Jack Kilcrease

June 28, 2021

The Later Erlangen School on Atonement and Christology

Regarding Christology and atonement, the later Erlangen school represented by Paul Althaus (1888-1966) and Werner Elert (1885-1954) was in many ways more conservative than its nineteenth predecessors. The nineteenth-century Erlangen school had taken over from Lutheran Pietism and Friedrich Schleiermacher the concept that that along with the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions, Christian experience was a valid source of theological authority. By contrast, under the influence of their teacher Ludwig Ihmels, Elert and Althaus affirmed that Scripture was the supreme theological authority to the exclusion of religious experience. Similarly, both Althaus and Elert abandoned Johannes von Hofmann and Gottfried Thomasius’s metaphysically problematic belief in kenotic Christology in favor of a fairly traditional understanding of the two natures in Christ.

Both Elert and Althaus took an interest in responding to the historical skepticism concerning the identity of Christ and the historicity of the Gospels that marked the work of figures like Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976). Both Erlangen theologians held that Christianity would be meaningless and invalid if the Gospels were false and if Jesus was not true God and man. In order to push back against theological Liberalism and historical skepticism, Elert and Althaus offered a series of common arguments in their respective works.

First, in his early and shorter dogmatics, Elert partially adopted Hofmann’s line of reasoning by insisting that the development of the Church and the reality of the contemporary Christian community would make little sense if the events of the Bible (including the life of Christ) had not occurred generally as reported. Analogously, contemporary Americans are not vexed about whether there was an American Revolution since the US government and other American institution would not exist if it had not happened. So too the Church as an embodied community would make little sense as it exists now if the history salvation as described by the Bible had not occurred.

Secondly, both Elert and Althaus argued that Jesus was an absolutely unique personality that could never be a mere invention of early Christians. Even if a detail here or there in the Gospel records might be inaccurate (it should be noted that neither believed in the full inerrancy of Scripture), the utterly uniqueness of Jesus’s personal character impressed itself upon the apostles and is reflected in the New Testament witness. The biblical and ecumenical doctrine of the two natures in Christ could be justified by pointing to the fact that the utterly unique personality of Christ presented in the Gospels contained both divine and human elements.

Both Althaus and Elert also very zealously defended the biblical and confessional doctrine of penal substitution. In his seminal work, The Theology of Martin Luther, Althaus vigorously argued against Gustaf Aulén and his attempt to claim Luther for the Christus Victor atonement motif. Likewise, in his work Law and Gospel (which primarily a response to Barth’s theology of grace and ethics), Elert outlined and defended his affirmation of the doctrine of penal substitution.

According to Elert, in the post-lapsarian world, humanity lives a “nomological” existence wherein humans are constantly enveloped by the experience of the condemnation of the law. Jesus came into the world as the embodiment and fulfillment of divine grace and judgment. He exposed the hypocrisy of those who claimed not to be sinners, while forgiving and having fellowship with the moral outcasts. He not only gave forgiveness, but taught an ethic of forgiveness that transcends the law. Jesus’ ethic of non-retaliation and forgiveness transcends the law because the logical final fulfillment of the law is retribution and retaliation (lex talionis). In order to make divine forgiveness and the Christian ethic of non-retaliation an actuality, Christ had to end the retribution of the law by bringing it to a completion by his death. The cross is thus a final retributive punishment for sin that ends all retribution. This was the fulfillment of divine wrath against sin and is an act of pure law. By contrast, the resurrection is act of pure grace, since it reveals God’s forgiveness won by the cross.

Image from Jeff Davis, “Contemporary Issues in the Christological Methods,” Life Giving Words of Hope & Encouragement by Jeff Davis, May 17, 2017, https://jeffdavis.blog/2017/05/17/contemporary-issues-in-the-christological-methods/.

June 14, 2021June 14, 2021

First Thesis on Justification

My new book entitled Justification by the Word: Restoring Sola Fide with Lexham Press will make the case for seven theses on justification. Here’s the draft of the first one:

1. Justification is the center of Christian theology.

Justification is the center of Christian theology because the salvation of sinners is the goal of God’s revelation in the Bible (scopus Scripturae) and the ministry of the Church. In saying this, we do not mean to suggest that justification exhausts the content of the Christian faith. Obviously without doctrines such as the Trinity, the divine essence and attributes, creation, and so-forth, justification would be incoherent and meaningless. Neither are we claiming that all other doctrines are deduced from the single doctrine of justification, as in so-called “Central-Dogma” theory. Rather, what we mean in stating that justification is the central doctrine of Christianity is that the ultimate goal of all of God’s revelation is to clarify and promote the proclamation of the doctrine of justification in the midst of the Church.

Image from the Institute of Lutheran Theology, @InstituteLutheranTheology

May 24, 2021May 24, 2021

The Fulfillment of the Law and Active and Passive Righteousness

Perhaps one helpful way of conceptualizing how the law can be fulfilled and abrogated coram Deo, while remain a rule of life coram mundo, is through Luther’s distinction between two (active and passive),^[1] or in some cases three (civil, imputed, sanctified),^[2] kinds of righteousness.^[3] Coram Deo, humans are righteous or unrighteous not on the basis of what they do, but through what they receive. We passively receive our sinful nature from our parents, which in turn colors everything we do or leave undone. Likewise, faith is created by a monergistic act of the Holy Spirit, and we receive the gift of imputed righteousness and a renewed heart passively. This passive gift of righteousness completely abrogates the law coram Deo. From the perspective of this relational horizon, the law as condemnation moves to the gospel as freedom from condemnation. Once the gospel has arrived, the law no longer holds sway since it is completely fulfilled.

In terms of our external person coram mundo, humans are good or bad based on what they do (i.e., active righteousness). Under the first use of the law, the unregenerate can make better or worse decisions and likewise be judged as just or unjust based on what they do. A person is defined as a good spouse, parent, or citizen based to what extent to which they behave well in these roles. Indeed, as far as active and civil righteous is concerned, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas are essentially correct. One can indeed train himself to act in a habitually correct way within his roles in society. Likewise, under the gospel and the third use of the law the regenerate can cooperate with the Holy Spirit and can listen to and obey the commandments of God through specific external actions. The faithful do this both as an act of gratitude for the gifts of creation and redemption that they have received, as well as restrain the wicked impulses which remain present in them this side of the eschaton.

It should be noted that fallen humans tend to reverse these two kinds of righteousness. Rather than being judged by who they are before God (children of Adam, or redeemed sinners in Christ), humans desire to be righteous on the basis of their works. As a result, humans have created the various world religions (which work on the basis of the opinio legis),^[4] as well as rationalistic/moralistic schemes of theodicy.^[5] Coram mundo, humans desire not to be judged righteous and worthy of status on the basis of what they do, but on the basis of who they are. Likewise, human desire to judge others on the basis of their identities. In human history, this has given rise to the sins of racism, sexism, and classism, among others.

[1] LW 26:7-8, LW 31:297-306.

[2] WA 2:43-7.

[3] See Charles Arand, “Two Kinds of Righteousness as a Framework for Law and Gospel in the Apology,” Lutheran Quarterly 15, no. 4 (2001): 417–439; and Robert Kolb, “Luther on the Two Kinds of Righteousness: Reflections on His Two-Dimensional Definition of Humanity at the Heart of His Theology,” Lutheran Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1999): 449–66.

[4] Chris Marantika, “Justification by Faith: Its Relevance in Islamic Context,” Right with God: Justification in the Bible and the World, ed. D.A. Carson (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 228-242; Sunand Simithra, “Justification by Faith: Its Relevance in Hindu Context,” in Right with God, 216-27; and Masao Uenuma, “Justification by Faith: Its Relevance in Buddhist Context,” in Right with God, 243-55.

[5] Gregory Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997); and idem, Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001); Gottfried von Leibniz, Theodicy, trans. E.M. Huggard (New York: Cosmo Classics, 2010).

From the draft manuscript for Jack D. Kilcrease, Justification by Word (Lexham Press, forthcoming).

Image from R. J. Grunewald, “Two Kinds of Righteousness,” Grunewald, accessed May 24, 2021, https://www.rjgrune.com/blog/two-kinds-of-righteousness.

May 10, 2021March 22, 2022

Review of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr

Guest Post by Dcs. Ellie Corrow and Dr. Bethany Kilcrease

Part III: The Second Part of Our Epic Critique

Making of Biblical Womanhood presents several convincing historical arguments that deconstruct the assumed uniformity of biblical womanhood throughout the church’s history, but Barr falters when attempting to address modern controversies of the twentieth century. Barr’s conclusion that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy “became important because it provided a way to push women out of the pulpit” may well be true.¹ Barr does show evidence of correlation. But she did not present enough evidence to convince us that this was in fact a case of causation, that inerrancy became important primarily because it served as a helpful item in the patriarchal toolkit and not merely that promotion of inerrancy and the solidification of “biblical womanhood” among evangelicals happened to occur around the same time. We suspect Barr is correct, but we would have liked to have seen more evidence.

Additionally, Barr’s argument regarding inerrancy is built around an insufficiently nuanced doctrine of inerrancy. One way to think about the doctrine of inerrancy is to make it the foundation of one’s belief system. This is common among both fundamentalists and evangelicals. According to this line of thinking, Christians believe in the Bible because it is inerrant. Since the Bible is inerrant, Christians believe everything it says about Jesus and can trust Him. Therefore, if inerrancy is undermined, by, for example, questioning Paul’s directives regarding women, all of Christianity comes crashing down. A better, and we would argue more biblical, approach is to begin with Christ. We believe in Christ’s resurrection from the dead. His divine authority then leads us to trust His authorized Scriptures completely.² In this way, inerrancy flows from belief in Christ, rather than belief in Christ resting precariously on inerrancy.

I think we know someone who recently published the definitive confessional Lutheran dogmatic work on this topic….

Unfortunately, this dismissal of inerrancy as a tool of the patriarchy leaves Barr vulnerable to the argument that she rejects complementarianism because she rejects the authority of Scripture, which would be an unfair characterization of her work. In an earlier chapter, for example, she invites the reader to reexamine Paul’s writing on women by way of cultural and historical context, whereas someone less committed to the veracity of Scripture might either argue for non-Pauline authorship or blatant rejection of difficult passages. However, despite her problematic approach to inerrancy, Barr’s broader point that inerrancy has been weaponized against women has validity. Indeed, literalist readings of 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1 Corinthians 14 are often used a litmus test for biblical faithfulness, whereas other Pauline texts that are not directed specifically at women rarely receive the same sort of rigid application.

May 5, 2021March 22, 2022

Review of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr

Guest Post by Dcs. Ellie Corrow and Dr. Bethany Kilcrease

Part II: The First Part of Our Epic Critique

Barr’s real contribution in The Making of Biblical Womanhood is to finally make scholarship detailing the historical development of the threads constituting biblical womanhood accessible to the public. Her main argument that biblical womanhood, which tells women they must be domestic, housebound, and married mothers at the expense of other vocations is important and prophetic. As such, her book deserves to be widely read throughout the Church. She demonstrates that the way we often read even the Bible through a patriarchal lens has led the Church to discount the significance of named women in the Bible, including Mary Magdalene, Phoebe, and Junia. Moreover, the chapters on the history of women in the Church during the Middle Ages and Reformation period are alone worth the cost of admission. Her chapter on the Reformation, for example, helps explain why Katharina von Bora Luther died impoverished. Her tragedy extended beyond an individual failure on the part of the Church. Rather, it was a product of a newly constructed economic system that limited women’s opportunities outside the home.

The Making of Biblical Womanhood is a tour de force, but there are also spots where Barr could strengthen her historical arguments and where we, as confessional Lutherans, disagree with her theological conclusions. Again, historically speaking, Barr’s argument that “biblical womanhood” is essentially an evangelical version of the patriarchal cult of domesticity is accurate. There is nothing in the Bible that confines women to the domestic sphere and subordinates them to all men in all contexts. As the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) noted in 2009:¹

"The Bible’s clear direction regarding responsible male leadership in the home and male ordination to pastoral ministry may not be assumed to mean that only men can exercise any kind of leadership or authority in home, church, or society. Some view this as an inconsistency, but it is not. In Baptism every believer is called to service in his or her vocations within the various spheres of life. The body of Christ requires that its individual members exercise the wide variety of their gifts, whether that individual is male or female (1 Cor 12:7).... Such leadership of women is not inconsistent with Scriptural teaching. On the contrary, it exists in the very context of our church’s life and teaching which upholds and promulgates the divinely ordered responsibility of pastors and husbands. When women serve in this way they are enhancing the work of the priesthood of all believers, serving as members of the body of Christ, and not usurping pastoral authority or violating the 'order of creation.' Scripture provides numerous examples of such service, for instance Priscilla’s instruction of Apollos (Acts 18:26) or the teaching Timothy received from his mother and grandmother (2 Tim 1:5)."²

However, this is not to say that we support approach Barr’s exegesis uncritically. She does not adequately address the distinction between biblical texts dealing with the vertical relationship between humans and God and those addressing the horizontal relationships between humans and other humans.³ For example, Galatians 3:26-29 relates to the vertical relationship between believers and God in Christ. But the other passages, such as those in 1 Corinthians 14, deal with horizontal relations within the Church or between spouses. Others, such as Ephesians 5, may address both.