Author: Jack Kilcrease

Jack Kilcrease is a Lutheran lay theologian and member of Our Savior Lutheran Church (LCMS). He is currently a member of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations. Jack was born in Texas, but grew up in Oregon. He went on to receive a B.A. from Luther College and an M.A. from Luther Seminary. He earned his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology and Ethics from Marquette University in 2009. Jack’s theological work explores the gift of God’s self-donation in Jesus Christ. He is the author of several books including the most recent volume of the Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics series on Holy Scripture and the forthcoming Justification by the Word (Lexham Press). Jack is currently Associate Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at the Institute of Lutheran Theology’s Christ School of Theology. He is also an Assistant Adjunct Professor teaching philosophy at Aquinas College. Jack lives in beautiful West Michigan with his lovely wife, Bethany, and his two energetic daughters, Miriam and Ruth. When he’s not thinking about theology—and even when he is—Jack enjoys running, hiking, and hanging out with his family and cat. He’s passionate about BBQ, whiskey, jazz, movies, and theological discussion.
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The Eucharistic Miracle of Christ’s Substantial Body and Blood Given For Us

The Augsburg Confession affirms the ancient and medieval consensus of the Catholic Church that Christ’s flesh and blood are substantially present in the Eucharist: “Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat the Supper of the Lord; and they reject those that teach otherwise.” This affirmation of the substantial presence of Christ’s flesh and blood in the Lord’s Supper was integral to the Lutheran Reformation from the beginning. 

In On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther is critical of the practice of communion in one kind (i.e., the pre-Vatican II practice of withholding the cup from the laity), transubstantiation, and the the Mass as a sacrifice for the living and the dead. Nevertheless, unlike most of the other reformers, Luther is quite clear that there is a Real Presence based on his canonical, catholic, and evangelical principle. This real substantial presence was the overwhelming catholic consensus of the ancient Church from its inception….

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The New Heavens and the New Earth: The Marriage Supper of the Lamb

The resurrected people of God will dwell in the New Heaven and New Earth. Contrary to popular Christian piety, the Bible does not envision humans floating away from the temporal order to an immaterial and disembodied heaven. Rather, Revelation describes the New Jerusalem as coming down from heaven (Rev. 21:2). The presence of God fills all creation as a cosmic Temple paralleling the way the Lord had earlier filled the Tabernacle/Temple. St. John records that the New Jerusalem, which will be like an arboreal Temple (i.e., a new Eden), will have no Temple. Rather, God and the Lamb will be its Temple (Rev. 21:22).1  

Heaven is the Direct Presence of God

In this sense, it is not so much that humans leave earth for heaven, but that heaven and earth merge. Heaven is not a separate ontological realm, or physical created space. Instead, it is simply the unmediated presence of God. Daniel describes the ascension of the Son of Man as movement into the presence of the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7). Hebrews reinforces this point by noting that Jesus’s ascension into heaven is one into the presence of God (Hebrew 9:24). In the same epistle, the author reminds readers that heaven “is not a part of this creation” (Heb. 9:11). In other words, heaven is God’s direct and unmediated presence; it is not a distinct created realm.    

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The New Heavens and the New Earth: Annihilation or Renewal?

As St. Paul shows in 1 Corinthians 15, the risen Christ is the prototype for the new humanity. He exemplifies the “spiritual body” (soma pneumatikon)1 that believers will enjoy after their resurrection and judgment in the new heavens and the new earth. What God has prepared for the redeemed transcends human comprehension (1 Cor. 2:9). Therefore. for the most part, we must take the Bible’s descriptions of life in the redeemed state as metaphorical or analogical language. 

Nevertheless, with regard to the resurrected body, we have a concrete example of what it will be like in the person of Jesus. Following the resurrection, Jesus displayed his glorified body and its capacities to the disciples, who then recorded these encounters in the Gospels. These accounts show that although the glorified body will remain physical, it will be mysteriously physical. Resurrected bodies will transcend the normal limitations of earthly bodies (1 Cor. 15:49). 

Annihilationism?

Since the time of Luther, Lutheran theologians have disagreed about the nature continuity between the old and new creations. Some believed the new heavens and new earth would be the result of the destruction of the old creation and its replacement by a new creation. Others believed renewal of the original creation would form the new heavens and new earth would be. 

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God’s Humbling Hiddenness and Revelation by Faith

Luther will guide our biblical explication of the God of the Gospel as both hidden and revealed.  As we observed in an earlier section, both the pre-modern Greek and Latin theological traditions relied on a dialectic of “negation” (apophatic theology, via negativa) and affirmation (kataphatic theology, via positiva).  Lowell Green has noted that Luther in his doctrine of God also relies on a form of affirmation and negation, albeit a radically different one.1  Luther’s affirmation is God hidden (negation) and God revealed (affirmation).  As we will also see, one could also add God’s appearance under the law as negation, and gospel as affirmation.  

It should be recognized that Luther’s concept of divine hiddenness is not just a matter of affirming that God is incomprehensible.  Of course, all orthodox Christian theologians have claimed this one way or another. Rather, following the biblical data (Isa. 45:15), Luther is clear that God actively hides from his people.2  Why and how this is the case is something we will explore below. 

Luther on Divine Hiddenness

How Luther talks about divine hiddenness is quite complicated because he applies the principle differently in different contexts.  The British historian of Christian doctrine B.A. Gerrish has thematized these disparate statements of Luther into two kinds of hiddenness: Hiddenness 1, where God is hidden in his revelation, notably in Christ.  Hiddenness 2, where God is hidden above and apart from revelation.3

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The Faithfulness of East and West: Post-Nicaea Rejection of Onto-Theology Part 2

The Eastern Theological Trajectory

The Cappadocians

The writings of the Cappadocian Father St. Gregory of Nyssa illustrate the Eastern theological trajectory.  In the mid-Fourth century, Gregory confronted a Neo-Arian theologian named Eunomius.1  Beyond holding that the Son could not be homoousios with the Father because being “generated” and “not generated” would make God compounded of two realities and not simple,2 Eunomius also asserted an extremely crass version of onto-theology.3  According to Eunomius, God was as knowable as any other being and therefore easily intellectually dissected, a point which he based his early criticism of Nicene doctrine upon.4  This was also backed up with a strongly univocal conception of language.5

In response, Gregory noted that Eunomius was engaged in a category confusion. Being ingenerate and generate was not a property of the divine substance, but rather the persons within the common substance of divinity.6  The divine substance and the divine persons were two distinct, yet related realities.  The personal relations within God spoke of the “howness” of God and were knowable from the common actions of the persons of the Trinity in the economy of salvation. 

Nevertheless, contrary to the claims of Eunomius, the “whatness” of God in the form of the divine substance was unknowable, in this life or even the next.7  Hence, it was not part of the system of being, and it was not therefore subject to Eunomius’s logic chopping.  In keeping with this view of the divine essence, Gregory of Nyssa composed a mystical text entitled The Life of Moses. 

In this work, Moses’ ascension into the darkness of Sinai in Exodus 21 becomes a metaphor for Christian existence.  Spiritual progress means an ever-increasing movement into the luminous darkness of the divine life.8  In this, Gregory rejects the notion that the soul is capable of ever spiritually beholding the divine essence, and therefore categorically denies what Western theologians have typically called the “beatific vision” (visio beatifica).9

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