Theology Archives - Page 8 of 22

May 30, 2024May 30, 2024

Reconciliation through the Spirit in the Means of Grace

The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead works through the Word and Sacrament ministry of the Church to share the universal and objective “not guilty” verdict of the Father. This verdict comes through the message of the death and resurrection of the Messiah. Those who receive the proclamation of justification by faith secure the very presence of the risen Jesus in the power of the Spirit. As the great cosmic judge, the Son of Man, Jesus now mediates the same verdict and presence he proleptically shared with the eschatological Israel in his earthly ministry through the Church.

The Church is defined by the means of grace to which Jesus has attached his Name, that is, his presence. Therefore, to be in contact with the means of grace is to both be in contact with the risen Jesus, and his body/bride the Church. The Church and the Divine Service (Gottesdienst) is the replacement for the Temple (Eph. 2:19-22) and its service. This is because the Church and its Divine Service are now the body of Jesus, the true eschatological Temple in the flesh (Jn. 1:14). As the Son of Man, Jesus proleptically elected and worked justification in the midst of the outcastes of Israel. He told his hearers beforehand what verdict he would render on them in light of their belief or unbelief in his words of judgment and grace.¹

May 28, 2024May 28, 2024

The Death of Christ as a Revelation of Sin

Christ’s regal and sacerdotal activity find their ultimate fulfillment in his prophetic office. Christ’s prophetic office does not merely encompass his teachings prior to his crucifixion, but is finally and most supremely fulfilled in his actualization of the testament of the gospel. The saving testament of the gospel is the message of his salvific cross and empty tomb. The cross and the empty tomb are the supreme act of revelation of the Triune God. St. Paul tells us that the omega-point of God’s revelatory activity, and the center of all proper Christian teaching, is the death and resurrection of Christ: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Martin Luther echoed this in his slogan: “The cross alone is our theology” (crux sola est nostra theologia).¹ In his Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle summarized the content of the revelation of the cross as: “[Christ] was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).

Although the message of the cross’s ultimate telos is salvation, in Scripture salvation never comes apart from a corresponding act of judgment. Hence, the cross is not only a revelation of grace, but it is the means by which “[God] will destroy the wisdom of the wise [and] the intelligence of the intelligent” (1 Cor. 1:19). Jesus is “The stone that the builders rejected [that] has become the cornerstone” (Matt. 21:42). Hence, the crucifixion and empty tomb not only reveal the hidden plan of redemption, but also expose the true depths of human sin. The New Testament emphasizes that the exposure of the true depths of human sin in the cross occurs on two horizons: coram Deo (i.e., the divine-human relationship) and coram mundo (i.e., the human-human relationship).

June 22, 2023June 22, 2023

Speaking on the Authority of Scripture in Wittenberg

I am excited to be speaking at the North European Luther Academy‘s 2023 Annual Theological Symposium in Wittenberg, Germany. This year’s symposium topic will be “Inspiration, Authority, and Leadership.” I will be speaking on the “The Authority of Scripture and Tradition in Light of the Lutheran Confessional Paradigm” and “The Doctrine of Scriptural Inerrancy in Confessional Lutheran Perspective.” Other speakers include Daniel Johansson, Knut Alfsvåg, Rune Imberg, and Fredrik Sidenvall. If you can make it, I’d love to connect!

May 18, 2023May 18, 2023

The Image of God and Freedom

The text of Genesis 1, quite specifically connects existing as God’s image-bearers with the dominion humans possess in creation. After affirming his intention to make humans in his image, God addresses both the man and woman saying: “. . . have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). Because God created humans in his image they share in God’s dominion over the primal creation and in his complete freedom. This freedom exists in two horizons: coram Deo (before the face of God) and coram mundo (before the face of the world).

Coram Deo, although primal humans are free from the law in the manner that Christians would later be free from the law in Christ, such freedom does not mean arbitrary or destructive lawlessness. As the Formula of Concord correctly asserts, the law is God’s eternal will for his creation (lex aeterna) both before and after the Fall. Nevertheless, in the state of integrity, God made human beings in the divine image. Therefore, human creatures wholly desired to perform the law. The law was not contrary to their desires and therefore they did not need to place their desires in subordination to the law since their wills exactly mirrored God’s law. Rules are only positive demands when they are not followed or if we do not desire to follow them. If my expectation is for my children to clean their room, and they do it habitually on their own, then there is no reason to make it a family rule that children must clean their rooms each week. Moreover, when children spontaneously clean their rooms, they are simply doing what they desire and are not subjecting their will to any higher authority than what they naturally desire. In this scenario, they would clean their rooms out of perfect freedom, because in cleaning they would simply be doing what they wanted to do without any external authority telling them they must or coercing them to do so.

Because humans share in God’s dominion and are free from the condemnation of the law in the primal state, they also possess a share in God’s rest as exemplified by the primal Sabbath. Freedom from the law and its condemnation means rest from its demands relentlessly pressing down on humanity and demanding a response. In the primal week, much as in the work of Christ, work led to rest and rest enabled work. Regarding the primal week, God’s work in creation actualized the seventh day of rest. Because God completed his works he could rest and bid his people enter into that rest. Although a literal day in the primal week, the Sabbath as described by Genesis also has a typological meaning as the text itself indicates. Genesis 2 gives the Sabbath has no boundaries since the language of evening and morning is intentionally missing, unlike with the other days. Hence, the Sabbath becomes emblematic of the rest that the people of God enter into. Christians enter this rest when they receive by grace all that God has given them (Heb. 4), namely, the whole of creation along with God’s own self-donating presence with them. This is true in the old creation within the narrative of the seven days. However, it is also true in the new creation when Christ’s work gives rest to the conscience of Christians suffering under sin and the condemnation of the law: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

February 28, 2023March 10, 2023

The God of the Gospel: Affirmation and Negation in Divine Hiddenness

One response to the mythological metaphysics of modernity has been calls to return to something like Aquinas or Pseudo-Dionysius’s analogical or mystical view of God. Although both authors avoid a mythological view of God by removing him from the system of being, calls to return to mysticism or analogy misconceive the problem. Sadly, those who call for such a return often view idolatry primarily as a confusion of creature and creator, rather than as an extension of the problem of self-justification. Humanity only generates idols because self-justifying humans need a God who they can control with their good works or kill off with their denial.

Those who idealize Aquinas’s or Pseudo-Dionysius’s approach to the problem of idolatry typically function within a legalist trajectory. These legalists employ the strategy of pressing the claims of divine transcendence all the harder in order to keep humans from confusing the creation with the creator. Within Protestantism, this can also be observed in Zwingli and Calvin’s wrongheaded campaigns against church artwork and at times music. Pressing the claims of transcendence all the more strongly does not cure human self-justification, it simply hardens it. This is,, of course not to say that showing a concern for divine transcendence, or creator/creature distinction are mistaken. Indeed, univocity and the immanentization of the divine create their own problems with self-justification and idolatry. The key is that any biblically faithful and intellectually credible view of God must overcome antinomian and legalistic conceptions of God by making the law subordinate and penultimate to the gospel.

In order to understand the biblical teaching concerning God from the perspective of the gospel, we turn to Luther as our guide. As we observed in an earlier section, both the pre-modern Greek and Latin theological traditions relied on a dialectic of “negation” (apophatic theology or the via negativa) and affirmation (kataphatic theology or the via positiva). Lowell Green has noted that Luther’s doctrine of God also relies on a form of affirmation and negation, albeit a radically different one. 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.