Tag: Luther

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Luther on Predestination

Although Luther comments on predestination somewhat infrequently, there is a clear doctrine of predestination in Luther derived from his engagement with Paul and Augustine.[1]  Nevertheless, unlike Augustine, election is described as being something that God executes in and through the preaching of the promise in Christ.  In a passage in “A Sermon on Preparing for Dying” (1519) Luther writes:

“Therefore fix your eyes upon the heavenly picture of Christ, who for your sake went to hell and was rejected by God as one damned to the eternal perdition, as He cried on the cross, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?  My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?’  Behold, in that picture your hell is overcome and your election assured, so that if you but take care and believe that it happened for you, you will certainly be saved in that faith.”[2]

Here it should be noted that much like the word of absolution sacramentally contains within itself the coming of God’s justification of sinner, so too God’s eternal judgment of predestination supervenes on the word of the cross.  Unlike in Augustine, there is not gap between God’s eternal, hidden, predestinating will, and the word of the preacher.  To apprehend in faith the word of promise that God has attached to Christ’s death and resurrection is to be assured of God’s eternal election of the believer.

In 1531, Luther offered similar counsel to Barbara Lisskirchen (formerly Weller), a woman who wrote the Reformer due to her deep anxiety about the question of her predestination.  Luther writes in a response letter:

“[T]he highest of all God’s commands is this, that hold up before our eyes the image of his dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.  Every day he should be our excellent mirror of how much God loves us and how well, in his infinite goodness, he has cared for us in that he gave his dear son for us.  In this way I say, and in no other, does one learn to properly deal with the question of predestination.  It will be manifest to you that you believe in Christ.  If you believe then you are called.  And if you are called you are most certainly predestinated.  Do not let this mirror and throne of grace be torn away from your eyes.  If such thoughts still come and bite like fiery serpents, pay no attention to the thoughts or serpents.  Turn away from these notions and contemplate the brazen serpent, that is, Christ given for us.”[3]

The key point to notice in this passage is not only that God’s eternal election is embodied in Christ crucified and received by faith in him, but that the faith that apprehends Christ is what Philip Cary calls “unreflective faith,”[4] that is, a faith that does not worry about its own authenticity.  Likewise, as Randall Zachman helpful summarizes: “[For Luther] faith means believing with certainty that God’s Word is true even when the whole world, the heart of the believer, and even God himself contradict the truth that is revealed in the word, particularly the word of promise.”[5]  Faith therefore looks outside of itself (extra nos) to Christ himself and his word of promise.  Again, to look away from Christ would be to return to self-trust and self-incurvature, the very definition of sin.  Throughout the letter, Luther emphasizes that all questioning of one’s election and justification are satanic temptations.  Faith accepts God’s trustworthiness in his word as absolute reality and rejects the unreality of unbelief. 

[1] See: Fredrik Brosché, Luther on Predestination: The Antinomy and the Unity Between Love and Wrath in Luther’s Concept of God (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell international, 1978).

[2] LW 42:105-6.  Emphasis added.

[3] Martin Luther, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, trans. Theodore Tappert (Vancouver, BC: Regent College Press, 2003), 116.  Emphasis added.  See lengthier argument in Luther’s Genesis commentary along the same lines: LW 5:43-50.

[4] Philip Cary, “Why Luther is Not Quite Protestant: The Logic of Faith in a Sacramental Promise,” Pro Ecclesia 14, no. 4 (2005): 450-55.

[5] Randall Zachman, The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2005), 9.

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

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The Word Opens God to Abuse

In spite of this glorious fulfillment, God’s Word must always withstand opposition from His fallen creatures. Testing must precede validation. As in the life of Christ, humiliation always precedes glory, and trial always precedes vindication. Indeed, the reality of testing and opposition to God’s Word reveals the deep kenotic dimension to the act of revelation. Through His Word God not only reveals Himself, His will, and His purpose but is sacramentally present in it by the power of the Spirit (Mt 18:20; 28:20; Gal 3:2). God’s eternal Word, without losing its uncreated power and glory, kenotically makes itself available and tangible through the medium of finite human words. By making Himself known and tangible through His revelation in means, God opens Himself up to rejection, blasphemy, and abuse by His creatures.

Indeed, one suspects that this is the motivation behind Aquinas and Barth’s previously discussed theories of revelational analogy. If God makes Himself to be known in a merely analogical echo, then He does not fully open Himself up to the possibility of blasphemous abuse, misuse, or rejection of His Word. If God does not fully identify Himself with the means of grace, then He is saved from being rejected and abused when they are rejected and abused.

Aquinas and Barth’s revelational analogy is of course the logical corollary of their thoroughly Leonine view of the incarnation, wherein the communication idiomatum is little more than notional.[1] Nevertheless, as Luther notes, a God who does not communicate Himself fully to the flesh of Christ and suffer abuse is ultimately of no use to us.[2] And a God who has not communicated Himself fully to the external Word as both propositional truth and effective presence is of no use to His sinful creatures in need of “grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). If God is not fully present in His Word then He remains distant and hidden from His creatures, and they cannot grasp Him for the sake of their salvation. Just as the very Word of God made flesh submitted Himself to abuse and blasphemy on the cross and yet triumphed in the resurrection, in giving His external Word God submits Himself to abuse and opposition, and yet triumphs in either the creation of faith or the hardening of judgment.

[1] See my description in “Thomas Aquinas and Martin Chemnitz on the Hypostatic Union,” Lutheran Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2013): 1–32.

[2] Regarding Zwingli’s attempt to separate the two natures in Christ, Luther writes: “Beware, beware, I say, of this alloeosis, for it is the devil’s mask since it will finally construct a kind of Christ after whom I would not want to be a Christian, that is, a Christ who is and does no more in his passion and his life than any other ordinary saint. For if I believe that only the human nature suffered for me, then Christ would be a poor savior for me, in fact, he himself would need a Savior. In short, it is indescribable what the devil attempts with this alloeosis.” Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper, 1528 (AE 37:209–10; WA 26:319).

From Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 67.

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The “Wolf of Wall Street” and the Orders of Creation: Part II

Part 2 of a throwback post from February 8, 2014

From the perspective of Luther’s Genesis Commentary, the idea that the Kingdom of God comes if we fix politics is all wrong.  In his commentary on the primal narrative of human life before the Fall, Luther shows that God established first the Family and then the Church as the original and most authentic setting of human existence.  They were created before the Fall into sin and therefore are not necessarily a response to the condition of human sin.   Rather, they are a natural setting for human life on earth.  These orders only become unworkable on their own after sin arrived on the scene.  Therefore after the Flood, in Genesis 9 God promulgates the new law of retribution, thereby implying the establishment of the Order of the State, as Paul confirms in Romans 13.  Hence, the State and its coercion are not meant as a means of fulfilling human life.  It is, unlike the other Orders, something created in order to counteract human sin and therefore make up for the failures of the first two Orders.  As a result, it cannot replace these other Orders.

This of course brings us back to the Wolf.  Belfort, like many others in our society, did not belong to the Church and did not have much of a family life (the little he has, he systematically destroys).  In terms of his behavior, he is able to do many, many things which are illegal, but — oddly enough — the government doesn’t care about most of them. When he is finally convicted, the prosecutors have no interest in his use of prostitutes or cocaine!  Hence, the normal and natural settings for human life are barren for him.  They do not function as either a medium of vocation, or as a means of moral formation.  He has no ultimate hope in his life, and so he feels that Epicurean excess is the only reasonable goal of human existence.  He has no sense of the law of God as taught by the natural law and summarized in the Decalogue.  And, hence, the only thing left over to direct and restrain him is the State.  Since the State is not omniscient and omnipresent, it cannot actually regulate his moral and spiritual life — even if that was its role — in a way that could force him to live a productive life.  All it can do is come in and pick up the pieces.  He is free to get away with whatever he can.

Within such a situation then, the State must either remain impotent in the face of a corrupt culture in which the Orders of the Church and Family are non-functional, or it must actually take over those functions and become more and more intrusive, totalizing, and, indeed, tyrannical.  And this latter course more often than not happens.  And so there comes about a kind of symbiotic effect.  The more the Church and the Family deteriorate as Orders of Creation, the more the Order of the State takes over their functions.  And the State must then feeds children and supports families because there are no families or fathers.  The State teaches “virtue” (after a fashion) in public schools.  And to many secularists the State becomes a kind of religion and now brings the kingdom.  Nevertheless, it is likewise the case that as the State takes over these functions and becomes more and more totalizing, it also accelerates the deterioration of the Orders of the Family and the Church as well.

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The “Wolf of Wall Street” and the Orders of Creation: Part I

Part 1 of a throwback post from February 8, 2014

image courtesy of Wikipedia

A few weeks ago, my wife and I went to see The Wolf of Wall Street about the corrupt stockbroker, Jordan Belfort.  Very good, I thought, although not my favorite movie of the year (David O. Russell’s American Hustle wins that honor).  It was a bit long, and I think that certain more lurid scenes could probably have been cut.  That being said, it was an interesting study in personal ambition and the power of human beings to engage in almost limitless self-corruption (Incidentally, although some may doubt the truth of some of Belfort’s stories, the FBI agent who followed him stated in an interview that, to the extent he could verify things, the stories were not exaggerations).  In many respects though, I think director Martin Scorsese got fundamentally wrong why Belfort became corrupt and the nature of his corruption.  The film was never really preachy (something Hollywood often cannot help), but the subtext was quite obviously an indictment of capitalism.  There was even a reference to the 1%, that is, a nod in the direction of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

I would of course make a couple of points about this.  First, of course, any economic system is corruptible, because humans are by nature corrupt.  This is obvious and I need not elaborate on this by pointing to historical examples.  Secondly, there is nevertheless a possibility for capitalism with virtue (one might say).  Certainly the Puritans had a vibrant capitalist culture while maintaining a relatively high level of morality (at least in human terms).  The Dutch did as well.  Historian Simon Schama has documented this in his book The Embarassment of Riches about the Dutch in the 17th century. In my own city, Grand Rapids, this culture of virtuous capitalism has continued, with the old and wealthy Dutch families using their resources to build up the civic life of the city in some very remarkable ways.  One the heirs to the DeVos fortune spoke at Aquinas College’s graduation back in 2010 and gave a talk on business life and Christian vocation that would have warmed Martin Luther’s heart.  So, I think what Belfort’s problem and the problem of current economic system is not really capitalism per se, but capitalism without virtue.

So if it’s not capitalism, but capitalism without virtue that’s the problem, why did The Wolf of Wall Street become the way he did and not like a more virtuous capitalist?  I would argue that part of the problem with Scorsese’s critique is that it doubles down on the problem that created Belfort in the first place.  Scorsese somehow thinks there needs to be more state-control.  Indeed, over the previous 100 years or so, we have developed the notion that the state is really the center of human life.  This is a mistake made not only by the Left of the political spectrum, but also by the Right.  That being the case, in our current political discourse the state is meant to bear weight that it wasn’t established by God to bear as an Order of Creation.  In other words, the assumption is that human flourishing happens if we get politics right.  In fact, not just human flourishing happens, but maybe even the Kingdom of God happens – witness the strange messianic projects that both liberal and conservative Presidents have conjured up in recent decades.  It’s just the matter of invading one more country and converting it to democracy, or it’s a just matter of inventing one more social program- and “Bam!” the kingdom has come!

To be continued…