Throwback Post Part 1:
Before his death, Luther claimed that The Bondage of the Will (BOW) and the Catechisms were the only things that he had written that were worth reading. What I’m interested in focusing on here is Luther’s constant refrain in the discussion of the Ten Commandments that “we should fear and love so that…” How should we take this? If we follow Luther’s own words as a hermeneutical key (namely that the BOW and the Catechism are his best works and therefore a definitive representation of his thinking), “fearing and loving” should be understood in terms of Luther’s own dialectic of the hidden and revealed God.
For those unfamiliar, in BOW Luther speaks of God preached and God not preached. If we look at creation as a whole as a sphere of God’s activity, the logic of God’s action, especially during a pandemic, will appear incomprehensible to us. Whereas God in his revelation in Word and sacrament states “I will not delight in the death of the sinner,” God insofar as he works all things certainly does work death to sinners. Of course, he does this for good reason: All are born with original sin. The difficulty is that through his electing will, God approaches some through Word and sacrament. He converts, justifies, and sanctifies them. Yet he does not work faith within others (who are of course no less sinful) and actually works their destruction.
Continue reading “The Shape of Christian Life Part 1: God in His Masks”