Category Archives: Martin Luther

Luther’s Kerygmatic God Versus the Speculative god of the Thomists

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The Christian world needs a revival! It needs to come to a genuine knowledge of God. Not a speculative knowledge, as those retrievers of Aquinas would have it; but a concrete known knowledge of God gifted to us in God’s Self-exegesis in Jesus Christ. When God becomes a predicate of a notional ‘godness’ that ‘we’ (think the philosophers) connive, God simply becomes a projection of our own faces (Ludwig Feuerbach knew this well). But this is the God that the evangelical Reformed types these days are introducing people to. Not the God of the Bible revealed in Jesus Christ, but the god of the philosophers, whether that be of Aristotle, Plotinus, or Descartes. The reformational types, if they are going to retrieve anyone, it ought to be a Protestant par excellence, like Luther, rather than the Catholic par excellence, Thomas Aquinas (and the whole mode of philosophical speculation about God that followed).

In the following Eberhard Jüngel offers an insightful comparison between the speculated god of Rene Descartes versus the biblical and concrete God of Martin Luther. As the reader will see, the God of Luther is the kerygmatic God in Jesus Christ.

Remaining at the level of rational knowledge of God, for Luther too there is a fundamental cognitive difference between the “that-being” and “what-being” of God, between the ‘existence’ and the ‘essence’ of God: There is “a vast difference between knowing that there is a God and knowing who or what God is. . . .” Whereas Descartes begins with the ‘essence of God’ which is comprehended in the ‘idea of God’ and moves to the ascertainment of the ‘existence of God’ through the ego . . . , Luther takes another route: “Reason . . . knows that there is a God, but it does not know who or which is the true God. . . .” 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: “Thus reason also plays blindman’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 and assigns the name God and ascribes divine honor to its own idea of God. Thus reason never finds the true God, but it finds the devil or its own concept of God ruled by the devil. . . .” For “Nature knows the former [scil. that God exists]—it is inscribed in everybody’s heart; the latter is taught only by the Holy Spirit. . . .” This difference does not obtain for faith. For faith knows that God is in that it experiences who or what God is.[1]

Knowledge of God is, of course!, key to all Christian existence and its theology. Get knowledge of God wrong, and everything subsequent is askew. If knowledge of God isn’t grounded in God’s Self-knowledge given for the world in Jesus Christ, then all that we are left with is a knowledge of God based upon our own whimsical machinations about what godness must be like. If we are left to this mode, the latter iteration, then, in the end, we haven’t been thinking about and talking to the genuine and living God whatsoever; indeed, all that we would have been doing is speaking to ourselves in self-assigned sacrosanct ways. This, I contend, is precisely what the god of Thomism presents the Church with. While this matter is a complex, given intentions and periodization, nonetheless, at an ultimate end what matters is that the Christian gets God right. And the only way to do that is to rely on the God who breaks the philosopher’s god’s back with the weight of His glory as revealed at the cross. Jüngel writes further: “The Cartesian God on the cross—and the cross would collapse! The ‘infinite substance, independent, omniscient, and omnipotent’ is too heavy. And that is its weakness.”[2] Jüngel’s, clearly, is a critique of a Cartesian notional God; I am applying his critique, clearly, to the contemporary Thomists, more broadly. The point of the matter holds true across all philosophers, and their respective notions of godness: they all start with an abstract human reflection about what godness must entail, and then attempt to synthesize the God of the Bible, the God Self-revealed in Jesus Christ, with that. But as Jüngel (and Luther et al.) rightly underscores, this presents us with an irradicable contradiction. The God Self-revealed in Jesus Christ breaks the philosopher’s genius by presenting it with an otherworldly sui generis reality that can only be accounted for by the categories of faith as presented in a logic of Grace.

I hope others will come to grasp the gravitas of these things, and stand against the tide of Thomist and other philosophical retrieval being done in the name of Christ and orthodoxy. There is no orthodoxy ‘but Christ and Him crucified,’ and the logic that the ‘wisdom of the Cross’ is suffused with as if from a new logic that contradicts the old. There is a better constructive way to be an ‘orthodox’ Christian while not selling out to the mainstream of revisionist retrieval being done by most evangelical theologians today; and this, on one hand or the other. Show me someone’s prolegomena, and “what” or “who” their God is will become immediately clear. Let’s be good Protestants, anyway.

[1] Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute Between Theism and Atheism, trans. by Darrell L. Guder (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock [Reprint], 2009), 124 n. 53.

[2] Ibid., 123.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux as the Patron Saint of Luther and Calvin, Not Thomas

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A friend just reminded, once again, of the role that St. Bernard of Clairvaux played in the formation of both Martin Luther’s and John Calvin’s theology, respectively; the latter quoted or alluded to Clairvaux in his Institutes more than any other author. It was this spiritual, even mystical tradition that stood in the background to the foremost of these magisterial Protestant Reformers; it wasn’t Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. I am bringing this up within the ambit of my last post with reference to the retrieval work being done by people like Matthew Barrett and Craig Carter, for the Baptists. When they retrieve the Great Tradition, they ought to nuance their approach such that the historical theology they are said to be retrieving entails the variety of ideational trails present within the theologizing of history’s various and respective thinkers; this includes lines of tradition that are at odds with the mood, and even material offering of someone like Thomas Aquinas. And yet, for some reason, these folks have fixated on Aquinas, and his Aristotelian heritage.

Here is a sampling of Clairvaux; pay attention to what he is saying about God and knowledge of God. Reflect on whether he sounds like a speculative theologian like Aquinas, or if he sounds more like an Athanasius who is committed to a kataphatic and revelational theology of God’s Word.

Once God was incomprehensible and inaccessible, invisible and entirely unthinkable. But now he wanted to be seen, he wanted to be understood, he wanted to be known. How was this done, you ask? God lay in a manger and lay on the Virgin’s breast. He preached on a mountain, prayed through the night, and hung on a cross. He lay pale in death, was free among the dead, and was master of hell. He rose on the third day, showed the apostles the signs of victory where nails once were, and ascended before their eyes to the inner recesses of heaven. . . . When I think on any of these things, I am thinking of God, and in all these things he is now my God.[1]

This is not the theology of Aquinas. Here is Aquinas’ way to God:

. . . the proposition that “God exists” is self evident in itself, for, as we shall see later, its subject and predicate are identical, since God is his own existence. But, because what it is to be God is not evident to us, the proposition is not self-evident to us, and needs to be made evident. This is done by means of things which, though less evident in themselves, are nevertheless more evident to us, by means, namely of God’s effects.[2]

Aquinas is an apophatic theologian who reasons his way to God (see his Prima Pars) discursively through reflection on the ostensibly given vestiges of God in the created order. His is not a committed theology of the Word that is contingent on God’s intensive Self-revelation in the manger, but one that arises from a latent capacity within humanity to think God from a created grace infused into the elect’s accidents of human being. In other words, for Aquinas, to think God does not require the Word of God, per se, it instead is an ecclesiologically based knowledge of God as the Church’s supposition within a hierarchical chain of being, as that finds its primal orientation in its first cause, God, ostensibly supplies the theoretical bases for the Christian, such as Aquinas, to think God in abstraction from God’s Self-revealed Word in Jesus Christ, as that is attested to in Holy Scripture.

What Barrett, Carter, Sytsma et al. are doing, whether that be on the Baptist or Presbyterian side of the coin, is a repristination effort. It would be one thing if they were engaging in a constructive dialogue with the past, allowing the kerygma, the risen Christ as God’s Word to regulate said discussion; but they aren’t! Instead, they are engaging in a just is, which is another way to say, in a natural theological approach to Church History, and said history’s ideas. They are simply presuming that just because there is such an amorphous thing known as the Great Tradition, that just because it has been seemingly allowed to develop, that God must have been providentially supervening in this development, such that it now has His imprimatur stamped on it as a reality from Him. And so, in the final analysis, what is being done, ironically, is a species of the theology being retrieved itself. It ostensibly imbibes a natural theology, as that is uncritically received as the just is mode of theological endeavor, only to find a theologian like Thomas Aquinas, the theologian of natural theology, and sees in him a patron saint of a long lost orthodoxy. And yet how ironic! Thomas Aquinas is a Roman Catholic theologian who thinks God from a theory of ecclesial authority that is itself funded not by a robust theology of the Word, but by a commitment to a philosophical notional construction of God known as the actus purus (pure being) tradition, in regard to thinking God and everything following.

I am here to help apply the brakes. I am a committed Protestant and Reformed Christian who maintains that a robust theology of the Word, that the ‘Scripture Principle’ ought to fund how a Protestant Christian does Protestant theology. To take on the baggage of Thomas’ synthesis of Aristotle, even if some Post Reformed orthodox theologians did this, is neither safe nor sound. And yet these various theologians are engaging in just this practice, and, apparently, unwittingly foisting Catholic theological categories upon their various students, and whomever will listen to their rallying cries on the highways and byways. I would simply ask you to reconsider the way they are taking you, and ask if maybe, just maybe, there isn’t a thread of Protestant historical development that doesn’t repose upon Thomas’ synthesis. There is; and that is exactly why this blog and our books came to exist. That is, to alert people to an alternative and genuinely Protestant, and dare I say, Christian way to think God. To think God in the way that we saw Bernard of Clairvaux thinking God earlier in this article. Both Luther and Calvin had Clairvaux’s christological concentration when it came to thinking God, and this is most surely at odds with Thomas’ synthesis and the repristinational effort currently underway by those noted (and others not).

 

[1] Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo in nativitate Beatae Mariae: de Aquaducto, ed. J. Leclerq and H. Rochais, S. Bernardi Opera 5 (Rome: Cistercienses, 1968), 11 cited by Michael Allen in, Justification.

[2] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 7

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, “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.” 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 ‘veil,’ so to speak, of Christ’s humanity; indeed, His “historicity,” His “flesh-and-blood-ness” 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 Peter’s confession, and Matthew 17, the Mount of Transfiguration, come to mind, where they seemed to be ‘getting it,’ but then His kenotic flesh hid His glorified personhood from them once again. It wasn’t until after the Spirit came, who Jesus said would bear witness to Him, and teach them many things (cf. Jn 14—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 Evangelists’ 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 God’s cross.

Thomas Torrance offers a profound word on this reality, in regard to the “Jesus of faith” as that relates to the “Jesus of history.” 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 God’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 isn’t just the Reformed, like Torrance who thinks this way about the approach of the Christian vis-à-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 God’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 . . .  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 Christ’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 isn’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 isn’t a relic of history, He was never history’s accident, instead He is the risen Christ who has kerygmatic thrust, evangelical power for us now; ‘if this be not true we are of most people to be pitied.’

Melanchthon, Luther’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 God’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 ‘Christological confessionalism’ that has always attended the liveliness of the Church’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 ‘secular’ 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 Church’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 God’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 idol’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 hadn’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, Incarnation, edited by Robert Walker, 10.

[2] M. Luther, Operationes in Psalms, 1519-21, WA 5, 543, 13-21 cited by Eberhard Jüngel, 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 Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2001), 29-30 n. 46.

 

Martin Luther Against Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and the Post Reformed orthodox

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Martin Luther, as I have referred to previously, was indeed anti-Aristotelian, particularly with reference to Aristotle’s anthropology as that effused throughout his Nicomachean Ethics. Indeed, Luther makes his disgust toward Aristotle’s Ethics, and thus, anthropology, very clear in his theological protestations, as he nailed those, just a month prior to his 95 theses, to the Wittenberg door. This was the real reason for Luther’s reformation, as my former professor and mentor, Dr Ron Frost, has so clearly argued. Luther saw Pelagian wickedness in Aristotle’s anthropology, and of course insofar as Aquinas appropriated Aristotle’s Ethics, among other things, this compelled Luther to post his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology contra the Papacy. When you read his DAST it is clear that Luther sees the anthropology forwarded by Aristotle as a corrosive agitant vis-à-vis an orthodox, and thus biblical understanding of salvation. Here is the aspect where Luther makes clear, in 1517, what he thinks about Aristotle’s impact upon the Papal doctrina:

  1. We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds. This in opposition to the philosophers.
  2. Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace. This is in opposition to the scholastics.
  3. It is an error to maintain that Aristotle’s statement concerning happiness does not contradict Catholic doctrine. This is in opposition to the doctrine on morals.
  4. It is an error to say that no man can become a theologian without Aristotle. This is in opposition to common opinion.
  5. Indeed, no one can become a theologian unless he becomes one without Aristotle.
  6. To state that a theologian who is not a logician is a monstrous heretic–this is a monstrous and heretical statement. This is in opposition to common opinion.
  7. In vain does one fashion a logic of faith, a substitution brought about without regard for limit and measure. This is in opposition to the new dialecticians.
  8. No syllogistic form is valid when applied to divine terms. This is in opposition to the Cardinal [Peter of Ailly].
  9. Nevertheless it does not for that reason follow that the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity contradicts syllogistic forms. This is in opposition to the same new dialecticians and to the Cardinal.
  10. If a syllogistic form of reasoning holds in divine matters, then a doctrine of the trinity is demonstrable and not the object of faith.
  11. Briefly, the whole Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light. This is in opposition to the scholastics.
  12. It is very doubtful whether the Latins comprehended the correct meaning of Aristotle.
  13. It would have been better for the church if Porphyry with his universals had not been born for the use of theologians.
  14. Even the more useful definitions of Aristotle seem to beg the question.[1]

This poses a problem, especially to those desirous of retrieving Post Reformed orthodox theology for the renewal of the 21st evangelical and Protestant churches. David Sytsma has recently argued that the later Luther came to find Aristotle’s Ethics useful, at least in some way, but that even if he didn’t (which he didn’t, in the main) Luther is really of no consequence to the development of Protestant theology; that Luther’s impulses were not necessary for the flowering of a latterly developed Protestant orthodoxy. Indeed, Sytsma wants to recast the foundation for the development of Protestant orthodoxy at the feet of Luther’s codifier, Philip Melanchthon. Sytsma writes:

Despite Luther’s early polemic against Aristotle, he did not altogether reject the usefulness of the Nicomachean Ethics. Just as Melanchthon had joined Luther in his initial critique of Aristotle, there are indications that the influence went the other way as well. In his later years, after Melanchthon had reintroduced Aristotle’s ethics at Wittenberg, Luther expressed remarkable appreciation for Aristotle’s text. In 1543, Luther said that although philosophers such as Cicero and Aristotle do not teach “how I can be free from sins, death, and hell,” they nonetheless wrote excellently on ethics: “Cicero wrote and taught excellently about virtues, prudence, temperance, and the rest. Aristotle similarly also [wrote and taught] excellently and very learnedly about ethics. Indeed, the books of both are very useful and of the highest necessity for the conduct of this life.” (Luther 1930: 608) Luther also appropriated Aristotle’s concept of equity (epieikeia) from book V of the Nicomachean Ethics as a consistent part of his theology (Kim 2011: 91-98; Gehrke 2014; Arnold 1999). In his Lectures on Genesis wrote that “peace and love are the moderator and administrator of all virtues and laws, as Aristotle beautifully says about epieikeia in the fifth book of his Ethics” (Luther 1960: 340; Kim 2011: 94). Alongside his praise for Aristotle’s concept of epieikeia, Luther even affirmed Aristotle’s concept of virtue as a mean between extremes:

Aristotle deals with these matters in a very fine way when he writes about geometrical proportion and epieikeia…. The law must be kept, but in such a way that the government has in its hand a geometrical proportion, or a middle course and epieikeia. For virtue is a quality that revolves about a middle course, as a wise man will determine. (Luther 1966a: 174; Gehrke 2014: 90)

Such remarks indicate that while Luther initially objected to perceived theological abuse of Aristotle’s ethics, he came to accept its usefulness in certain respects (Gerrish 1962: 34-35). Whether or not this is the case, however, Luther’s own views are not definitive for the larger history of Protestantism, for his early anti-Aristotelian polemic was not taken too seriously by later ethicists at Protestant universities, who on this matter “looked for guidance from Melanchthon rather than Luther” (Svensson 2020: 189).[2]

It is interesting as we read Sytsma what becomes rather apparent is the type of hedging, he is engaging in throughout his treatment. The way we know he is hedging is the way he concludes: viz. that Luther’s thinking is ultimately of no consequence towards the later development of Protestant orthodoxy. I say he is hedging because you can sense a level of ‘spin’ in regard to the way Sytsma is attempting to present Luther vis-à-vis Aristotle. There is no doubt that Luther appreciated certain aspects of Aristotle’s ability to communicate with a level of technical precision and clarity that would make any communicator and teacher swoon. But there is scant evidence to suggest that Luther ever recanted of what he intentionally wrote contra Aristotle’s Ethics in his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology. For Luther the whole premise of his reformational work was bounded by his slavish commitment to what came to be his seminal and paradigmatic moment; his realization of sola fide, ‘Faith Alone!’ Aristotle’s anthropology was diametrically opposed to this reality, insofar that his notion that humanity had a capacity within itself to be virtuous through habituation in the virtues, ran counter to Luther’s commitment to the Bondage of the Will. When you read the whole of Luther’s DAST, this becomes the clear target of his protesting, and thus reformational identity. To attempt to soften this, in regard to Luther’s “later” stance towards Aristotle, is to play fast and loose with the historical Luther in context; Sytsma should know better. He does, in the end, know better, and knows he must admit that Luther’s reformational impulses run counter to the type of ‘Christian Aristotelianism’ (see Muller) that he is attempting to recover for a 21st century Protestant revival of orthodoxy.

Why does this historical matter, matter, though? It matters because the truth matters, for one thing. Beyond that, at a material theological level it matters because as Protestants we want to be committed to, indeed, a faith alone mode as our evangelical identity. Luther’s protest was contra a system of soteriology that saw grace as a substance presented through the liturgy of the Holy Roman Catholic See. He understood that the only Mediator between God and man, was the Man, Christ Jesus. As such, to attempt to sneak a concept of grace back into the Protestant theological matrix that is funded by an Aristotelian anthropology dead-set against this type of immediate mediation between God and humanity through Christ Jesus, is to undercut the whole premise of what it originally meant to Protestant. If Sytsma and the whole machine he works within desires to think grace and salvation in the terms provided for by Aristotle, then do what so many Presbyterians, and the like have done in recent years, and swim the river Tiber; but don’t pretend to call yourselves ‘Protestant’ simply because the Post Reformed orthodox almost immediately fell right back into the communal waters of the Papal font. So-called Post Reformed orthodoxy is an anachronism constructed in order to identify the development of Protestant Reformed (and even Lutheran) orthodoxy that took place in the 16th and 17th centuries. But according to the Protestant ‘Scripture Principle’ Protestants don’t operate with a magisterium of the sort that Sytsma et al. are attempting to set this period of Protestant doctrinal development up as. We don’t allow nostalgia of a Western European development, even if it is ostensibly “Protestant” to allow it to call us into siren soundings, and blind us to what is actually at stake in regard to Protestant, and more importantly, biblical doctrina. And yet I would contend this is exactly what Sytsma and his whole company have been drawn to.

Luther would be rolling in his grave if he knew what happened to the Protestant churches. But no matter, as Sytsma would say to Luther: “[your] views are not definitive for the larger history of Protestantism. . . .”

[1] William Roach, Martin Luther’s 1517 Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, accessed 04-26-2022.

[2] David S. Sytsma, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Protestantism, accessed 04-26-2022, 2-3.

Luther’s Personalist Grace Contra Scholastic (Catholic and Protestant) Created Grace

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Martin Luther’s doctrine of grace was of a personalist sort, contra the Thomist Catholic concept of grace as a ‘created grace’ or habitus (a disposition given by God to elect humanity in their “accidents” whereby they might habituate [cooperate] with God by way of gratia infusa [infused grace, which is created and thus derivative grace] and merit the possibility to ultimately be justified before God wherein the iustitia Christi finally consummates as the iustitia Dei [‘righteousness of Christ’ … ‘righteousness of God’]). This is significant to underscore, not just because it offers an alternative, “biblical,” account of grace, contra Roman Catholicism, but this implicates Reformed orthodoxy insofar that it received, and repristinated this doctrine of Grace, the Thomist doctrine, in the development and codification of its so-called “orthodox” Reformed theology. Here is Luther with some commentary by Helmut Thielicke:

‘I take grace in the proper sense,’ writes Luther in his treatise Against Latomus (1521), ‘as the favor of God—not a quality of the soul, as is taught by our more recent writers. This grace truly produces peace of heart until finally a man is healed from his corruption and feels he has a gracious God.’ LW 32, 227. In his 1519 commentary on Psalm 1:2 Luther says: ‘Here “delight” [in the Law of the Lord] stands, first of all, neither for ability [potentia] nor for the indolent habit [habitus] which was introduced from Aristotle by the new theologians in order to subvert the understanding of the Scriptures, nor for the action [actus] out of which, as they say, that ability or habit proceeds. All human nature does not have this delight, but it must necessarily come from heaven. For human nature is intent and inclined to evil, . . . The Law of the Lord is truly good, holy, and just. Then it follows that the desire of man is the opposite of the Law.” LW 14, 295.1

Thielicke develops Luther’s critique with greater depth, but for our purposes this quote will have to suffice. What should be understood though, as I highlighted previously, is that for the scholastics (Catholic or the Reformed orthodox latterly), what was most important was to recognize that ontologically nature retained its esse (essence), even post-fall; in other words, the intellect remained intact, retained a “point of contact” with God even after its rupture from God in the fall. In this frame, then, grace was only needed as an addition to the ‘accidents’ (not the essence) of humanity whereby the elect person might synergistically cooperate and perform ‘their’ salvation with God (in the Catholic frame this took place sacramentally through the Church; for the orthodox Reformed this was understood through Federal or Covenantal theology as that developed progressively along the way). But significantly, grace for the Aristotelian (as that was appropriated in various iterations of “Thomism”), was not, and would not be God himself, personally. The need, in the scholastic frame was not that desperate; that is, that God himself be grace for us (pro nobis). For the scholastic, as already noted, the fall did not plunge humanity into a rupture with God wherein the whole of what it means to be human was lost, just part, essentialistically, was lost. And it was ‘this part’ that a created grace, as a ‘medicine’ would make perfect (e.g. ‘grace perfects nature’). As the reader can see, though, Luther opposed this type of Aristotelian rambunctiousness.

For Luther, and others, even in the 16th and 17th century Reformed ambit, grace was in fact God for and with us. We of course see this theme picked up by people like Barth and TF Torrance in their contexts and under their own respective ideational periods of reference. Insofar that the Post Reformed orthodox have imbibed, retrieved, appropriated, repristinated the Thomist mantle, and they are doing that currently with exuberance, this is the doctrine of grace they are ingesting. There is a better way forward, and this is why I am so intent on introducing people to Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance. They are retrievers of the ‘Chalcedonian pattern,’ and the Athanasian frame wherein grace is indeed God for us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. As such, salvation obtains for us, ‘in Christ,’ fully, and not through a synergistic frame of cooperating (or persevering) with God by way of ‘created grace’ wherein nature is perfected and not re-created through apocalyptic resurrection, ascension, and the Parousia.

There is a better way for the genuinely evangelical (historically understood) Christian, and it certainly isn’t by retrieving, whole hog, Post Reformed orthodoxy, or the type of mediaeval classical theism so many are attempting to “revive” the Protestant church with today. The biblical faith is intentionally trinitarian, relational, and thus personalistic. The ‘ground and grammar’ of any truly evangelical theology must be pollinated by biblical and revelational categories rather than philosophical and speculative ones (of the sort that we get through Aristotelian Christianity). Luther knew this, this was the basis of his reforming work. He understood God’s grace in personal, relational ways, and thus genuinely evangelical ways rather than in the philosophical categories that the schoolmen did.

 

1 Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics: Foundations (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 225 n. 3.

 

Barth’s Extension of Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Contra the Trad’s Theology of Glory

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I am attracted to Barth’s theology for a variety of reasons. I am quite minimalist when it comes to theology. In other words, as a Protestant (Reformed) Christian I am interested in doing theology of the Word. This is why I am so acutely allergic to speculative theologies of the sorts that we find under the umbrella of classical theism. I repudiate overly metaphysicalized theologies that take shape after Aristotle/Plato, or any other system that accretes the reality (res) of Holy Scripture with barnacles that are unnatural to its existence as the Christ conditioned text that it is. And yet like a machine theologians continue to retrieve these sorts of theologies in the name of service to the church. That’s not for me; if you like that sort of stuff—i.e. talking about God as if you could so through the categories of the philosophers / talking about God with philosophers even if those philosophers aren’t Christian—then we are on different theological planes. Further, the planes we are on are so disparate that I would contend that theologians who do theology with the philosophers aren’t even engaging with what I take to be genuine confessional Christian theology. And this is why I like Barth (and the after Barth tradition like we find in Thomas Torrance et al.) so much.

With the aforementioned noted let’s read along with Barth as he develops his thinking on knowledge of God and its relationship to his reformulated doctrine of election (which in the Church Dogmatics is yet forthcoming, relative to this reading, in II/2). Barth writes:

It is in His love above all that God reveals Himself as the One who is incomparable and therefore unique; which means that He reveals Himself as the true and essential God. This revelation is of such a nature that He accomplishes at one stroke what the idea of uniqueness is unable to accomplish in any of its various forms and applications. We have referred already to the fact that divine revelation has the character of election, and to the twofold aspect, that as He chooses man in order to reveal Himself to him as God, God also chooses Himself, that He may be revealed to man as God. It is not, however, from the principle or concept of this twofold election that the knowledge of the divine uniqueness comes. It is not unique in this character of election as such. The idea of election itself leads us back only to the idea of uniqueness. Knowledge of this does not give or complete knowledge of the divine uniqueness. This takes place in the actuality of the twofold election as it occurs in God’s revelation according to the witness of the Old and New Testament. It is a choice, but it is a choice as an event. It is in this event as such that the love of God reveals itself and acts with the incomparability to which the only appropriate response is the confession of God’s uniqueness. It is in this event that the twofold choice is made which excludes even the very idea that God may be subject to the rivalry of other gods.[1]

If you are familiar with Barth’s theology you will immediately recognize the strong emphasis of actualism in the above passage. All speculation, according to Barth, is besmudged by the very event of God’s free and lively choice to be God for and with and in us through the humanity of Jesus Christ. Barth sees this scandalous particularity as definitive of the ‘events’ of Holy Scripture itself; insofar as those events find their concretion in attestation to their reality in Jesus Christ. But this is the warp and woof of Barth’s theology; he doggishly attempts to follow the contours of Holy Scripture as Scripture’s ontology is grounded in the Self-givenness of Godself for humanity. In other words, outwith Christ, for Barth, Scripture, as all of creation has no context, no telos, no meaningful meaningfulness towards which it might radiate genuine knowledge of God. An implication of this is that there is no space for discursivity, in regard to the theologian’s own capacity to speculate God. In other words, the philosophers have no meaningful contact with God, for Barth, since they are definitionally delimited by their flatlander horizontality. For Barth (and for me) knowledge of God only always comes from the event of God’s election to incarnate and be God with us, that we might be humans with Him, through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ.

The aforementioned constraints bother many (most) theologians. It cramps their ability to engage, rather nakedly, with the so-called Great Tradition of the church. Indeed, this sort of Barthianizing, ironically, is too solo Christo for them; or, it is too nuda Scriptura for them. There isn’t much respect among other academic disciplines if the theologian takes Barth’s route. If the theologian takes Barth’s route they might as well admit that they are some sort of Uncle Jed backwater only pretending to talk in intelligible ways about God. At best, if the theologian wants to show any sort of charitableness toward Barth, they will attempt to integrate ‘pearls’ of insight from Barth (i.e. contextless and abstract ‘words of knowledge’) into their broader and speculative theological projects (you know, the classical theistics type).  

I am ultimately hoping, as you have read this post, that among multiple things I am attempting to introduce folks to, in regard to Barth, that Barth’s theology offers a rather radical Protestant prolegomena. In other words, Barth’s offering is greater than himself. He presents the Christian theological world with what I would call, in orientation, a neo-Luther style; not fully in material or even formal substance with Luther, but definitely in spirit. In my view, Barth extends Luther’s theology of the cross (theologia crucis) while contradicting the Tradition’s theologia of gloriae (theology of glory). Just how I see it. Maybe you will better understand why I reject the academic class. I see most of it so riddled with the pockmarks of theology of glory, and smug classmanship, that I have almost no desire to be part of it in any way; life is much too short for such theatrics.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1 §31: Study Edition Vol 9 (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 12.

I Am Appalled. Solo Theologia Crucis

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Let me provide a quote from (my nemesis), Richard Muller. He offers a definition of Martin Luther’s theologia crucis. Luther’s theology of the cross is at the very center of my mode as a Christian thinker. It has been with me ever since I studied it in Reformation theology class in seminary, back in 2002. I have a more constructive and detailed post on this (and many others), which you can read here. Consider this post as somewhat of an addendum to the post I just linked you to. Muller writes:

theologia crucis: theology of the cross; a term used by Luther and descriptive of his insight into the nature of revelation and therefore of theology as a whole. God has chosen to reveal himself, not as human describes him in its rational theology of glory (theologia gloriae, q.v.), but in the weakness and the scandal of the cross. True knowledge of God is, therefore, a knowledge of God that rests upon the hiddenness of God in his revelation, a knowledge that humbles worldly reason and wisdom. Like Luther’s distinction between God hidden and God revealed (Deus absconditus/Deus revelatus, q.v.), this concept of a theologia crucis militates against the marriage of theology and philosophy contemplated by the medieval scholastics.[1]

And the Apostle Paul’s theologia crucis,

For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. –I Corinthians 2.2

This is the theological mode I slavishly prefer, as you know by now. I reject theologies that are grounded in speculative, discursive meanderings that are rooted in philosopher’s un-evangelized wits. As a Christian I am bond-slavishly committed to knowing God through God, as that is mediated through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. There is no other Way, Truth, or Life. Luther would be appalled at the shape Reformation theology took, both in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, post his death. I am appalled. Barth was appalled. Torrance was appalled.

[1] Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastics Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1985), 300.

Law/Gospel Actualized as Gospel Alone in Contraposition to Thomistically Retreived Soteriologies

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Protestants of a certain stripe are all about retrieving classical theologies, particularly of a Thomistic[1] hue. These Protestants typically, and rightly, as the case may be, start by retrieving theology proper (doctrine of God) categories, and then work their way from there. They terminate in soteriology; and in the Protestant frame I’m thinking of, this termination looks most closely akin to Federal (Covenantal) theology.[2] Built into Federal theology is a notion of bi-lateral contract between God and humanity. God provides the grace and salvation, and the elect person (if they don’t have a temporary faith) co-operates with that grace thus meeting the conditions required for acquiring final justification (aka ‘glorification’).[3]

Lutheran theologian, and ethicist, Helmut Thielicke describes this theory of salvation in the following way. You will notice that his sketch is in discussion with the Augsburg Confession which stands in contraposition to the Catholic (and Thomistic) understanding of salvation. If you are familiar with Lutheran (and Reformed theology) you will immediately pick up on the Law/Gospel combine Thielicke and the Augsburg Confession are thinking through.

What happens when particular emphasis is laid on the imperative? The Apology draws attention to this problem in a polemical section of Article IV on “Love and the Keeping of the Law.” According to the Thomistic doctrine of justification the imperative, although not exactly isolated and absolutized, is nonetheless accorded an autonomous significance. For justification is linked with the “keeping of the Law,” and the imperative, i.e., the requirement of good and meritorious works, has the significance of co-operation in the attainment of justification. The Apology finds the reason for this primacy of the imperative, or at least for the high degree of emphasis laid upon it, in the Thomistic concept of prima gratia.

In opposition to this accentuating of “initial grace,” the Apology maintains that Christ does not cease to be the mediator after we are renewed. “All those err who maintain that he [Christ] has merited for us only the ‘initial grace’ and that we then subsequently attain acceptance and ear for ourselves eternal life by our keeping of the Law. Christ remains the mediator, and we must always maintain that on his account we have a reconciled God, even though we ourselves be unworthy.

By way of interpretation, it should be noted that the expression “Christ remains the mediator” is an exaggerated formulation which is to be taken with a grain of salt. For it goes without saying, as the Apology realizes well enough, that Thomism does not present the doctrine of justification in such crude and deistic fashion that Christ is, as it were, only the initiator of justification, and that then, having started the movement, he withdraws, after the manner of Deism, and leaves everything to the human action thus “cranked up” and released. Thomism cannot mean this, since it regards all the “merits” attained by man as merits only through grace, and hence only for the sake of Jesus Christ. Hence we must not allow this polemical formulation to give us too simple a view of Thomism.

Nevertheless, the Apology does use this polemical formulation; and if we cannot think that it is simply caricaturing its opponents in order to ease the task of refuting them, we must interpret it as follows. The concept of prima gratia involves a decisive infringement upon and restriction of the mediatorial significance of Christ. For when justification is linked with the prima gratia, this initial grace is regarded as the basis which makes possible our doing of the meritorious works necessary for salvation. Thus grace becomes merely the basis which makes possible the real thing. The real thing is the meritorious works; they are the key to the process of justification. For it is by works that we see whether the grace lent to us is actualized and put to good use, or whether it remains instead idle capital. In the strict sense, therefore, initiatory grace is really the basis of the possibility, the indispensable condition of the real event. In relation to the merits which are normative for salvation, justification has liberating and creative power. Its position is rather like that of a means to an end.

In thus characterizing Thomistic faith as a “means to an end,” we should not forget, of course, that this is an exaggerated formulation because in Thomism grace is in some sense final as well as primary. For what man merits is grace in its quality as an end, as ultimate “goal.” Between the two, however, merits have a decisive position, since they can challenge and even block the way from primary grace to ultimate grace.

In Rome’s assigning of a key position to works, the Apology sees not only an infringement upon the exclusiveness of Jesus Christ, but also a threatened perpetuation of the assaults of doubt [Anfechtung] which Luther sought to overcome. “If those who are regenerated are supposed later to believe that they will be accepted because they have kept the law, how can our conscience be sure that it pleases God, since we never satisfy the law?” If good works occupy the key process of justification, then the assurance of our being accepted and justified by God (the “sure conscience” [conscientia certa]) is continually threatened. For this assurance depends in turn on the assurance that we have fully kept the Law, an assurance that can never be definitive and unequivocal. To the degree that the decisive phase in the process of justification passes into the hands of men, there is always instability, and hence assaults of doubt.[4]

This, in a nutshell, is the stuff that Federal theology is made of. While it is all vouchsafed by the absolutum decretum, and God’s brute sovereignty therein, this is how the Divine pactum unfolds, in a loose way, in Federal theology. Is this by mistake, or is there a correlation between the doctrine of God and soteriology present in the Thomist (Aristotelian) frame? There is a correlation. In other words, the way a theological system thinks God, so goes the rest of its subsequent theologizing. If a system gets a doctrine of God wrong, everything following will be eschewed in orientation to the wrongness of who and what God is conceived to be.

In Evangelical Calvinism, even more expressly than we find in Thielicke’s Lutheran frame, the object of salvation is the subject. In other words, there is no discussion that takes place, about salvation (or anything else!), in abstraction from the concrete life of God in Jesus Christ. Both the person and work of Jesus Christ are thought together, never apart. As such, the ‘imperative’ (Law) of the Christian life is never thought in rupture from its indicative (Gospel), but only together. This is because, for the Evangelical Calvinist, as Thomas Torrance would emphasize, salvation is Grace all the way down; insofar that salvation is God become human in Christ for us (pro nobis). This means, simply, that insofar that the person is in union with the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, that this person is justified, sanctified, and glorified, from head to toe, in the robe of Christ’s righteousness. Further, this means that the ‘eternal indicative’ is also the eternal imperative insofar that God freely elected to step into the gap between Himself and fallen humanity. As He stepped into this gap, which is Grace, all conditions, particular to the actualization of re-conciliation between God and humanity, were immediately realized. In other words, the dilemma that Thielicke and the Augsburg Confession are addressing, in regard to the Thomist categories, are never raised as real dilemmas.

For the Evangelical Calvinist there is no sunlight between God’s inner life for us and the human conscience and concrete lived existence we inhabit on a day-to-day basis. And all of this is because the Evangelical Calvinist does not think God from the speculative and Aristotelian categories that Thomism, and her Calvinist (and Lutheran orthodox) iterations do. We think concretely from the evangelical life of God for us revealed and exegeted in Jesus Christ. In other words, we think of God in relational and personalist ways which avoid thinking of Him in terms that are law-like, decretal, and juridical. As such, the dilemma Thielicke is rightly countering, as presented by the Thomist categories, are non-starters for the Evangelical Calvinist. Nevertheless, it is important to understand, contextually, why Evangelical Calvinism offers a positive way forward that does not fall prey to these sorts of dilemmas as given rise by speculative theologies like we find under the umbrella of the Thomisms.

[1] Thomas Aquinas’ theology, and its subsequent “neo-Thomist” receptions and developments.

[2] We get ‘poser’ versions of this in sub-set forms in lower iterations of Reformed or more accurately “Calvinist” theologies (think of Five-Point Calvinism, and other like versions; whether those be in direct correlation with, or in contraposition to Five-Pointism).

[3] See Myk Habets and Bobby Grow, “Theologia Reformata et Semper Reformanda: Towards an Evangelical Calvinism,” in Editors Myk Habets and Bobby Grow, Evangelical Calvinism: Volume 1: Essays Resourcing the Continuing Reformation of the Church (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012), 1-19. Also see Bobby Grow, “Assurance is of the Essence of Saving Faith: Calvin, Barth, Torrance, and the ‘Faith of Christ,'” in Editors Myk Habets and Bobby Grow, Evangelical Calvinism: Volume 2: Dogmatics and Devotion (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2017), 30-57.

[4] Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics: Volume 1: Foundations, edited by William H. Lazarus (Philadelphia: Fortess Press, 1966), 74-6.

Simul Justus et Peccator: ‘Simultaneously Justified and Sinner’

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“He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son he loves, . . .” –Colossians 1.13 (NET)

ὃς ἐρρύσατο ἡμᾶς ἐκ τῆς ἐξουσίας τοῦ σκότους καὶ μετέστησεν εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ υἱοῦ τῆς ἀγάπης αὐτοῦ, –Colossians 1.13 (GNT)

Simul justus et peccator–Martin Luther

As Christians in Christ we are simultaneously inhabitants of the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ, and at the same time we continue to dwell in a world full of the darkness we have been redeemed from; this world is yet present in our old hearts, and in the bodies of death we continuously inhabit. This seems paradoxical, dialectical even; it is. Sin no longer has its filthy grip on our lives / instead the righteousness of Christ does. In this we have the freedom of God to live in the holiness He has always already inhabited in the perichoresis of His Triune Life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; we have become ‘partakers of the divine nature’ by the adoption of God’s Grace; been made co-heirs with Jesus Christ as we are now in union with the life that He has always had by nature with the Father in the Holy bond of matrimony provided for by the Holy Spirit. As Christians we paradoxically live in-between two ages; even as we inhabit both of them, yet in asymmetrical ways. We are citizens of the heavenly Kingdom, seated in the heavenly places with Christ; yet we are still in this world, in these bodies. Helmut Thielicke explains these things in the language of  æon, which is the Latin transliteration of the classical and Koine Greek, αἰών; the word simply means: ‘age.’ He writes:

In the second form the question runs, “How do I move from faith to action?” That is, how do I make my Christianity concrete? What is life in the new aeon to be like? For to be baptized is, after all, to let oneself be called into God’s salvation history, and hence out of the old aeon. But to be called out in this way can mean only that we are delivered from the ruling powers of this aeon and set under the dominion of a new and different Lord. It means, for example, to acquire a new relation to the god Mammon, and to the powers of property and possession (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13; 12:16-20; Mark 10:21, 24 f.). It means also that I have to revise my relationship to my body (I Cor. 6:19) and its passions (Phil. 3:19; I Cor. 6:16), to the things of this world (I Cor. 7:29 ff.) and anxiety concerning them (Matt. 6:25 ff.), to the Thou of my neighbor and to the groups to which I belong. It implies, in fact, the total revision of my existence in all its dimensions, since Christ is ruler of the entire cosmos and not just Lord of my inwardness. The orientation of my existence—and this means concretely my life in the plenitude of its relationships—is completely transformed because I am now the member of another history and of another aeon.

On the other hand I am simultaneously—by virtue of a mysterious simul—a member of the old aeon. For Christ did not pray the Father that he should take his own out of the world, but that he should keep them alliance with wickedness (John 17:15). After all, they are no more “of the world” (in terms of origin and destiny) than is Christ who, even though he walks in it, still is not “of” the world (John 17:16).

Hence believers in Christ stand to the old aeon in a relationship of both continuity and discontinuity. The relationship is one of continuity insofar as they eat and drink, marry and are given in marriage, laugh and cry, stand under authorities and within orders, etc. It is one of discontinuity because they no longer receive their orientation from all of this. Their relation to that which is relative can no longer be something absolute (to put it in Kierkegaardain terms). They live “in the flesh” to be sure, but no longer “according to the flesh.” We shall see later to what degree Luther’s well-known phrase “at once righteous and sinful” [simul justus et peccator] reflects this relationship to the two aeons, especially when it is seen to involve an interrelating of res and spes, of present and future, of this aeon and the coming aeon: ‘sinful in fact, righteous in hope” [peccator in re, justus in spe].[1]

What a glorious, yet precarious status we inhabit. We are redeemed, and indwell, in and through the mediatorial humanity of Jesus Christ, the Holy of Holies of God’s inner and triune Life. Yet, we remain in the far country of this groaning world, and the bodies that inhabit it, until we fully realize the beatifico visio in the consummation of all things yet to come at the shout of the coming Son of Man.

I long to be saved from my ‘body of death.’

“Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”–Romans 7.24 (NET)

[1] Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics: Volume 1: Foundations, edited by William H. Lazarus (Philadelphia: Fortess Press, 1966), 40-1.

Luther as Hercules: American Evangelicals, Conspiracy Theories and End Times

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I just watched a video produced by a former seminary prof of mine, who specializes in the theology of culture, Dr. Paul Metzger. The video features a discussion with Dr. Greg Camp and professor, Jon Morehead, and the topic is: American evangelicals, conspiracy theory and its connection to end times eschatological speculations and fervor (or fever). In all honesty, for any of us who have been more intimately associated with so-called conspiracy theorism, it wasn’t all that informative. Although it does get into the origins of the illuminati in the late 19th century, in America, and then how that has blossomed into 21st century iterations; that represented a helpful sketch of the historical sourcing that so-called conspiracy theorism is funded by. But then it tails off into a passive anti-Trump advertisement, as Trumpism is tied into Qanon and other so-called conspiracy theories afoot.

But I want to get beyond that, a bit. Some of my readers, I’m sure, are concerned with my apparent turn to the sort of conspiracy theorism I have been referring to above. I want to provide some perspective on that. The reality is that in the history there have been actual CONSPIRACIES that have engulfed humanity into the most destructive vicissitudes imaginable (the easiest and closest reference that comes to mind, of course, is Nazi Germany). I do grant, of course, that there are actual and real conspiracy theories, but those are often deployed as deflections which serve as subterfuge, in the sense that it makes it almost impossible to disentangle the theory from the actual conspiracy; especially when media, of any type, gets involved in the fomentation of these things.

But this is exactly what, I would contend, folks committed to anti-conspiracy theorism, in the name of sobriety and institutional identity, overlook too hastily. They fail to recognize that there are real, even satanic (because us Christians still believe that the devil and his minions are real and active in this present ‘evil age’) conspiracies that the ‘world system’ is embroiled in. And precisely because we are Christians, we ought to see these things framed within the apocalyptic framing that Scripture, and even more importantly, as Scripture attests to its reality, Jesus did. There are identifiable conspiracies, and conspirators active in the world today, and they are of their father the devil. Often folks like my former professor, and the guests he had on his production, want to keep things much too abstract (that’s I how read them). They prefer to operate with an abstract notion of evil that is operative in the world, thus it allows us to keep things more intellectually manageable in regard to how we approach these things (i.e. in dispassionate and ‘academic’ ways). In other words, there almost seems to be this sense that the mode I am referring to is okay with thinking of evil as a globular mass ‘out there,’ but when others attempt to make that too personal and particular, when we start giving names, and identifying movements, it is just at this moment that the descriptor “conspiracy theory” becomes the handy way out.

Ever since my first real introduction to Martin Luther in Reformation Theology class in seminary by my former prof (and I’ll still claim him as my current mentor), Ron Frost, I was hooked (maybe this is because of my Scandinavian heritage, I don’t know)! Luther, was a theologian who had grist in his theology, the sort that produced his famous theologia crucis (theology of the cross). Luther, the son of a miner, was a ‘man of the earth,’ we might think of someone like Esau, in terms of earthiness, or of St. Peter; at least these are the sorts of personages who come to mind when I think of Luther. Psychologically and spiritually, Luther had a deep sense of his utter need for God; which of course propelled him into his protesting work against the Papacy. Luther, as Heiko Oberman so eloquently describes him, was ‘a man between God and the devil,’ as such, Luther had a sense of God’s apocalyptic presence and even doom. He found relief, from the doom part of that, personally, through his solifidian (‘faith alone’) breakthrough. Once this relief came, he came to see the papacy, and the pope himself, as the literal and personal Antichrist (some Lutherans today, like the Wisconsin Synod, an offshoot of the Missouri Synod, still understand the office of the pope to be representative of the Antichrist). My point: if Luther was present today, if he operated with this same sort of zeal, and was willing to openly call out the pope as the Antichrist, he would be considered a conspiracy theorist himself. Notice the historical mode surrounding Luther, and how Luther saw himself vis-à-vis the pope during his time, as described by David Whitford:

In 1522, the dramatic woodcut, attributed to Hans Hoblein, depicting Martin Luther as the Hercules Germanicus firs appeared . . . . The woodcut was part of early pro-Luther propaganda. Dangling from Luther’s nose hangs the pope. Screaming in Luther’s mighty grasp is the inquisitor Jakob von Hochstraten. Lying at Luther’s feet are the decapitated Hydra of scholastic miscellany: Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Okham, Aristotle, Nicholas Lyra, and Peter Lombard. The Hydra, of course, was only one of the first tests Hercules would face. Other more terrible tests awaited him. Hercules final test was to face Cerberus, “a monster not to be overcome and that may not be described, [who] eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades.” So too, Luther came to feel that he would have to vanquish not only the scholastic Hydra, but his own hound of Hades. In 1520, Luther came to believe that he involved in an apocalyptic struggle against the Antichrist himself: the pope.[1]

If the Christian, I contend, is living with a sense of God’s immediacy, particularly as that is ‘felt’ through the theology of the cross, they will live with the sort of abandon and apocalyptic energy that Luther (and the Apostle Paul) did. Even if we’re ‘planting trees’ in the process, we will not be afraid to live lives that are framed by the scandalous nature of particularity. This does not mean we must, at the same time, engage in the sort of sacrificium intellectus that real conspiracy theorists often do. But it does mean that there ought to be a willingness to attempt the discernment and disentanglement of things that ‘institutional discernment’ typically fails at. Luther, while initially, attempting to work within the institution, was so driven by the all compelling light of Christ that shown upon him in his Augustinian monkery, and freed him, that he finally was cast out of the institution because of his willingness to be the “Church’s” idiot.

I am willing to be considered the Church’s idiot, if it means an openness to view things that contravenes ‘conventional’ discernment tablets. In that process I will, to a degree, slide too far down one side of the pendulum, this way, or that way, but there must be, in my view, a willingness to think beyond the so-called sobriety of the “peers.” Luther was willing to call the pope the personal Antichrist. Today that would be akin to seeing Obama or Trump as the Messiah, literally. But it was Luther’s willingness to be considered a fool for the Gospel, and often that led him into being a fool simply for himself, that he was willing to take these theopolitical stands. I’ve been told by a few people I know, PhDs in theology, that I have ‘lost my mind’ because of the particular conspiracies that I think are real; but so be it. I stand coram Deo (before God), and so do you!

 

[1] David M. Whitford, “The Papal Antichrist: And the Underappreciated Influence of Lorenzo Valla,” Renaissance Quarterly, (Volume 61: Number 1), Spring 2008:26.