Tag: Word

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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). 

Continue reading “Doing Theology: Part I”
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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/.

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The Pattern of Flight from Condemnation to Grace

God’s wrath is revealed to all outside the garden (that is, outside the sphere of divine grace and promise) through his creaturely masks. Indeed, God’s “invisible attributes [i.e., including his holiness and wrath], namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20, Emphasis added).[1] 

Nevertheless, God established a new word of promise in the form of the protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15.  The grace of the protoevangelium took on an even more definite form in the corporate life and history of Israel through the promise God attached to Abraham’s “seed” (Gen. 22:18).  This effective Word of promise pushed the history of Israel inexorably along to its fulfillment in the person of the Messiah, even in the face of human opposition.  Nevertheless, the movement of the divine Word toward its final fulfillment could often appear as a failure even as it succeeded.  When Moses pronounced the divine Word “Let my people go,” it appeared ineffective to both the Egyptians and Israelites.  Indeed, Pharaoh was apparently unmoved by the pronouncement of the divine deed-word and, in turn, increased Israel’s labor (Exod. 5).  Nevertheless, it was through Pharaoh’s very obstinacy that God worked his redemption and was finally able to bring a plague so horrific that Egypt expelled Israel.[2]  God likewise told Isaiah to speak a word of repentance to Israel that they would ignore, thereby ensuring their suffering in Babylon (Isa. 6:9-13).  But Israel’s destruction was be the occasion for their true repentance, something that would prepare them for the grace of restoration and the coming of the Messiah (Isa. 40).  Finally, God’s Word of redemption found ultimate fulfillment in the opposition and murder of Jesus by his opponents.  By killing God himself, Jesus’ enemies brought about the fulfillment of the very Word of God that they sought to thwart.  As Luther’s theology of the cross shows, God works under the form of his opposite.  

God fulfills his Word under the outward appearance of it having failed.

Likewise, throughout the history of Israel, God’s pattern of attaching his dual words of condemnation and grace to created masks continued.  By doing so, the Lord bid his covenant people to flee from the word of condemnation to that of grace.  Although Jacob is attacked by God in the night, he demands the name of the shadowy attacker and thereby hearkened back to the promise of blessing that God had made to him at Bethel (Gen. 32:22-32).[3]  Moses is also attacked by God on his return to Egypt but flees to the promise of grace found in circumcision of his son (Exod. 4:24-26).[4]  God threatened with death those who came near Mt. Sinai, the mountain where he gave his law (Exod. 19:10-13), but promised forgiveness and a share in his personal holiness to those who approached him through the sacramental channels of the Tabernacle/Temple at Mt. Zion.[5] 

This pattern of fleeing from condemnation to grace also continued in the life of Christ.  In the crucifixion, God designated Jesus and the sacraments of the New Testament, which flowed from his side (Jn. 19:34) on the hillock of Golgotha, as the new place of grace. Likewise, he designated the Temple mount and works connected with it as a place of condemnation (Gal. 4:25-6).  In his resurrection, Jesus insisted that the women flee his tomb (the place of death and condemnation) and instructed them to tell his disciples to meet him in Galilee.  In Galilee, Jesus told the disciples look for him now not in the tomb, but in the word and sacrament ministry of the Church (Mt. 28:8-10, v. 16-20).

[1] Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology (New York: T & T Clark International, 2011), 70-4.

[2] Steven Paulson, Luther’s Outlaw God: Hiddenness, Evil, and Predestination, vol. 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018), 229-43

[3] LW 6:122-55.

[4] Paulson, Luther’s Outlaw God: Hiddenness, Evil, and Predestination, vol. 1, 17-8.

[5] See good description in: John Kleinig, Leviticus (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2003).

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

Image: Gustave Doré, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1855.

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Luther on Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist

Although Luther affirmed the substantial presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist, he disliked the doctrine of transubstantiation 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.[1]  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.[2] 

In spite of this criticism of transubstantiation, it is interesting to note that Luther does not consider belief in the doctrine to be tremendously problematic and allows that people could still affirm transubstantiation as a theologoumenon.[3]  What is most important to the Reformer is that one affirms the substantial presence of Christ’s flesh and blood in the Lord’s Supper.  Although how one conceptually achieves this mysteriously physical presence is not unimportant, the main point for Luther is that one knows that Christ is substantially present in his body and blood “for you” (pro me).[4] 

This is why Luther was considerably less tolerant when it comes to the sacramental symbolicism of a figure like Zwingli.[5]  From Luther’s perspective, Zwingli ignores the divine promise that Christ’s flesh and blood will be present on essentially rationalistic grounds, namely, that physical bodies cannot be at more than one location at once.  As we have seen Luther rejects this logic and affirms that Jesus’ body remains a real body. However, it participates in God’s glory and can transcended the normal boundaries of physicality.[6]  After all, in the resurrection Jesus was able to walk through walls and appear and disappear at will.  Jesus’ body nevertheless remained a real body.  Christ could still invite Thomas to place his fingers in the nail holes of his very real hands and eat fish with the apostles.  Likewise, the mysterious supernatural quality of Christ’s body in the Lord’s Supper does not negate its real physicality or his genuine humanity. 

As we noted earlier, these differences between Luther and Zwingli on the sacrament are due in part to competing concepts of the communicatio idiomatum.[7]  Nevertheless, these differences also have implications regarding the nature of how the Word of God functions.  For Zwingli, the words of institution are signifiers that merely signify.[8]  Zwingli resolves the puzzle of how the signifiers “body and blood” can be validly applied to the signified “bread and wine” (which they do not match) through sacramental symbolicism.[9]  For Luther, divine words are not mere signifiers, but promises that effect what they speak.[10] This is the same principle that we have seen earlier in his views of confession and absolution.  Hence the words “this is my body . . . this is my blood” possess divine power to bring about the presence of Christ’s flesh and blood.[11]  Faith must simply trusts that God’s words perform what they promise.  To believe otherwise would be to trust in human reason over the God’s clearly stated promises.[12]

[1] LW 36:33-4.

[2] LW 36:34-5.

[3] LW 36:35.

[4] Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Robert Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 379.

[5] Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, 169-77; Sasse, This is My Body, 134-294.

[6] Thomas Davis,  This Is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 41-64; Sasse, This is My Body, 148-60.

[7] Sasse, This is My Body, 148-54.

[8] See discussion in: Aaron Moldenhauer, “Analyzing the Verba Christi: Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and Gabriel Biel on the Power of Words,” in The Medieval Luther, ed. Christine Helmer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 53-6.

[9] Ulrich Zwingli, “On the Lord’s Supper,” in Zwingli and Bullinger, 175-238.

[10] Moldenhauer, “Analyzing the Verba Christi,” 57-61.

[11] LW 37:180-88.

[12] LW 37:131.

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