Posted on by Jack Kilcrease

Mystical Union by Faith: Vows Before Consummation

Throwback Post

According to Martin Luther, the believer receives all that is Christ’s , through faith in the word: “The one who has faith is a completely divine man, a son of God, the inheritor of the universe. He is victor over the world, sin, death, and the Devil.”1 The scholastics claimed that the habitus of love makes faith living. But Luther argued this was incorrect. Love is not the “form” (in the Aristotelian sense) of faith. Christ is.2 Faith holds Christ like a ring holds onto a jewel.3 

In other words, because faith takes its reality from Christ and his alien righteousness, it lives on and subjectively justifies the sinner. As Lutheran theologian Regin Prenter observed: “Faith lives completely and alone by the real presence of Christ. To the same extent that Christ is really present, faith is really present, and only to that extent.”4 Moreover, to use the terminology of later Protestantism, Luther believed the Word of God and the saving faith it creates did not simply justify believers. It sanctifies them as well. Here the Reformer echoed Jeremiah’s description of the Holy Spirit working through the proclamation of the New Covenant to write the commandments on the hearts of believers (Jer. 31:33). 

Luther’s Use of Aristotle

Luther clearly rejected the medieval Church’s belief that habits implanted in the soul sanctified the Christian. However, interestingly, he did not totally abandon the language of formation taken from Peripatetic philosophy. Nevertheless, instead of using Aristotle’s concept of ethical formation through habits (i.e., augmentation of human agency and right performance), Luther used Aristotelian epistemology’s concept of objects of consciousness imposing their form on the knower’s intellect.  

In Luther’s interpretation, the divine power of the gospel impressed the form of Christ upon the heart and mind of the believer. Aristotle taught that when beholding an object of sense, the form of the object impressed upon the “Agent Intellect” (intellectus agens). Knowledge of a particular entity forms the human intellect in the same way that a signet ring makes an impression when pressed against wax.5 Because of its divine power, the proclamation of the word impresses itself upon the mind of the believer and conforms him to the sanctifying image of Christ: 

Now the form of the Christian mind is faith, the trust of the heart, which takes hold of Christ, clings only to Him and to nothing else besides . . . For the Word proceeds from the mouth of the apostle and reaches the heart of the hearer; there the Holy Spirit is present and impresses that Word on the heart, so that it is heard. In this way every preacher is a parent, who produces and forms the true shape of the Christian mind through the ministry of the Word.6

As Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson correctly observes, the key difference between Luther and Aristotle/medieval scholasticism on this point is that the Reformer argued this formation occurred through hearing, rather than through physical/intellectual vision.7 Because the forensic proclamation of the word impresses the sanctifying image of the risen Christ upon the Christian, forensic justification is effective.8  Indeed, as Gerhard Forde observes: “The old argument about whether justification is ‘only’ forensic or also ‘effective’ is transcended . . . It is, to be sure, ‘not only’ forensic, but that is the case only because the more forensic it is, the more effective.”9  

The Finnish School on Mystical Union

Luther strongly emphasized the union between Christ and the believer in Freedom of the Christian and the Galatians commentary of 1531. As a result, in recent decades the Finnish school of Luther research has argued that the Reformer actually conflated mystical union with justification.10 In this conception, Christ unites himself with the believer through faith in the word. Subsequently, God recognizes the divine-human person of Christ present in the believer by faith as the believer’s righteousness coram Deo.11 

The Finnish scholars then claim that later Lutheranism’s emphasis on the exclusively forensic nature of justification is a distortion of Philipp Melanchthon. This supposed distortion of Luther’s teaching was then transmitted to the rest of Lutheranism through criticism of Andreas Osainder’s12 description of justification as the indwelling of the uncreated righteousness of God.13

Of course, both more traditional Lutheran readings of Luther (i.e., ones that argue Luther taught a forensic doctrine of justification that is nevertheless also effective) and the Finnish school agree that justification results in imputation as well as mystical union. The Finnish scholars acknowledge Luther was extremely explicit that the imputation of righteousness is necessary14 because believers remain sinners until temporal death: “. . . acceptance or imputation is extremely necessary, first because we are not yet purely righteous, but sin is still clinging to our flesh during this life.”15 Believers, considered in themselves apart from the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, remain worthy of judgment. Sin is “so great, so infinite and invincible, that the whole world could not make satisfaction for even one of them.”16 

Hence, the imputed righteousness of Christ forms the basis of Luther’s mature doctrine of simul iustus et peccator17: “I am a sinner in and by myself apart from Christ. Apart from myself and in Christ I am not a sinner.”18 Likewise, the Formula of Concord (1577) and later Lutheran Scholasticism affirmed that Christians are united with Christ (along with the whole Trinity) by mystical union (unio mystica).19 Indeed, seventeenth-century theologians like Johann Gerhard were even comfortable with the language of deification similar to that employed by the Greek Fathers. To give one example of many, Gerhard approvingly quotes St. Irenaeus as writing: “Because of His immense love, the Son of God became what we are, to perfect us to be what He is. He became a partaker of our nature to make us sharers in the divine nature [Against Heresies, Book 5, Preface].”20

Handbook of Consolations, Carl Beckwith, trans., (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2009), 33.

Is Imputation Logically Prior to or a Result of Mystical Union?

The disagreement between the two interpretations actually lies in the question of whether imputation occurs logically prior to or as a consequence of mystical union. Returning to Albrecht Ritschl’s helpful distinction mentioned in the previous chapter,21 the point of dispute between orthodox Lutherans and the Finnish school is whether justification is a synthetic judgment or analytic judgment. Orthodox Lutherans view justification as a synthetic judgment. The Formula of Concord makes the claim that the imputation of righteousness comes first and subsequently causes regeneration and mystical union.22 Therefore, Christians are not righteous because they are mystically united with Christ. Rather, they God declares them righteous through the promise for the sake of Christ prior to mystical union with Christ. 

The Finnish school makes righteousness coram Deo an analytic judgment. In faith, the believer unites with Christ and God imputes the believer as righteous because of his union with Christ and his righteousness. The Finnish interpretation of Luther does not fit the material we have examined for three main reasons. 

First, claiming that Melanchthon and Luther had completely different conceptions of justification and did not notice it strains credulity. The two theologians worked in close proximity to one another for two and a half decades. They mutually agreed upon,23 and also corroborated with each other on a number of confessional documents, notably the Apology to the Augsburg Confession (Melanchthon being the official author, with Luther adding material).24 Moreover, a series of letters sent to the Swabian Lutheran Reformer Johannes Brenz, to which Melanchthon and Luther both contributed, confirm that Melanchthon and Luther must have understood each other’s views on justification. When challenged on the issue of what actually causes God to judge believers righteous coram Deo, Luther asserted with absolute clarity, in consultation with Melanchthon, that justification consists of the imputed alien righteousness of Christ.25  

Secondly, the Finnish interpretation is inconsistent with Luther’s logic of justification by word. As Luther correctly notes, the judgment God makes about sinners in the proclamation of the gospel is forensically true even before they accept it. It follows, then, that God’s forensic and judicial judgment is prior to mystical union. The Finns are, of course, correct that Christ is himself present in the word of the gospel and unites himself with believers through the word. But Luther repeatedly affirmed that the gospel speaks forensic truth prior to any unification via faith between the believer and Christ. In a word, Christ is for believers before he is in them.   

Thirdly, the logic of mystical union as justification contradicts Luther’s conception of sanctification. Beginning with the Romans commentary of 1516, Luther rejected any description of divine grace that located the basis of righteousness coram Deo inside the sinner. The externalization of grace for the sake of decentering the incurved sinful self is ultimately the reason why the Reformer rejected the medieval conception of the habitus. If the Finnish school is to be believed, Luther effectively replaced the habitus as a predicate for the believer with mystical union in his later theology. Such a conceptual move on Luther’s part could only undermine his own soteriological premises and reorient the sinner back to a form of self-incurvature. 

Externalized Grace and Ecstatic Existence

Luther emphasized the external nature of grace (extra nos) to encourage believers to live ecstatic rather than centered existences: living outside of themselves in Christ by faith, and outside of themselves in human community by love. Seen from this perspective, mystical union does not serve the function vacated by the medieval concept of infused grace. Rather, mystical union inculcates the reality of the promise in believers by giving them the divine promiser’s very being. 

As we have seen, for Luther, the union of Christ and believers through justification mirrors marriage. In holy matrimony there are both wedding vows (forensic promise) and a consummation (mystical union). The fact that the vows made at a wedding are subsequently guaranteed and made concrete by the bride and groom’s physical mutual self-gift to one another is implicit in Luther’s marriage analogy. To give one’s very self to another is to give the ultimate pledge of one’s loyalty and trustworthiness to the other. As Gerhard wrote:

O happy soul, that is united to Christ by the bonds of this spiritual marriage! Thou mayest securely and confidently appropriate to thyself all the benefits of Christ’s redemption, just as a wife shines resplendently in the glory that belongs to her husband. It is by faith alone that we are made partakers of this blessed spiritual union, as it is written, “I will betroth thee unto me in faithfulness” (Hos. ii. 19). By faith we are engrafted as branched into Christ, the spiritual vine (John xv. 2), so that we derive all our life and strength from Him; and as those united in marriage are no longer twain, but one flesh (Matt. xix. 6), so “he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor. vi. 17) because Christ dwells in our hearts through faith (Eph. iii. 17).26

  1. LW 26:247. ↩︎
  2. LW 26:88-9. ↩︎
  3. LW 26:89, 132, 134. ↩︎
  4. Regin Prenter, Spiritus Creator: Luther’s Concept of the Holy Spirit, trans. John Jensen (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1953), 43. ↩︎
  5. Aristotle, De Anima, trans. J.A. Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 424a.17. ↩︎
  6. LW 26:430. ↩︎
  7. Robert Jenson, “Luther’s Contemporary Theological Significance,” in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, ed. Donald McKim (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 282-3.  Also see: Cary, The Meaning of Protestant Theology, 186-92. ↩︎
  8. Mark Mattes, “Luther on Justification as Forensic and Effective,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, ed. Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, and L’Ubomir Batka (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 264-74. ↩︎
  9. Gerhard Forde, Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life (Mifflinton, PA: Sigler Press, 1990), 36. ↩︎
  10. See: Robert Jenson and Carl Braaten, eds., Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998); Tuomo Mannrmaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther’s View of Justification, trans. Kirsi Sjerna (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005); idem, Two Kinds of Love: Martin Luther’s Religious World, trans. Kirsi Sjerna (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010); Olli-Pekka Vainio, ed., Engaging Luther: A New Theological Assessment (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010);  idem, Justification and Participation in Christ: The Development of the Lutheran Doctrine of Justification from Luther to the Formula of Concord (1580) (Leiden: Brill, 2008). ↩︎
  11. Mannermaa, 87-8.  Also see discussion in: Dennis Bielfeldt, “The Ontology of Deification,” in Caritas Dei: Beiträge zum Verständnis Luthers und der gegenwärtigen Ökumene: Festschrift für Tuomo Mannermaa zum 60. Geburtstag, eds. Oswald Bayer, Robert Jenson, and Simo Knuuttila (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola Society, 1997), 92-5. ↩︎
  12. Henry Hamann, “The Righteousness of Faith before God,” in A Contemporary Look at the Formula of Concord, ed. Robert Preus and Wilbert Rosin (St. Louis: Concordia, 1978), 137-62;  Emanuel Hirsch, Die Theologie von Andreas Osiander und ihre Geschtlichen Voraussetzugen (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck und Ruprecht, 1919); Carl Lawrenz, “On Justification, Osiander’s Doctrine of the Indwelling of Christ,” in No Other Gospel: Essays in Commemoration of the 400th Anniversay of the Formula of Concord, 1580-1980, ed. Arnold Koelpin (Milwaukee: Northwestern, 1980), 149-74. ↩︎
  13. Vaino, Justification and Participation in Christ, 69-81. ↩︎
  14. Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith, 56-7. ↩︎
  15. LW 26:132-3; WA 40.I:233. ↩︎
  16. LW 26:33. ↩︎
  17. See discussion in: Gerhard Ebeling, Lutherstudien: Dispuatio de homine. Part 3: Die theologischen Definition des Menschen.  Kommentar zu These 20-40, vol. 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989), 536-7. ↩︎
  18. LW 38:158. ↩︎
  19. FC SD III.54; Concordia Triglotta: The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, German-Latin-English, trans. and ed. F. Bente, W. H. T. Dau, and Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 934-5; Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church,  495-6. ↩︎
  20. Qtd. in Johann Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces: On Christ, trans. Richard Dinda (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2009), 144.  Also see: Johann Gerhard, Sacred Meditations, trans. C.W. Heisler (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1896), meditation XIII. ↩︎
  21. Albrecht Ritschl, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation: The Positive Development of the Doctrine, trans. H. R. Macintosh and A. B. Macauley (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark. 1900), 38, 80-2.  ↩︎
  22. FC SD 3.18-9; CT, 921. ↩︎
  23. Trueman, “Simul peccator et justus,” in McCormack, Justification in Perspective, 90. ↩︎
  24. Charles Arand, Robert Kolb, and James Nestingen, The Lutheran Confessions: History and Theology of the Book of Concord (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 107. ↩︎
  25. See WA BR 6:100.  See discussion in: Trueman, Simul peccator et justus,” McCormack, Justification in Perspective, 91; Timothy Wengert, Defending Faith: Lutheran Responses to Andreas Osiander’s Doctrine of Justification, 1551-1559 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 68-9. ↩︎
  26. Gerhard, Sacred Meditations, 75. ↩︎

From the draft manuscript for Jack D. Kilcrease, Justification by Word: Restoring Sola Fide (Lexham Press, 2022), chap. 4

From On the Gospel of John (L. 10. in Joan. p. 862, 863. item. p. 364, 365)

Cover image from Douglas Culp, “Encountering Jesus in the Sacrament of Marriage,” Faith: The Magazine of the Catholic Diocese of Lansing, September 1, 2019, accessed July 18, 2024, https://faithmag.com/encountering-jesus-sacrament-marriage; other image from: “Art Deco opal & diamond ring made in the 1920’s,” Kalmar Antiques, accessed July 22, 2024, https://www.kalmarantiques.com.au/product/art-deco-opal-diamond-ring-made-in-the-1920-s/; Johann Gerhard quotation meme from St. John Lutheran Church, Wheaton, Illinois, https://www.facebook.com/stjohnwheaton; “Union with Christ and Federal Headship,” Reformation Theology, accessed July 22, 2024, https://www.monergism.com/reformation-theology/blog/union-christ-and-federal-headship; and Duncan Edward Pile, “Why Honour Marriage?,” Patheos, December 17, 2023, accessed July 21, 2024, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/duncanedwardpile/2023/12/why-honour-marriage/.