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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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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Our Sabbath Rest and Vocations in Christ

Throwback Post

In the Genesis 1, the pinnacle of creation occurred on the sixth day when God made humanity in his own image. Then on the seventh day God remained present with his very good creation and rested. God’s sixth-day creation and seventh-day rest pointed toward and paralleled the Son’s Incarnation as the ultimate gift of divine presence and rest. The Incarnation prefigures the destiny of the whole creation. At the end of Revelation, St. John writes that the whole creation has become a Tabernacle of the divine presence (Rev. 21:3, 21:22). This correlates well with Daniel’s promise that the Temple mount (i.e., the locus of the presence of the divine kavod) would permeate the whole of creation (Dan. 2:35).1 

The promise of God’s communicative presence and divine rest are inexorably tied up with the promise of grace found in the gospel. The gospel is a unilateral gift and, as such, is an act of self-donation. To make an unconditional promise entails surrendering one’s being to the other. The one making the unconditional promise ceases to makes any conditions (i.e., the works of the law). As we have already seen, unconditional promise is also manifest in the covenantal imagery of marriage and its consummation (established in Genesis 1). This is why the Bible uses the image of the nuptial feast for the eschaton (Lk. 14:7-14, Rev. 19:6-9).  

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Post-Nicaea Rejection of Onto-Theology: Part I

The Council of Nicaea repudiated the ontotheological trajectory of the Ante-Nicene tradition. There are a number of theories about the origins and aims of the Arian heresy.1 But perhaps the most cogent way of reading it is simply as the Subordinationist heresy taken to its logical conclusion. Origen, and others within the Ante-Nicene tradition, thought more in terms of the Hellenistic concept of being and degrees of being. As a result, Greek philosophy supplanted the biblical paradigm of creator/creature and then removed God from the system of being. The Greek paradigm also deemphasized the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Without the strict division of creator/creature, Hellenized Ante-Nicene theologians fit the Second Person of the Trinity into a continuum of degrees of being, with the Father at the top and nothingness at the bottom.  

Arianism and Its Rejection

Based on indirect evidence regarding the nature of the Arian heresy, it can be said that much to his credit Arius recognized the importance of the biblical distinction between creator/creature more seriously than his Origenist predecessors in the Church of Alexandria.2  Nevertheless, like Origen, Arius saw the second person of the Trinity as part of the hierarchy of being.  If God as creator is outside the hierarchy of being (in that he is ingenerate), then it logically followed that as generated Christ must be part of the hierarchy of being.  Consequently, Arius reasoned that Christ must be on the creaturely side of the creator/creature division.3  

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Our Great Hope: Christ’s Return as Judge

The little apocalypses of the Synoptics, St. Paul’s letters, and Revelation affirm that at the Second Coming of Christ the dead will rise and final universal judgment will commence. Believers should experience “bold confidence” (Eph. 3:12) regarding Christ’s Second Coming because he has already proleptically judged us righteous through the promise of the gospel present in Word and Sacrament. As the Son of Man, Jesus shared his verdict with his hearers ahead of time. Believers today, in the interim between the first and second coming, do not need to wonder what Christ’s final judgement on them will be. The presence of the risen Jesus in Word and Sacrament (Matt. 18:20) proleptically delivers his “forgiven and justified” verdict to the contemporary Church.  

Quotation from exegetical professor emeritus Rev. Dr. Paul Raabe

Are We Judged According to Works?

The clearest passages of Scripture interpret other passages. Therefore, sections of Scripture that speak of judgment according to works must be read in harmony with the clear passages affirming the unconditionality of justification. Thus, the good works upon which Christ judges believers provide evidence of genuine faith (Matt 25). As we have seen, true faith necessarily gives rise to the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-26). Paul very clearly teaches both that saving faith inevitably results in good works and the unconditional nature of the promise of the gospel (Rom. 3:28). 

Although Luther sadly misinterpreted it, the Epistle of James makes precisely the same point. When St. James speaks of believers being “justified by works” in addition to faith (Jam. 2:24), he refers to the way works manifest saving faith. In a similar vein, in Romans 2, Paul speaks of the final judgment according to works (Rom. 2:6-11). However, he is speaking of a hypothetical situation apart from the intervening grace of Christ. In the next chapter, he is quick to affirm that no one can stand before God because of humans’ total lack of righteousness (Rom. 3:9-20).  

Thus, Christ will not render his positive judgment at the Second Coming on the basis of one’s works. However, a tree is known by its fruit. Only those with saving faith can actually perform good works in God’s sight. These fruits will reveal otherwise hidden faith at the Last Judgement.

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