Category: Theology

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The Speaking God and His Linguistic Creation

Our basic starting point for talking about God’s Word as it is present in its inspired and written form in the Bible is the recognition that as creatures we exist and suffer the address of a speaking God (Deus loquens, Deus dicit). Insofar as we are God’s creatures we are addressed by God in His act of creation and receive our being from that same address (Genesis 1; John 1). Since we are being addressed by God already in our creation, the dogmatic question relating to Sacred Scripture ultimately will be “How are we being addressed by God?” and not “Are we being addressed by God?” To answer this question we must first examine the ontological structure of God as a speaker from all eternity and creation as His created speech in time.

The Godhead speaks from all eternity. Jesus Christ is the eternal Word of God (John 1). This is the truth with which any confessional Lutheran account of Sacred Scripture must begin, just as the Book of Concord and the Augustana begin with this affirmation in the ecumenical creeds.1 The Word of God is not something created but rather is eternal. In that God is eternal and unchanging (Nm 23:19; Mal 3:6; Heb 13:8), in all eternity He is never a speechless or inactive God (Deus mutus, Deus otiosus). From all eternity the Father speaks forth a linguistic image of Himself in the person of His Son (Jn 1:1–3; Heb 1:3; Col 1:15). Though the Father is the source of divinity (fons totius divinitas), He nevertheless knows and addresses Himself from all eternity in the person of His Son (Mt 11:27; Lk 10:22).

1. See Concordia Triglotta: The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, German-Latin-English, trans. and ed. F. Bente, W. H. T. Dau, and The Lutheran Church— Missouri Synod (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 31–35 (hereafter cited as Bente). Unaltered Augsburg Confession I (hereafter cited as CA; Bente, 42–43).

From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 1-2.

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New Historical Theology Podcast: Doth Protest Too Much

Fr. Andrew Christiansen, a fine student of mine at the Institute of Lutheran Theology, is producing a new historical theology podcast called Doth Protest Too Much. The Fr. Christiansen writes that the ecumenical interview-based podcast will “dive into the last 500+ years of church history and the theological developments within the broad ‘Protestant’ tradition, from the Reformation to modern theology.” I was honored to be the first guest and engage in a stimulating discussion about the Protestant Scholastics on the episode “Those Cut-and-Dry Scholastics.”

Rev. Andrew Christiansen is the Canon for Youth and Schools at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Shreveport, Louisiana.

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The Imputation of Righteousness and our Future-Present Justification

Although justification is pronounced objectively in the resurrection (Rom. 4:25), it is received subjectively through faith that hears the promise: “For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved . . . [And] faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:10, v. 17).  No one can have faith apart from the electing and regenerative work of the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:14, 12:3, Gal. 3:2).  Christ makes intercession on behalf of believers in heaven, on the basis of his sacrifice on the cross (Rom. 8:34).  The Holy Spirit, the who is the spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6), makes the fruits of Christ’s intercession – justification – present in the heart of the believer (Rom. 10:6-13) through the hearing of the Word (Rom. 10:7, Gal. 3:2).  Much as the elect representational persons stood in the place of Israel in the Old Testament as mediators, so too Christ and his righteousness stand in for the unrighteousness of the unbeliever through an act of imputation (Rom. 3:25, 4:9, v. 22, 8:10, 1 Cor. 1:30, 2 Cor. 5:21, Gal. 3:6, Phil. 3:9).  The concept of representation that we see in the Old Testament therefore makes sense of Paul’s language of imputation in atonement and justification.  In atonement, Christ is imputed with human sin, and in justification humans are imputed with Christ’s righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21).

It is important to notice that Paul uses the term eschatological term “justification” for what happens proleptically (in the future) to believers in the present.  As we observed earlier, for Second Temple Jews, at the end of time God would “justify” (judge righteous and vindicate) those who had adhered to the covenant and usher them into the kingdom.  For Paul, Christ is the object of election and justification.  He is one the one who has adhered to the covenant and be vindicated on the eschatological day of his resurrection.  Therefore, in the present believers can proleptically receive through Christ what they will receive at the end of time through faith in the promise (i.e., election and justification).  This is because the eschaton has already happened for Christ, and therefore when believers enter into him the eschaton happens to them as well.  Outwardly, believers remain in the current age weighed down by sin and death, but in the inner being they already have been ushered into the kingdom of the resurrected: “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10).