Since the self is properly oriented in its relationship with God by faith as trust, Luther now redirects love to the task of correctly orienting the external person in the earthly sphere. This represents a total inversion of the Augustinian doctrine of love. For the Bishop of Hippo, the love of earthly things functions as distractions from the love of God. Indeed, in spite of being a biblical theme, at this stage of his development Luther seems uncomfortable about even talking about the love of God. Later in the Catechism, he again returned to the formula of “We should fear and love God, etc.,” and lost his aversion to talk of the love of God. Nevertheless, in Freedom of a Christian, Luther consistently argues that love’s proper orientation is in fact an earthly object, namely the neighbor: “This is truly Christian life. Here faith is truly active in love [Gal. 5:6], that is, it finds expression in works of freest service, cheerfully done, with which a man willing serves another [i.e. the neighbor] without hope of reward . . . “[1]
Hence, the creative Word of God brings about a faith which orients believers toward God in Christ, whereas love is primarily directed toward the neighbor: “We conclude, therefore, that a Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and the neighbor. He lives in Christ through faith, and in his neighbor through love.”[2] Whereas the person under the power of sin and self-justification stood curved in on himself (incurvatus in se), now the believer lives a life externalized in the other: first in Christ through faith, then through the neighbor in love.[3] In this, the self becomes radically decentered in the form of ecstatic existence (raptus, exstasis). In this, Luther borrows yet another theme from the mystical tradition,[4] yet remolds it around the biblical themes of faith in God and the love of the neighbor.
[1] LW 31:365. Emphasis added.
[2] LW 31:371. Emphasis added.
[3] See good description of Luther’s position here in George Wolfgang Forell, Faith Active in Love: An Investigation into the Principles Underlying Luther’s Social Ethics (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999).
[4] See Karl-Heinz zur Mühlen, Nos extra nos: Luthers Theologie zwischen Mystik und Scholastik (Tübingen: Mohr, 1972).
From the draft manuscript for Jack D. Kilcrease, Justification by Word (Lexham Press, forthcoming).