Essentially Lutheran

The Foolishness of God

2007-08-17T10:51:00.000-04:00

Does Christianity make sense? Do all its various teachings add up? Is it logical?

For a time, I began to think - yes. It must make sense.

Something within me demanded logical explanations to all the haunting questions of the ages. “Why am I saved and not others?” “Why do the innocent suffer?” “What is the point of my life?” “What is the REAL truth and how am I to know it?” etc. etc.

I started to think that if Christianity can’t answer these big questions in a logically airtight, satisfying way, what good is it?

But this kind of thinking and search for logical answers (thankfully) proved fruitless.

Oh, I know there are Christian pat answers to these big questions. The best theological minds down through history (and continuing mercilessly in our time) offer us lots of ways to explain God and try to harmonize human logic with what we find in the Bible. But most of this is just interesting speculation. What I found was - regardless of which logical path I followed - God eventually ended up being either non-existent, impotent or a monster. So much for my logic.

Now I am certain that Christianity does NOT make sense. Christian theology is the very opposite of philosophy. It springs from different premises, operates by different rules, and in most cases (perhaps all?) cannot be reconciled with natural reason.

And that’s OK. In fact, it’s more than OK. If God is to stay God, it is the way it must be. When God and my reason collide, my reason necessarily yields, whether I like it or not. And I admit I seldom like it.

I am currently re-reading a book that has been in my library for many years - The Foolishness of God, The Place of Reason in the Theology of Martin Luther by Siegbert Becker. It is a fascinating and comforting book, because Prof. Becker (correctly, I think) uncovers the key to understanding Luther’s seeming anti-rationalism. He explains and defends Luther’s way of fitting Scripture, faith and reason together by relegating reason to its proper place - as a servant of Scripture and faith, not their master or judge. Put in a somewhat more spiritual way, faith inevitably puts natural reason to death, giving birth to a sanctified use of human reason, ruled by faith. (We don’t check our brain at the door. It is exchanged for a new one.)

The irony of the book is that it obviously employs human reason (as any book written by humans must) in a way that makes Luther’s unreasonableness totally reasonable. Or, as one commentator put it, “Luther may have been antirationalistic, but he was not irrational.”(David Scaer)

While all this sometimes makes my head swim, (using human reason to analyze human reason is a somewhat circular process), I believe that a simple recognition of the limits of natural reason is a gracious ingredient of the gift of faith. And it is immensely freeing.

Prof Becker’s book is not just a key to understanding Luther. It provides, I believe, a key to understanding Christianity itself. An escape, if you will, from the bondage of the fallen mind.

The Bad Grammar of Tragedy

2007-08-02T09:24:00.000-04:00

One of my pet peeves is politicians and news reporters who consistently torture the language in times of tragedy. The Minneapolis bridge collapse serves as but the latest sad reminder.

“My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families.”

This cliché contains two errors.

First, our thoughts do not really go anywhere. They either stay in our head, or, if they go anywhere, they “go out” to God. They certainly cannot “go out” to the victims and their families.

Ah, you say, but this is just an idiom. Well, actually it’s not. Unless we corrupt the language enough to make it one. The proper idiom is “My heart goes out.”

I could perhaps tolerate a new idiom where “thoughts go out” to someone, but the second error is not tolerable. Prayers ought never “go out to” the victims, nor to their families. Prayers can only go out to God, “on behalf of” or “for” the victims and their families.

Why politicians and news reporters want to continually tell us that they are praying to the victims and their families is beyond me. Don’t they know how silly this sounds? I’m guessing that many of them don’t even believe that God hears their prayers. Why would they believe the victims and their families can hear their prayers?

Maybe this is just a petty pet peeve.

But for some reason I want to throw a brick at the TV every time I hear the language tortured in this way. The suffering is bad enough at a time like this. People ought not be adding to it.

“My heart goes out to the victims and their families and I am praying for them.”

There.

Is that so hard to say?

Can a Lutheran be a Universalist? (Part 8)

2007-07-16T15:08:00.000-04:00

Now to Luther’s fourth “exit”, which is to stop searching for a logical exit and simply accept and believe both sides of the paradox.

Luther believed that theological exit strategies too often lead us astray, in circles, or down blind alleys. We are so desperate to escape our Biblical paradox that we will, at great cost, reason our way out of it.

And on the subject of human reason, Luther had much to say. It is precisely here where Luther is most misunderstood and most criticized. This is because Luther believed human reason itself was paradoxical. He called it the devil’s bride and a damned whore. But he also called it God’s greatest gift to man, a glorious light.

So although Luther’s theology used reason to discover Biblical truths, his resultant theology sometimes ended up being quite “unreasonable.” That is to say, it embraced logical absurdities. He would simply not allow reason to stand in judgment of Scripture.

Luther believed that if something was taught in Scripture it didn’t matter to him if he and others thought it to be absurd. He saw, as did few before or after him, that logical attempts to escape from something clearly taught in Scripture often just ended in another kind of contradiction - contradicting the words of Scripture itself. This, to him, was more absurd than accepting a Biblical paradox on pure faith.

So Luther had no difficulty teaching contradictory absurdities. The saved are predestined to salvation, but the lost are not predestined to damnation. The saved cannot lose their salvation and, oh, by the way, yes they can. No one can make a decision to accept Jesus, but we can make a decision to reject Jesus. The saved are saved entirely by God, but the condemned are condemned entirely by themselves.

These are, to most theologians and philosophers, logical absurdities.

So it would be quite in keeping with Luther’s way to accept and believe in the universal restoration of all, and - at the same time - accept and believe in the eternal punishment of some. Both are taught in Scripture, so both can be believed and taught.

Logically absurd?

Maybe so. But it seems to me that one could hold to both sides of this paradox and still remain quite Lutheran.

Perhaps more Lutheran than Luther.

Can a Lutheran be a Universalist? (Part 7)

2007-07-10T11:12:00.000-04:00

The third (and supposedly final) exit from a Biblical paradox is theological.

Here at last is where most find their exit from the contradictory teachings of eternal hell and universal restoration. The problem is, there are two exits. The traditionalists find one, the universalists find the other. Then they each go back to re-exegete the critical passages, reinterpreting them in light of their preferred exit - their theological grounding. Suddenly one set of passages becomes much clearer than the other. And, one way or another, the other set is (even if with some difficulty) re-explained in light of some other overriding theological precept.

So what theological issues are really in contention here? There are several I think, but the overriding one is the nature of God’s love (or mercy) and God’s righteousness (or justice). How will these two (seemingly conflicting) attributes of God ultimately influence what God will actually do with all us sinners - believers and unbelievers? And then secondarily (or perhaps primarily) what does Christ’s death and resurrection have to do with it all?

Now we find ourselves at the very soul of Christianity. And this explains why the question of universal restoration pushes people’s buttons and stirs the emotions to the boiling point. It is why some have to use pseudonyms when they write about it.

There are many who believe that Christianity has no meaning without an eternal hell. To them, a temporary hell - regardless of how severe - is no hell at all. Being saved from such a hell depreciates Christ’s atonement, compromises God’s justice and makes being a Christian meaningless. What’s the point, after all, if everyone will be saved in the end? Why not eat, drink and be merry and believe whatever you want? Nothing matters anyway.

On the other hand, universalist theology believes that Christianity has no meaning with an eternal hell. An eternal hell represents the ultimate failure of God and a permanent victory for sin, death and Satan. It makes man’s will sovereign over God’s will, compromises God’s power, love and mercy, and ultimately turns Christianity into a self-centered, exclusive, highly judgmental religion based on fear. It is, in the end, no different from any other religion - where we are ultimately responsible for saving ourselves and others.

To those of us Lutherans who take a high view of Scripture, the question becomes - which of these two theological exits is the most consistent with the overarching message of Scripture?

When Law and Gospel collide, what is trump? Does love prevail or does it fail? When God appears to be defeated by man's rebellion, is he really?

Does Scripture portray God’s wrath and judgment as disciplinary and redemptive? Or is it portrayed as purely punitive - something God is required to do because of his righteous nature?

What are we to make of Jesus’ teachings to forgive seventy times seven and love our enemies? Does God ask this of us without requiring it of himself?

Are the chosen of God (Israel and the church) portrayed as the “frozen chosen” or are they the first-fruits, the part that represents the whole, the visible pledge of God’s promise to the whole world?

Does the Bible ever portray God’s attributes of mercy and righteousness to be in conflict, so that sometimes one wins out over the other? Or are they essentially the same, always in harmony - so that God’s mercy is righteous, and God’s righteousness is merciful? And if that is so, is it possible to reconcile this nature of God with the concept of an eternal hell?

Theologically, it seems to me that a Lutheran can believe in a universal restoration without being in conflict with any other of Dr. Luther’s teachings. In fact, it seems to me that all Lutheran doctrines fall much more neatly into place with universal restoration than without it. So (to me) it is quite remarkable that there is not much more interest, study and discussion of it within Lutheranism.

That brings me to my final point - Luther’s mysterious fourth exit from a Biblical paradox.

Can a Lutheran be a Universalist? (Part 6)

2007-07-03T11:52:00.000-04:00

The second exit from a Biblical contradiction is hermeneutical - the art of interpretation.

Here, if we are good Lutherans, we lean not on our own understanding (or tradition), but we “let Scripture interpret Scripture.” And anyone can do this, since we believe in the perspicuity (or clarity) of Scripture. Thus hermeneutics in not some magic art performed by professionals. It centers on the process of letting the clearer passages of Scripture shed light on those that are less clear.

How this plays out in actual practice, of course, is not so simple. Lots of things get in the way, not the least of which is our own preconceived ideas (or the ideas of others whom we respect). So the paradox is this. Although Scripture is clear, there is no guarantee that it will be clear to me.

This in itself is an odd doctrine, and one which tends to drive me just a little crazy. It can also stop me from reading the Bible entirely, which is unfortunate. Nevertheless, I have found that - when confronted with a Biblical paradox - examining the Scriptures which create the paradox has always been a profitable exercise.

In the case of the universalist and never-ending punishment views of God’s judgment, the critical issue is not the reality or nature of a literal hell, the wrath of God, the seriousness of sin, the role of faith in salvation, salvation through Christ alone, or any such matters. It is a very narrow question. Is God’s judgment on the lost the final word? Yes or No?

There are some passages that seem to say yes, others say no. But which are actually the the clearer passages? Which ones are so clear that they are very difficult (impossible?) to “interpret away” or ignore?

Because this is a blog and not an essay (although I fear it could turn into one), I’ll just select ten passages at random that seem to speak to this question - five on one side, five on the other. There are obviously many more.

Five “Eternal Punishment” Passages

1.) Matthew 25:31-46, (Jesus foretells His return and the Day of Judgment) especially the words “Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels’ “ and also “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

2.) Luke 16:19-31, (Jesus parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus) especially the words “Between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, in order that those who wish to come over here to you may not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.”

3.) II Thessalonians 1:6-10, especially the words “these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.”

4.) Mark 9:43-48, especially the words “unquenchable fire, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.”

5.) Revelations 20:10-15, especially the words “and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

Five “Universal Restoration” Passages

1.) Lamentations 3:22-23, 31-33, especially the words “His compassions never fail” and “Men are not cast off by the Lord forever.”

2.) I Corinthians 15:12-28 especially the words “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.” and also, “When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, that God may be all in all.”

3.) Matthew 16:15-19 especially the words “upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.”

4.) I Peter 3:18-4-6 especially the words “For Christ also died for sins once for all” and “He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient” and “the gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God.”

5.) Phillipians 2:8-11 especially the words “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ I Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

So which of these sets of passages is the clearer?

Should the universalist passages be used to shed light on the supposed never-endedness of God’s wrath? Or should the eternal punishment passages be used to shed light on the supposed never-endedness of God’s mercy?

The “orthodox” view has treated the eternal punishment passages so crystal clear that it required all the universalist passages to be interpreted away.

The question for the inquiring Lutheran is this, “Are not the universalist passages just as clear?” If they are, then we are still mired in a Biblical contradiction.

Hermeneutics doesn’t seem to help us. (Or I should say, it doesn't seem to help me.)

Where’s the next exit?

Can a Lutheran be a Universalist? (Part 5)

2007-06-25T12:28:00.000-04:00

As I understand it, professional theologians offer us three exits from a Biblical contradiction. (Actually, Luther offers a fourth, but I will deal with that later.)

The first exit is exegetical. We study passages of Scripture in their context, word by word in the original language, trying to ascertain the plain meaning as intended by the original writer and his intended readers. Perhaps there is a contradiction only because we have misunderstood the actual meaning of the text.

For example, in the apparent contradiction between universal salvation and unending torments, much of the exegetical discussion centers on two words - the word “all” and the word “eternal”.

Does the word “all” in the universalist passages (like Romans 5:18) really mean “all without exception?” Or can it mean something else, like “all of a particular kind” or “all without distinction”? On the other hand, in the passages about eternal judgment (like Matthew 25:46), does the Greek word for “eternal” really mean “without end?” Or does it mean “age enduring”, “pertaining to an age” or “from the Eternal One?”, thus opening the door to post-mortem redemption?

We dig a little deeper. Studying the immediate context, we find a second usage of the word “all” in the same passage of Romans 5:18. “through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all.” Since most agree that the first all means “all without exception,” it follows then that the second all would have the same meaning. The universalists appear to be on firm ground.

However, in the Matthew 25:46 passage, we find a similar parallelism with the use of the word eternal. “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Here it can be said that we know “eternal life” to be unending. And so it follows that eternal punishment would have the same meaning - torment without end. The traditionalists also seem to have exegetical support.

On and on it goes, from passage to passage, from word to word, we search for an exit. In this arcane world of exegesis, as fascinating as some of us might find it, we seem to be at the mercy of the scholars’ research and expertise. It seems we are the jury, weighing the evidence, judging which scholars make the most convincing case. But the evidence is technical and sometimes difficult to understand. And both sides seem sincere and credible. So what are we to do?

We need more evidence.

We look for another exit.

Can a Lutheran be a Universalist? (Part 4)

2007-06-20T11:37:00.000-04:00

One of the grand paradoxes of being Lutheran is this - that, as devoted as we may be to the historic, orthodox teachings of the Christian faith, everything we believe and confess still falls subject to correction by the Word of God. A single, small word or phrase of Scripture has more power in it than all the volumes of Christian theology ever written.

A lone monk, standing on mere phrases of the biblical text (“the just shall live by faith”, etc), challenged a thousand years of learned thinking, “common knowledge”, official councils, pure reason, and “orthodox” teaching. Following such an example, even the most confessional, conservative among us will still, if we want to remain truly Lutheran, humbly subject ourselves to the power of the Word - through which God speaks - regardless of where it takes us, and what consequences we might suffer along the way.

To the Lutheran, tradition is allowed to speak softly, but the words of Scripture will always carry the big stick. And so if a Lutheran is to contemplate the final fate of the damned and reexamine the doctrine of unending torments, he or she must put aside tradition and treat it as nothing compared to the plain words of Scripture.

If the words of Scripture teach of punishment without end for the condemned, and no final restoration for all, then the Lutheran must accept that, even if it seems unfair, unmerciful, and contrary to the nature of God as we have come to know Him.

And if the words of Scripture teach of a final restoration of all, and do not teach of unending torments, than we must accept that also, even if it overthrows two thousand years of majority Christian thought, turns us into “heretics”, and results in countless new ways for the old man in us to abuse the grace of God.

And then there is the final “if.” What if the words of Scripture seem to teach both? What is a Lutheran supposed to do with that?

This, I submit, is what appears to be the actual case.

And Lutherans, in my opinion, are better equipped than most to deal with such a powerful Biblical contradiction.

Can a Lutheran be a Universalist? (Part 3)

2007-06-18T09:20:00.000-04:00

We Lutherans like to believe that “the tradition of the church” holds little sway in our theology. Sola Scriptura precludes it. And our long-running dispute with Rome over the role of tradition and church councils demands that we poo-poo tradition in favor of the Biblical text.

However, it seems to me that we huff and puff a bit too much about all this. We are, I think, in denial on the matter. I discovered this in my little controversy with the WELS regarding church fellowship, where I learned just how powerful the “tradition of the church” can be. In that controversy, Scripture itself consistently took second place to the church’s traditional interpretation of Scripture. There was far more emphasis on the actual meaning and interpretation of the wording of the church doctrine (and the books that tried to explain it) than there ever was concerning the words of Scripture. In the end, my own (and others) beliefs and actions were judged against the wording (and supposed meaning) of the church’s written documents - not the words of Scripture. Of course, my adversaries claimed that they were essentially one and the same - which is precisely my point.

So as I assess the obstacles to Lutheran universalism, I believe the tradition of the church, the rulings of councils, the thoughts and writings of the most dominant theologians, and ultimately peer pressure - all these will present far more difficulty to the Lutheran universalist than the Biblical text. Although closet universalists may be many, there are few today who are willing to publicly challenge traditional church teaching on the everlasting destiny of the damned.

It is not without good reason that Gregory MacDonald (whoever he is) used a pseudonym when he wrote his book The Evangelical Universalist.

Mercy is Falling

2007-06-16T11:23:00.001-04:00

Mercy is falling, is falling, is falling.
Mercy it falls like a sweet, spring rain.
Mercy is falling, is falling all over me.

Hey-oh, I receive Your mercy,
Hey-oh, I receive Your grace!
Hey-oh, I will dance forevermore.

Announcing the birth of Mercy Rain Arn (grandchild #3).

Can a Lutheran be a Universalist? (Part 2)

2007-06-14T09:16:00.000-04:00

It seems to me that evangelicals attempting the move toward universalism have a longer, harder road to travel than do Lutherans. With a salvation theology that is either Calvinist or Arminian, evangelicals come to the issue facing major theological obstacles.

Calvinist theology is committed to a limited atonement, thus ruling out any means of salvation for those God did not choose to love. Arminian theology, on the other hand, is committed to man’s ability to choose to love God, placing salvation (or at least the final, most decisive piece of it) in the hands of unreliable people. Under such a system it is simply not plausible that all people would choose God.

Lutherans, on the other hand, have neither of these obstacles to contend with.

Lutherans already embrace a universal atonement. Unlike Calvinist theology, Lutherans believe that God loves everyone, Christ died for all, nobody has been elected or predestined to damnation and God wants all to be saved.

Lutherans also reject the doctrine that man chooses to love God of his own free will. Unlike Arminian theology, they believe repentance, faith and salvation is a gift of God - entirely a work of God’s grace. There is therefore no theological basis to believe God cannot (or does not want to) give this gift to all people.

Without these two theological obstacles, a Lutheran seems well down the road to universalism without even working up a sweat. But there are still two other obstacles in the way.

The first is the traditional teaching of the church. The second is the Biblical text.

Can a Lutheran be a Universalist? (Part I)

2007-06-12T10:44:00.000-04:00

I am currently reading The Evangelical Universalist by Gregory MacDonald (pseudonym), 2006.

MacDonald has also written a shorter paper entitled “Can an Evangelical be a Universalist?”, which is posted on Brian McLaren’s website.

Seeing the title of this article, I ask myself the same question about Lutherans.

I’ve read a fair number of books and articles defending Christian universalism (or the doctrine of final restoration, as some prefer to call it.) A lot of them, to my way of thinking, aren’t very good. Universalism comes in a lot of flavors, even including non-Christian universalism, which teaches salvation apart from Christ. Authors come at the issue from a wide variety of perspectives - as very liberal theologians, as legalists (we can all earn our way to heaven eventually), as former Calvinists, Arminians, or even Unitarians. Some are overly argumentative, seemingly just out to condemn the harshness of the traditional church and its teachings. The variety of perspectives and agendas results in a kind of smorgasbord of thought on the matter, most of which I can’t relate to.

Some of the better authors, however, approach the issue with great clarity and honesty, evidencing a high regard for Scripture and “Luther-like” principles of letting Scripture interpret Scripture. MacDonald appears to be one of these. Other authors I have appreciated are:

- Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God (1999)
- Jan Bonda, The One Purpose of God: An Answer to the Doctrine of Eternal Punishment (2003)
- Andrew Jukes, Restitution of All Things (1867 - Out of Print)

I am on the lookout for a Lutheran theologian who has studied and written extensively on the subject (either pro or con) - so far without success.

The Providence of God

2007-05-31T12:58:00.000-04:00

This morning my wife was parked along the road visiting a rummage sale.

She was returning to her car (the white Toyota), when it was struck from behind by another car. The driver had been speeding, got distracted, lost control, side-swiped another parked car and then hit our Toyota from behind - pushing it about 30 feet and into the ditch.

No one was hurt.

Ten seconds later, my wife would have been walking behind the car and would have been crushed between the two vehicles.

Fifteen seconds later, she would have been in the car - about to buckle her seat belt.

The Lord gives and takes away.

This morning He gave.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

The Ideal Sermon

2007-05-29T12:20:00.000-04:00

In response to my last post about “self-improvement” sermons, I was asked the question, “What would an ideal sermon look like in your world?”

I don’t think there’s a formula for an ideal sermon. However, I do find that at least some mention of Jesus usually helps it along its way.

If the sermon topic relates to my self-improvement (sanctification), then I would hope that the sermon would not play to my old self-righteousness nature, but rather would point me to the righteousness of Christ in me - my new self. When Jesus is mentioned, I would hope it would be the Jesus who does not condemn me, but accepts me as I am, loves me, gives himself up for me, gives me new life, sets me free, empowers me, blesses me, sanctifies me, etc. In other words, the Jesus who is for me, not against me - the Gospel Jesus. This Gospel Jesus is the death of my old self, and the hope of the new.

Recently, I heard a sermon in a Presbyterian church. The topic was patience - a subject that could easily have been moralized into a typical “how to” sermon - how to become more patient. The pastor skillfully avoided doing this. A significant portion of the sermon dealt with the patience of God - His long-suffering nature. Then it also dealt with our human failures to be patient. In other words, we are not at all like God in this way. We are by nature impatient.

At this point, he could have launched into the “how to” portion of the sermon, which (to me at least) would be telling me how to get my nature to become like God's nature. He began with a few practical tips and tricks that people have found to help (counting to 10, etc.) But then he immediately told us that while such methods may help us in some sense, patience is not something we achieve. It is a fruit of the Spirit, not something we go about “getting” through our own efforts.

In fact, he said this quite bluntly. “We can’t try to GET patience. It is a gift of God.” So the first, last and best thing to “do”, is simply ask God for it. Then, if we recognize it in us, we know where it came from, and we have no reason for boasting, except in our Jesus.

To my way of thinking, this sermon “told it like it is.” It did not hold out the false hope that I could “self-help” my way to becoming more patient through some 5-step program. And it did not lay any new burdens on me. It left me in the care of the Burden-Carrier - the All-Patient One.

It may not have been the “ideal sermon”.

But it was pretty close.

Self-Improvement Sermons

2007-05-25T12:27:00.000-04:00

I’ve grown quite intolerant of self-improvement sermons.

You know the ones I mean. They are the “How To” sermons. “How to” be a better spouse, “how to” be more loving, “how to” pray, “how to” be this, “how to” do that. The topics are infinite.

The sermons usually contain 3-5 bullet points. In the more clever sermons, the bullet points all have key words that begin with the same letter. Or the first letters of the main points form an acrostic. Each point has appropriate Bible passages to back it up.

“How to” sermons are most common in the mega-churches. So I’m guessing this is what the majority of Christians are looking for - practical ways to improve themselves and their lives.

I guess this can be beneficial, as long as the Gospel doesn’t get lost in the process. But it’s been my experience that the Gospel does get lost. So at the end of the sermon I am left with one more program to carry out. One more set of items to add to my already long “to do” list. One more area of my life to work on fixing in the coming week. One more burden on my back. It’s like the pastor is saying, “Here. Carry this burden. It’ll do you good - make you a better, stronger Christian. There’s more where that came from. I’ll have another one for you next week.”

I sometimes look around at all the other faces in the pews and wonder, “What are they thinking?” Do they really think they can do all this stuff? Does that guy up front think that he can do it? Am I missing something? Is the Christian faith just one big complicated self-improvement program - a long “to do” list of ways to make myself a better person?

Call me old-fashioned. Or maybe just old. But I can’t buy what the self-improvement folks are selling.

It’s not that my self doesn’t need improving. It’s just that I have a radically different view of self-improvement.

Working for God

2007-05-24T09:02:00.000-04:00

Recently one of my daughters asked me the question, “What do you think is the purpose of your life?” My first reaction was to say, “I don’t know.”

Of course I couldn’t leave it at that. So I jabbered on about love, ever-changing life circumstances and my aunt Tanna, a seemingly selfless person who seemed to find her purpose in the most mundane of life’s chores - cooking, baking, cleaning, washing and ironing (while raising an orphan child without aid of a husband).

But I never really answered her question directly.

The way the question was worded, it seemed to differ from the more general “meaning of life” question or the “Why are we here?” question. Two words seemed to make the question different. The word “purpose”. And the word “your.” These made it too specific and too personal to answer with fine-sounding cliches. It brought to mind the whole question of vocation, a subject which I have been reading about in Gustaf Wingren’s “Luther on Vocation.”

I suppose it is a little late in life for me to be thinking about such things. My so-called career is mostly behind me. But career (defined as job or primary means of support) is, as Luther saw it, not necessarily vocation, but merely a part of it. I am in the early stages of studying this, and I don’t yet have a unified understanding of Luther’s theology - at least not one that will help me answer my daughter’s question directly. But the theological context for Luther’s thought is quite clear.

Luther’s views on vocation were born, in the main, as a response to monasticism. At first blush, this may not seem relevant today. However, the fundamental flaws of monastic thinking persist today, perhaps now more among Protestants than among Catholics. It is based in the attraction of “working for God.”

As I think about vocation (or “purpose of my life”) , I can appreciate the lure of this kind of thinking. If indeed I am personally called by God to some purpose, I am tempted to elevate that purpose into the heavenly realms. My purpose must be some grand spiritual purpose related to God’s Kingdom - maybe involving some great self-sacrifice. Not on a par with Paul or Mother Theresa, of course, but of the same general stuff. My purpose is to serve God - or “work for God” in some way, be it large or small.

If I travel down that road far enough, I run the risk of monastic thinking, which makes God the object of my vocation. When God is the object, then the focus of my attention is on hearing God’s call, obeying God, carrying out God’s wishes and pleasing God.

All this sounds good and righteous, and in some sense, it may well be. But Luther’s theology of vocation appears to be about none of this. It leaves God in heaven and keeps us and our vocation on earth. For Luther, the object of vocation is not God. The object of vocation is always my neighbor, who is not in the spiritual realms, but in plain sight - perhaps in the next room.

The needs of my neighbor rule the province of vocation. And although God surely puts these neighbors in my life (spouse, children, friends, work colleagues, strangers, etc.), my calling is to love, befriend and serve them, not concern myself with pleasing God. If there is an element of sacrifice in this service, it is sacrifice for neighbor, not for God.

One could say that this is not an either/or situation. For as we serve our neighbor, we are surely also serving and pleasing God. But working for God and pleasing God is not my purpose, since God is already well-pleased with me in Christ. And so my works are not for God, but for my neighbor. To the extent that I forget that, and spiritualize my efforts into the heavenlies, I can actually do harm to my neighbor. Now my neighbor becomes a project - a rung in my ladder to reach God - a means to my personal end. I set out to please God, searching for neighbors to help, meddling where I am neither wanted or needed, ignoring the needs of the neighbors God has already placed in my life.

Luther believed that love discovers for itself what is the greatest benefit to neighbor. And so vocation is always plural (vocations), not just because we simultaneously hold more than one station in life (spouse, parent, child, employee, friend, etc), but because the needs of our neighbors are ever-changing. Thus vocation can never fit into any prescribed program. Each person finds and follows his vocations, his purposes, in true freedom - freedom from any requirement to please God - motivated by the power of mere faith and love.

What this means to me personally and practically is still unclear. Except for this. I cannot answer my daughter’s question about my purpose with a generalized cliché, such as “to glorify God” or “to discern God’s will and do it.”

I would rather answer as I did - rambling on about love, changing life circumstances, and my Aunt Tanna. At least in that convoluted answer, “working for God” was not mentioned.

What the Bleep Do We Know!?

2007-05-08T11:20:00.000-04:00

As a Christian, there are two ways to react to a book like this.

One can be put off by the often obvious “We can be as gods” new age/eastern religion philosophy that seems to run as a subtheme throughout the book, often masquerading as “a new way of thinking.” Or one can be surprised and encouraged by some of the many possible hidden truths which the authors suggest, recognizing that their discoveries are entirely consistent with what Christians have long believed about the relationship between the physical and spiritual dimensions of reality.

It is an intriguing book from both vantage points.

The authors argue that scientific dogmatism and religious dogmatism have taken turns stifling each other’s work - giving rise to an unnecessary and harmful hostility between the two. It is now time to recognize that the physical world and the spiritual world intersect to such an extent that the paranormal is just as real as the normal. Examples of this are found throughout the book, making for some fascinating reading.

Unfortunately, the book sometimes seems to devolve into just another “power of positive thinking” self-help, “change your paradigm” sermon, dressed up in a blend of spiritual and scientific garb. This, however, is not without value. I think there are some important truths in their particular version of positive thinking, as they explore the actual power of faith, the subconscious connections between people (even in different times and places), and the ultimate importance of a reality that we do not see.

All these are basic ideas consistent with a Christian worldview, though the centrality of Christ as a unifying figure is obviously missing.

I learned some new things reading this book. Not necessarily a new philosophy of “doing life”, but a new appreciation for the way science is apparently expanding its investigation into the non-physiscal universe. It is interesting to note that not all scientists fall into the traditional categories of evolutionist or creationist thinking - presupposing the non-existence or existence of God. Some remain open to either possibility. And this apparently opens up whole new dimensions of experimentation and investigation.

I doubt that science will necessarily discover God or prove His existence to anyone’s satisfaction. God seems to want to reserve this task to himself. But the persistent yearning of the human spirit to know more and more (whether good, bad or sometimes ugly), comes through loud and clear in this book. And there is a certain intellectual humility evident in the title that carries throughout the book.

It is most certainly true that we know less than we think we know.

Barren Rocks and Smiling Cornfields

2007-05-07T10:15:00.000-04:00

There seems no question that, if God exists, then Nature itself is certainly one of the revelations of God. To be sure, man has instinctively sought God in Nature more than anywhere else. Whether through pantheistic worship, Thoreau-like contemplation, or even agnostic science - we look for God (or to be god) through understanding the majesty and mystery of the natural world.

But, as Andrew Jukes points out, the revelation of God in Nature is veiled and hidden - just as he is veiled in Jesus and Scripture. Nature contains the same kind of inherent inconsistencies, such that one can be led to question whether, in fact, the Natural world was indeed the work of a single God. Or was it, after all, a result of mere chance - or, worse, the handiwork of competing gods?

Andrew Jukes goes so far as to suggest that Nature seems to misrepresent God, saying,

“Does it not seem also to contradict itself, with force against force, heat against cold, darkness against light, death against life, its very elements in ceaseless strife everywhere? On one side showing a preserver, on the other a destroyer; here boundless provision for the support of life; there death reigning. Are there not here exactly the same contradictions and the same difficulties which we find in Scripture? Either therefore we must say, Nature is an inconsistent and lying book, and therefore we will not believe the testimony either of its barren rocks or smiling cornfields; or else we must confess some veil or riddle here.” (Restitution of All Things, p 10)

The history of science demonstrates that the reality of nature is indeed veiled, containing hidden contradictions that conceal the truth of it. The classic example of this is the rising and setting sun, whose movement was obvious to all for thousands of years. And yet it took a higher faculty to reveal that the sun does not move. Or does it? We still speak of the rising and setting sun. This is what most of us non-scientists can actually see and know, though we also know (by faith?) a contradictory truth - that it neither rises nor sets.

Such a paradox (now apparently resolved) is but one of many in Nature. The discovery of such a grand contradiction does not cause scientists to give up on science, declare Truth unattainable, and reject the natural world as some kind of fantasy. Dare I say, in their persistence to continually seek the truth about the physical world, they are an example to all of us who seek the truth about God

We are all dealing with revelations of a God hidden by the same veil. And yet this is a God who makes Himself known, in His good time and manner. The difference between the scientist and the theologian is that the scientist has limited himself to a single revelation. The theologian has more than one. But all the revelations are under the same veil.

The veil often frustrates me. But it teaches me that God himself decides when, where and how He will be found. That is part of what makes him God (and me not so much).

Maybe that's the point of the veil.

The Humanity of Scripture

2007-05-04T10:23:00.000-04:00

Andrew Jukes begins his little book “The Restitution of All Things” (1867) with a refreshingly honest look at the nature of Biblical contradiction. Obviously, the Biblical text which tells of the many who are eternally lost seem to contradict those texts which speak of the reconciliation of all. So prior to embarking on his own explanation of this riddle, he offers his view of the nature of Scripture.

He begins with Christ, who is the primary revelation of God. The nature of Christ, he argues, is not (in principle) any different from all other revelations of God, in that “the divine is revealed under a veil, and that veil a creature-form.” God is both hidden and revealed at the same time - in Jesus first, but similarly also in Scripture, Nature and Providence. These four revelations of God, he asserts, all contain apparent contradictions because they are both natural and super-natural, human and divine - God hidden in the humble.

Jukes maintains a high view of Scripture, ridiculing those who would pick apart Scripture to prove its human origin. Of course it’s human! He compares all such efforts to picking away at the flesh of Jesus (even to the point of killing him) just to prove He was human.

He writes about Scripture “…it has humbled itself so to come for us, out of the heart of prophets and apostles; in its human form, like Christ’s flesh, subject to all those infirmities and limitations which Christ’s flesh was subject to - thoroughly human as He was; yet in spirit, like Him, thoroughly divine, and full of the unfathomed depths of God’s almighty love and wisdom.”

When I am confronted with Biblical contradiction, the human side of Scripture, my first instinct is to run away, to deny, to reject or to attack. These riddles make me angry, doubtful, anxious, and fearful. Why couldn't God have been more clear and logical? What is the point of presenting us with such difficulty?

Jukes reminds me that the human and contradictory Jesus, the perfect (yet veiled) revelation of God, had a similar effect on people. And people asked the same kinds of questions.

Jesus was not what we expected of a Messiah.

And Scripture is not what we expect of a divine message.

Dark Conversations

2007-05-02T11:14:00.000-04:00

Twice during the last week I found myself involved in conversations that ”went dark.” To me, a dark conversation has three characteristics.

First, the subject matter is some specific evil in society. Like sexually transmitted diseases, dishonest politicians, bias in the news media, random gun violence, war, poverty, high taxes, bad schools, welfare abuse, etc. The possibilities are infinite.

Second, the focus is on judging the people involved - their irresponsibility, stupidity, inconsideration, selfishness, incompetence, hypocrisy, ignorance, bad behavior or just plain evilness. This sometimes takes the form of anecdotal one-upmanship. Like, “You think that’s bad. Just the other day I was in a grocery store line and you’ll never guess what this lady was buying with her food stamps!”

Finally, the conversation has a turning point. Either it degenerates into extended whining about more and more injustice in the world, with lots of shaking of heads and “Tsk, Tsk’s.” Or, it turns toward talk of one or more of the pat solutions - all of which are political. That is to say, government must do something - change a law, create a new one, or enforce an old one. In other words, "There oughta be a law!"

At this point, the conversation runs the risk of going even darker, as disagreement arises regarding the proper legalistic solution. Or, if all parties are in political agreement, it can darken into now judging the political opposition - those who are too stupid or evil to see the solution as clearly as we do.

Eventually, someone puts the conversation out of its misery by changing the subject. (“So how ‘bout them Brewers?”) Often, that person is me. I like a good, dark conversation as much as the next guy. But there comes a point...

I’ve been trying to figure out ways to end these conversations without involving a sports team. Like I could say “There but for the grace of God go I. I could see myself buying Twinkies with food stamps.” That might stop the conversation. Or at least refocus it.

Or, I could say, “You know what Ghandi said -‘Be the change you want to see in the world’." That might redirect the conversation.

On the other hand, I could just end up sounding trite and sanctimonious.

Better stick with the Brewers. At least until they start to lose. If that happens, don’t know what I’ll do.

For Whom Does the Bell Toll?

2007-04-18T23:38:00.000-04:00

As many churches and schools plan memorials for the the Virginia Tech slaughter, some want to include the tolling of a bell, once for each victim killed.

They are faced with the question, how many times should they toll the bell - 32 or 33?

It’s a tough question - one that is generating a lot of discussion (and emotion.)

For me, there are two right answers.

One is technically and theologically correct. The other is the right thing to do.

The Children's Sermon

2007-04-17T08:40:00.000-04:00

I’ve never been a big fan of the so-called “children’s sermon” in public worship. I trust the motives are good, whatever they may be. But these little vignettes make me uncomfortable. I feel like I am a party to an intrusion into a sacred space - the gentle faith of a child. And I’m always fearful that the sermonizer will moralize (which they often do).

The low point for me (maybe the high point for everyone else) is that moment in the message where the sermonizer poses a question and invariably some four-year old answers in a way that causes the entire congregation to burst out laughing.

Now, God knows I’m all in favor of laughter and joy in church. The Gospel is a party. But more often than not, I don’t think the four-year old is trying to be either funny or joyful. He is dead serious. And normally his answer is more honest than funny. We adults just happen to find such honesty hilarious, especially in church.

Kids will say the darndest things (like the truth, for instance.)

And I can’t help myself. I laugh too.

But it makes me uncomfortable.

Misproclaimed Absolution

2007-04-16T07:58:00.000-04:00

In two different Lutheran churches I attended last Sunday and this Sunday, the pastor “misproclaimed” the absolution (the announcement of the the forgiveness of sins) by using his own creative wording. I’m beginning to wonder how widespread this practice might be, and whether it is intentional or accidental.

After the public confession, rather than personally announcing the forgiveness of sins to the congregation (in the first and second person, i.e. “I forgive you your sins” or even the second person passive "your sins are forgiven"), the pastor used third-person grammar in a more generic statement about God (i.e. God is merciful to man, blah, blah, blah).

I know God is merciful. But is he merciful to me?

Unless God forgives my sins, he is a God no different from the god of Islam - who also is said to be merciful, is he not?

I realize this may sound nitpicky. And I don’t consider myself liturgically legalistic, by any means. But I can appreciate why some churches insist on precise liturgical language - at least in the case of the absolution, because it is the one event in the public service where, if the pastor doesn't mess it up, you cannot avoid hearing the Gospel. Even if the entire rest of the service is filled with legalism (i.e. the praise songs, the sermon, the prayers, the announcements - yes, especially the announcements!) the forgiveness of my sins is (or ought to be) pure Gospel.

“I announce the grace of God to all of you and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

The Opiate of the Masses

2007-04-14T16:35:00.000-04:00

One of Luther’s most startling claims was that what seemed to us to be so good and holy was actually sin and evil in the sight of God.

How are we to understand such a claim?

He was speaking of our religious and spiritual efforts - all of which is as filthy rags to God.

But if this is true, what is the point of obedience, morality, Bible study, prayer, meditation, worship, church attendance, sacrifice, the doing of good deeds, the refraining from evil? Are all such things just ways we delude ourselves into thinking we are satisfying God or getting closer to him? Is religion itself void of any true meaning and purpose? Is it just the “opiate of the masses”, as Karl Marx suggested?

In a word, yes.

Religion is an addiction that temporarily makes us feel good, but is ultimately self-destructive - harmful to ourselves and to others. It is, as the atheists claim, the primary cause of the greatest of evil in the history of man.

Thank God we can be free from religion!

The Christ of Christmas, Good Friday and Easter has destroyed the need for religion, thus setting us free from its control. We now know that God is already satisfied with us and closer than we can imagine - all without any of our religion. So religion (and all that is practiced in its name) really has no point - at least not insofar as God is concerned. Religion is the waging of a war that is already won.

Freed from this burden, we can live in peace - not judging ourselves or others. We can approach life as it comes, love ourselves, our family, our friends and even our enemies, meditate if we wish, converse with God at will, worship under no obligation, listen to the preaching of the Gospel and read the Holy Bible as often or as little as we find necessary, pursue a happy, productive and satisfying life in our vocation, recognize what is good and do it, recognize what is evil and shun it, love, learn, sing, dance, play and work - never alone or afraid, for God is always with us.

Life without religion is life worth living.

Were You There?

2007-04-07T13:08:00.000-04:00

"Were you there when they crucified my Lord?"

African American Spiritual

Since reading Gerhard Forde (...and Paul) (...and a little bit of quantum physics), the question in this song has new meaning for me.

Paul writes in Galatians “I have been crucified with Christ” The same thought is expressed in Romans (“We were therefore buried with him”) and Colossians (“having been buried with him”). Metaphorical expressions? Or were we really there -physically, metaphysically, spiritually, mystically, or some other way our adverbs can’t fully explain?

If we do not take Paul’s wording as mere metaphor, the answer to the song’s question is a resounding “Yes, we were there!” All mankind was there. Somehow, mysteriously (to us), the incarnation of Jesus put God in communion with humanity in such a way that he made it possible for us to be with him in his death. This is how our sin-filled nature was vanquished, and also how we received a righteous new life in the resurrection.

Forde calls this “getting caught in the act.” We participated in the crucifixion. On the one hand, we were there to crucify Jesus. On the other hand, we were also there being crucified with him. Impossible? Makes no sense?

While Einstein scratched the surface on the relativity of time, quantum physics is just now beginning to understand how matter can be in two different places at once. Beyond that, the scientific study of consciousness (including consciousness that transcends time and space) opens up possibilities that heretofore seemed far-fetched. Perhaps science itself will eventually be capable of substantiating our presence with Jesus at the cross. One day every knee will bow - even the knee of science.

In the meantime, faith is all we have.

And faith tells me, "We were there."

Giving Back to God?

2007-04-02T15:08:00.000-04:00

Every now and then I hear the phrase “giving back to God.” Normally it is in the context of the passing of the plate, or some other church-related offering. In that context (or any other for that matter), it strikes me as an odd phrase.

First, I don’t believe I have anything that God doesn’t already own. So “giving to God” seems like a weird idea in itself. But the notion of “giving back” makes it even weirder. Did God give me something and now wants it back? That doesn’t sound like God.

Ok, maybe what is actually meant is this: God has given me so much, not just my money and other material blessings but also life and salvation, including his one and only Son who died on the cross for me. In return, the very least I can do is drop a few dollars in the collection plate. This, it seems to me, is the most ludicrous and grotesque idea imaginable.

The way I figure it, when Jesus died on the cross, he removed all my debts and obligations. I now owe him nothing! I'm sorry if that sounds radical, but I think that’s the way he wants it. There’s nothing I am obligated to give him, and there is nothing I can give him. We both have everything. I have everything in Jesus. And Jesus got everything he wanted when he reconciled me (and the whole world) to himself. Anything further we might do for each other is just for fun.

In the meantime, there are people and organizations who need my gifts.

So I give to my local church, some para-church groups, some charities and (on occasion) to individuals in need.

But I never give to God.

And I certainly never give back to God.

Jesus Camp

2007-03-28T14:56:00.000-04:00

When I checked out “Jesus Camp”, the documentary expose on the threat posed by the indoctrination of the kids of the Christian Right, I was all set to be outraged. I figured I could enjoy being outraged on two fronts at once.

First, I expected to be outraged at how Hollywood would edit and skew the storyline to mock Christianity. Second, I expected to be outraged at how badly the Christian Right would represent the Christian Gospel, if in fact they mentioned it all amidst their legalism and political action agenda.

So I pulled up my chair, braced myself with popcorn, and prepared for the worst.

What a disappointment.

The so-called “threat to America” turned out to be a portly, middle-aged Pentecostal lady who ran a summer camp for a bunch of sweet kids from Pentecostal families. The camp meetings resembled a typical Pentecostal meeting, with lots of hollering, repenting, crying, repenting, falling on the floor, speaking in tongues, repenting, condemning of the devil, sin and the worldliness of the world, etc. etc. The woman’s arsenal consisted of a bunch of object lessons that included foam rubber brains, a cardboard cutout of George Bush, and a cute stuffed tiger that represented sin (The kids were warned that it would grow up into a big stuffed animal [which still looked cute to me] and they would end up having “a tiger by the tail.”

Ok, I know it wasn’t intended to be a comedy. And I shouldn't have really chuckled at all this. I knew I was supposed to be outraged. But if this is the best they could find to scare America, I think America is safe. Filming Pentecostals doing their Pentecostal thing is not exactly tough journalism. It doesn’t take much editing effort or storyline skewing to make a Pentecostal meeting look ridiculous. But I don’t think this lady speaking in tongues holding a stuffed animal is going to frighten, shock or scare anyone.

Most of the Christians in the documentary, of course, did focus their passion on a legalistic and moralistic message. The Gospel was absent, except for one small slice which came from an interview with Ted Haggard (filmed before his fall). He said something like this, “Of course the kids love to come here (to his church). At the public schools they are taught that they are cosmic accidents - animals descended from monkeys. Here we tell them that they are precious souls, loved by God. Why would they not love to come?”

That little excerpt redeemed the dominant legalism of the Pentecostal lady and (especially coming from Ted Haggard) eliminated any last vestige of hope for my outrage.

Lacking outrage and anything remotely informative (Religious people are teaching their children what they believe. Imagine that!) , the movie is not worth the time it takes to watch it. It was nominated for an academy award, probably not for its quality, but for its political agenda. It lost out to another second-rate documentary (An Inconvenient Truth), which was probably nominated for the same reason.

Limiting the Atonement to “Just Us”

2007-03-26T21:30:00.000-04:00

The great debate between Calvinism and Arminianism has been around for over four hundred years. Their differing views of salvation essentially center on the question “How shall we go about explaining how it is that Christ’s saving work on the cross is limited to ‘just us?’” Or, put more respectably, “Why are we saved and not others?”

Simply put, the Calvinist says, “Because God chose us and not others.” The Arminian answers, “No, because we chose God and others did not.”

These two answers are diametrically opposed. But they have four things in common. First, they are both wrong. Second, they can each be proved and disproved with Scripture and sound reason (as evidenced by the four hundred year old debate.) Third, they both put God’s reputation in jeopardy. Calvinism questions God’s love (He arbitrarily loves some and hates others.) Arminianism challenges God’s power (He loves all, but is powerless to save all.) Fourth, and what I want to address here, is that each theology necessarily limits Christ’s atoning work on the cross - turning it into something less than what it actually was.

Calvin, with logic proceeding from his understanding of divine election, concluded that when Jesus died on the cross, his death atoned only for the sins of the elect - the chosen of God. Thus the “L” in reformed theology’s TULIP acronym stands for “limited atonement.” Jesus work on the cross was, by God’s design, limited to “just us.”

Arminians find too much Biblical support for the universality of the atonement and claim to believe in an unlimited atonement. However, they teach that the atonement only becomes real when an individual, by an act of their free will, chooses to believe it. Thus the death and resurrection of Christ did not actually save anybody - it only made salvation possible. So IF and WHEN an individual believes in the atonement, then the atonement actually atones. In this way, Arminians limit the atonement perhaps even more than Calvin - subjecting it ultimately to the capricious and powerful will of man.

Luther, of course, had little tolerance for either of these two theologies. His belief, as we might expect, was far more radical. According to Luther, Scripture clearly taught an unlimited, universal atonement that actually saved the world. (“Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world!”) Thus he believed that when Christ died on the cross, the entire world - and every creature (then or ever) associated with the world - was reconciled to God. (“God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” )

This simple trust in a universal atonement harmonized with Luther’s trust in an unconditional Gospel. For only an unlimited atonement can be grounds for an unconditional Gospel. Calvin’s gospel (IF you are among the elect) and Armininius’ gospel (IF you choose to believe), are both conditional gospels which spring from the limitations they have placed on the atonement. The Gospel according to Luther knew nothing of such conditionals or limitations.

Blog Break

2007-02-19T08:53:00.000-05:00

On two week break - returning March 5.

Did I say two weeks? I meant five - returning March 26.

Forde on Atonement - Conclusion

2007-02-16T11:34:00.000-05:00

As I stated at the outset, I don’t think Forde necessarily denies vicarious satisfaction in toto. Rather he dismisses what might be considered the cruder forms of it - those forms that make God the primary obstacle to reconciliation, rather than us. Such thinking can turn God into a blood-thirsty God who demands his pound of flesh before he can show mercy. Such a view makes God out to be neither righteous nor merciful.

Forde concedes that certainly the work of Christ does satisfy God’s wrath. But he insists on placing this in a context that does not ignore the real problem - our wrath against God, and specifically our wrath against his mercy.

“There is indeed a sense in which we must say that Christ’s work is to “ satisfy” the divine wrath. But it is surely a mistake to say, to begin with, that Jesus was killed because God’s honor or justice or wrath was the obstacle to reconciliation which had first to be “ satisfied “ before mercy could be shown. Surely the truth is that Jesus was killed because he forgave sins and claimed either explicitly or implicitly to do it in the name of God, his Father. When we skip over the actual event to deal first with the problem of the divine justice or wrath, we miss the point that we are the obstacles to reconciliation, not God.”

Forde clearly does not deny that the death of Christ removes God’s wrath against us. He writes,

“As “God of wrath” he submits to death for us; he knows he must die for us. That is the only way he can be for us absolutely, unconditionally.”

At the same time, Forde does not deny the victory motif either. The cross absolutely marked the defeat of Satan, sin and death itself. Forde would not argue with this. He simply recommends that this victory be placed in a context that does not remove us from the scene. He says about this view:

“Surely the view must be deepened to say (at the very least) that the demonic powers operate through us, their quite willing lackeys.”

In the end, it seems to me that Forde does not discard any of the atonement theories entirely. They each display some aspect of what actually was accomplished at the cross. I think he is merely reminding us to be careful when we search for the necessity of the cross, especially if that search takes us away from the actual event itself, our personal involvement with it, and the unconditional love and mercy of God. ("For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son...")

Forde on Atonement - Part 4

2007-02-15T10:54:00.000-05:00

Forde says that we move too quickly past the “brute facts” of the crucifixion in search of our atonement theories. He suggests that before trying to look at it from God’s point of view, we would do better to start with looking at it from ours. Only then will we perhaps get “’caught in the act’ in more ways than one: caught at it and at the same time caught by it.

So when we look at the actual facts and consider the question, “Why could God not just up and forgive?”, we find that the simple fact is, he did!

"Jesus came preaching repentance and forgiveness, declaring the bounty and mercy of his “Father.” The problem, however, is that we could not buy that. And so we killed him. And just so we are caught in the act. Every mouth is stopped once and for all. All the pious talk about our yearning and desire for reconciliation and forgiveness, etc., all our complaint against God is simply shut up. He came to forgive and we killed him for it; we would not have it. It is as simple as that."

Forde says we are all implicated in the universal rejection of such unconditional forgiveness. We do not necessarily reject the idea of unconditional forgiveness in the abstract. We could maybe handle that. But we could not handle the actual forgiver himself - the one who actually did the deed - actually forgave sins without conditions. We could not tolerate the one who “actually eats with traitors, whores, outcasts, and riff-raff of every sort.”

The crucifixion exposes us for who we really are “sinners, fakes, liars, deniers, unbelievers.” We don’t really want uncondtional forgiveness, because it is a threat to our conditional world and all our religious ambitions. To consent to such forgiveness would mean that we would have to give up on ourselves - essentially lose our own lives (our old selves). So Jesus had to go. It was a matter of self-defense.

In looking at the facts in this way, from below instead of from above, we are able to see that it is not God who is the obstacle to reconciliation. It is us. This is Forde’s main point. God did indeed have a problem. But his problem was not necessarily how to satisfy his righteous wrath against us. His problem was how to get us to stop rejecting his mercy. Put another way, the problem was never reconciling God to us. The problem was reconciling us to God. God needed a way to put an end to us and our religious ambitions. When we finally let him have mercy on us, only then would he be "satisfied." And this could only be done by killing us.

So here is how we get “caught by the act.” Through faith, we are crucified with Christ. The old self, which refuses to accept unconditional forgiveness, is destroyed. It is put out of business. The final obstacle to reconciliation between God and man is removed.

His death is, therefore, our death. As Paul put it, Christ “has died for all; therefore, all have died” (2 Cor 5:14).

So Forde concludes, when looked at from our point of view, the cross must always be understood as an act of God's mercy toward us - one in which we participate personally. We first participate by killing Jesus (we reject the God of mercy and get him out of the way). Then we die with him (he gets us, our sin and our spiritual ambitions out of the way) and a new us is born. Now there is true reconciliation.

Atonement theories which put us on the sidelines, abstractly assessing the crucifixion from afar (or from above), can distract us from knowing the cross in this way.

Forde on Atonement - Part 3

2007-02-13T19:46:00.000-05:00

In the section of his essay subtitled “Theories Aside”, Forde brushes away the other two atonement theories as faring no better than vicarious satisfaction. The theory of moral influence centers on the idea that Jesus' sacrificial act was needed to serve as an example to inspire human selflessness and faithfulness. Forde merely asks a few rhetorical questions.

“How can God possibly be “justified” in sending his Son into this world to be cruelly murdered at our hands just to provide an example of what everybody already knew anyway? If the cross does not actually accomplish anything new, is not the price too great? Is not a God who would do such a thing fully as thoughtless and cruel as the God of vicarious satisfaction?”

He disposes of Gustaf Aulén and the “victory motif” just as hastily. Under this theory, Christ’s work in incarnation, death, and resurrection was required to conquer Satan and the demonic powers that hold us in slavery to sin and death. But Forde says that under this theory, like the others, the actual act of us killing Jesus is ignored.

“Once again the killing has been covered up. Jesus’ death is somehow necessary to defeat the demons. We are exonerated because the demons did it. God, too, is exonerated in the process because he can appear as the hero of the piece, the mighty conqueror of the demons.”

Forde points out that this theory seems to undermine God’s sovereignty, as he again asks the unanswerable questions.

“Why should the cruel death of Jesus be necessary to defeat the demons? Surely if God is God, he could just put the demons out of commission whenever he wished.”

He then briefly references the troubled history of atonement theories, pointing out that even the early church fathers struggled with this question, as they pondered the idea of “ransom” and debated to whom the ranson was paid. He also notes that the vicory motif, popularized by Gustaf Aulen in his 1931 book, Christus Victor, was the classic view that both Anselm (vicarious satisfaction) and Abelard (moral example) were contending with in the 12th century when these theories were first developed. Thus we have come full circle.

Having brushed the theories aside, Forde restates the issue before moving toward his goal.

"So we come back to our original question: Why the murder of the innocent one? What does that accomplish for us—or for God? What is “the word” of Christ? What does he actually do for us that God could not have done with greater ease and economy in some other way? The crucial and persistent question emerging from discussion of the various views seems always to be that of the necessity for the concrete and actual work of Christ among us.

It is, of course, ultimately the question of the necessity for Christology at all. Cannot God just up and forgive and/or cast out demons? Or to use another current form of the question: Is there not grace aplenty in the Old Testament? Or in nature? Or in other religions even? Why Jesus? Why the New Testament?"

Forde on Atonement - Part 2

2007-02-12T19:56:00.000-05:00

I base my understanding of Forde’s atonement views on his essay “Caught in the Act: Reflections on the Work of Christ.” This essay is not an exhaustive theological work (thankfully), but a relatively short essay. Actually, it’s more like a very long sermon.

Forde introduces the essay by briefly discussing the shortcomings of the three most prevalent atonement theories - vicarious satisfaction, moral influence and the victory motif. But as he goes through these, I sense he is in a bit of a hurry. He is on his way to the “brute reality” of the cross itself - the actual event and our involvement with it. This is the main focus of his essay, and the atonement theories are but the path he uses to get there.

So while Forde does not expend much energy debating or debunking the major theories, it is clear they don’t much impress him. He dismisses them as insufficient to prove the necessity for Christ’s death (which may not need proving). More importantly he argues that atonement theories can distract us from the message of the cross, obscuring the very thing they are designed to explain.

“Indeed, the fatal flaw in most thinking about the atoning work of Christ is the tendency to look away from the actual events, translate them into “eternal truths,” and thus to ignore or obscure what actually happened and our part in it. We interpret Christ’s death as though it were an idea, a necessary part of a logical scheme of some sort, as though God were tied to a scheme of honor or justice making him the obstacle to our reconciliation. We exonerate ourselves, so to speak, by blaming the necessity for the cross on God.”

With this he begins to explain his complaint concerning the vicarious satisfaction view of atonement.

“..it is maintained that God needed the death of Jesus in order to be able to be merciful to us. God is the object of the atoning act. The demands of his law, or wrath, or justice had to be “satisfied.” So we are exonerated because the cross was necessary to God. But the inevitable consequence of such thinking is that it doesn’t finally reconcile us to God. If the cross is necessary to pay God, God will be pictured as at worst a rather vindictive tyrant demanding his pound of flesh or at best an inept subordinate caught in the same inexorable net of law and justice as we are. The theory intended to foster reconciliation actually contributes to further alienation.”

“The persistent criticism of doctrines of vicarious satisfaction and substitutionary atonement since the enlightenment have the same root. The picture painted of God is too black, too contrary to the biblical witness. If the death was payment, how could reconciliation be an act of mercy? Mercy is mercy, not the result of payment. If God is by nature love and mercy, why could he not just up and forgive? Jesus, it seems, forgave sins before his death. Why then was the death necessary? The logic of the theory threatens the very thing it wants to promote: the mercy of God.”

Forde, of course, is not the first to question the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction. As I understand the historic criticism, it is rooted in the rather straightforward logic that grace and mercy cannot be made dependent on payment or satisfaction, else grace and mercy cease to be.

Forde does not dwell on this problem, but is moving on toward his main point. First, however, he quickly deals with the two other popular atonement theories.

Forde on Atonement - Part 1

2007-02-11T10:21:00.000-05:00

It may seem odd that Christian theology is still struggling with what actually happened at the cross. We’ve had two thousand years to consider the matter. One would think it not that difficult to come to some conclusion, especially since it stands at the heart of Christianity - the sina qua non, if you will.

But the cross event is unique. And it is called foolishness by the Apostle Paul. So perhaps it is not unusual that our explanations don't necessarily measure up to the event itself. I won't criticize those who struggle to comprehend the cross. I've found that I’m certainly not immune from wondering about the wonder of it all myself.

I don’t wonder about the historical accuracy of the event or who exactly was involved. Questions of this nature don’t interest me. The crucifixion itself and the divine nature of Jesus have long ago been settled questions - settled at least to my satisfaction and most who consider themselves Christian. But the question of why still lingers, and the why raises questions of what actually took place - beyond the physical crucifixion of the Son of God.

Why did Jesus have to die? Could not have God reconciled the world to himself some other way? When we enter this realm, we encounter differing theories of the atonement, and now even the word theory sounds strange. Don’t we know for sure? Are we still speculating about all this? The use of the word theory seems dangerous in itself. But that is what we seem to be faced with - atonement theories.

I was first confronted with the whole notion of atonement theory when I discovered that my new-found theological hero, Gerhard Forde, was accused of denying the vicarious satisfaction of Christ. Now, as it turns out, I don’t believe he really denies it so much as challenges us to think of it in an entirely new way. But I will get to that later. The point is that vicarious satisfaction is but one of several theories of atonement, all of which come in various flavors. It is the most common and the one I had always believed without question. It was also the one I assumed Luther taught, and what had been taught down through the ages.

Christ had to die because the justice and wrath of God against us had to be satisfied. The sins of the whole world had to be paid for, and the sacrificial death of Jesus was the only price acceptable. Theologically, this is called vicarious satisfaction - Jesus taking our place in satisfying the justice of God the Father. It is also sometimes called substitionary atonement - Jesus substituting himself for us in order to make us acceptable to God.

So I was faced with the question, why would a Lutheran theologian, especially one of Forde’s stripe - someone obviously devoted to Luther’s theology of the cross and the radical preaching of the unconditional Gospel - why would such a person seem to question the vicarious satisfaction view of atonement?

Hier Ich Stehe

2007-02-09T09:59:00.000-05:00

There is a Luther gift shop across the street from the Castle Church in Wittenberg. It was here that my friend Jerry bought me a pair of souvenir socks imprinted with the words “Here I Stand” (in German, of course.)

I wonder if some are offended by the gift shop and the socks. They might seem to trivialize the importance of what took place on the door across the street - and what Luther was actually risking when he said those words in front of Emperor Charles V himself, heir to the 1000-year-old Holy Roman Empire.

"Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear and distinct grounds and reasoning - and my conscience is captive to the Word of God - then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience.

Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen"

There have been numerous movies made of Luther. Most portray this scene of Luther at the Diet of Worms as a towering, heroic figure - defying Emperor and Pope with certainty and courage. But I like the most recent movie (Luther), where the filmmakers tried to more honestly capture Luther’s terror and doubt. He was, after all, just human.

And I think Luther would approve of the socks - at least in this sense. They bring us back to earth. Luther was nothing if not earthy. “We are all still beggars,” said Luther, shortly before his death. Shoeless beggars - in ridiculous looking socks.

The socks remind me to not take myself too seriously - even while considering the weightiest of matters, the defense of the very Gospel of Christ itself. This is useful to remember when blogging. Or when doing anything else, for that matter.

Post-Lutheranism

2007-02-06T08:56:00.000-05:00

In our postmodern world, we are now also confronted with postmodern Christianity, post-Evangelicalism, post-liberalism, post-conservatism, post-denominationalism, and even post-Christianism.

Whence cometh post-Lutheransim?

Alas, there is no such beast. My Google search comes up empty.

Sigh. What to make of this. Does not Lutheranism need some post-like improvement along with all the rest? If we have no post-, we have no future. For that matter, we may have no present, since it seems everyone else is already living in their post-ness.

Well, whatever.

I now have at least one blog entry on post-Lutheranism. I’ll see if Google can find it. Maybe it will inspire some creative Lutheran to get off the dime and discover post-Lutheranism before it’s too late.

God Hidden

2007-02-05T14:13:00.000-05:00

Growing up Lutheran, the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper were inseparable from my concept of church. Like pulpit and pew, the font and altar table were part of the architecture. I suppose I just took them for granted. I did not question the Lutheran view of the meaning of the sacraments as I learned them in confirmation class. I could recite the orthodox explanations. On the other hand, I never quite understood it all. The more I was exposed to other Christian views about them, the more confused I got. Eventually I arrived at a point where the diversity of explanations, coupled with the apparent Biblical ambiguity, caused me to not even want to think or talk about them. They were just one more theological minefield, and a bit of an embarrasment. Now, the more I study Luther’s theology of the cross, the more I am beginning to appreciate the meaning and mystery of the Christian sacraments.

It seems as if nothing has divided Christianity more than differing views over the theology of the sacraments. But I think this is somewhat of an illusion. What divides Christianity is still (I believe) the theology of glory over against the theology of the cross - an emphasis on the works of us over against the works of God. The sacraments are just one of the battlegrounds, albeit a highly visible one. They are out there in plain sight, confronting us, speaking to us. But what do they say?

The theologian of the cross hears the sacraments as simply another form of the Gospel. Nothing more. Nothing less. The sacraments speak the language of the cross, the language of salvation, forgiveness of sins, and life eternal. As the Gospel clothed in physical forms, they have somewhat of a mystical edge, but they are, underneath, no more or less mysterious than the Gospel. There is no difference. Thus it is not proper to elevate them above the Gospel - as was common in the church of Luther’s time - nor is it proper to lower them beneath the Gospel - as is common in our time.

The Gospel itself is a sacrament - the power and glory of God hiding in the humblest of places. The Gospel hides in a baby born in a barn. It hides in an ordinary man with little to recommend him (no visible means of support and no place to sleep.) It hides, finally and most dramatically, in a horribly shameful execution - nailed to a cross.

This Gospel in human form then rises from the grave, but does not announce the triumph to a skeptical world. Rather, he remains still humble and hidden among the people - so hidden that it later seems almost too easy for his enemies to claim that somebody made the whole thing up. Then this Gospel seems to disappear entirely - except for the word of it, spoken and written.

So now, to us, the Gospel is mere words - a bit of human language - recorded in a book written by many different authors who sometimes (to us) seem not to have gotten their stories straight. This same Gospel also comes to us verbally and extemporaneously, in the lame and tired phrases of cracked-pot preachers - people who often don’t seem to know what they are talking about and tend to be more than a little annoying. And yet, in this word of the Gospel is hidden the power of God’s Holy Spirit, testifying of a humble Savior who also happens to be the God of the Universe. And in this person of Jesus we are shown the nature of God’s interest in us - how much he loves us! For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.

The Gospel is, therefore, not just a story or a piece of language. It is love clothed in language, and love has power unspeakable. The love of God hidden in the Gospel has a power that can be found in nothing else. It is a love that requires a faith to believe in it, and then it creates the faith that it requires. Thus it is a love that does not allow itself to be unrequited. One way or another, not with glory but with power, it has its way with us.

In this context, I understand the sacraments as but another form of the Gospel. This seems even more humble (and perhaps more foolish) than words alone. Now we have common water, bread and wine - nothing special. But they are not water, bread and wine alone. They come in communion with the word of the Gospel, and so they are not religious rituals we perform. They are the real presence of God hidden - not just hidden in the word, but now also hidden in the physical elements that we can actually see, touch, taste and feel.

If this were not hard enough to believe, the doing of the sacraments comes clothed in the humblest garb of all - the church. Jesus (for some odd reason) gives to the church the job of distributing his Gospel. At the same time, he seems to have allowed his church to be the most unlikely candidate to conduct such holy work. What a train wreck, this thing we call the church! This church is us! Who can honestly say they can find one speck of goodness among such self-righteous sinners?

But that is precisely the point. While we are yet sinners, God loved us. If the church were righteous, it would have no need of any gospel, much less this one. This Gospel is exclusive - it is for sinners only. And it is distributed by sinners only. Then, in the heart of the sinner, God finds his final hiding place. What more humble, unlikely place to hide than that?

So now, in light of what the Gospel actually does (as opposed to what it is), and its final hiding place, the sacramental form of the Gospel becomes clearer, at least to me. Like the Word of the Gospel, the Gospel of Baptism requires faith, and it creates what it requires. No where is this drama more clearly hidden than in the baptism of infant children. Here is perhaps the only time and place where the work of God in reaching us cannot be mistaken as our own work to reach him. The work of God in the baptism of believing adults is not so apparent, but it is nevertheless the same work. And the Gospel of the Lord’s Supper is also the same work of God. As Gospel, the bread and wine, the body and blood, come to us again and again. Each time they require a renewed faith, and then create what they require - sustaining us in the absolute certainty of God’s love and forgiveness.

We can try to attach other meanings to the sacraments. We can try to strip them of all meaning. We can try to turn them into religious rituals, signs and symbols. Or we can load them up with rules and regulations to try to convert them into laws we must obey (or suffer the consequences). But there is no law in them, and therefore no condemnation. The sacraments are the Gospel, and as such contain the real presence of the Hidden God of Love. And this Love will accomplish what God wants it to accomplish, whether we see it or not.

I understand that this does not answer my every question. Maybe it answers very few. The sacraments will always remain a source of mystery. But it is a mystery I can live with. Because while I know God is hidden in them, I also know that God is revealed in them. And the God revealed is the Jesus of the cross - the one who gave himself up for me out of love.

No Ifs in the Gospel

2007-02-02T20:23:00.000-05:00

“In defining the essence of the gospel, everything depends on whether it is a conditional or an unconditional message of grace.”
- August Pieper, The Proper Distinction of Law and Gospel and Its Application for Pure Teaching and Spiritual Life (1910)

One of the characteristics of Luther’s more radical theology was his understanding of the gospel as an unconditional proclamation. He did not see it as an invitation. Or an explanation. Or an argument. Or a theological contruct. It was a proclamation preached without conditions.

The gospel can be said in many different ways, but, to be the gospel, it cannot contain any if’s. So it sounds something like this:

“Your sins are forgiven.”
or
“God loves you just the way you are, for Jesus sake.”
or
“Jesus died on the cross to save you from your sins.”

This is in contrast to a gospel with conditions, which might sound like this:

“Your sins will be forgiven if you repent and are truly sorry for them.”
or
“God loves you and wants you to accept his love. If you do, you will be saved.”
or
“Jesus died on the cross to save you from your sins. If you believe in him, you will be saved.”

These conditional gospels are very common in the church, and sound entirely Biblical. True as they might sound, however, they are not the gospel. This took me a long time to really understand.

I think maybe I always believed in an unconditional gospel, but never quite understood how it could be preached so boldly - especially in the face of what seems to sound like a whole lot of conditions in the Bible. Both Forde and the Wauwatosa theologians were of particular help to me here.

In the essay quoted above, August Pieper lays out the Biblical case for preaching the gospel promise without any conditions. He does not mince words. A gospel preached with conditions is not just an impure gospel, or a watered-down gospel, or a hedge-your-bets gospel. It is no gospel at all.

The Wauwatosa Theology

2007-01-31T20:24:00.000-05:00

With Forde as my main course and Capon for desert, I like the writings of the Wauwatosa Theologians as vegetable side dishes. Not necessarily tasty or easy to chew, but highly nutritious.

They taught in the fledgling Wisconsin Synod seminary in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin in the early part of the 20th century (roughly 1900 - 1930). Their names were J.P. Koehler (pictured), August Pieper and John Schaller. Highly gifted, and perhaps a bit outspoken (Koehler was kicked out in 1929), their spirit and devotion to Scripture is now looked on as representing the golden age of the WELS.

What made them unique within conservative Lutheranism was their antipathy toward blind dogmatism based on the work of prior theologians (repristinating), openness to being taught by Scriptural authority and renewed emphasis on Biblical exegesis. In the words of Pieper:

“ … we submit to no man, be his name Luther or Walther, Chemnitz or Hoenecke, Gerhard or Stoeckhardt, so long as we have clear Scripture on our side. . . . We esteem the fathers highly, far higher than ourselves as far more learned and more devout than we are. Therefore, we want to use them, particularly Luther, as guides to Scripture, and to test their doctrines a hundred times before we reject them. But authorities equal to Scripture or opposed to Scripture they may never become for us, or we shall be practicing idolatry. . "

They saw that the conservative synods of the Lutheran church were falling victim to the same error that Luther denounced - putting the authority of the church fathers above that of Scripture. Pieper called this authority-theology.

"We renounce this authority-theology anew. It causes so much damage to the church. It is unfaithfulness to the Lord; slavery to men; it brings errors with it. But it also makes the mind narrow and the heart small. . . . Dogmatic training perhaps makes one orthodox, but it also easily makes one orthodoxist, intolerant, quarrelsome, hateful, and easily causes division in the church.

. .

Scripture is at once narrow and broad. The study of it makes the heart narrow to actual false doctrine and heresies, but broad toward various human expressions and presentations. It does not accuse of false doctrine unnecessarily; it teaches us to bear and suffer in love the mistakes of the weak. It keeps the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Therefore we want to entirely do away with this dogmatic authority-theology, and to sink ourselves ever deeper into Scripture and to promote it above all else. We know that in doing so we will best serve the church.”

- August Pieper (1913), Quoted by Mark Braun in The Wauwatosa Gospel (2002). p 25.

The Wauwatosa theologians proved that it is possible to keep dogmatics in its proper place without sacrificing it to skepticism or liberalism. In so doing, they brought fresh clarity to the Gospel which, to ears dulled by dry dogma, sounds somewhat radical.

-ism This!

2007-01-31T09:18:00.000-05:00

In the heat of debate with my WELS brethren about church fellowship, I was accused of antinominianism and gospel reductionism. I, in turn, accused my brethren of legalism and traditionalism.

So I figure we were pretty much even on the -ism accusation scorecard. If I could have hurled one more -ism at them, I’m sure I would have won the argument.

Recently I learned of repristinationism. This is the tendency to thoughtlessly and mechanically repeat the theology of the past, blindly accepting the beliefs, wording, doctrines and proof passages of prior theologians as primary authority, rather than restudying Scripture afresh.

This is an -ism that everyone should carry around in their arsenal. If you sense you are losing the argument, accuse your adversary of repristinating and just walk away.

Be careful though. As ye repristinate, so shall ye be repristinated upon. And let he who has not repristinated, hurl the first charge of repristination. And… Ok, enough already.

Great word.

The Smell of an Old Wineskin

2007-01-30T22:41:00.000-05:00

Luther’s understanding of the law developed from the way Paul speaks of it in contrast with the gospel, particularly in Romans and Galatians. In this context, Paul does not so much describe the law by what it is is, but by what it does. The law accuses, binds, condemns, curses, terrifies, and kills. The gospel acquits, frees, saves, blesses, comforts and brings to life. In this dialectic, Luther saw the law and the gospel as necessary opposites, but with the law always hand-maiden to the gospel - never the other way around.

In the Lutheran confessions, Melanchthon described the accusatory function of the law with the latin phrase lex semper accusat (the law always accuses) and Lutheran theologians have thence referred to this function as the “semper”. So now we have the simul and the semper. Both are necessary to understand Luther - and all the weeping and gnashing of teeth over the third use of the law.

The semper fits properly with the first and second uses of the law, both of which confront me as a sinner, whether Christian or not. First, it always (semper) demands and threatens, thus bringing about some level of restraint, civic righteousness and moral behavior. This promotes a peaceful society, but cannot reconcile me to God. So the law continues to always (semper) accuse and condemn me. It does not remove my guilt, but rather magnifies it - making me always (semper) more aware of my sin, shame and broken relationship with God. And so comes the second use of the law - to dramatize my need for help beyond the law, namely the Savior who fulfilled the law for me and takes away my guilt (the gospel).

Now, however, when I come to the third use, the semper does not fit. In Christ, the new me is fully clothed in the righteousness of Christ. I am no longer subject to the coercion or accusation of the law. So is the semper no longer semper? Has the law changed? No, it continues to accuse - but it accuses Christ. So Christ became guilty, was condemned and crucified. And thus Christ became the end of the law for me.

In view of the cross, I live as the new me and the semper does not apply. Nothing can accuse me or shame me or condemn me. In this new me, I can (by faith) come to the law and delight in it. It is no longer a threat. However, I am not convinced that this is necessarily the point of the new me. In the righteousness of Christ, a return to the Ten Commandments (minus the semper) seems strangely anticlimactic. I think there’s more to it.

What of the possibility that the moral law was indeed fulfilled in Christ and now the “law of Christ”, the “walking in the spirit”, the “fruits of the spirit” - all this is something entirely new - something way different from perfect obedience to moral law - or law of any kind?

The first two uses of the law no doubt continue in effect for the old me. But (to the new me) the third use smells a bit like an old wineskin.

Law Cannot Make us Willing

2007-01-29T12:23:00.000-05:00

Born in the shadow of a law-dominated Roman Catholic church, Luther’s theology recovered the priority of the Gospel and then emphasized a proper distinction between Law and Gospel. And yet, the heirs of Luther (and all Christianity for that matter) continues to struggle with the lawful use of the Law. To say that the issue was settled by Luther (or the Lutheran confessions) overstates the case.

First, Luther’s views did not necessarily hold sway over Calvin and the other reformers - so modern evangelicalism has evolved a different view of the Law than Lutheranism. Beyond that, Lutheran theologians themselves have continued to struggle with how the Law fits into the life of the Christian. And this struggle spills over into the pastor’s way of preaching the Law and how the individual Christian responds to such preaching.

The debate within Lutheranism revolves around the so-called three uses of the Law commonly called the mirror, the curb and the guide. For Lutherans at least, the first two uses are never at issue. The third causes all the mischief.

The essence of the controversy was brought home to me when I recently went back to my little brown catechism, the version I used in confirmation classes fifty years ago. There I found the three uses, just as I had remembered them:

1. As a mirror it shows us our sin and the need of a Savior.

2. As a curb it checks to some extent the coarse outbreak of sin, thereby helping to preserve order in this sinful world.

3. As a rule it guides us in the true fear, love, and trust in God, that we willingly do according to His commandments.
- Luther’s Catechism (1956), Explanation p. 90-91

Immediately I noticed parenthesis inserted around the last clause of use #3. (that we willingly do according to His commandments.) and hand-written in the margin was the sentence: “Law cannot make us willing.”

The handwriting was not mine however. I recognized as it as my father’s. And it was written in ink! (a sin of the first order). What was up with that? Had my dad at some point taken my catechism and made his own editorial comments in it?

I flipped through the rest of the catechism. There were no other entries anywhere. This was the only one.

Then I looked at the inside front cover, where I saw my father’s name - Edgar D. Hahm. This was not my catechism after all.

Sometime between 1956 (when this catechism was published) and his death in 1991, my father felt compelled to blog this single sentence (in ink) in his own copy of Luther's Small Catechism.

He obviously had his own concerns about the misuse of the Law.

I wish I could talk to him about this now.

Now What? Moral Progress?

2007-01-26T15:56:00.000-05:00

Luther’s simul (simultaneously sinner and saint), according to Forde, eliminates the notion of moral progress, even (or should we say, especially!) for the Christian. This, in turn, also eliminates the notion of the so-called 3rd use of the Law (which I will describe and discuss at another time). These are two of the major theological flash-points which I think make Luther so radical and his theology so unpopular. It is where Forde’s idea of a more radical Lutheranism parts company not just with popular Catholicism and Evangelicalism, but also, it would seem, with modern-day Lutheranism.

So what is this really all about? It is about the so-called “Christian life” or the doctrine of sanctification. It is about the “Now what? question. I am a Christian saved by grace, now what am I to do? Well, the Christian bookstores are filled with ideas, as are almost all Christian Bible study guides, Sunday morning sermons, and so, we might think, the Bible itself.

But for Forde, the Biblical teaching regarding sanctification can only be understood in terms of a completed justification through faith in Christ, and Paul’s simul found in Romans 7. Thus the believer’s state of being righteous by grace is total and cannot be improved on by us. And the believer’s state of being unrighteous is also total, and similarly cannot be made better by us, since it has been crucified with Christ and is dead. So our righteousness is total and our unrighteousness is total - all at the same time. In such a state of affairs, there is no movement from one to the other possible.

This simul is difficult to come to grips with. We would prefer the idea of movement, and our human effort in cooperating with that movement. We take to the idea of spiritual disciplines, buckling down and somehow growing. We enjoy the psychological rewards that come from seeing at least some improvement. Even our failures encourage us - just try harder next time. We have no problem giving God half the credit, because certainly it would not happen without him. But it certainly also would not happen without us. That just seems logical, and even Biblical.

But the Bible does not so much talk about our progress as it talks of absolutes. And the absolutes confront us in ways that make a mess of our talk of progressive sanctification. We read such things as “The one who practices sin is of the Devil.” (I John 3:8) Here we must invent different levels of sin (willful and unwilful) in order to deflect the passage away from us and on to someone else. It does not fit a scheme of Christian moral improvement. Or how about “Pray without ceasing.” (I Thess. 5:17) Praying 99% of the time falls short of the mark. What makes us feel satisfied with slight progress here? What would be the Biblical basis for gritting our teeth and aiming at a mere 50%?

The simul, which grants us the perfect righteousness of Christ from the moment we are justified through faith, and yet also acknowledges the continuing full wretchedness of our sinful nature (of the devil), seems to bring passages like this to life. They are not just theoretical concepts or goals, but the actual reality of our everyday life, and there is no need to interpret the life out of them. They can be allowed to mean precisely what they say.

But what are the practical implications of such a way of being and thinking? If the simul were really true, are we not still confronted with the question of “Now what?” If moral progress and spiritual growth are no longer necessary. what are we to do? Luther answers this question, I think, in his doctrine of vocation - an area which I have yet to study in much detail and which seems too often overlooked in the church, perhaps because it seems too earthly. But earth happens to be where we live, and, given the state of the nation (and others), it would not seem that difficult to find a job that needs doing, and just do it. Such a simplistic sanctifiction theology could put the Christian bookstores out of business, but it might be worth the risk.

Little Miss Sunshine

2007-01-25T11:34:00.000-05:00

In somewhat the same class as “Napoleon Dynamite” (with an entirely different style) some will find this movie stupid and offensive, and even not all that funny, if indeed it was even meant to be a comedy. But I liked it. Enough to root for it as Best Movie of 2006, though I haven’t seen the other four nominees, so my endorsement may not mean much.

The movie portrays the human experience of aspiration, failure, conflict, love, hate and redemption in such a freshly odd mix that I found myself wondering why I so quickly liked each and every character, in spite of themselves. I need to see the movie a second time to perhaps find out. In that respect (for me) the movie is actually a mystery. What was it about each of these characters that made them so lovable? It certainly wasn’t their humanity. Or was it? There are clues throughout the movie, but even the ending does not clearly offer up the answer. The answer is somewhere else. It is somewhere in me.

The writers went out of their way to try to offend most Christian moral sensibilities, capping off the attempt with the teen-age son who wears the T-Shirt proclaiming “Jesus Was Wrong.” I’m sure we will start to see more of those in the mall, alongside “Vote for Pedro.” In spite of that, I found Christian websites that recommend the movie, with, of course, all the obligatory warnings.

What does this have to do with Luther or theology? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. When in doubt, I can justify discussing almost anything under the category of Luther's simul, which is the starting point for discovering all the paradoxes of human behavior. Recognition of the simul may also be one key to accepting others as God accepts us. And this (I suspect) has much to do with solving the mystery of this movie.

Assumption of Bondage

2007-01-24T12:18:00.000-05:00

“If you begin with the assumption of freedom, the preoccupation is always how to keep freedom in check, how to bind; But if you begin with the assumption of bondage, the preoccupation is always how to set out the word that frees.”
- Gerhard Forde. The Captivation of the Will. p.21

This statement reflects one of the non-apparent truths that Luther argued in The Bondage of the Will. If it were more universally understood and accepted, it might transform the predominant religious worldview.

The error begins when we assume humanity’s basic problem (and its only hope) lies in its own innate freedom. We see the problem as this - that people are way too free to do evil, free to indulge themselves in worldly pleasures, free of God and free of God’s righteous will. In other words, people seem to be having way too much fun without God. So the primary business of religion is preoccupied with reigning in that freedom, bringing it back into check, redirecting it, spoiling the fun, getting all of us back under God’s law (and his thumb) where we belong. In doing this, we seem to think people will become more moral and the world a more fit and happy place to live. We wonder why things seem to get worse, and why religion makes us so unhappy.

If, on the other hand, we begin with the assumption that humanity is actually in captivity, not really having any fun, bound to do evil and suffering its consequences, under the curse of a world gone sour, already under God’s law, and thereby also under his thumb, and also the thumb of an unmerciful self (as well as an ever-accusing unmerciful and real Satan) - then the message of the church is radically different. It does not try to fix such a mess with additional formulas of moral improvement based on some legal code - God’s or any other. The business of the church is now this - to get out the word of the cross - that we are all no longer captive to such religious requirements. We have been set free - free of the law and its curse, and thereby also free from the necessity to do evil, the punishment for evil, Satan and the tyranny of self. We become preoccupied with freedom, the kind of freedom that actually could make the world a truly happy place for us to live.

Misunderstood Imperatives

2007-01-23T18:15:00.000-05:00

One of the great problems of Biblical interpretation (and theology) involves the precise nature of Biblical commands, specifically noting the difference between Gospel commands such as “repent, believe, trust, etc.” and commands of the moral Law, such as “Thou shalt have no other Gods” or “Honor your father and mother.”

Whether to recognize this distinction (or not) was one of the major points of contention between Erasmus and Luther when they debated our ability (or inability) to contribute to our own conversion. In his Diatribe, Erasmus argued that God would not give a command that we did not have the wherewithal to accomplish. So, if God commanded us to “Believe”, then we must certainly have within us at least some small ability to get the job done. Luther of course disagreed, setting forth his argument with great passion and force in the “Bondage of the Will.”

I recently ran across Prof. John Schaller’s essay “God’s Will and Command” (1915). In this essay, Schaller explores in some detail the nature of the Gospel imperative and how it differs from the commands of God’s moral law. Stated briefly, Schaller argues that we must think of these commands given under grace as having within them the enabling power of God’s will. They can indeed produce what they command, without our assistance. Thus the command to “Repent” is like the command Jesus spoke to Lazarus, “Lazarus, come forth.” Although Lazarus did indeed obey the command (dead as he was), no one would claim that Lazarus had within him the ability to do so. The power to obey came from Jesus. In other words, God willed him to will what he willed. Bottom line - Lazarus could take no credit for his obedience, just as we can take none for our faith.

What I found most helpful in Schaller’s essay was his use of the simul - how the old me will continually react badly to Gospel imperatives as though they were Law, even though the new me knows better. This explains why I so often have a legalistic reaction to such commands.

"Man by nature stands under the Law, as Paul states it in Gal. 4:3 in so many words…. He hears God's will and command that he should repent, be converted, and believe in Christ. All this he presumes to understand, because what is said appears as imperatives. But not only does the true thought-content of God's commands remain incomprehensible to him, but he also does not notice that here is an imperative which in its nature is entirely unfamiliar to him. Therefore the imperative form evokes from him only wrong notions and thoughts. He regards these commands as new demands made upon him, of the kind that have always plagued and made him unhappy. And because he seems to have the freedom of choice, he sets himself against these demands and formulates with more or less clarity the reason for his refusal to obey.

...

What, however, is true of the nature and character of the unregenerate, that also still clings to the regenerate, because he carries the old nature with him alongside the new man. While his ears and eyes have been opened so that he sees the wonders of grace and understands the Word of the cross for his salvation, and he also rests his faith on this Word, he nevertheless has learned all this as a new language, which he appropriates completely only gradually; and his thoughts move about in this new environment or sphere of understanding with more or less helplessness.

...

In every Christian there remains a rather large remnant of legalistic thinking. Because this new way of thinking has not yet taken complete hold of the Christian's flesh and blood, it will happen that in his thinking he will, without being aware of it, enter upon and follow legalistic paths, which should long ago have been done away with, until it dawns upon him with consternation that he has gone astray. So it becomes understandable to us why not only in the Reformed Church, but also among Lutherans much legalistic thinking and application of God's Word has from time to time come to light. Here again the misunderstood imperatives are seen in action. Instead of understanding them as addressed to the new man, who has been freed from the Law, one falls back into the way of thinking of the old man and converts the evangelical, creative commands of God into moral precepts, the fulfilling of which God's righteousness requires."
- John Schaller, God’s Will and Command (1915)

Schaller’s essay made me want to reread the New Testament to find all those misunderstood imperatives - those that may indeed carry with them the creative will and enabling power of God - addressed to the new me under grace, not the old me under law. In addition to repent and believe, perhaps the Gospel imperatives include more than even Schaller dared consider - like seek, come, walk, avoid, give, rejoice, pray, go, love, etc.

At the same time, I wonder how we are to preach these imperatives without conveying the spirit of the Law, burdening people with just so much more to do - along with the accusation, guilt and curse that comes with the failure to do it. It seems to me that we must be very careful here, because my old me is still very active and seems to pick up on all such talk as just additional demands, impossible to carry out.

Finding Fault

2007-01-22T10:03:00.000-05:00

Finding hypocrisy, false teaching and judgmentalism in the church is easy. Finding it in myself is impossible.

Robert Farrar Capon

2007-01-21T08:02:00.000-05:00

I recommend Capon to anyone - especially anyone going through that Christianity-is-stale-and-boring phase of life.

I first met Robert Farrar Capon in the book Health, Money, and Love & Why We Don’t Enjoy Them (1990), which is an easy read. Capon is an Anglican scholar, priest and theologian with a fresh way of expressing the outrageousness Gospel. He is a bit unsettling at times, but as one reviewer put it: “Jesus and Father Capon have at least one salient personalitiy trait in common - they both love to shock people - jar us out of our complacency.”

Some of his other “easy read” books in my library are these:

- The Astonished Heart: Reclaiming the Good News from the Lost and Found of Church History. 2003

- The Fingerprints of God: Tracking the Divine Suspect through a History of Images. 2003

And some of his lengthier, more difficult works:

- The Romance of the Word: One Man’s Love Affair with Theology. 1995

- Kingdom, Grace and Judgment: Paradox, Outrage and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus. 2002

- Genesis: The Movie 2003

The End of Religion

2007-01-20T12:53:00.000-05:00

If Gerhard Forde is one of my favorite entrees, Robert Farrar Capon is my dessert of choice. He puts the fun back into chewing on seriously offensive theology. And he makes grace so real you can taste it.

It is Capon who introduced me to the proposition that Christianity is not a religion.

“For some time now, we’ve been treated to a good deal of heavy breathing and earnest thumbsucking about the plight of the Christian religion and the problems of the institutional church. Almost all of it is wildly off the mark. While it is true that our present dishevelment may well be one of the larger crises (or opportunities) the church has bumped into over its long career, our real difficulty is something else: we have an almost continuous track record of hitting the Christian nail squarely on the thumb. All our noisy hammering to the contrary, the problem is not that we need to get back to the truth of our religion or to get on to some better version of the ecclesiastical institution; rather we need nothing so much as to stop acting as if we’re either a religion or an institution at all.

To begin with, Christianity is not a religion; it’s the proclamation of the end of religion. Religion is a human activity dedicated to the job of reconciling God to humanity and humanity to itself. The Gospel, however - the Good News of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ - is the astonishing announcement that God has done the whole work of reconciliation without a scrap of human assistance. It is the bizarre proclamation that religion is over, period.

All the efforts of the human race to straighten up the mess of history by plausible religious devices - all the chicken sacrifices, all the fasts, all the mysticism, all the moral exhortations, all the threats - have been canceled by God for lack of saving interest. More astonishingly still, their purpose has been fulfilled, once for all and free for nothing, by the totally non-religious death and resurrection of a Galilean nobody.

Admittedly, Christians may use the forms of religion - but only because the church is the sign to the world of God’s accomplishment of what religion tried (and failed) to do, not because any of the church’s devices can actually get the job done. The church, therefore, must always be on its guard against giving the impression that its rites, ceremonies, and requirements have any religious efficacy in and of themselves. All such things are simply sacraments - real presences under particular signs - of the indiscriminate gift of grace that God in Christ has given everybody.”

- Robert Farrar Capon, The Astonished Heart: Reclaiming the Good News from the Lost-and-Found of Church History. 1996. p. 1-2

Capon is not simply playing with definitions here - redefining the word "religion". He is more radical than that. He redefines Christianity.

It is one thing to say (as I have often said) "Christianity is unique among the world religions in that it...." or "Christianity is the only true religion because..." This kind of talk (as I see it now) could simply be "product differentiation" - a strategy used to increase market share - and the church may not be in that kind of business.

It is a matter of a different sort entirely to proclaim "Christianity is not a religion. Christ put a stop to all such nonsense." This, it seems, might capture some attention - though not necessarily. And attracting attention may not be good enough reason to change our language. I would say it merely because it more closely captures the actual truth of the matter.

The Elephant in the Room

2007-01-19T08:46:00.000-05:00

I wish I could simply say, “I am a Christian” and everyone would know what that meant. Given the wide diversity of Christian churches and beliefs (and the bad reputations enjoyed by most), I feel the need to immediately add “but I’m not typical. I’m not that kind of Christian.”

I find myself wanting to clarify exactly what the Christian label means. And I want to apologize for all those other Christians (legalists, hypocrites, profiteers, snake-handlers, etc) who have scandalized Christianity over the last 2000 years. I need to defend real Christianity, which, by happy coincidence, is my particular version of it. I want to vindicate Christianity. I want to justify it.

The reality is, however, I am more interested in vindicating myself - justifying myself. Some would call this self-justification. And a few (rightly) would point out that my spirit of self-justification is contrary to the spirit of the Christian Gospel, which tells me it is God who justifies - and, in fact, has already done it. I am caught in a trap. My righteous desires to defend the truth are invariably spoiled by my self-righteous spirit. The moment I think of myself as one of the “good Christians”, I am no longer. I am the Pharisee.

This dilemma is at the heart of the problem that faces all who strive to be a “good Christian”, behave as a “good Christian”, or believe as a “good Christian”. It is the elephant in the room. It stands in the middle of the church, crapping large turds all over our brave, pious talk. It makes a mess of our most reasonable theologies, turning our good works into evil deeds, our faithfulness into betrayal, our success into failure, our strength into weakness. It blocks all the exits. It allows no visible means of escape. In the end, it kills us. (One might say, it crucifies us.)

Such is the scandalous message of the cross. Jesus comes to save us and we kill him. We are then somehow crucified with him. Christ goes down, and we go down with him. The crucifixion is the end of our righteousness and the beginning of His for us. This puts to death all our failed attempts to please God, reach God, obey God, become like God. It kicks the ladder out from under us, ending our prospects of climbing into heaven.

This theology of the cross is not the birth of a new religion. It is the death of all religion. And the birth of a new us. In the rebirth of us there is hidden new life in our dieing bodies, new sanctity in our wickedness, new freedom in our captivity, new peace in our chaos, new joy in our suffering.

This (in brief) is the seldom-preached-because-it’s-too-hard-to-believe Gospel message of Christianity. It is the unequivocal announcement that God finally got sick of religion and chose to have it killed.

Conventional Wisdom on Its Head

2007-01-18T10:49:00.000-05:00

In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul calls the message of the cross foolishness. Other translations say:

“doesn’t make any sense”
“folly”
“sheer silliness”

Paul goes on to quote God from Isaiah, where He says:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise.”

or in modern language:
“I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head.”

Rather than trying to make sense of the cross, it seems Luther simply accepted Paul’s view that it was foolish and went about the task of trying to figure out what made it so foolish.

In other words, how exactly does the cross turn conventional wisdom on its head?

According to Forde, Luther saw the cross as primarily God’s attack on human sin. Ultimately it is also our salvation from sin, but to grasp the foolishness of the cross, we must first see how it attacks us as sinners, not just as sinners in our bad works, but sinners in our good works.

This, to Luther, was the key to understanding the offensive illogic of the cross and lies at the root of how a theology of the cross differs from a theology of glory. As Forde puts it:

“The offense consists in the fact that unlike other theologies it attacks what we usually consider the best in our religion. Theologians of the cross do not worry so much about what is obviously bad in our religion, our bad works, as they do about the pretension that comes with our good works.”
- Gerhard Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross. p.2

It is not any particular doctrine of the atonement that made the cross nonsense for Luther. It was his understanding of what the cross says about our sinfulness, that such a radical act would be necessary.

In a nutshell, according to Luther’s offensive theology, all of our good works were actually sin - sin that needed to be destroyed at the cross along with our more obvious bad works. In fact, Luther seemed to claim that good works were humanity’s biggest problem. In a sense then, what appears to be the very best of us, is actually the worst of us.

If this is actually true, as Luther tried to prove with his Heidelberg Disputation, then God certainly has kept his promise to turn conventional wisdom on its head.

Shut Down the Blog

2007-01-17T10:04:00.000-05:00

One of the problems I considered when I started this blog (and consider every time I write) is the matter of offense. I suspect much theological writing comes across to the reader as offensive in that it is dogmatic, argumentative and judgmental. These are cardinal sins, particularly to the postmodern mind (as I understand postmodernism).

Dogmatism represents a closed mind; it is the source of bigotry and most other evil in the world. Dogmatic assertions must be replaced with stories. Argumentation is inherently divisive and annoying. It is to be replaced with a more civil discourse, something called conversation. And judgmentalism is the worst sin of all. It reveals a self-righteous and arrogant spirit. I may hold my beliefs, (which are true for me), but I dare not judge yours (which are true for you.) Judgmentalism must always yield to toleration, not just in the normal sense of the word (no burning at the stake), but in the moral obligation to accept opposing ideas to be of equal value with your own. That may paint postmodern thinking with too broad a brush, but, no matter. I could use the same brush for modern thinking or any other kind of thinking.

Any theology, it seems to me, will inherently be offensive to someone. To “take a position” is to risk offense, regardless of how loving the intent or how sweet the tone. That’s why politics and religion are forbidden topics at the Thanksgiving table. In contemplating all this, I began to doubt whether any of this is worth it. What is the point of it all? Does not almost all theological discussion just create more confusion, more insecurity, more doubt, more division among Christians, more offense to the non-Christian?

I have seen theology divide fathers from sons, children from parents, brothers from brothers, friends from friends. All in the name of God’s honest truth. Is this really what God's truth is intended to do? (Some would say yes.) But does anybody really have any idea what they are talking about? Do I? (Some would say no.)

At this point in my thinking, I could have gone either way. Shut down the blog or forge ahead. ” Then I reread Forde’s introduction to his book On Being a Theologian of the Cross where he cited I Corinthians 1:18-25. I read and reread. Finally, I had an “aha” moment of sorts. I think I’m beginning to understand. The theology of the cross is not just one more theology that will offend some people and not others. It offends everybody! It offends me.

One reason it offends me is that it is not a theology (at least not in the normal sense), but rather an attack on theology. In fact, it puts an end to theology. Now I think I know why Luther never wrote a systematic theology. (Or Paul, for that matter) It also dawned on me that the theology of the cross (which is not a theology) could, in fact, be very postmodern (as well as modern, medieval and ancient.)

As I forge ahead, the reader should be aware that I may truly have no idea what I’m talking about. But I will continue to explore this strange new world of the theology of the cross (which is not a theology) and will (probably) continue to blog.

Essentially Lutheran

2007-01-14T23:43:00.000-05:00

When I call myself essentially Lutheran, I mean to say that I am basically Lutheran, or in the main Lutheran, or for the most part Lutheran. The adverb gives warning that stereotypical assumptions about Luther (or Lutheranism) may or may not apply to me. The word is used in a liberating sense, allowing me to go wherever Scripture and conscience leads, not necessarily bound by the doctrinal assertions of Luther, the early confessors or of any of today’s Lutheran church bodies.

At the same time, by using the word “essentially” I hope to convey the meaning that I am in accord with the essentials of Luther’s theology or the essence of it - the core of Luther’s thought - that which makes Luther Luther. This essence refers to Luther’s way of knowing God always through the message of Christ crucified - what has come to be known as his theology of the cross.

Now, this little self-description (essentially Lutheran) may not satisfy many people. Many may not know all the radical implications of Luther’s theology of the cross. On the surface it sounds agreeable enough and uncontroversial, so they will want to know more about what really matters. Like where do I fit on the conservative/liberal theological spectrum?

For Luther, such a spectrum was not relevant. The question was always, were you a theologian of the cross or a theologian of glory? There was no spectrum. It was either/or. Of course, there were in his day a broad spectrum of theologians of glory. These may have run the gamut from conservative to liberal (no doubt defined by different issues then), but that would be of little consequence to Luther. What mattered was that they were all on the glory road and did not comprehend the cross.

For me, to be essentially Lutheran quite simply means to be a theologian of the cross and not a theologian of glory, as Luther understood these two different ways of thinking.

A Curious Faith

2007-01-12T18:47:00.000-05:00

To have a curious faith is to have a faith that is ever questioning, often doubting, constantly wondering. It is the kind of faith that can get a person into trouble with religious authorities, with one’s own conscience and, some would say, with God - though God is the most likely to forgive.

Can God Prove He Exists?

2007-01-11T12:59:00.000-05:00

Let's say God really wanted to give us convincing proof that he exists. How would he do it?

In the following passage, philosopher Robert Nozick explores the characteristics of the proof that would be required.

"The history of thought is littered with attempts to prove the existence of God. Since it is not at all easy to imagine how God could provide a permanently convincing proof to us of his existence, the failure of people to do so is not surprising. Any particular signal announcing God’s existence - writing in the sky, or a big booming voice saying he exists, or more sophisticated tricks even - could have been produced by the technology of advanced beings from another star or galaxy, and later generations would doubt it happened anyway. More promising is a permanent signal, one so embedded in the basic structure of the universe that it could not have been produced by any of its inhabitants, however advanced.

What then would an effective signal be like? Understanding the message should not depend upon complicated and convoluted reasoning which is easily mistaken or faulty. Either people wouldn’t figure it out, or they would not trust it if they did. To cope with the fact that anything can be interpreted in various ways, the signal would have to show its meaning naturally and powerfully, without depending on the conventions or artificialities of any language. The signal would have to carry a message unmistakably about God, if about anything; its meaning should shine forth. So the signal itself would have to be analogous to God; it would have to exhibit analogues of at least some of the properties it speaks of and itself instancing part of its message, the signal would be a symbol of God.

As an object symbolizing God, it would have to command respect - no people traipsing all over it, cutting and analyzing it in their laboratories, or coming to dominate it; best might be for it to be unapproachable. For people who don’t yet have the concept of God, it would help if the symbol also gave people the idea, so they could know what the symbol was a symbol of.

A perfect symbol should be spectacularly present, impossible to miss. It should capture the attention and be available by various sense modalities; no one should have to take another’s word for it. It should endure permanently or at least as long as people do, yet not constantly be before them, so that they will notice it freshly.

No one should have to be an historian to know the message had come. The signal should be a powerful object, playing a central role in people’s lives. To match God’s being the source of creation or standing in some crucially important relation to it, all life on earth should depend on the signal and center about it.

If there were some object which was the energy source of all life on earth, one which dominated the sky with its brilliance, whose existence people could not doubt, which couldn’t be poked at or treated condescendingly, an object about which people’s existence revolved, which poured out a tremendous quantity of energy, only a small fraction of which reached people, an object which people constantly worked under and whose enormous power they sensed, one they even were unable to look at directly yet which did not oppress them but showed how they could coexist with an immensely dazzling power, an object overwhelmingly powerful, warming them and lighting their way, one their daily bodily rhythms depended upon, if this object supplied energy for all life processes upon earth and for the beginning of life as well, if it were dazzlingly spectacular and beautiful, if it served to give the very idea of God to some cultures that lacked the concept, if it were immense and also similar to billions of others scattered throughout the universe so that it couldn’t have been created by more advanced beings from another galaxy or by any being lesser than the creator of the universe, then that would be a suitable message announcing God’s existence."

- Robert Nozick, The Examined Life, Philosophical Meditations, 1989. pp 49-51

Gerhard Forde

2007-01-09T19:56:00.000-05:00

Gerhard O. Forde (1927-2005)
pastor, scholar, teacher, writer
Luther Theological Seminary, St. Paul, MN
Lecturer in Church History, 1959-61
Instructor of Systematic Theology, 1964-74
Professor of Systematic Theology, 1974-98

While an ELCA theologian may seem an unlikely source of inspiration for an old WELS-bred conservative like myself, I have found Gerhard Forde to be a breath of fresh air - daring to preach and teach the more radical Gospel I have come to believe. It is a Gospel I believe Luther preached, and which Luther believed Paul preached. The writings of Gerhard Forde, more than any other source, helped me to interpret Luther’s theology in a way that I could understand. And it was remarkably consistent with what I had already come to believe through a hodgepodge of other means.

I first met Gerhard Forde in the book Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification (1988).

The book dealt with the question of the Christian life, addressing the following kinds of questions:

- How do we grow closer to God?
- Is there a secret to the spiritual life?
- Do we need a second blessing?
- Is sanctification God’s work or ours?
- Is it instantaneous or is it a process?

Five scholars from different traditions (Lutheran, Reformed, Wesleyan, Pentecostal and Contemplative) were brought together to write and respond to one another’s views. Forde was asked to present the Lutheran view.

As I read Forde’s description of sanctification, I was struck by just how clearly and calmly he said some very radical things. It was the clearest description of the unconditional Gospel I had seen in print since first reading Jeff Harkin’s Grace Plush Nothing. Forde seemed to dodge the issue of sanctification as he preached the unconditional Gospel, and this seemed to baffle the other four writers who had to respond to his views. But he was not dodging. He was merely allowing the cross to inform his view of sanctification. He was doing the theology of the cross in plain sight, and his critics didn’t quite know what to make of it.

After that brief introduction to Forde, I bought and read five of his books. I am now in the process of re-reading each one of them. I have decided that, for a book to be truly worth recommending, I personally should have been driven to read it twice or more. These five books, in my view, are worth reading at least twice:

- The Captivation of the Will: Luther vs. Erasmus on Freedom and Bondage (Lutheran Quarterly Books, 2004)

- On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (1997)

- Theology Is for Proclamation (1990)

- Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life (1982)

- Where God Meets Man (1972)

The Simul

2007-01-08T18:52:00.000-05:00

The old me rationalizes himself out of his troubles. He hears the Law and sees his salvation. He tames it first, to make it doable (at least for him, if not for those of weaker stuff). He redefines obedience and perfection in his own image - what is reasonable for him. Then he uses it to medicate his own guilt, salve his own conscience. He can do the Law. Just follow the program. Self-will, self-discipline, self-control, self-improvement - all will lead him ultimately to self-righteousness - and he will be ok with God and his fellow man. His troubles will be over.

On the other hand, the unconditional Gospel confronts the old me and causes him grief. He cannot believe that his valiant efforts are not needed, his sacrifices useless, his righteousness as filthy rags, his cooperation a sham, his faith a gift. Everything is already finished, done, accomplished. Someone else came and did his salvation business for him. This wrecks his self-esteem, turns him into nothing, defeats his purpose in life, kills his ambitions, crushes his ego, makes all things meaningless. What is the point of living now? There is nothing left to do, to think, to feel. He senses himself dying, and fights for life, as he understands life to be - the only life he knows. He sees only one option. He must fight against this Gospel. This Gospel must be silenced, compromised, watered down or ignored.

In his struggle to survive, the old me grabs for the most powerful weapon he has. He grabs the Law of God. He uses the Law as a weapon against the Gospel. He elevates it above the Gospel. He has to. The Gospel is killing him. The Law is his only defense. If it fails him, he will surely die. And that is exactly what happens. It is not a quick and painless death. It is a slow death that lasts a lifetime. The old me was as good as dead from the moment the Gospel told him so. But he fights on, oblivious, unconvinced and unconverted. He will never admit defeat. That is why he continues to vex me, and why he must eventually be put to physical death. In my physical death, the final victory of the new over the old will be complete. The old man will be gone, annihilated, never to be seen, heard or felt again. The new me, the true recreated one, will live on.

But this new man, the “me” who is born from above, is a present reality from the moment the old man is crucified with Christ. Without the new me, there would be no hope for me at all. The new me is the real deal, my true identity, a new creation of God. This me does not need self- esteem, because this me has the esteem of God. This me does not wonder about the will of God - my will and God’s are one, in Jesus. This new me thinks, acts and loves in harmony with the God who (re)created him and gave him life. He is a perfect re-creation of what God intended, because he is in Jesus. The new me is patient, kind, does not envy, does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. The new me never fails.

This new me is not a puppet on a string any more than Jesus was a puppet of the Father. This me is a unique person of God’s own design - incomprehensibly one with God in Jesus, and yet still a separate person who loves and is loved. He is not a god, but he is in the image of God - just as his first parents were made in the image of God.

Like the first Adam, this new me has no sin. But this new me is superior to the first created Adam in a most important way. This new me, because he is in Jesus (the Last Adam), will not ever sin. This new me has the mind of Christ, and Christ has the will of the Father. So the Father’s will, through Jesus, is now my will. And this will, and the faith to believe it, is actually mine. It is gifted to me for no reason other than God wants to gift it. God loves me in spite of my old me, which is hopelessly lost and beyond repair.

So where exactly is this new me? I don’t often sense him or feel him. I would have to say that I don’t even know him. I can’t even imagine him. He would have to be so vastly different from the old me that I’m not sure I would recognize him if he showed up. If he did show up, I fear I would not even like him. Does he stay completely hidden within me? Does he ever reveal himself to me or others? Am I to think of myself as two people - the good me and the bad me? Or am I to think of myself as one person in two parts - the greater part evil, and some tiny (hopefully growing) part that me is pure and good? If there is truly an old me and a new me, who on earth am I?

This doctrine is ridiculous!

Ah, there it is - the logical mind of the old me at work, fighting for life. The old me is always recognizable. He is the one who will question the existence of the new me, for the new is the death of the old. The new me is recognizable only by faith. And here is the secret to recognizing the new me. Just as I cannot see the Father, except by looking at the Son, so I cannot see the new me, except by looking at the Son. For the new me and Jesus are one. I cannot dig down deep into myself to find the new me. It is pointless to look for the new me in my own thoughts, feelings, words or works - for all those can so easily be counterfeit - the old me, dressed up in self-righteousness, fighting for survival.

The only way to see the new me is in Jesus, and him I can see only through the eyes of faith. This faith is given and nourished by the Holy Spirit through the message of grace (the Gospel). Thus the grace message becomes a mirror that reflects the new me. Just as the Law is a mirror that shows me the utter sinfulness of the old me (even when I am being good), so the Gospel is a mirror that shows me the glorious righteousness of the new me (even when I am being bad). It does this by showing me Jesus (Christ in me). The Gospel shows me the Jesus who was born for me, lived for me, was crucified for me, rose again for me and then gave me the faith to believe on Him. Through these divine acts in history past, and by the power of the Holy Spirit in history present, Jesus created the new me to live forever in history future. I can gaze upon the new me any time I want, simply by holding up the Gospel mirror. There is no evidence of outward works or inner thoughts that could confirm the existence of the new me more powerfully than the Gospel proclamation, for it is the promise of God himself.

This, briefly, is my interpretation of Luther's doctrine of simul iustus et pecator - we are simultaneously saint and sinner. Lutheran theologians sometimes affectionately refer to this as - The Simul.

My Land

2007-01-07T20:37:00.000-05:00

My house is set on an elevated corner of a two acre plot of land which slopes down to a pond and overlooks another ten acres of nature preserve, with wetlands and two more ponds. Trees and brush hide most other houses that border this preserve. Between the house and my pond lie the gardens and grasses of a natural hillscape, designed and planted by the former owner in cooperation with nature’s Creator. Together they built the pond, planted the trees, flowers, bushes and grasses - then invited the birds and butterflies, the fish and the frogs.

The former owner was an undertaker who spent most of his working life in the basement of a funeral home - making the dead presentable to the living. Much of his free time, I surmise, was spent on this land - dressing and keeping it, as did the first Adam. His wife was an artist - the house filled with her paintings. The man did his art outside (and in that funeral home basement).

I met the man, but did not get to know him. This leaves me free to imagine him as I want. I speculate on his life - a life lived between the living and the dead. What was he thinking? Was he thinking of his land while he dressed the dead? Did he think about the dead while he worked the land? Was the seasonal cycle of the land (which died in the winter, but always came to life in the spring) a source of constant hope and joy for him as he went about the gruesome tasks of his profession. I think so. He was a happy man.

I bought this land and with it the necessity of caring for it. I wonder what I can possibly do to improve it. To change it in any significant way seems strangely sacrilegious. It is twice not mine. It belongs to an undertaker and his God.

McLaren and The Lost Luther

2007-01-06T11:59:00.000-05:00

Soon after being excommunicated from my Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) congregation in Milwaukee, I found myself standing in the Castle Church of Wittenberg, Germany, gazing on Luther's tomb. I wondered, were he alive today, what he would think of me and my petty struggle with ecclesiastical authority. I wondered more generally what he would think of the modern Lutheran church, with all its obvious flaws. Would he recognize his theology in it? What would he think of the Christian church at large, fractured into the thousands of denominations that grew from the seeds of protest he planted? Finally, what would he think of the new emerging church movement, kingdom theology, church growth, and the host of other modern and postmodern contributions to church history?

What would Luther think? WWLT? Is this a slogan that would sell armbands? Not likely. And perhaps rightfully so. Luther himself said “People try to make me a fixed star. But I’m not. I’m a wandering planet. No one should look to me for guidance.” Modern Christianity, it would seem, agrees. Luther is a rogue planet. And few there are that look to him or his theology for guidance.

Much of what Luther considered important and essential seems to have fallen out of favor. His beliefs are not so much refuted or thought false as they are simply ignored, deemphasized or overshadowed by the seemingly more reasonable, more relevant, and more rewarding theologies of modern Christianity. Luther, in other words, seems to have fallen off the theological map.

Brian McLaren, a leader in the emergent church movement, exemplifies the Rodney Dangerfield-like attention given the heirs of Luther. You need only read the subtitle of his book A Generous Orthodoxy to get the picture:

Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, catholic, green, incarnational, depressed-yet-hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian.

As cutely inclusive as McLaren wants to be, he apparently found no need to be Lutheran.

What are we to make of this? Is Luther’s theology considered so odd and out-of-date that it does not merit mention in a book with orthodoxy in its title and generosity as its theme? Or did McLaren simply find nothing positive to say about Lutheranism and therefore kept silent. (If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.) Or did he, like so many others, lump Luther with Calvin and treat them as essentially of the same ilk, with Calvin as the more substantive? Or a fourth possibility. Modern Lutheranism might have appeared to him such a hodgepodge of legalism and liberalism that he didn't quite know what to make of it. Finally, perhaps he simply didn’t know anything about Lutheranism. It was not on his radar screen. Lutheranism, in its shy, Garrison Keillor-like self-consciousness - not wanting to draw attention to itself - may have left the building before McLaren arrived.

McLaren’s motives don't really matter. I will forgive him his affront to Luther for now and return to some of his more interesting ideas later, because he is helpful in understanding how Luther’s thought might relate to the postmodern mind. In the meantime, McLaren provides us with a useful illustration of the seeming disappearance of Luther’s essential theology. I can’t fault McLaren for not appreciating Luther's legacy when I myself, a lifelong Lutheran, lost sight of much of it myself. For that matter, maybe I never really saw it.

My Confirmation

2007-01-05T09:41:00.000-05:00

My confirmation, as I recall, had nothing to do with me confirming anything. I suppose I must have said vows, but I don’t recall exactly what they were. I don’t believe they had much meaning for me then, nor any now. To me, the confirmation process was a picture of the grace of God at work. It was an enacted parable in which I and all my 14-year old classmates were allowed to play a part.

The classes leading to confirmation were different from all other grade school classes. There were no grades, tests, compulsory memory work or homework. We sat and listened twice a week as our pastor explained the truths of the Bible from Luther’s Small Catechism.

In this class, we were never put on the spot. The pastor asked questions, but he only called on those who raised their hand. He assigned memory verses from the Bible and the catechism, but when it came time to recite he always asked for volunteers or we recited together as a class. His class was so different because he treated us with the same respect given to adults. But it went beyond that. His way of teaching was not some kind of method. He did not demand so little of us as a way to make us responsible for our own learning. He truly seemed to take no responsibility for us. He was not trying to convince us or indoctrinate us. There were never any lectures about “how important this was” or anything like that. He lectured, and we listened and learned (or not). It was no more complicated than that.

I loved my little catechism and my Bible. They represented something I knew to be important. They were ancient books, written by famous people, containing serious ideas. The books had no pictures. This alone put them in a way different category of textbook. In those day it was considered a desecration to write in books, and we didn’t, except to put little x’s (in pencil) by the assigned passages we were encouraged to memorize. We didn’t take notes as I recall. Taking notes was unnecessary, since there were no tests. And besides, little was spoken that was not already in print.

Examination Sunday in front of the entire church preceded confirmation. We sat in chairs facing the pastor on the altar, our backs to the congregation, as if it were a normal class, but with an audience. We knew in advance the questions we were going to be asked, but (as in class) no one was called on who had not first raised their hand. I’m not sure of the origin or purpose of examination Sunday in the Lutheran church. Perhaps at one time it was supposed to be a true exam, where we as students were to prove our mastery of the subject matter. But such (thankfully) was not the case for me or my classmates in the early 1960’s. Examination Sunday was a parable of the Gospel’s power to fulfill the Law. Under the pastor’s grace, there could be no failure of this exam. We were all going to pass, and so by grace we were saved any embarrassment. Confirmation was a gift, so no one could boast.

Thirty years later I would do battle with other pastors to try and save the confirmation grace parable for my own children. But I would fail. Tests and grading had invaded the instruction classes. Homework was common place. Papers had to be written. Church attendance was used as a measure of eligibility for confirmation. The secularization of confirmation classes made them indistinguishable from other kinds of classes. The Law had triumphed over the Gospel and the parable was no more.

The Sunday following my examination Sunday was Confirmation Sunday. As part of the ritual we were assigned a single Bible verse to say on the altar. As I recall, I was more nervous on confirmation Sunday than I was for the examination Sunday, simply because of this mandatory recitation. Although I was an above-average memorizer, I was always terribly anxious about reciting - fearing I would blank out and look stupid. My verse was 1 Timothy 6:12:

“Fight the good fight of faith. Lay hold on eternal life,
whereunto thou art also called, and hath professed a good
profession before many witnesses.”

I don’t know how the pastor assigned the verses to us. It could have been random, but at the time I thought not. It was apparent he was giving short, easy verses to those who were known to have difficulty reciting. And the best students in the class normally got the long, difficult verses. Mine was somewhere in between, assigned for different reasons (or so I thought at the time.) I was convinced I got my verse because I had told people I wanted to become a Lutheran Day School teacher. Thus I had “professed a good profession before many witnesses.” I have never forgotten my memory verse, in spite of the fact that I misunderstood its meaning then and, for the most part, do not entirely understand its meaning now.

All these details, of course, muddle the main point of the confirmation parable. Through confirmation, I and all my pre-adolescent classmates were accepted into the congregation as an automatic rite of passage - based entirely on our age. From the slowest to the brightest, we all wore the white gown and the flower. There was no male or female, no Jew or Greek, no success or failure. We were accepted into the adult world of the church simply by the grace of being there.

I was never asked if I wanted to be confirmed. Such a question would have been inappropriate. This was not for me to decide. This was not about my wants or desires, my commitment, my faith, my mastery of anything. I could no more make a lifelong commitment to God than I could make a commitment to my future profession. I was, after all, just a 14 year old farm kid.

In my confirmation, I supposedly confirmed what took place at my infant baptism - speaking for myself now what was spoken for me then. But the reality is, I did not confirm anything. I was confirmed. Not by the command or the power of God, since God and Scripture know nothing of confirmation. I was confirmed by a congregation of people, according to the tradition of the church, accepted as an adult Christian and now allowed to sit at the Table with the big people. It was a simple rite of passage based on age and grace. In that light, excluding all other grand intentions others may ascribe, it was (for me) a great success.

The Hinge on Which All Turns

2007-01-03T20:03:00.000-05:00

To Luther, the essential issue of Christianity was the question of the freedom or bondage of the human will, calling it the “hinge on which all turns.” By his own account, he hoped that his book The Bondage of the Will would survive, even if all his other writings perished. The book did survive, but unfortunately it is fairly difficult to read and digest. After muddling my way through it, I bought Gerhard Forde’s commentary on it, The Captivation of the Will - Luther vs. Erasmus on Freedom and Bondage. This was extremely helpful and a fair substitute for any who want to know the essence of the matter without having to endure Luther’s bombastic and sometimes tedious 16th century polemics.

For an even quicker summary of the matter, what follows is an excerpt from J.I. Packer’s introduction to his translation of Luther’s The Bondage of the Will:

“What is the modern reader to make of The Bondage of the Will? That it is a brilliant and exhilarating performance, a masterpiece of the controversialist’s difficult art, he will no doubt readily admit; but now comes the question, is Luther’s case any part of God’s truth? and, if so, has it a message for Christians today? No doubt the reader will find the way by which Luther leads him to be a strange new road, an approach which in all probability he has never considered, a line of thought which he would normally label ‘Calvinistic’ and hastily pass by. This is what Lutheran orthodoxy itself has done; and the present-day Evangelical Christian (who has semi-Pelagianism in his blood) will be inclined to do the same. But both history and Scripture, if allowed to speak, counsel otherwise.

Historically, it is a simple matter of fact that Martin Luther and John Calvin, and, for that matter, Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Bucer, and all the leading Protestant theologians of the first epoch of the Reformation, stood on precisely the same ground here. On other points, they had their differences; but in asserting the helplessness of man in sin, and the sovereignty of God in grace, they were entirely at one. To all of them, these doctrines were the very life-blood of the Christian faith. A modern editor of Luther’s great work underscores this fact: ‘Whoever puts this book down without having realized that evangelical theology stands or falls with the doctrine of the bondage of the will has read it in vain.’

The doctrine of free justification by faith only, which became the storm-center of so much controversy during the Reformation period, is often regarded as the heart of the Reformers’ theology, but this is hardly accurate. The truth is that their thinking was really centered upon the contention of Paul, echoed with varying degrees of adequacy by Augustine, and Gottschalk, and Bradwardine, and Wycliffe, that the sinner’s entire salvation is by free and sovereign grace only. The doctrine of justification by faith was important to them because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace; but it actually expressed for them only one aspect of this principle, and that not its deepest aspect. The sovereignty of grace found expression in their thinking at a profounder level still, in the doctrine of monergistic regeneration - the doctrine, that is, that the faith which receives Christ for justification is itself the free gift of a sovereign God, bestowed by spriritual regeneration in the act of effectual calling.

To the Reformers, the crucial question was not simply, whether God justifies believers without works of law. It was the broader question, whether sinners are wholly helpless in their sin, and whether God is to be thought of as saving them by free, unconditional, invincible grace, not only justifying them for Christ’s sake when they come to faith, but also raising them from the death of sin by His quickening Spirit in order to bring them to faith. Here was the crucial issue: whether God is the author, not merely of justification, but also of faith; whether, in the last analysis, Christianity is a religion of utter reliance on God for salvation and all things necessary to it, or of self-reliance and self-effort.”

- J.I. Packer, Introduction to his translation of The Bondage of the Will (1957) p. 57-59.

One sentence in this excerpt struck me as particularly provocative. That was the comment that suggested that orthodox Lutheranism has abandoned Luther on this crucial issue. In the same sentence he indicated that the modern evangelical ("who has semi-pelagianism in his blood") has done the same. In other words, he is saying that the Reformation failed.

I found this same assessment of the "unpopularity" of Luther in the forward to Forde's book on the bondage of the will, written by Steven Paulson. Paulson writes:

"There are not many who have been willing to follow Luther as he is 'forced to confess' the captivation of the will. There are even fewer who will confess with him just who Jesus Christ is and what he is doing with sinners. Just so, there are not many who have been willing to embrace what this implies for preaching. Yet what a vast difference it makes for a preacher to stand before a congregation and assume their wills are bound rather than stand before a group and assume their wills are merely in need of motivation."
- Steven Paulson, Forward to The Captivation of the Will, by Gerhard Forde, 2005. p xi

I am inclined to agree with all this. The Reformation has seemd to have failed. It is obvious that Pelagianism and its many flavors is winning the day in evangelical Christianity and has certainly infected Lutheranism in many ways. So if I stand on Luther's side of the hinge (which I do), and the hinge is truly the crux of the matter (as I believe it is), then I need to get used to being in a very tiny minority.

On the other hand, I am less inclined to divide Christianity by this hinge and exert a lot of energy lamenting the lost Luther. I think we all have semi-pelagianism in our blood. It is part and parcel of the original sin and therefore ought not surprise us when it rises up and tries to dominate. I don't mean to minimize the matter by saying this. Original sin is clearly a serious problem. So serious that only God could handle it, as Luther's theology attests. But rather than seeing Christianity as divided by this hinge, it might be more useful to see the individual Christian divided - including myself. The hinge divides the old and the new me. The old me will always be Pelagian and convinced of my own freedom to accept or reject God, obey or disobey, trust or not trust, believe or not believe. The old me is dead but doesn't know it. So it fights for its own survival. The new me, created by the Gospel, will always know that it was God who gave me birth, God who will preserve me, and God who will enable whatever is required of me. The old me will not be convinced or converted with reason or Scripture. The old me must be killed by the Gospel.

Unreasonable Opposites

2007-01-02T18:26:00.000-05:00

I have struggled, like many others, with Biblical contradictions. They made me angry, resentful and distrustful of the Bible. How could two seemingly contradictory statements both be true? It was foolishness. The theology of the cross, as a different way of thinking, rescued me from my misery. How did it do this? It started when I finally came to understand the cross itself as an eternal contradiction.

The crucifixion is the ugliest event in human history. It is also the most beautiful. It is an act of utter injustice and perfect justice at the same time. It is love and hate, victory and defeat, strength and weakness, judment and grace. And on and on. If I had a quarrel with Biblical contradiction, I would have to argue with the cross. This I was incapable of doing. Eventually my discomfort with other Biblical contradictions yielded to comfort. Paradox lost its power to confuse or upset me. This is not something I remember reasoning out for myself. No "aha" moment. It just seemed to happen the more I absorbed Luther’s Theology of the Cross. I can now see how Luther so firmly and confidently held to his unreasonable opposites - an ability which infuriated his scholastic opponents at the time and continues to marginalize him in Christianity today. If the cross is true, then I can be simultaneously sinner and saint. I can be crucified with Christ and still not dead. Jesus can be human and God. The Bible can be words of God and words of men. The Gospel can kill and bring to life. A baby can be baptized and believe. The body of Jesus can be eaten with bread, His blood received in wine. If the crucifixion of Jesus happened, many unreasonable opposites can be true because of it.

Luther never abandoned reason, as some have accused. The cross simply humbled him to the Scriptures in such a way that he was compelled to interpret all Scripture in the light of the cross. In that light he saw no need to resolve Biblical conflict. While others plodded on, he was able to admit defeat and just accept opposing truths. He did not hold them "in tension", as we like to say today. That notion, I think, would be foreign to him. He saw paradox, but seemed to see harmony, not tension. And he did not really hold to anything. The cross held him - and would not let him go. This is how he could preach that Scripture was clear, everyone should read it and anyone could understand it. This is perhaps one of his most outrageously unreasonable doctrines (one I still have a hard time believing), but it illustrates his level of confidence in the power of the Gospel over against the power of us. He certainly must have known that for most people the Bible was not clear. He put no confidence in people's ability to figure it out. He just trusted that the Gospel of the cross would do unto others that which it had done unto him.

All of us are theologians

2007-01-01T22:58:00.000-05:00

"...all of us are theologians, in one way or another. Being a theologian just means thinking and speaking about God. True, we may not do much of that. We might go for days and weeks without a thought of God entering our heads, but that is usually impossible. Things happen. Acccidents. Tragedies. Deaths and funerals. Natural disasters. Illness. Loss. Suffering. Disappointment. Wrongdoing. And so on and on. There is also good fortune. Experience of great beauty or pleasure. Sheer grace. Chance encounters that determine our lives. Love. We begin to wonder… wondering if there is some logic to it all in our lives, or some injustice. We become theologians."

- Gerhard O. Forde On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 1997. p 10-11