Throwback Post Part 2:
Within this situation, what is the Christian to do? Luther tells us that the revealed God of the gospel (the God of grace) is God’s real self, despite what might be considered evidence to the contrary! When we approach God hidden, or God under his masks of law, we can only find condemnation—something actually alien to God in his proper nature (opus alienum). Consequently, we should flee from the God of hiddenness and wrath, to the God of grace. In other words, we must flee from God not preached to God preached. Nevertheless, if both are God, how do we know that God preached is the more authentic of the two? In the Galatians commentary, Luther talks about God in his hiddenness and wrath condemning and destroying Jesus who bears the sins of the world. The law (in a sense) tries to destroy the promise by condemning Jesus who has entered into solidarity with those under the God of hiddenness and wrath. In spite of this, Jesus atones for sin, undoes the power of the law, and reveal God’s true heart. Jesus (the revealed God of grace) has gone up against the hidden God of wrath and law and come out the other side victorious. Therefore, those who are united with him by faith can also share in his victory and therefore have nothing to fear from God not preached.
Faith clings to the revealed God against the hidden God, and therefore the shape of the Christian life is one of trust and flight from one to the other. This can be observed throughout the history of salvation. God establishes his relationship with Adam and Eve through two trees—the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God attaches his promise to all the trees of the garden as means of mediating the good to Adam and Eve (“you may eat…”). He gives them the tree of life as a sacrament of immortality. Nonetheless, he also establish the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as an alternative to the means of his grace. This was not a test (as John of Damascus and John Wesley have argued), or a means of earning their glorification (as Reformed Federal theology argues), but rather a manifestation of the irrationality of God not preached. In other words, the tree is in a sense inexplicable. Why put the possibility of becoming evil in the midst of the good creation? It is a mystery, a manifestation of the hidden God. Nevertheless, it was also formative of the obedience of Adam and Eve, which ultimately constituted a sacrifice of praise to God, as Luther argues. Because Adam and Eve found God not preached in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the structure of their believing existence was the flight from God not preached (that is, the God of destructive condemnation) to God preached (that is, his manifestation in the other trees of the garden and the tree of life). Adam and Eve only entered into sin and condemnation when they sought God not preached and ignored God as manifested to them in his Word.
We can of course name other examples of this phenomenon: Jacob is attacked by the hidden God by the river, but seeks the name and therefore also the self-donating gift of the preached God who had already covenanted with him. Moses is attacked by God unpreached (for no apparent reason) on his return to Egypt, but his wife circumcises their son, and the attack is ended when God preached (that is, the God of the gospel manifested in the promise connected to circumcision) is sought. Lastly, God unpreached is encountered on Sinai (much to the terror of Israel), but he establishes himself later as God preached in the Tabernacle and later on Mt. Zion. This preached God (as John Kleinig has shown) sacramentally channels his alien holiness to the people.
Turning to the Catechisms, I would argue that when Luther speaks of “fearing and loving” God he is talking precisely about this fleeing from one God to another. God not preached cannot be trusted, and does nothing but promote unbelief in his goodness as a result of his seemingly irrational and terrifying presence. And so one must seek God where he has given his Word and promise to be gracious. Perfect faith means perfect obedience to God’s Word because it means that we trust God’s actions in the different masks to which he has attached his word. This is why Luther states in his discussion of the First Commandment that it is both the gospel (we need no other gods than God, because he is supremely trustworthy) and a summary of the law.
In trusting God as a gracious God, we trust what he says about all his creatures and the goods that he will give us through them. We trust that God has put parents and other authorities above us for our good. We trust that God has channeled certain goods connected with our sexuality through marriage, and consequently we don’t need to seek them elsewhere. Finally, we trust that God will ultimately take care of us and so we don’t need to covet, lie, or steal. Hence, all the commandments demand faith in God, and each commandment is merely an illustration of what trusting in God looks like and what it does not look like. If one looks to God not preached and away from God’s scriptural promises to channel the good through his creatures, one will of course become terrified and unbelieving. One will seek the good autonomously, apart from God’s promises and consequently look for it in the wrong places. One will grasp at it, because this will be the only means of securing it. One will in effect make himself his own god through self-trust. Hence, we must flee from God not preached (“fear”) found in the inappropriate means of gaining the good, and cling to God preached (“love”) in order to believe God’s commandments.
Original version first posted by Jack Kilcrease, “Fleeing from God not Preached to God Preached: The Shape of the Christian Life,” Crux Sola Est Nostra Theologia, July 15, 2013.