One response to the mythological metaphysics of modernity has been calls to return to something like Aquinas or Pseudo-Dionysius’s analogical or mystical view of God. Although both authors avoid a mythological view of God by removing him from the system of being, calls to return to mysticism or analogy misconceive the problem. Sadly, those who call for such a return often view idolatry primarily as a confusion of creature and creator, rather than as an extension of the problem of self-justification. Humanity only generates idols because self-justifying humans need a God who they can control with their good works or kill off with their denial.
Those who idealize Aquinas’s or Pseudo-Dionysius’s approach to the problem of idolatry typically function within a legalist trajectory. These legalists employ the strategy of pressing the claims of divine transcendence all the harder in order to keep humans from confusing the creation with the creator. Within Protestantism, this can also be observed in Zwingli and Calvin’s wrongheaded campaigns against church artwork and at times music. Pressing the claims of transcendence all the more strongly does not cure human self-justification, it simply hardens it. This is,, of course not to say that showing a concern for divine transcendence, or creator/creature distinction are mistaken. Indeed, univocity and the immanentization of the divine create their own problems with self-justification and idolatry. The key is that any biblically faithful and intellectually credible view of God must overcome antinomian and legalistic conceptions of God by making the law subordinate and penultimate to the gospel.
In order to understand the biblical teaching concerning God from the perspective of the gospel, we turn to Luther as our guide. As we observed in an earlier section, both the pre-modern Greek and Latin theological traditions relied on a dialectic of “negation” (apophatic theology or the via negativa) and affirmation (kataphatic theology or the via positiva). Lowell Green has noted that Luther’s doctrine of God also relies on a form of affirmation and negation, albeit a radically different one. Luther’s affirmation is God hidden (negation) and God revealed (affirmation). As we will also see, one could also add God’s appearance under the law as negation, and gospel as affirmation.
It should be recognized that Luther’s concept of divine hiddenness is not just a matter of affirming that God is incomprehensible. Of course, all orthodox Christian theologians have claimed this one way or another. Rather, following the biblical data (Isa. 45:15), Luther is clear that God actively hides from his people. Why and how this is the case is something we will explore below. How Luther talks about divine hiddenness is quite complicated because he applies the principle differently in different contexts. The British historian of Christian doctrine B. A. Gerrish has thematized these disparate statements of Luther into two kinds of hiddenness: Hiddenness 1, wherein God is hidden in his revelation, notably in Christ; and Hiddenness 2, wherein God is hidden above and apart from revelation.1
Turning to Hiddenness 1, contrary to what is often asserted, Luther (like Augustine and Aquinas) accepts that there is a kind of analogy of being. Indeed, as Katherine Sonderegger notes no Christian theology can function without some kind of analogy of being.2 As Paul Hinlicky correctly notes, it cannot be denied that God is in some measure like his creation, and in other ways not.3 If the Christian doctrine of creation is true, it must be the case that as far as God and his creation are similar, God must be properly what his creation is by derivation and participation. Indeed, this is precisely what Paul testifies to in affirming that we see God’s transcendental qualities in those “things that are made” (Rom. 1:20). Even the Eastern Fathers (who denied any knowledge of the divine essence was possible), allowed for an analogical knowledge of the “howness” of God as Trinity.4 Similarly, in the twentieth century, Karl Barth (who famously claimed that analogia entis was the doctrine of the Anti-Christ!)5 still allowed for an analogia relationis, wherein the “howness” of the divine being (i.e., the Trinitarian relations) were analogically knowable, even if the “whatness” of the divine substance was not.6
Citing Romans 1:20 in the Heidelberg Disputation, Luther certainly holds that God’s transcendental qualities are knowable from nature. This knowledge of divine goodness and glory is nevertheless unprofitable for fallen humans, since they abuse it in the form of self-justification. In the Genesis commentary of the 1530s, there is another even more intriguing development of a notion of analogia entis as essentially linguistic. Luther takes with the utmost seriousness the biblical conception of God as a speaking God (Gen. 1, John 1) and creation as his speech. Creatures are words of God in analogy to the divine Word: “God, by speaking, created all things and worked through the Word, and . . . all His works are some words of God, created by the uncreated Word.”7 Elsewhere, in his sermon for Trinity Sunday 1538, Luther speaks of God’s being as Trinity as analogized on the basis of a linguistic agent: God the Father as speaker, Son as word spoken, Spirit as hearing.8 Here Luther mirrors Jesus’s own description of the Trinitarian relations (Jn. 16:13).
Because creatures are created words that analogize God’s eternal Word, and God’s eternal Word is an active word that creates what it speaks (Thettel-Wort).9 Creatures are a medium of God’s actions. In the Large Catechism, Luther speaks of creatures as “channels” through which God acts. A mother’s breast may give a baby milk, but because God’s Word is constantly speaking his creation into existence, the milk’s ultimate metaphysical source is God. The mother’s breast is but a channel through which God’s Word speaks into existence the created good and delivers it to the creature.
Expanding on Luther, one could safely say that all creation possesses a kind of sacramental quality. Although there is a very clear line between God the creator and his creatures, creatures serve as a kind of visible word (verbum visible) preaching God’s intentions through them. The line between natural and supernatural theology is blurred to the extent that all reality is simply an encounter with God’s Word. Nevertheless, there is a distinction between natural and supernatural theology because of the difference between God’s auditory and visible words (verbum audibile, verbum visible).
[1] B. A. Gerrish, “To the Unknown God: Luther and Calvin on the Hiddenness of God,” Journal of Religion 53 (1973), 263–293.
[2] Katherine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology: The Doctrine of God, vol. 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 26.
[3] Hinlicky, Beloved Community, 74-75.
[4] See examples in: Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 50, 207-208.
[5] CD I/1. ix.
[6] CD III/2. 220.
[7] Lectures on Genesis (1535-1545). LW 1:47
[8] Paul Hinlicky, Luther and the Beloved Community: A Path for Christian Theology after Christendom (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010), 130-135. The section of the sermon that they refer to can be found in: Sermon for Trinity Sunday (1538). WA 46:433.
[9] See That These Words of Christ, “This is My Body,” etc. Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics, (1527). LW 37:180-188.
Image from “What Does This Mean – The Hiddenness of God,” Messiah Lutheran Church, accessed February 23, 2023, https://messiah-nc.org/sermons/what-does-this-mean-the-hiddenness-of-god/.
From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).