Tag: sanctification

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Mystical Union by Faith: Vows Before Consummation

Throwback Post

According to Martin Luther, the believer receives all that is Christ’s , through faith in the word: “The one who has faith is a completely divine man, a son of God, the inheritor of the universe. He is victor over the world, sin, death, and the Devil.”1 The scholastics claimed that the habitus of love makes faith living. But Luther argued this was incorrect. Love is not the “form” (in the Aristotelian sense) of faith. Christ is.2 Faith holds Christ like a ring holds onto a jewel.3 

In other words, because faith takes its reality from Christ and his alien righteousness, it lives on and subjectively justifies the sinner. As Lutheran theologian Regin Prenter observed: “Faith lives completely and alone by the real presence of Christ. To the same extent that Christ is really present, faith is really present, and only to that extent.”4 Moreover, to use the terminology of later Protestantism, Luther believed the Word of God and the saving faith it creates did not simply justify believers. It sanctifies them as well. Here the Reformer echoed Jeremiah’s description of the Holy Spirit working through the proclamation of the New Covenant to write the commandments on the hearts of believers (Jer. 31:33). 

Luther’s Use of Aristotle

Luther clearly rejected the medieval Church’s belief that habits implanted in the soul sanctified the Christian. However, interestingly, he did not totally abandon the language of formation taken from Peripatetic philosophy. Nevertheless, instead of using Aristotle’s concept of ethical formation through habits (i.e., augmentation of human agency and right performance), Luther used Aristotelian epistemology’s concept of objects of consciousness imposing their form on the knower’s intellect.  

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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.

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Sanctification and Justification

https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/sanctification.html

Sanctification is then not the building up of righteous qualities inside of believers, but believers learning to live outside of themselves as a result of their justification.  Such an existence lived outside of ourselves neither destroys the simul of Christian existence, nor the full and robust reality of sanctification.  The more the Christian meditates on the divine Word, the more he or she cannot help but feel the reality of his or her inner sinfulness.  This recognition will undoubtedly be augmented by the fact that we sin every day and therefore the older we become the more we have to regret.  Nevertheless, such a recognition of our innate sinfulness draws us ever more out ourselves into Christ through faith.  In turn, faith in Christ ever increases and overflows into service to our neighbors. 

Of course, Christian love is always imperfect.  Hence, there is a genuine insight in Luther’s early theology wherein he describes the believer as “partim peccator,”[1] and “peccatores in re, iusti autem in spe.”[2] In our present life, there is a real distinction between which actions of ours are the fruits of the Spirit and which are sins.  Hence, Lutherans have developed the paradigm of “active” and “passive” righteousness, within which believers are “partim peccator” according to the former category.  At the same time, any sin within us makes us “totus peccator” before God.  One either sins, or does not, and this fact grants us a status of total sinfulness or righteousness before God.  Even the good works of believers are imperfect, and therefore judged by the absolute standard of divine law are in themselves sinful (Isa. 64:6).  Hence, we are not “partim peccator” before the eyes of God according to passive righteousness.  In the present age, we are always total sinners coram Deo and therefore beggars before the divine throne of judgment and mercy.

Believers’ sense of their sinfulness drives on their sanctification.  If believers honestly contemplate their own actions, they cannot help but feel that their sinfulness outweighs their progress in good works. Indeed, the progress of sanctification cannot be quantified, and at times, we cannot detect any moral progress in our lives at all.  Such reflections should inevitably lead us to repentance and ever-deeper faith in Christ.  This divinely wrought faith in turn leads to overflowing love for God and our neighbor.  Thus, the Christian life can be seen as a perpetual cycle of believers suffering the work of the Word of God as law and gospel, until they are definitively transformed by temporal death and resurrection.

[1] WA 56:272.

[2] WA 56:269.

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

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Lutheran Theology and the Metaphysical Question

Throwback post from April 3, 2014

The entire discussion of sanctification brought up a number of issues.  Chief among them is my use of speech-act theory, as well as my use of categories of thought taken from relational and ecstatic metaphysics to explicate my views of sanctification.  When I pointed out the advantage of these ways of speaking to give an account of and to conceptually preserve biblical and confessional commitments (as well as their precedent in Luther’s own ways of speaking and conceptualizing theology), it was charged that I rejected the substance ontology of the early Lutheran dogmaticians, and that I was therefore out of accordance with the historic tradition.  As much as I tried to explain in a few short sentences to point out that my position was being distorted, such a response was generally speaking ignored.  Below, I would like to clarify my position on the metaphysical question in light of my biblical and confessional commitments to God’s truth.  Regarding Lutheran theology and the need to speak in terms of philosophical ontology, I would make the following observations:

1. One cannot canonize any one ontological scheme.  There are a couple reasons for this.  First of all, the great weakness of Catholic and Reformed theology is that they have more or less canonized a particular metaphysical scheme and allowed it to determine their theology.  This can be seen in the Catholic commitment to things like Transubstantiation and the doctrine of created grace.  In the case of the Reformed, they enter into their discussion of the two natures in Christ and the sacraments with philosophical presuppositions about what divinity and humanity are (non capax, etc.), and what God would do and what he would not do .  And so, ultimately they ignore or obfuscate what Scripture says about these things.  Secondly, Lutheranism (or perhaps more accurately, people who define themselves as Lutheran!) has functioned with a number of different philosophical traditions: Nominalism, Scotism, Aristotelianism, Leibnizianism, Kantianism, Hegalianism, and Existentialism.  Many of these philosophical schemes have had unfortunately distorting effects on the teaching of biblical truth.  My opponents tend to think the Aristotelian one was pretty good.  In some respects, this was true.  Nevertheless, this too also created any number of problems.  One example might be the false teaching of “receptionism,” that is largely a function of the Melanchthonian appropriation of Aristotle’s casual scheme.  All causes must be in place (including reception) to actualize a reality.  This distorts the gospel-promise of the Supper by effectively claiming that my action of reception is a contributing cause of the body and blood of Christ being present, rather than the sole cause lying in the promissory and consecratory word.  The third reason that we cannot canonize any one metaphysical scheme is that as Oswald Bayer has pointed out, this would be the theology of glory.  To know a universal scheme within which we can relate the ontic reality of God to all beings in an absolutely consistent way would in fact to suggest that we could know God’s being in itself, and how all of God’s works (which, often seems contrary) are coordinated with one another.  This is a problem because we know that the theology of glory always leads to conceit and self-justification.  Such a knowledge of God is not proper to this life, but the next life.  In this life, an attempt at such a knowledge leads to creatures believing in God as a transparent ideal, rather than a savior.  From this, theology and ethics becomes structured around trying to be conformed to that ideal.  Such knowledge will only be possible and helpful to us in the next life when God purifies us and conforms us to his ideal reality.

2.  If metaphysical and ontological terminology and schemes have historically distorted aspects of biblical teaching, then why bother with them at all?  One has heard this argument from Lutherans  often enough, and indeed to some extent in the history of Protestant theology.  The young Luther was contemptuous of philosophical terminology borrowed from Aristotle.  Of course, he never completely rejected philosophical learning (he has very nice things to say about Plato in the Heidelberg Disputation, as he trashes Aristotle).  Moreover, many of the presuppositions he used to attack philosophical reason were in fact borrowed from Nominalist philosophy (this is particularly the case in his arguments against Zwingli).  Finally, he ultimately did acquiesced to Melanchthon’s revival of a purified Aristotelianism in the curriculum of Wittenberg by the 1530s.  Moreover, we find of course a similar rejection of philosophical metaphysics in the considerably less orthodox theology of 19th century Liberal Protestantism.  Schleiermacher and Ritschl in particular rejected philosophical tradition as a basis or in some case, even a tool, for theological discourse.  Adolf Harnack built an entire theory of the fall of the Church around it in his History of Dogma by positing that Christian theology had gradually been corrupted by Greek philosophy (his famous “Hellenization Thesis”).  Unfortunately for the coherent of their argument, they attacked philosophical reason on the basis of Kantian presuppositions, thereby revealing that they were unable to escape philosophical schemes themselves!  

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