a purely historicist angle simply fails precisely because of who Jesus is, and thus remains to be for us. He isnā€™t a relic of history, He was never historyā€™s accident, instead He is the risen Christ who has kerygmatic thrust, evangelical power for us now; ā€˜if this be not true we are of most people to be pitied.ā€™

Melanchthon, Lutherā€™s colleague, writes something very similar, in spirit, to both Luther and Torrance:

Thus the faith which makes us pious and righteous in the eyes of God is not just this, that I know the history, how Christ was born, suffered (the devils know this too); no, faith is the certainty or the sure, strong trust in the heart that with my whole heart I take Godā€™s promises to be sure and true, by which are offered to me without any merit of mine forgiveness of sins, grace and full salvation through Christ the Mediator. And so that no-one can say it is simply a matter of knowing history, I will add: faith is this, that my whole heart accepts that same treasure. This is not my doing, nor my gift or offering, not my work or preparation. It is [simply] that a heart takes for its consolation and trusts in the fact that God grants and gives to us, not we to him, that he pours all the riches of grace upon us in Christ.[3]

We are visiting different contexts, at least with reference to Torrance in juxtaposition with Luther and Melanchthon, but the main premise is present in all three: viz. that to know Christ is to not to know a relic of religious history and phenomena, but to know Christ is to know Him presently in our midst, as the ground of our life and being in all things.

It is this ā€˜Christological confessionalismā€™ that has always attended the liveliness of the Churchā€™s vitality in the world. Insofar that the Christus praesens (to riff a phrase) is not the reality; insofar that the risen Christ is merely thought of in ā€˜secularā€™ or profane terms, this is where the Church ceases being the Church, and instead slips into being another social club in the culture writ large. When Christological concentration is not the focus of the Churchā€™s teaching and theologians, when her disciples fall into a following of a Christ of history, without first understanding that He is the Christ of Godā€™s faith for us, it is at this point that the Church becomes just one more platitude of human self-projection; it is at this point that the Church becomes an idol wherein its people come to see their reflection as their idolā€™s, a christ of an abstract and desolate history. In order for the liveliness of the Church to be always present, she must repose in the strong reality that Jesus Christ is indeed risen, present, and active as the eternally present for us Theanthropos, Godman.

We would do well to follow the leads of Torrance, Luther, and Melanchthon in their respective Christological concentrations. In the end, the Eschaton, the Christian, if they hadnā€™t prior, will come to recognize that this is the focus that dominates all of heaven, and at that point the entirety of all creation, including the rocks, will cry out that Jesus is King!

 

[1] Thomas F. Torrance,Ā Incarnation, edited by Robert Walker, 10.

[2] M. Luther, Operationes in Psalms, 1519-21, WA 5, 543, 13-21 cited by Eberhard JĆ¼ngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2001), 29.

[3] Philip Melanchthon, Apology of the Augsburg Confession, cited by Eberhard JĆ¼ngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2001), 29-30 n. 46.

*repost

 

On Orthodoxy and Heresy and a Theology of the Word of God

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It is unnecessary to jettison all of creedal Christianity in favor of a supposed ā€˜naked Scripture’ (scriptura nuda). And yet there are many, whether that be on the popular or academic sweep, who maintain that this is in fact what being a Protestant Christian ultimately entails. I have someone in particular in mind with this post (who will remain unnamed), but it has general application too. To be a creedal Christian doesnā€™t necessarily entail that you ascribe absolute ecclesiastical authority to the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches; indeed, this runs exactly counter to what someone like Martin Luther would have maintained as the original, or at least the most infamous, Protestant reformer. Indeed, Luther, infamously, at the Diet of Worms exclaimed the following:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by clear reason, for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves, I am bound by the Scriptures that I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot to do otherwise. Here I stand, God help me.

Some might take this as the naked Scripture mode I referenced previously, but that would be mistaken. Luther is simply identifying an order, an ā€œontology of authorityā€ as that relates to his submission to the living Lord. His conscience is ultimately bound to Holy Scripture, and its reality in Jesus Christ. If Church councils or Popes or Metropolitans contradict the clear teaching (think Lutherā€™s analogia fidei in contrast to the Catholicā€™s appropriation of the antique regula fidei) of Scripture, then as Luther exclaimed at Worms, he will go with Scripture every single time. Here Crisp indexes what I take to be something that Luther himself would affirm, in regard to a theory of authority vis-Ć -vis God:

  1. Scripture is theĀ norma normans,Ā theĀ principium theologiae.Ā It is the final arbiter of matters theological for Christians as the particular place in which God reveals himself to his people. This is the first-order authority in all matters of Christian doctrine.
  2. Catholic creeds, as defined by and ecumenical council of the Church, constitute a first tier ofĀ norma normata,Ā which have second-order authority in matters touching Christian doctrine. Such norms derive their authority from Scripture to which they bear witness.
  3. Confessional and conciliar statements of particular ecclesial bodies are a second tier ofĀ norma normata,Ā which have third-order authority in matters touching Christian doctrine. They also derive their authority from Scripture to the extent that they faithfully reflect the teaching of Scripture.
  4. The particular doctrines espoused by theologians including those individuals accorded the title Doctor of the Church which are not reiterations of matters that areĀ de fide,Ā or entailed by somethingĀ de fide,Ā constituteĀ theologoumena,Ā or theological opinions, which are not binding upon the Church, but which may be offered up for legitimate discussion within the Church.[1]

This seems like a rather straightforward ordering, or hierarchy, as that relates to understanding how a Protestant would think about authority. Scripture is the ā€˜norming normā€™ which all following developments become, at best, normed norms. That is, Church councils, so on and so forth have a relative, we might say, ā€œeschatologicalā€ value to them in the sense that they should never be taken absolutely, but only as proximate thinking as that relates to a proper understanding of Scriptureā€™s teaching vis-Ć -vis its reality in Jesus Christ. Bruce McCormack helpfully states it this way as he reflects on Barthā€™s understanding on the development of Christian theology:

I say all of this to indicate that even the ecumenical creeds are only provisional statements. They are only relatively binding as definitions of what constitutes ā€œorthodoxy.ā€ Ultimately, orthodox teaching is that which conformsĀ perfectlyĀ to the Word of God as attested in Holy Scripture. But given that such perfection is not attainable in this world, it is understandable that Karl Barth should have regarded ā€œDogmaā€ as an eschatological concept. The ā€œdogmasā€ (i.e., the teachings formally adopted and promulgated by individual churches) are witnesses toĀ theĀ Dogma and stand in a relation of greater or lesser approximation to it. But they do not attain to it perfectlyā€”hence, the inherent reformability of all ā€œdogmas.ā€ Orthodoxy is not therefore a static, fixed reality; it is a body of teachings which have arisen out of, and belong to, aĀ historyĀ which is as yet incomplete and constantly in need of reevaluation.[2]

Some might read this and think this militates against valuing a creedal Christianity, but just the opposite is the case. If we take McCormackā€™s identification in Barthā€™s understanding of Dogmatic development as a jumping-off point, what is being affirmed is the value, the ā€˜relativeā€™ value of the catholic creeds of the Church. It isnā€™t an abandonment of the pronouncements and the rich theological grammar developed therein, au contraire!: it recognizes that the church then when confronted with certain internal and external pressures responded in a way that set a trajectory for the Church to think God, to think Christ in ways that would be ultimately definitive as a baseline for thinking God and Christ in ways that Christians everywhere might build upon, receive and develop in orders that might go beyond, but never leave behind at their base level. McCormack continues in a different but related context:

. . . Every period in the history of theology has had its basic questions and concerns that shaped the formulation of doctrines in all areas of reflection. In the early church, it was Trinity and Christology that captured the attention of the greatest minds. In the transition to the early Middle Ages, Augustinian anthropology played a large roleā€”which would eventually effect a shift in attention from theories of redemption to the need to understand how God is reconciled with sinful human beings. The high Middle Ages were the heyday of sacramental development, in which definitions of sacraments were worked out with great care, the number of sacraments established, and so on. The Reformation period found its center of gravity in the doctrine of justification. In the modern period, the question of questions became the nature of God and his relation to the world. Basic decisions were thus made in the areas of creation, the being of God and his relation to the world, and revelation, which were to become foundational for further development in other areas of doctrinal concernā€¦.[3]

I think the above considerations from McCormack are helpful in regard to situating the way we think about the role of a creedal Christianity insofar that they frame a genuinely Protestant way into thinking about Church authority. As McCormack and Crisp, respectively, identify, the sole authority, or the ultimate authority by which all other iterations of subsequent ecclesiastical reflection take form comes from Holy Scripture and its reality in Jesus Christ (who indeed is the Churchā€™s Head). It is helpful to think these things eschatologically, as both McCormack and Barth do, insofar that Scriptureā€™s reality, just as creationā€™s in general, is found in and from Jesus Christ. But the way the Protestant, along with the Catholics and Orthodox, think who Jesus is, at a grammatical level, comes from what the early Church councils promulgated; viz. in regard to articulating the inner-theo-logic of thinking the natures of Jesus Christ as both fully God and fully human (the Theanthropos) etc.

Hopefully, at minimum what is gleaned from the above is that there is no reason whatsoever for the Protestant Christian, even if you consider yourself Post Protestant, to abandon a conciliar Christianity simply because you cannot imagine how that type of Christianity can be reconciled with being an adherent of a purported ā€˜naked Scripture.ā€™ It was never the Protestant way to think away from its Catholic (and I even mean Roman in a sense) roots, it was simply an attempt to think from a deep theology of the Word of God as the authoritative basis for thinking God, and a God-world relation. Yes, there is space to develop further the grammar provided for by the creeds, indeed the conciliar grammar was merely negative language, something like minimal parameters set in order to protect the sheep of the Church from those wolves who would take Jesus and the triune God captive by overly relying upon pagan, and in that context, Hellenistic philosophies that were improperly evangelized that would not allow them to be put to use in retextualized ways, and thus within a kerygmatic frame. In other words, heresy has always been a thing, even now.

If you find yourself feeling genius, that what it means to be Protestant is to chart out in original and unconstrained (by any sense of reception from the past) ways is to develop your own original Christian Philosophy Iā€™d ask you to reconsider. The history is littered with these attempts, and one thing is for sure: such contenders end up in the same cul-de-sac of isolation and disfellowship that such attempts of ā€œoriginalityā€ always lead to. What ends up almost always obtaining in these adventures of originality is the person inevitability ends up denying, or at least downgrading the divinity of Jesus Christ; which of course leads to a further denial of the Trinity itself. Being a genius or original thinker isnā€™t worth the pain and destruction of what being antiChrist ends up entailing. I would simply ask such contenders to repent, and be genuinely Protestant by affirming a robust theology of the Word with proper recognition of its explanation through the centuries under the concursus Dei of Godā€™s providential working. Indeed, this shouldnā€™t stifle creativity and constructivity, in fact it ought to fuel it by providing fruitful and rich developments of Christological and Theologically Proper grammarization that the communio sanctorum (ā€˜communion of saintsā€™) have fellowshipped with, around, and from for millennia.

 

[1] Oliver Crisp,Ā god incarnate,Ā (New York: T&T Clark International, 2009), 17.

[2] Bruce L. McCormack,Ā Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl BarthĀ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 16.

[3] Bruce L. McCormack, ā€œIntroduction,ā€ in Kelly M. Kapic and Bruce L. McCormack eds.,Ā Mapping Modern Theology: A Thematic and Historical IntroductionĀ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2012), 11, 14 scribd edition.

A Devotional with Martin Luther and his Theology of the Cross

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The following is a repost I originally wrote approximately in and around 2009. I am currently, and once again, being pressed with a really challenging spiritual attack. I’ve walked through many years of these seasons in the past, but that doesn’t necessarily make the heat right now that much cooler. If you could remember me in prayer at this time I would really appreciate it. And with that I’ll leave you with the following word on Martin Luther’s theology of the cross, and some of its devotional implications for our edification and encouragement.

I was first introduced to Martin Lutherā€™sĀ theologia crucis,Ā or ā€œTheology of the Cross,ā€ in seminary, in my Reformation Theology class. Once I heard of it, I was hooked! It is absolutely brilliant, and represents the best of Martin Lutherā€™s theological offering for the church. My previous post was a tribute to Rory Wheeler, who just went home to be with the Lord as a result of the effects of cancer. Death, even for the Christian, presents lingering questions; the primary one being ā€œwhy dear Lord, cannot you just vanquish this curse, right now?ā€ It is obvious to all of those with eyes of faith, that the Lord works in ways that would appear ā€œhidden.ā€ He became man, a babeĀ wrapped in swaddling cloths in a manger. He was born into a poor-manā€™s family from ridiculed Nazareth. The list of Godā€™s hiddeness (Deus absconditus), of course, can be enumerated over and again. Indeed, this is where Lutherā€™s theology of the cross finds its footing; that God works in ways that to the naked eye seem foolish (see I Corinthians 1:17-25, the passage of my Masterā€™s thesis, and motivated by Lutherā€™s theology of the cross). Randall Zachman provides one of the best descriptions of Lutherā€™s theology of the cross that I have ever read. Here is Zachman in full:

In the context ofĀ theologia crucis,Ā faith means believing with certainty that Godā€™s Word is true even when the whole world, the heart of the believer, and even God himself contradict the truth that is revealed in the Word, particularly the Word of promise. Thus, when God begins to show mercy, God does so by first revealing wrath (in law); when God makes alive, God does so by slaying. The same contradictions apply especially to those who have already come to faith. God promises the forgiveness of sins, yet our conscience feels nothing but sin and wrath; God promises life, yet we see nothing but death. Faith, therefore, is the art of believing the Word while experiencing, seeing, and feeling the opposite. We believe that Christ is the Son of God, even though we see and abandoned man on the cross; we believe that God cares for the church, even though we see nothing but a church persecuted by the world and apparently abandoned by God; we believe in eternal life, even though we see and feel nothing but death.

However, the primary locus of the theology of the cross is the experience of trial or tribulation (Anfechtung), when the very heart and conscience of the believer sense that Godā€™s promise of grace and forgiveness is a lie. The believer must regard the promise of forgiveness as true and certain even though the conscience testifies to the contrary.

But under the cross which we experience, eternal life lies hidden. . . . We, too, experience the cross, and death appears to us, if not in fact, yet in our conscience through Satan. Death and sin appear, but I announce life and faith, but in hope. Therefore, if you want to be saved, you must battle against your feelings. Hope means to expect life in the midst of death, and righteousness in the midst of sins.

This is the very meaning of being simultaneously righteous and a sinner (simul iustus et peccator): to believe that we are righteousĀ coram DeoĀ even though we feel like condemned sinners.

Within the context of the theology of the cross, the grace of sanctification and its attestation in the testimony of a good conscience would necessarily be subordinated to the grace of justification and the promise of the forgiveness of sins. This is because the testimony of the good conscience confirms oneā€™s faith in the promise, whereas the theology of the cross emphasizes that testimony of the conscience that contradicts faith in the promise; that is,Ā Anfechtung.Ā Therefore, although Luther continually insisted upon the necessity of sanctification and of the testimony of the good conscience, within the framework ofĀ theologia crucisĀ he could not help but consistently subordinate the grace of sanctification to that of justification.

Lutherā€™s concentration on the theology of the cross also accounts for his refusal to involve the Reformation directly in the external reform of the church. The Word of God does not deal with external, temporal things, but rather with invisible, eternal things; and such invisible things are revealed under an external appearance that contradicts what is being revealed. The theology of glory, in contrastā€”such as Luther found in the papacyā€”emphasizes externals to the point of neglecting the invisible truths revealed by the Word: indeed, to the point of calling Godā€™s Word a lie. Thus, those in the Reformation who would introduce concern for externalsā€”such as Karlstadt with his rejection of idols and the papal massā€”misunderstanding the whole nature of the Word of the cross, and divert the attention of believers from the invisible, eternal things of Godā€™s promises to the visible, temporal things of human reason and senses. Yet it is precisely reason and the senses that must be mortified if we are to believe that the Word of the cross is true.

Lutherā€™sĀ theologia crucisĀ also explains his suspicion of those, such as the Anabaptists, who emphasized the external holiness and moral behavior of the church. If the Word of the cross reveals the truth of God under a contrary appearance, then one would expect the true church not to look like the church at all, but rather to look like God-forsaken sinners. The ā€œsynagogue of Satan,ā€ on the other hand, with its theology glory, would look like the true church of God and would demonstrate a superior holiness externallyā€”as in the monks and friarsā€”but inwardly it would be rejected by God. The theology of the cross would therefore lead one not to stress the conformity of the appearance of the church with its faith, but rather stress the ways in which the appearance of the church denies its claim to be the people of God. The church looks like a gathering of sinners rejected by God and the world, whereas it is in truth the beloved people of God. The church cannot be judged by its appearance, but only by whether it has the Word of Christ crucified. Hence the primary task of the church is to preach the Word of God, while letting externals take their course.[1]

How can that not bless you?! There is a lot in this, too much to talk about in toto; as far as the implications and applications, let me grab just a couple. But first I should also notice something else for us. You see Zachman refer to Lutherā€™ ā€œtheology of glory,ā€ this was in contrast to the theology of the cross; and it refers to (oversimplified) focusing on doing things for the praise and glory of men, instead of God (just do a word study or theology of glory study in the Gospel of John, youā€™ll see how this plays out) [Luther attacked the scholastic theology of his day as based upon the ā€œtheology of gloryā€ instead of the ā€œcrossā€]. Now to my applications.

1) It seems like a loving God would vanquish death so that humanity would no longer have to endure the torment of it. Indeed, he has, but it is only with eyes of faith that we understand the significance of the cross and resurrection and ascension. To the world if God is all powerful, and loving (David Hume) why doesnā€™t he do something about it now? The wisdom of God is displayed in hiddeness, in the unexpected; God is the God whose ways are not our ways, but the way of the cross, the unexpected! Why did the holocaust happen? Why do little kids die from cancer, or starvation? We have to interpret these kinds of questions through the hidden ways of God, through the cruciformity and cross-shaped work of Godā€™s life. Thatā€™s the answer to Lutherā€™s theology of the cross; the wisdom and knowledge of God is only penetrated by those who are wedded to him, in Christ, by the Spirit. And it is when we are pressed up against the most dastardly things of this lifeā€”tribulationsā€”that we quit depending on ourselves, and throw ourselves on Godā€™s mercy that we enter into the kind of life that God gives himself in his inner-life of mutual and interpenetrating love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is when we are pushed beyond ourselves that Godā€™s glory in the face of Jesus Christ is just waiting to smile on is in the midst of ourĀ thlipsis, tribulation! Here is the wisdom of God, to take what is intended to destroy, and bring resurrection life out of it!

2) The second application here is a quicker observation. This one has to do with Lutherā€™s/Zachmanā€™s point about how the church should look vis-Ć”-vis the theology of the cross. Frankly, it shouldnā€™t look like what Western, and in particular, American, upward mobile churches strive to look like. It shouldnā€™t look like people who have it all together. It should look like people who are broken, needy, and beggarly. When did Jesus do his greatest work of atonement? What was the crescendo of his work? When he went to the cross. When he was most broken. It was here that he brought life to all of humanity, through his death; by rupturing the bonds of self love (homo incurvatus in se), with the unbreakable bond that he shares consubstantially with the Father and Holy Spirit. That is, a life is given shape, by self-giveness; between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is through this kind of brokeness, in the mirror image of the cruci-shaped Son, that we can be the church for the world. That we have something to offer them; only when we are broken, and realize that we receive life as gift from the Father, in Christ, by the Holy Spirit.

Much more to say, but this has run long enough. I think I will talk more about theĀ theologia gloriaeĀ ā€œtheology of glory,ā€ in the near future.

 

[1] Randall C. Zachman,Ā The Assurance of Faith,Ā 9-10.

 

Luther against the god of the Philosophers and Descartes on God Knowledge per Juengel

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Knowledge of God and its bases has never been an uncontested thing in theological development and discourse. The Apostle Paul, of course, famously addresses the issue of knowledge of God in Romans 1 which has become the locus classicus for proponents of an ostensible natural theology:

18Ā ForĀ the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men whoĀ suppress the truthĀ in unrighteousness,Ā 19Ā becauseĀ that which is known about God is evidentĀ within them; for God made it evident to them.Ā 20Ā ForĀ since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen,Ā being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.Ā 21Ā For even though they knew God, they did notĀ honor Him as God or give thanks, but they becameĀ futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.Ā 22Ā Professing to be wise, they became fools,Ā 23Ā andĀ exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals andĀ crawling creatures.

To appropriate this text as if it just does teach a natural theology, or way of thinking God in a form like Thomas Aquinasā€™ analogia entis entailsā€”which would be a subset of a natural theology simpliciterā€”isnā€™t justified. Those who would simply assert such need to present an argument that Paul is intending to teach that who and what God is, is latent within something like the vestiges of creation.

On a different basis, but as corollary with something like Aquinasā€™ analogia entis, Rene Descartes attempts to present a certain knowledge of God from his methodological skepticism; thus, doubting everything as a basis for knowing until he gets to himself (so his cogito ergo sum). Descartes is offering his own form of an analogia entis, thinking godness from his idea of God that he has more certainly established by conniving God an epistemic ground founded in his own thinking as a prius to God.

Martin Luther yells a resounding Nein (as does Karl Barth in his own way). Eberhard JĆ¼ngel presents an insightful commentary on how Luther differs from Descartes on a theory for a knowledge of God. He writes:

Remaining at the level of rational knowledge of God, for Luther too there is a fundamental cognitive difference between the ā€œthat-beingā€ and ā€œwhat-beingā€ of God, between the ā€˜existenceā€™ and the ā€˜essenceā€™ of God: There is ā€œa vast difference between knowing that there is a God and knowing who or what God is.ā€ See Luther, Lectures on the Minor Prophets II: Jonah, Habakkuk (in Lutherā€™s Works, vol. 19), ed. Hilton C. Oswald (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1974), p. 55. Whereas Descartes begins with the ā€˜essence of Godā€™ which is comprehended in the ā€˜idea of Godā€™ and moves to the ascertainment of the ā€˜existence of Godā€™ through the ego . . . , Luther takes another route: ā€œReason . . . knows that there is a God, but it does not know who or which is the true God.. . .ā€ And it is the misfortune of reason overstepping its boundaries that it wants to move from the knowledge that there is a God somehow to the knowledge of who God is, as Luther says: ā€œThus reason also plays blindmanā€™s buff with God; it consistently gropes in the dark and misses the mark. It calls that God which is not God and fails to call Him God who really is God. Reason would do neither the one nor the other if it were not conscious of the existence of God or if it really knew who and what God is. Therefore it rushes in clumsily an assigns the name God and ascribes the divine honor to its own idea of God. Thus reason never finds the true God, but knows the former [scil. that God exists]ā€”it is inscribed in everybodyā€™s heart; the latter is taught only by the Holy Spirit.. . .ā€ This difference does not obtain for faith. For faith knows that God is in that it experiences who or what God is.[1]

Luther concedes that natural humans have an abstract notion of Godness, but this is where such knowledge of God terminates. Ultimately, it could be inferred, that if this was the basis for a knowledge of God in conclusion, what people would end up with, in regard to filling out this abstract knowledge of Godness, would end up being merely a self-projection of the self onto this ā€˜naturalā€™ schematizing towards a knowledge of God. For Luther, as Juengel helpfully distills, a genuine knowledge of God is only one that is grounded in the eye of faith. Which if this is the case, and I think it is, presupposes that first the hidden God (Deus absconditus) must come down to us and be with as and be the revealed God (Deus revelatus) for us. This is nothing short of what Barth (and TF Torrance) pick up on, and develop into, in Barthā€™s case, what he identifies as an analogia fidei/relationis (ā€˜analogy of faith/relationā€™). But sticking with Luther contra Descartes, per Juengel, reason is incapable of knowing who and then what God is. And we could surmise from this if natural reason is incapable in precisely this way, then constructing a theology proper based upon categories provided for by the [classical] philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle represent, ends up being foolā€™s errandā€”a foolā€™s errand because this method can only lead the seeker of God into an abyss of idolatry (as Ludwig Feuerbach understood so presciently in his own modern context).

On a negative note, I present this to you so that you can more critically read what certain evangelical, Reformed and Lutheran theologians are attempting to recover in the name of an orthodox doctrine of God. They are recovering notional categories for thinking God from the direct heirs, in both the ā€œorthodoxā€ realms of Reformed and Lutheran thinkers, to Thomas Aquinas; and we might add, tangled into this, something like Descartesā€™ thinking in regard to a certainty towards knowing God. I would strongly recommend to avoid this approach in attempting to think rightly, and thus orthodoxly about the living God. As Luther knew, such intellectualist machinations about God, again, can only finally terminate in a conception of godness that is only able to repose in the notion that some ā€˜unknown god,ā€™ an abstraction of the human-knower, must certainly exist. And if this ā€˜ratiocinationā€™ about God is followed, what is left, is for said rationales to say both what and who God is; with an emphasis on the former, as we see fruiting in both Descartes and Thomas.

On a positive note, take heart, for those who seek to know God, as Luther so brightly understood, from the faith of Christ, it is here where the seeker stands on solid ground; as the Apostle has written: ā€œFor no man can lay aĀ foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.ā€ When the Christian builds upon this foundation, the one seen with the faith of Christ, it is thence that the knower of God can genuinely be called such. When we arenā€™t building cathedrals of knowledge of God that wait upon ā€˜revelation perfecting reason,ā€™ and instead allow Godā€™s Self-revelation to impose Himself upon us, afresh anew by the Holy Spirit in Christ, it is here that the Christian can confidently proclaim that they see the face (prosopon) of God in Jesus Christ. This is the foundation, Godā€™s being-in-becoming for the world in Jesus Christ that God has freely elected as the basis for the would-be knower of God to genuinely know who (and thus what) He is. And this is the all-important conclusion: that God is the one who has laid the foundation for knowing God in and from Himself, for us in Jesus Christ. He hasnā€™t left the Christian to be an orphan, or archaeologist attempting to discover God under the rubble of the artifacts of paleo pagan thinkers of a purported ultimacy. No, God has deigned that we know God from God alone in Christ alone by grace alone through faith alone; indeed, the faith of Christ.

I wonā€™t directly address the Romans 1 passage, per se. I will leave that to the reader, and see if they can infer how I ā€œexegetedā€ that pericope throughout the body of this post. (I have also written other posts that deal directly with that passage vis-Ć -vis a purported natural theology reading)

[1] Eberhard JĆ¼ngel, God as the Mystery of the World, trans. by Darrell L. Guder (Eugene, OR: Wipf&Stock, 1983), 124 n. 53.

Gerhard Forde on Martin Luther’s Theology of the Cross

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The following comes from an old defunct blog of mine. It is simply a passage from Lutheran theologian, Gerhard Forde, on Martin Lutherā€™s theologia crucis, or ā€˜theology of the cross.ā€™ When I was first confronted with Lutherā€™s dialectic of a theology of the cross versus a theology of glory in my seminary Reformation theology class, it changed my life (not an overstatement). Not so much by focusing on its negative side (i.e., ā€œversus a theology of gloryā€), but by focusing on the positive implications it provides in regard to a knowledge of God and how that implicates the Christian existence coram Deo. I will always cast myself as a theologian of the cross, which I see as an antecedent, in certain qualified ways, to Karl Barthā€™s style of a theology of crisis (e.g., with the different pressures, and historical circumstances understood).

What I want to primarily emphasize, after Forde, is how a theology of the cross makes the Christian vulnerable before God, just as God in the grace of Christ, has made Himself vulnerable for us. Not predicated by us, to be clear, but vulnerable in the sense that as TF Torrance would say, ā€œGod loves us more than He loves Himself,ā€ in the sense that He freely choose to not be God without us, but with us. Here is Forde:

ThesisĀ 22.Ā That wisdom which perceives the invisible things of God by thinking in terms of works completely puffs up, blinds, and hardens.

Thesis 22 is, in effect, a statement about the religious effect of the theology of glory and the wisdom of law upon which it is based. Religious people in particular seem to have difficulty being theologians of the cross. That is because the theology of the cross is quite devastating for our usual religious aspirations under the wisdom of law. The indignation and resentment against God ā€¦ is aroused not only ā€” perhaps not even principally! ā€” because of the strenuousness and rigor of the life proposed, but finally because in the cross God has literally taken away from us the possibility of doing anything of religious merit. In Jesus God has cut off all such possibility. God, as St. Paul could put it, has made foolish the wisdom of the wise. We are rendered passive over against Godā€™s action. This is always galling for the old being. We adopt a very pious posture. It is, so the protests go, too easy, too cheap, it has no obvious ethical payoff, and so on and on. Religiously we like to look on ourselves as potential spiritual athletes desperately trying to make Godā€™s team, having perhaps just a little problem or two with the training rules. We have a thirst for glory. We feel a certain uneasiness of conscience or even resentment within when the categorical totality of the action of God begins to dawn on us. We are always tempted to return to the safety and assurance of doing something anyway. Generally, it is to be suspected, that is all we planned to do, a little something. But to surrender the ā€œwisdomā€ of law and works, or better, to have it taken away, is the first indication of what it means to be crucified with Christ.[1]

[1] Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Lutherā€™s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518, 91-93.