Tag: Luther

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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. 

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Doing Theology: Part II

Read Part I Here

We should keep a number of relevant points in mind when examining how Luther construes the theological task.  First, the cycle of oratio, meditatio, and tentatio recapitulations the Incarnation and work of Christ.  Much as the Word was incarnate through the coming of the Spirit, so too divine truth becomes incarnate in the mind and proclamation of the theologian through the coming of the Word and the Spirit through oratio and meditatio. 

In Christ’s incarnation, the Holy Spirit enhypostically incorporated a human nature derived from Mary into the pre-existent Word, so that He might operate in the created world. So too (at least in Johann Gerhard’s account) the Spirit incorporates the pre-existent knowledge of the theologian in the theological task.  Finally, Christ’s communication of the Word was tested by his suffering and death, and validated by his resurrection. So too, the interpreter must undergo the testing of his interpretation and application of Scripture within the arena of the kingdom of the world.

The incarnational nature of the theological method of oratio, meditatio, and tentatio also shows how theology can be historically contextual and culturally responsive, while at the same time be faithfully ground in the unchanging Word of God.  The theologian’s act of faithfully translating the Word of God into the contemporary idiom is brought about only by the work of the Spirit. The Spirit himself incorporates the knowledge and thought-forms available to the interpreter in his context.  Since the Word of God as revelation is embedded in history and the created order, the theologian may seek to clarify the Word by drawing on multiple contextualized disciplines and sources of knowledge that will clarify its meaning. 

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Doing Theology: Part I

Through the apostolic ministry, Jesus translates his eternal reality and saving work into the preaching of the apostles, which is today condensed into the New Testament.  As true God and man, Christ is present to his Church. Within his Church, Christ continues to exchange sin and death for life and righteousness through the sacraments and the preaching office. 

Therefore, ultimately, the presence of the risen Jesus and the exchange of realities he affects through his continuing presence in the Word and sacrament ministry of the Church makes theology possible.  The theology of the Church depends on the real presence of incarnate Christ, which manifests as infinite and absolute. Yet, at the same time, Christ’s presence is contextual.  Through the teachers and pastors of the Church, the risen Christ translates himself into the theology of the Church in the way that he translated himself into his Incarnate life: through the work of the Word and the Spirit.

Luther’s engagement with Scripture offers us some important conceptual tools at this point.  In his commentary on Psalm 119, the Reformer argued that the language of the Psalm provided the Church with a model of how theologians ought to engage the truth of the biblical text.  For Luther, “prayer, meditation, and suffering/testing form a theologian” (oratio, meditatio, tentatio faciunt theologum). 

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Words are Sacraments and Sacraments are a Kind of Word

In other words, for Luther, the Eucharist (and by implication Baptism as well), confirms for the individual what the word universally proclaims. The word of the gospel is addressed to everyone in the congregation, and therefore it is possible to worry that this promise may not apply to you as an individual, or you have not genuinely received it by faith. Nevertheless, the Lord’s Supper contains within it the same promise and presence of the risen Jesus as the sermon. For Luther, words are sacraments and sacraments are a kind of word. The difference between the sermon and the sacrament is that the latter is applied to the individual who directly receives it. When reflective faith invariably worries about whether or not one has individually received Jesus and his promise of forgiveness, the believer may rely on the sacraments to give them assurance. There can be here no doubt that you have personally received the promise in the form of the sacrament since it was you as an individual who heard the promise and consumed the elements. By receiving the Eucharistic elements, the promise and presence of Jesus are given to you as an in tangible and physical way that draws you out of your subjectivity and enthusiasm (Did I truly believe? Did I truly receive the promise?) to the objectivity of the gospel.

The Word Present For You in the Lord’s Supper

From the draft manuscript for Jack D. Kilcrease, Justification by Word: Restoring Sola Fide (Lexham Press, 2022), 303-304.

Image from “Icon-of-Christ-the-Holy-Communion,” Catholic Stewardship Consultants, August 2, 2018, https://www.catholicsteward.com/2018/08/02/stewardship-bulletin-reflection-august-19-2018/icon-of-christ-the-holy-communion/.