Luther Archives - Page 6 of 9

February 2, 2022February 8, 2022

Luther On Christ’s Substantial Eucharistic Presence For You

The gospel is a unilateral divine self-donation, in that an unconditional promise means a gift of the promiser himself in order to fulfill the terms of the promise. Therefore, Christians who receive the unilateral promise of the gospel are heirs to Christ’s very sacrificed person as a guarantee that he is at their disposal to fulfill his promise. This means that through the promise of the gospel we inherit Christ and everything that he possesses. Indeed, as Paul states, all true believers in union with Christ are “fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom 8:17). This reality is manifest in the Lord’s Supper wherein Christ wills his very physical being (body and blood) through which he brought salvation to believers. Therefore, to paraphrase Luther, in dying Jesus gives the inheritance of his body and blood to believers in order that they might receive the forgiveness of sins and eternal life through his promise attached to them.¹

Returning to On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther’s second major difficulty with the medieval conception of the Eucharist is the doctrine of transubstantiation.² The doctrine of transubstantiation teaches that the bread and the wine in the Lord’s Supper are transformed by the words of institution into the body and blood of Christ, although the outward appearance and qualities of bread and wine (Aristotelian “accidents”) remain intact.³ Although Luther affirmed the substantial presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist, he disliked the doctrine of transubstantiation the because it contradicts 1 Corinthians 10:16 which states that the bread and wine remain in the Lord’s Supper as the medium by which one receives Christ’s substantial body and blood.⁴ Luther considers the entire idea of transubstantiation an Aristotelian rationalization of the mystery of how the body and blood of Christ can become present through the bread and the wine.⁵

January 27, 2022

Historical Introduction to the Augsburg Confession

Rev. Sean Smith let me talk away about the history and contents of the Augsburg Confession for his show Concord Matters on KFUO. Thanks for the opportunity!

Concord Matters — Historical Introduction to the Augsburg Confession

January 24, 2022January 25, 2022

Justification by the Word

Lexham Press will be publishing my newest book, Justification by the Word: Restoring Sola Fide, relatively soon. If interested, you can pre-order at Lexham’s website. Here’s a snippet from the introduction:

According to [Phillip] Cary, this unreflective faith is possible for Luther because of his belief in the sacramentality of the word.¹ Here Cary echoes the work of the German Luther scholar Oswald Bayer, who claims that it was in fact the sacramentality of the word, and not justification by faith, that was central to the so-called Reformation breakthrough.² The word of justification is objectified in both in preaching and the sacraments in such a way as to shift the focus from authentic appropriation of God’s grace to the question of the surety of God’s promise. Since the risen Jesus is genuinely present in the means of grace, he is capable of mediating a direct assurance of his justifying grace for sinners who look for him there. The tendency of believers to reflect upon and worry about the authenticity of their faith is seen by Luther as a sinful resistance to Jesus’s promise that they have already been accepted. Therefore, instead of “justification through faith” it might be appropriate to characterize Luther’s position as “justification by the word.”

In this book, we will endeavor to show that, although it has been neglected and misunderstood by Protestants and Catholics alike, Luther’s “justification by the word” is a better model for understanding salvation in Christ. It will be argued that this is not only the case because it is more faithful to the teachings of the Scriptures, but also because it is the only doctrine of salvation that fully succeeds in de-centering the self and overcoming the self-incurvature of sin (incurvatus in se). As Luther himself observes in his Galatians commentary of 1531: “This is the reason why our theology is certain, it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience, person, or works but depend on that which is outside ourselves, that is, on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive.”³

[1] Phillip Cary, “Why Luther is Not Quite Protestant: The Logic of Faith in a Sacramental Promise,” Pro Ecclesia 14, no. 4 (2005): 447–486. Also see similar argument in Phillip Cary, The Meaning of Protestant Theology: Luther, Augustine, and the Gospel That Gives Us Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 258–62.

[2] Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation, trans. Thomas Trapp (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 52–53; and Bayer, Promissio: Geschichte der reformatorischen Wende in Luthers Theologie (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), 240–41.

[3] LW 26:38

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

January 24, 2022January 27, 2022

“Blood with the Pope” or “Wine with the Enthusiasts”? The Luther vs. Zwingli Debate

Thanks to Fr. Andrew Christiansen for having me back on his “Doth Protest Too Much” podcast to discuss Luther’s debate with Zwingli over the nature of Christ’s present in Holy Communion.

Click here for the episode: https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blood-with-the-pope-or-wine-with-the-enthusiasts/id1549751430?i=1000537778612

From the website: “Doth Protest Too Much is a podcast on church history and the development of Protestant theology over the past several centuries. It is hosted by Episcopal priest Rev. Andrew Christiansen along with Stephen Burnett and Lutheran pastor Rev. Charles Lehmann. It also features interviews and discussions with world-class theologians and scholars of church history. We can be listened to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, & more.

Image from https://www.dw.com/en/a-tour-through-luthers-marburg/a-39247476

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.