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.
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.
Follow us on Twitter @MuchDoth & Instagram @doth.protest.too.much”
Image from https://www.dw.com/en/a-tour-through-luthers-marburg/a-39247476
Although confessional Lutherans affirm the ultimate authority of the Bible alone (sola Scriptura), various philosophical traditions have been legitimately utilized by Christians throughout history as instruments in service of the true faith. The pre-modern and early modern Church utilized thought-forms from Stoic, Platonic, and Aristotelian sources as means of explicating the central truths of the Christian faith to the post-biblical Gentile world. Although sometimes the use of philosophy obscured the truth of the Bible in the early Church, more often than not such thought-forms were used critically in light of the revealed realities of the faith. This can be supremely observed in the development of the distinct uses of the concepts of “substance,” “nature,” and “person” in the debates surrounding the Trinity and Person of Christ at Nicaea and Chalcedon.
Broadly speaking, most of the ancient metaphysical schemes utilized by Christians shared the common concept of “substance.” Although various ancient philosophical traditions defined substance differently (Stoic vs. Aristotelian, for example), broadly speaking substance ontology assumes two basic ideas: First, entities in a class or species share an objectively real common nature. For example, humans have a common nature with other humans. Secondly, that although certainly features of entities change, there is a core of identity or essence within them that persists over time. For example, despite physical changes I am the same person I was when I was a baby. It is easily observable that these aforementioned tenets of substance metaphysics imply linguistic realism and a correspondence theory of truth. That is, both claims assume that how humans typically use language to designate the identity of a given entity generally corresponds to the actual functioning of the world.
As should be clear from the description above, the ancient councils and creeds of the Church (particularly, those of Nicaea and Chalcedon) assumed the validity of substance metaphysics. For classic creedal orthodoxy, God is a single entity (ousia) with three real centers of identity (hypostasis) subsisting through their relations with one another. Likewise, Christ is a single center of identity (prosopon) whose integrity persists over time. He possesses two natures (physis), that is, he has a common nature with the other persons of the Trinity as well as the rest of humanity. From the great councils of the ancient Church, these thought-forms passed into the heritage of the Latin medieval church. From there were absorbed into the theology of the Magisterial Reformers of the sixteenth century with little comment.
Image from Marcellino D’Ambrosio, “Early Church Fathers Overview: Snapshot of the Fathers,” Crossroads Initiative, February 10, 2020, https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/early-church-fathers-overview-snapshot-of-the-fathers-of-the-church/.
Regarding Christology and atonement, the later Erlangen school represented by Paul Althaus (1888-1966) and Werner Elert (1885-1954) was in many ways more conservative than its nineteenth predecessors. The nineteenth-century Erlangen school had taken over from Lutheran Pietism and Friedrich Schleiermacher the concept that that along with the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions, Christian experience was a valid source of theological authority. By contrast, under the influence of their teacher Ludwig Ihmels, Elert and Althaus affirmed that Scripture was the supreme theological authority to the exclusion of religious experience. Similarly, both Althaus and Elert abandoned Johannes von Hofmann and Gottfried Thomasius’s metaphysically problematic belief in kenotic Christology in favor of a fairly traditional understanding of the two natures in Christ.
Both Elert and Althaus took an interest in responding to the historical skepticism concerning the identity of Christ and the historicity of the Gospels that marked the work of figures like Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976). Both Erlangen theologians held that Christianity would be meaningless and invalid if the Gospels were false and if Jesus was not true God and man. In order to push back against theological Liberalism and historical skepticism, Elert and Althaus offered a series of common arguments in their respective works.
First, in his early and shorter dogmatics, Elert partially adopted Hofmann’s line of reasoning by insisting that the development of the Church and the reality of the contemporary Christian community would make little sense if the events of the Bible (including the life of Christ) had not occurred generally as reported. Analogously, contemporary Americans are not vexed about whether there was an American Revolution since the US government and other American institution would not exist if it had not happened. So too the Church as an embodied community would make little sense as it exists now if the history salvation as described by the Bible had not occurred.
Secondly, both Elert and Althaus argued that Jesus was an absolutely unique personality that could never be a mere invention of early Christians. Even if a detail here or there in the Gospel records might be inaccurate (it should be noted that neither believed in the full inerrancy of Scripture), the utterly uniqueness of Jesus’s personal character impressed itself upon the apostles and is reflected in the New Testament witness. The biblical and ecumenical doctrine of the two natures in Christ could be justified by pointing to the fact that the utterly unique personality of Christ presented in the Gospels contained both divine and human elements.
Both Althaus and Elert also very zealously defended the biblical and confessional doctrine of penal substitution. In his seminal work, The Theology of Martin Luther, Althaus vigorously argued against Gustaf Aulén and his attempt to claim Luther for the Christus Victor atonement motif. Likewise, in his work Law and Gospel (which primarily a response to Barth’s theology of grace and ethics), Elert outlined and defended his affirmation of the doctrine of penal substitution.
According to Elert, in the post-lapsarian world, humanity lives a “nomological” existence wherein humans are constantly enveloped by the experience of the condemnation of the law. Jesus came into the world as the embodiment and fulfillment of divine grace and judgment. He exposed the hypocrisy of those who claimed not to be sinners, while forgiving and having fellowship with the moral outcasts. He not only gave forgiveness, but taught an ethic of forgiveness that transcends the law. Jesus’ ethic of non-retaliation and forgiveness transcends the law because the logical final fulfillment of the law is retribution and retaliation (lex talionis). In order to make divine forgiveness and the Christian ethic of non-retaliation an actuality, Christ had to end the retribution of the law by bringing it to a completion by his death. The cross is thus a final retributive punishment for sin that ends all retribution. This was the fulfillment of divine wrath against sin and is an act of pure law. By contrast, the resurrection is act of pure grace, since it reveals God’s forgiveness won by the cross.
Image from Jeff Davis, “Contemporary Issues in the Christological Methods,” Life Giving Words of Hope & Encouragement by Jeff Davis, May 17, 2017, https://jeffdavis.blog/2017/05/17/contemporary-issues-in-the-christological-methods/.
My new book entitled Justification by the Word: Restoring Sola Fide with Lexham Press will make the case for seven theses on justification. Here’s the draft of the first one:
1. Justification is the center of Christian theology.
Justification is the center of Christian theology because the salvation of sinners is the goal of God’s revelation in the Bible (scopusScripturae) and the ministry of the Church. In saying this, we do not mean to suggest that justification exhausts the content of the Christian faith. Obviously without doctrines such as the Trinity, the divine essence and attributes, creation, and so-forth, justification would be incoherent and meaningless. Neither are we claiming that all other doctrines are deduced from the single doctrine of justification, as in so-called “Central-Dogma” theory. Rather, what we mean in stating that justification is the central doctrine of Christianity is that the ultimate goal of all of God’s revelation is to clarify and promote the proclamation of the doctrine of justification in the midst of the Church.
Image from the Institute of Lutheran Theology, @InstituteLutheranTheology
I think the question of the continuing deification of the state in modern life is an interesting one. Ultimately, winning the argument about traditional marriage (by which I mean both the belief in man-woman marriage and also the indissoluble nature of marriage- i.e., no divorces aside from Jesus’ single exception) is a daunting task for modern Christians. It is a daunting task because even before the debate begins, Christians are faced with the fact that nearly everyone (including Christians themselves) already have a distorted understanding of marriage.
Prior to the modern era, the basic conception of marriage in Judeo-Christian culture was as an Order of Creation and an economic relationship. Since all property was tied up in land, and land was owned by families, marriage was a way of ensuring intelligent and rational means of wealth transference and (depending on the status of the family) political alliances. Theologically speaking as well, love was secondary in the definition of marriage. In Luther’s commentary on Genesis and in the Catechisms, he understands marriage as an Order of Creation established by God that defines the human self in this age. Here Luther echoed Jesus in Matthew.
Luther writes that God designed the world to function according to three estates after the Fall: marriage / family (including economic or civil life), the Church, and the government to curb evil. Everyone has vocations within these estates.
Similarly, the Roman Catholic Church understands marriage as both an something rooted in creation, and elevated by the order of grace. Though I may disagree with the Roman Catholic definition theologically, the commonality between it and the Lutheran one is clear: marriage is a reality rooted in legal, creational, and economic relationships. It isn’t about the subjective feelings or personal preferences of the participants. People in the pre-modern world, of course, did experience romance and love (it’s a universal human phenomenon), but such realities had only an incidental relationship to marriage. For perspective on this, read some of the medieval chivalric romances: the authors actually assume that love and romance are only incidental to marriage, or in very extreme versions, very nearly impossible within marriage.
Things changed in the 19th century. Since capitalism made wealth transference and generation possible without handing it down through kinship, western European and American society developed a new rationale for marriage. This rationale was companionship and romance, and marriage was therefore redefined as a public ratification of one’s subjective romantic feelings. After this, divorce became more common. Why? Because if one no longer experiences affectionate companionship with one’s spouse then the whole relationship ceases to serve its function. Hence, why not just move on? Of course there were still legal barriers to divorce, but after the 1960s and the advent of no-fault divorce, rates of divorce went off the charts. Moreover, the theory of companionship marriage also made same-sex marriage and other martial arrangements thinkable in new ways. If companionship and romance are the rationale for marriage, then why shouldn’t individuals of the same sex get married since they can obviously experience love and companionship as well as an opposite-sex couple?
This is why the same-sex marriage argument is so powerful in our context, even though at best it’s an exercise in the logical fallacy of “begging the question.” In other words, what advocates for same-sex marriage already assume is that same-sex relationships are the equivalent to heterosexual relationships. Consequently, denying gay men and lesbians the ability to marry is an act of discrimination. Same-sex marriage is a a matter of “marriage equality.” Nevertheless, the question remains: why can the advocates of same-sex marriage assume that there is an equivalency and appeal to this equivalency with such success? Because most assume that marriage is a public ratification of subjective feelings about another person- i.e., companionship marriage. Since most heterosexual individuals in our society already assume this, such an appeal works. If one, for example, believes that marriage is an Order of Creation and tied to specific heterosexual activities, then the argument doesn’t work. Also, if one assumes that marriage ordains certain goods that are tied to the sexual diversity of the persons involved and that these goods remain good irrespective of the subjective feeling of the partners, then the argument also falls apart.
But almost no one still sees marriage as an Order of Creation, and that’s why the same-sex marriage debate is not winnable for Christians in this society: we abandoned the correct understanding of marriage a long time ago. As a result, we can’t appeal to a model of marriage that even conservative Christians unconsciously don’t ascribe to.
This is a revised version of thoughts first posted May 14, 2013.
Image of Luther and the Three Estates from Bryan Wolfmueller, “Thinking Like a Lutheran: The Three Estates (Quotation Collection Post),” World Wide Wolfmueller, July 30, 2016, https://wolfmueller.co/threeestates/.
