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CONCORDIA JOURNAL

Volume 32 April 2006 Number 2

CONTENTS

EDITORIALS

Editor’s Note ...... 126 Theological Observer ...... 128

ARTICLES

Aspects of Lutheran Identity: A Confessional Perspective Werner Klän ...... 133 Luther Discovers the Gospel: Coming to the Truth and Confessing the Truth Robert Rosin ...... 147 Luther at Worms and Wartburg: Still Confessing Robert Rosin...... 161 Here We Stand: Confessing the Faith in Luther’s Footsteps from Worms to Smalcald Robert Kolb ...... 175 The Formula of Concord as a Model for Discourse in the Church Robert Kolb ...... 189

GRAMMARIAN’S CORNER...... 211

HOMILETICAL HELPS ...... 214

BOOK REVIEWS ...... 238

BOOKS RECEIVED ...... 252

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 125 Editor’s Note

The five articles presented in this issue were originally given at the twenty-first conference of the International Lutheran Council (ILC), which met in Berlin, Germany, from August 27 to September 2, and are publishered here by permission of the ILC. The conference, which involved bishops and presidents from twenty-five Lutheran churches was hosted by the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church (SELK) in Germany. The ILC is an association of confessional Lutheran churches from all over the world to promote the proclamation of the Gospel according to the Lutheran Confessions. It represents the more conservative churches of the Lutheran family. Lutheranism is the largest group within Protestant- ism, with over 69.5 million members. It traces its beginning to the sixteenth-century reformer Martin Luther. Dr. Werner Klän, Professor of Systematic Theology at the Lutherische Theologische Hochschule in Oberursel, Germany, delivered the keynote address, in which he emphasized the importance of the Lutheran Confes- sions for the church today. After pointing out that one fundamental characteristic of the Lutheran church is that it is a “confessional” church, he examines what Luther understood by the concept of the church being confessional. Confessions, which give identity to a church body, must be based on Scripture as the origin and founding document of the Christian faith. He then raises the question of “Lutheran identity” for the Lutheran church in Germany today in light of the Leuenberg Concord which was intended to bridge the differences between the Lutheran, United, and Reformed churches and what this means for SELK. Confessional statements keep the church grounded in the Word of God, provide a means of identity, and supply a guideline whereby Christians can understand and articulate their faith. In his article, “Luther Discovers the Gospel: Coming to the Truth and Confessing the Truth,” Dr. Robert Rosin begins with Martin Luther’s self- confession to being the son of a peasant who earned university degrees, turned from a future legal career to become an monk, then clashed with the church of his day, and married a nun. As Luther wrestled with the theological issues of his day, he was led to confess a different theology than what he had initially learned. Luther rediscovered the Gospel message of God’s promise of redemption in Christ and spent his life confessing and teaching that faith. In his article, “Luther at Worms and the Wartburg: Still Confessing,” Dr. Rosin starts with a discussion of Luther’s boldness and the risks he took in standing up to the emperor and church when he confessed, “Here I stand....” Luther did not take his stand simply to be contrary to the church of his day or to establish for himself a personality cult, but, in reexamining Scripture, he became convinced that comfort in Christ’s cross can be grasped

126 only by faith. Luther found some theological/confessional company in individuals like Johannes Brenz and Martin Bucer. Luther went on to write over 120 thick volumes in which he set forth his beliefs about the teachings of Scripture and the true contents of the Christian faith, until he made his final confession on his deathbed when he affirmed that he believed in Christ as the Son of God, who was his Savior and Redeemer. Dr. Robert Kolb, in his article, “Here We Stand: Confessing the Faith in Luther’s Footsteps from Worms to Smalcald,” notes the infrequent occurrences in the history of the church of a religious figure being summoned to testify before the highest secular governmental power and appealing to Scripture and conscience against the church and civil powers as Luther had done at the Diet of Worms. Luther’s confession at Worms involved a new understanding of human identity in relation to God, based on his distinction of the two kinds of righteousness. On the basis of his new insights into the relation between human beings and God, he formulated his theology of the cross. The Lutheran understanding of what makes human beings righteous before God, namely, faith in the merits of Christ, remain his, and our, most important contribution to ecumenical discussions in the church today. Luther began a habit of confessing his faith at the Diet of Worms and remained convinced that confessing the faith is a vital part of being children of God. In his second article, “The Formula of Concord as a Model for Dis- course in the Church,” Dr. Kolb points out that the “Formula of Concord” was the last of the confessional writings of the Lutheran church and was intended to bring harmony to strife-ridden churches of the time. It was to be a binding summary of Christian teachings regarding certain articles of faith that were in dispute at the time among different factions of Lutherans, such as the Gnesio-Lutherans, the Philippists, and the Crypto-Calvinists. Harmony was restored due to the dedication of men, such as, Jakob Andreae and his colleagues to the confession of the faith and the unity of the church. After more than four hundred years, the “Formula of Concord” still serves as an expression and confession of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and as a model for theological discourse in the church. It is our privilege to make these articles available to more people in the church and world. Quentin F. Wesselschmidt

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 127 Theological Observer

Pastoral Questions about Immigration Problems

One of the results of our Synod’s fiscal crisis which precipitated its organizational downsizing three years ago is that now there is no Hispanic administrative presence for Hispanic ministry at the International Cen- ter. Hispanics involved in educational or district programs around the Synod do what they can, but there is no center to channel questions and concerns. In practical terms, Concordia Seminary’s Hispanic Institute has become the default depository of a variety of questions and complaints related to ministry to Hispanics. On lighter occasions, I am called upon to suggest a Spanish language school in the U.S. or Central America, a possible servant event site in the States where someone’s child or grandchild could get some safe exposure to Hispanic culture. The tone of the question becomes darker, however, when a pastor calls to ask if he should report a worshipper whom he suspects is undocumented to the Immigration Ser- vice. In early October 2005, questions revolving around immigration seemed to dominate one of my workweeks. Early in the week, I finished editing the DVD summary of our June day-long workshop entitled Immigration and the Law which is jointly sponsored by Lutheran Immigration and Refu- gee Service and the seminary. This tool should be available to the Synod in early 2006. Over the next three days of the week, I received queries about immigration problems that prompt me to suggest the need for broad theological conversation about the nation’s immigration crisis. The first series of questions came from a circuit counselor of a midwestern district:

We have this problem. Hispanics are responding to our mission efforts. They are forming worshipping groups. When it comes to organizing and church polity, we really are not sure what to do because so many of them are not here legally…they really do not exist before the law, so they really cannot become voting members and sign our constitution or hold offices…or could they? Our historic polity suggests a congregation-based government that has a stable base for calling its pastoral leader. Here we have a numer- ous but quite fluid congregational base which probably cannot be legally responsible. Who calls and directs the missionary-pastor?

The “Theological Observer” serves as a forum for comment on, assessment of, and reactions to developments and events in the church at large, as well as in the world of theology generally. Since areas of expertise, interest, and perceptions often vary, the views presented in this section will not always reflect the opinion of the editorial committee.

128 The next day another pastor from another state called to present this problem:

One of my members overstayed his visa many years ago and has been living undocumented for some years. He is a wonderful evangelist, and I want him to receive theological education. He needs training. Do we give theological education to the undocumented? If we send him back to his home country to study theology, he will probably never be allowed to enter again…thus separating him from his family here and my ministry. If he stays, can he ever be ordained into the “public ministry”? Is theological education only for the documented?

Two days later a third pastor asked this question:

One of our members has a pretty good theological education but is here illegally. He has been in charge of our Hispanic congregation for some time. Will we get in trouble with the law if we call and employ him? If we ask him to leave to return to his home country, he won’t be able to minister to his people here or support his family here or there.

It seems that as much as we might want to avoid dealing with the problem of what to do with the eleven or twelve million undocumented immigrants in the United States or with the thirty to forty percent undocumented Lutheran Hispanics in our congregations, the questions will not go away. They invite us to consider the following:

1. Is it a sin for a person who is not able to feed his children in his own country to cross boundaries without documents to do legitimate work in the developed country so as to provide minimum sustenance for his family, even though he knows that he is techni- cally breaking a law? Genesis 42 reminds us how easy a nation can invoke homeland security concerns for its own end, as Joseph used the national security question to coerce his brothers. Did Yahweh make a mistake in His salvation history when He included Jacob’s sons’ hunger as an impetus for the trek to Egypt because they had heard that there was food? 2. May a local congregation freely minister to that person and include her/him into full congregational life? 3. May undocumented but productive immigrants minister to others and assume roles in public ministry? 4. May Lutheran financial entities…insurance companies…church extension fund offer financial services to the undocumented Lutheran?

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 129 Our own United States departments of agriculture and labor have published reports over the last decade that show that American vegetable and livestock production cannot function without the undocumented immigrant. He/she is subsidizing the American dinner table by low wages and often inhumane working conditions without recourse to fair labor protection standards. If it is a sin for the undocumented worker to be here,

1. Is it a sin for a middle-class Lutheran to eat meat, fruit, or grains that he or she knows have probably been harvested or processed by undocumented immigrants? 2. Is it a sin for Lutheran congregations to employ lawn services to maintain church property landscaping knowing that in all prob- ability a good share of the employees of that company are not documented? Could a congregation employ an undocumented landscape worker but not an undocumented minister of the Gospel? 3. Is it a sin for Lutherans to use office buildings and hotels in which a goodly portion of housekeeping is carried out by underpaid, undocumented workers? Would it really be possible to hold any district or synodical meetings in any hotel or conference center in the country without the undocumented worker making that possible? 4. Around 420 undocumented men and women are literally dying in the desert each year trying to get into the United States to work so as to support their families. How is that a concern for Lutheran Christians?

Is it possible to address these questions theologically? Is there cause for a theological critique of our life style and our patterns of consumption that engender the immigrants’ attraction to this country and the willingness of our local, state, and federal institutions to selectively enforce laws that favor our affluent life style while at the same time demonize and endanger the very hand that feeds us? We need to talk about this. Douglas Groll

On the Virtues of Just Hangin’ Out

In an essay for Harper’s magazine entitled “Quitting the Paint Fac- tory,” Mark Slouka makes an important observation about American culture. Slouka observes that in our culture, the god of “work” is increasingly commanding the devotion of the American people. He thinks that although we may have substituted a host of secular pleasures for the idea of heaven, we still believe that the work of our hands will save us. In his own words:

It is this willingness to hand over our lives that fascinates and appalls me. There’s such a lovely perversity to it; it’s so wonder-

130 fully counterintuitive, so very Christian: You must empty your pockets, turn them inside out, and spill out your wife and your son, the pets you hardly knew, the days you simply missed alto- gether watching the sunlight fade on the bricks across the way.... You must give it up, all of it, and by your example teach your children to do the same, and then—because even this is not enough—you must train yourself to believe that this outsourcing of your life is both natural and good.1

Slouka’s theological reading of secular culture caught my eye because the subject of “work” has come up in my own conversations with seminary students. Occasionally, I would be asked about how many hours a week I worked when I was a pastor. When I inquire why they are asking, the students usually would say that on vicarage or in some other capacity, they worked under a pastor who averaged seventy to eighty hours of work every week! Even though their supervisors usually gave them a pro forma warning, “Don’t do what I do,” the students still felt the pressure to conform. Apparently, their experience further blurred the already faint boundaries between competing priorities in their lives and left some of them wondering if the eighty-hour workweek would be their fate too. This raises a question that every pastor should ask himself: Has this false god from America’s pantheon snuck into my heart in Christian disguise? If Slouka is right, many laypeople in our churches already pay hom- age to him and to the covenant of success and happiness that he promises to fulfill for the faithful. Are pastors and pastoral teams fellowshipping at his table too? Of course, God’s called servants have a ready excuse to justify their extreme devotion to “work”: It’s really all devotion to the true God! It’s righteous self-sacrifice for the kingdom! Eugene Peterson, however, has a different perspective. Echoing Slouka, he quotes Hilary of Tours that such pastoral business is a blasphemous anxiety to do God’s work for Him.2 Peterson believes that there are two reasons pastors become so busy: vanity and laziness. Vanity because we want to appear important. What better way than to be incredibly busy? The long hours and crowded sched- ule are all proof to anyone who notices that we are important. And besides, we don’t want to disappoint anyone. Laziness because we let others decide what we will do instead of deciding ourselves. Because we lazily let others establish our values and goals we find ourselves frantically trying to satisfy half a dozen different demands, none of which is essential to our vocation.3 All of us can stand to be reminded that in Scripture one of the main

1 Mark Slouka, “Quitting the Paint Factory: On the Virtues of Idleness,” in Harper’s (November 2004): 62. 2 Eugene H. Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1989), 27. 3 Ibid., 27-28.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 131 hors d’oeuvres of God’s coming kingdom was the Sabbath—characterized by an absence of work! (Which, ironically, the inveterate workaholics managed to turn into quite a job to keep!) In another telling image, the prophets describe the kingdom of God, not as a place of business and work where money and power talk, but as a banquet of great food that money can’t buy (Is. 55:1-2). In other words, it’s a free party, for which we didn’t plan and for which we didn’t work. And the coup de grâce? God promises that we are the heirs of everything anyway! The idea is that we get it all without working for it! If this is really true, then whenever we rest and relax with our loved ones or whenever we appropriately enjoy the material blessings of God’s creation, we are getting a small taste of the full meal that will be ours. In other words, we are sampling the merchandise ahead of time. This means that we need not be slaves to the god of work in order to get what our culture says we must have. It is all ours anyway. By taking the time now to enjoy the good things that come their way in life, Christians are only tasting what will be their future reality. Freed from the consequences of our sin and guilt, and from the fear of not measuring up, we are free to enjoy the rich variety of experiences that life offers, knowing that it is just a sample of what is to come. Of course, here I am advocating neither the virtue of sloth nor the stubborn refusal to do anything but the most basic pastoral tasks (which apparently characterizes the ministry of some among us). Pastors are servants of the Gospel who serve people in all aspects of their lives. As such, they are not always (nor even often) in total control of their own sched- ules. Pastors serve when and where they are needed. And faithful servants are willing to make that sacrifice for the sake of others. That means that pastors do work hard. Pastors ought to be known as faithful servants who carry out their ministry with integrity and honor. Christ’s flock deserves nothing less. But, at the same time, it is also true that pastors ought to be known as fun-loving, family-oriented, extravagant, generous people because such lives manifest the presence of a greater reality among us and in us. Wisdom literature reflects on both aspects of our lives as we try to sort through all the voices competing for our attention. Wisdom teaches that those who live wisely in this life, not only know the importance of hard and honest work (Prov. 6:6; 10:5; 12:11; 20:13), but they also know how to enjoy life, how to rest and celebrate with family and friends (Eccl. 2:24; 3:13; 5:19; 9:9). Wisdom literature includes both emphases because both are important. In this age, until Christ comes again, life is a pas de deux. The wise man knows how to strike a balance. May God grant us the wisdom and strength to do this—and forgiveness when we fail. “...everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man” (Eccl. 3:13.) Timothy E. Saleska

132 Articles

Aspects of Lutheran Identity: A Confessional Perspective

Werner Klän

According to Hermann Sasse, the Lutheran church is “the confessional church par excellence.” And indeed, the confessional habit is significant for the profile of Lutheran faith, theology, and church, and thus an unmistakeable mark of Lutheran identity. Yet, from the very beginning, Biblical faith has striven to give answer to the Word of God, by praising Him. Christian faith has always required that we render account for its contents, both to God and humanity alike. From the early days of Christianity, believers were eager to express their faith in unison. Short formulas, like the “Sh’ma Yisrael” function as identity-markers to the people of God; concise phrases, like “kýrios iesoûs” reveal their speakers as members of the Christian community. Baptism, at the beginning of Christian life, is an excellent occasion of expressing one’s faith as corresponding to the basic convictions of the congregation. Persecutions and trials provide a particular opportunity to defend against accusations and to bear witness to kings and the political public. Misinter- pretations of God’s Word, and consequently false concepts of Christian dog- mas, challenge the church to clarify disputes, and to (re)establish consensus among its ranks. Throughout the history of Israel and Christendom, apologies and creeds, like the ancient or ecumenical symbols of faith, origi- nate from these situations. The Lutheran church, however, in a special manner is characterized as being “confessional.” This is due to the fact that “confession,” in the Lutheran use of the term, means a responsible reaction to God’s faith- creating action through His Word, expressing not only a person’s “private” convictions on religious matters, but formulating an agreement on the obligatory feature of Christian faith, revealing the accordance of a person’s belief with the doctrine of the church. This can be shown easily with regard to Martin Luther’s concept of confession.

Dr. Werner Klän is Professor of Systematic Theology at Lutherische Theologische Hochschule in Oberursel, Germany. This article was originally presented at the twenty-first conference of the International Lutheran Council which met in Berlin, Germany, from August 27 to September 2, 2005. The article was translated into English by Dr. Frederick S. Gardiner.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 133 1. Luther’s Concept of Confession

To the general public, it was Luther’s appearance at the Diet of Worms in 1521 that made him a true confessor. Indeed, Luther had to appear twice in the assembly. The first time, he asked for time for reflection; on the next day, he refused to retract: “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason..., I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the word of God. So help me God!”1 That scene before the German emperor has grown into mythological dimensions. But beyond the myth of Luther as a “hero of faith,” the profit of Luther’s appearance at the Diet of Worms for modern European and Western history, is the maintenance of an individual knowing his conscience captured by the Word of God. This being the sole authority he was willing to obey in spiritual affairs, Luther had found the steadfastness to resist the threats of the greatest political power and to oppose the ecclesiastical authorities of his times. To confess, in this regard, meant not to give in to the compulsion of revocation: “For this is the way, the opportunity, and the result of the Word of God.”2 As a response to the Word of God, Luther took the responsibility for what he had learned from Scriptures by proclaiming and teaching the Gospel as a preacher and professor at the University of Wittenberg. To confess, in this understanding, is an act of (Christian) faith, which is created by the very Word of God that faith is related to.3 In its essentially evangelical sense, the Word of God is His promise of salvation which calls for faith, and in doing so, conveys the faith that is able to accept God’s promise. Luther, indeed, indicates what he labels a “correlation of promise and faith” (“promissio ac fides sunt correlativa”). As the Gospel recounts and conveys God’s action to the believer, confessing the Gospel is the “natural” reaction of faith—faith itself being a gift of God.4 Faith consequently cannot but express itself in terms of confession. Conversely, this confession is “dependent on” and “initiated by...the Word of God.”5 Therefore, in the first place, confession, according to Luther, means assertion, as he stressed in the debate with Erasmus on the freedom or bondage of will. “For it is not the mark of a Christian mind to take no delight in assertions; on the contrary, a man must delight in assertions or he will be no Christian. And by assertion…I mean a constant adhering, affirming, confessing, maintaining, and an invincible persevering.... Nothing is better known or more common among Christians than assertion. Take

1 Luther’s Works (St. Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia and Fortress, 1958-1986) [henceforth LW], 32:112-113. 2 LW 32:111. 3 Robert Kolb, Confessing the Faith: Reformers Define the Church, 1530-1580 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1991), 22f. 4 Ibid., 21. 5 Ibid., 17.

134 away assertions and you take away Christianity.”6 Assertion, or affirmation is the positive, constructive, edifying, restoring, consoling expression of faith, congruent to the content of God’s promise. So the essence of Christian theology is to be found in assertion, which is “the only appropriate form for theological existence.”7 By emphasizing the affirmative character of confession, Luther does not at all deny the defensive nature of confessing the faith as an integral part of Christian doctrine. Therefore, confession includes the demarcation of error and misinterpretation of God’s Word as well. In order to preserve the truth of the Biblical message, rejections have to be articulated. To his most important treatise on the subject of the Eucharist in 1528, he added a “confession” which he presented as a doctrinal testament. In this document, which became the source of and the pattern to the confessions that the Protestant territories were to formulate only a few years later, like the Augsburg Confession of 1530, Luther laid down his personal faith; but he did so pursuing a doctrinal and ecclesiastical intention. Obviously, Luther’s confession of 1528 follows the structure of the Apostolic Creed, integrating a great deal of the contemporary issues questioned in theology and church: “I desire with this treatise to confess my faith before God and all the world, point by point. I am determined to abide by it until my death and (so help me God!) in this faith to depart from this world and to appear before the judgment seat of our Lord Jesus Christ.”8 Here, the contemporary and, at the same time, the eschatological dimension of Luther’s concept of confession becomes perceptible. Far from being just a personal act of a single individual, this testimonial type of testament was conceived by Luther as a true expression of the faith that all Christianity shares: “This is my faith, for so all true Christians believe and so the Holy Scriptures teach us.” Thus, a personal testimony of faith cannot be, by definition, different from what the one, holy, catholic church has believed and confessed from the very beginning. Inevitably, from the Lutheran point of view, the doctrine of the church has to be proved by the Scriptures. Confession, as a personal action as well as a statement on behalf of the church, responds to the Scriptural witness and is determined to its correspondence with the basic testimony of God’s Word. The doctrinal documents, for their part, define and regulate the teaching, preaching, and the life of the church by normative standards, derived from the Scriptures and applied to the necessities and needs of the church. Though this application occurs at certain times and places in history, it is intended to confess the truth of faith valid for all times. Believers of all times and ages take part in the confessional obligation of all Christians.

6 LW 33:19-20. 7 Ulrich Asendorf, Luther und Hegel: Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung einer neuen Sytematichen Theologie (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982), 106. Quoted from Kolb, Confessing the Faith, 26. 8 LW 37:360.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 135 2. Lutheran Identity as Ecclesiastical Identity

I believe that there is on earth a holy little flock and community of pure saints under one head, Christ. It is called together by the Holy Spirit in one faith, mind, and understanding it possesses a variety of gifts, and yet is united in love, without sect and schism. Of this community I also am a part and a member.9

In this manner, Luther elucidates the phrase “the congregation of saints” in the Large Catechism. For Luther, it is of central importance to take seriously the existence of the church, or of “Christendom,” as he prefers to say, and the priority of the community of the faithful over one’s own belief. This commitment to the church precludes identifying oneself as an atomized individual with one’s own private belief and piety and includes seeing oneself within a community of faith which is always prior to oneself and of which God the Holy Spirit makes use for the accomplishment of His work. This approach includes an ecumenical dimension as well. Lutherans understand themselves as being at once evangelical, catholic, and orthodox in the best sense of the word and professing a church which shall last forever. “It is also taught that at all times there must be and remain one holy, Christian church.” Lutheran identity is not first and foremost a special identity; it rather lays claim to catholicity. As in the Reformation, to renew the church means to remain faithful to the one, holy, catholic church. For this reason the renewal of the church in the Reformation and after has repeatedly been accompanied by the recourse to the Scriptures, the origin and the founding document of faith. For the Gospel, whose rediscovery and preservation were the primary concerns of the Reformation, is indeed the same Gospel to which witness is given in the Holy Scriptures by the apostles and the prophets and can be no other Gospel. It is, therefore, of great import to reach an understanding, to establish a “consensus” about what in fact this Gospel is, and that with the intention of proclaiming it: “It is enough for the true unity of the Christian church [singular, cf. the Latin text: ad veram unitatem ecclesiae] that the Gospel is preached harmoniously according to a pure understanding and that the sacraments are administered in conformity with the divine Word.”10 If, therefore, the church comes about through the preaching of the Gospel and the administering of the Sacraments, then the following holds true: What is necessary for the unity of the church is that which constitutes the essence of the church. The converse is likewise true: What constitutes the essence of the church is that which is required for its unity. The existence and the unity of the church depend upon one and the same

9 Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 437-438. 10 Ibid., 42.

136 thing: upon the Gospel in the form of the proclamation of the Word in accordance with the Scripture and upon the Sacraments in the form of administration in conformity with their institution. Here lies the identity of the Lutheran church and, as a consequence, the standard for the practice (Betätigung) and confirmation (Bestätigung) of church fellowship. These impulses from the beginnings of the Reformation have been appropriately incorporated into the constitution (Grundordnung) of the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church (Selbständige Evangelisch- Lutherische Kirche [SELK]). Firstly, Article One determines the specific place of the SELK within the context of the one Christendom: It “stands within the unity of the Holy, Christian, and Apostolic Church, which exists wherever the Word of God is preached in purity and the sacraments are administered in accordance with the institution of Christ.” Here as well the emphasis lies on the fact that we profess the Gospel as it is believed, or at any rate should be believed, in all of Christendom. Secondly, the SELK is bound by the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the infallible Word of God. And this indeed characterizes the SELK as an evangelical church in contradistinction to other denominations that, alongside the Scripture, give quasi-equal rank to other elements for guidance concerning the doctrine and life of the church. Scriptural conformity is thus indispensable for Lutheran identity. It is likewise essential for the clarifi- cation of internal conflicts as well as for the external alignment with other churches and denominations. A further determination that has been effected in the constitution of the SELK is the commitment to the Book of Concord. This reflects the opinion that the confessional texts of the ancient church and the Reforma- tion, which were collected in the Book of Concord in 1580, and the truths they express are Biblically grounded and therefore ecclesiastically binding. From this it follows that church fellowship is not possible with churches which are of the opinion that they can retract the positions here laid down or somehow harmonize them with contrary positions—be it by means of the mitigation of doctrinal rejections, or on the premise of the complementarity of ecclesiastical-theological “concerns.”

3. On Reviving the Question of “Lutheran Identity”—a German Perspective

The question of “Lutheran identity” has been raised recently on various occasions. Last year alone, several essay collections on the subject were published by representatives from the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (VELKD). These publications are no doubt to be seen in connection with the debate about a new structure of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and a stronger integration of the VELKD. How- ever, the deliberations they contain are categorically connected with a basic principle that is tantamount to a shibboleth: With the reception of

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 137 the “Agreement of Protestant Churches in Europe” (Leuenberg Agreement, 1973) there is no question about the existence of church fellowship between Lutheran, Reformed, and Unionist denominations; it is an unques- tionable—and unquestioned—fact. From the Concord-Lutheran point of view there are, now as before, substantial reasons to disagree with the statement that the passages of the Leuenberg Agreement concerning the Holy Communion articulate an “agreement in the understanding of the Gospel.” Still, it clearly does function as an after-the-fact theological legitimization of the informal union that from the point of view of the confessional Lutheran churches was already manifested by the founding of the EKD in 1948. It has been, in my opinion, indisputably demonstrated that this document stands in a direct line of descent from the (Old) Prussian Union of 1817/1830 despite the fact that it avails itself of new approaches in ecumenical methodology. By means of the systematic legerdemain of making a distinction between the “ground” and the “expression” of faith, it became possible to relativize the historical confessions of faith of the sixteenth century in their present-day relevance, especially with respect to their doctrinal rejections. These were relativized inasmuch as fundamental and central importance was accorded only to “justifying faith.” As a consequence it alone was viewed as necessary for the establishment of church fellowship whereas, the doctrinal formulation of such faith, for example in the confession of faith of the respective church, was said to belong in the sphere of “expression.” This renders it peripheral and unnecessary for the determination of church fellowship. Against this background a consensus in matters of faith, doctrines, and confession is therefore no longer a prerequisite for the declaration of church fellowship. This can much rather be put into practice proleptically if and because (at any rate from this point of view) consensus about justifying faith exists. The Leuenberg Agreement does not then simply confront one with the old historical issue at the root of the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church(es) in the nineteenth century, namely, the issue of the possibility of a church “union” of denominations with divergent confessions. On the contrary, this issue continues to be of concern to us today when we see that the EKD is plainly attempting to make the Leuenberg model quasi- normative for its understanding of church fellowship. And even if it were the case, as representatives of the VELKD would like us to believe, “that the Leuenberg Agreement is not a new confession and ‘leaves in effect the obligatory nature of the confessions in the participating churches’”; hence, “does not change the confession of faith of the church,” especially since the Leuenberg Agreement “is not a unionist confession,” it would still remain unclarified how the purported continuing validity of the confessions is rec- oncilable with the fact that at least their doctrinal rejections are to be considered as having no present-day validity. In any event, the largely uncontested significance of the reception of Leuenberg is that on this basis “fellowship in Word and Eucharist obtains among the Evangelical state

138 churches in Germany.” If one follows the official interpretation of this state of affairs by the Evangelical Church in Germany, then the church fellowship declared on the basis of the Leuenberg Agreement has for its part ecclesiastical status, with the result that the EKD “in the theological sense of the word already is ‘church,’ for church fellowship is church.” What in the Leuenberg Agree- ment itself was only mapped out is thereby translated into fact. The final text from 1973 does indeed state that unity had been attained “in a quanti- tative manner in the central doctrines.” Thereby that not unproblematic “proleptical consensus”—which was supposed to find expression in church fellowship in the sense of fellowship in Word and Eucharist, including intercommunion and intercelebration—was transformed into a hybrid “between a mere association of churches and a real ecclesiastical unity.” Henceforth “church fellowship” became identified with “church,” thereby attributing a church status to the EKD that in earlier years had always been contested, not least by the Lutheran state (or territorial) churches in the VELKD. Since 1973 the SELK has not seen itself in the position of being able to take this path as one compatible with the safeguarding of Lutheran identity. The path taken after the Second World War by the Protestant state churches, including the Lutheran state (or territorial) churches, to the EKD—and to the theological justification of this unification by means of the Leuenberg Agreement—has always seemed to the SELK to be in fact the path to the “Union,” albeit in a modified form. The (“New,” or “Old”) Lutheran fathers and mothers in the nineteenth century desired to preserve in an undiminished form for themselves and their posterity the heritage of Concord-Lutheranism from the sixteenth century. It was no accident that the crystallization point of the confessional awakening, which led in the end to the emergence of independent evangelical Lutheran churches, was the Sacrament of Holy Communion. The concern that forced confessional Lutherans onto “solitary paths” was that of preserving their Biblical Lutheran understanding in an ecclesiastically binding form, of defending it in its exclusivity against every kind of false compromise. Thus, the question of church fellowship in the sense of fellowship in Word and Eucharist, including intercommunion and intercelebration, was the foremost concern in the creation of confessional Lutheran churches in Germany. It was these churches that created a new awareness of the Concord-Lutheran principles of the sixteenth century and gave them renewed ecclesiological reality. They wanted to manifest Lutheran identity in the ecclesiastical dimension by establishing that, as the expression of full church fellowship, fellowship in public worship, particularly at the altar, has as its unconditional prerequisite a consensus in faith, doctrine(s), and confession.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 139 4. The Confession of Faith as Indicator of a Common Under- standing and Interpretation of Holy Scripture

The confession of faith, which for the confessional Lutheran churches in the anti-unionist and anti-liberal tradition of the nineteenth century is compiled in the Book of Concord of 1580, is not simply a recourse to doctrinal documents of times past; its intention is to be a voice in the present. A confession of faith is in this respect indeed first and foremost a personal response, but a response intended to enter into communication. It is at once an offer, a reply, and a challenge to those with whom I enter into dialogue. Hence, the emphasis on, the attainment of, and the striving for a consensus is from the outset an integral part of the nature of a confession of faith—in the Lutheran Reformation as well. This point of depar- ture can already be found in the Latin text of Article I of the Augsburg Confession: “The churches among us teach with complete unanimity— Ecclesiae magno consensu apud nos docent.” Thus the striving for consensus has been an integral part of the confession from the very beginning of the Lutheran Reformation and throughout its history, up to and including the formulation of doctrinal confessional documents, not least the For- mula of Concord in 1577. The confession of faith is further taken as a key to an appropriate and uniform understanding of Holy Scripture. Of course, this can be said only with a certain degree of reservation. For the confession itself is understood as an interpretation of Holy Scripture, i.e., as the proper, objective, and presently relevant interpretation in accordance with the standard and central import of Holy Scripture—in short, the Scriptural interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. Church identity can be historically formulated only by means of continually renewed recourse to this foundation, and its appropriate interpretation, as expressed by the “Binding Summary” [Summarischer Begriff] of the Formula of Concord. The intention of the confession of faith is therefore to provide a guideline for the understanding of Scripture, as well as a Scriptural test for the fundamental insights laid down in the confession. Properly implemented, the recourse to the confession of faith is the attempt to formulate and perpetuate historical continuity by reverting back to the identity at the origin of a (confessional) church—an identity that for its part was attained from the understanding and application of Scripture and that then became characteristic and ha- bitual. Hence, the confession of faith expresses the personal faith and trust— a Scriptural, i.e., Christocentric trust as rediscovered by the Reformation— which then is articulated consensually as a common trust that God, as He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, is determinative for my life and the life of Christendom to which I belong. And to this extent, church fellowship, both within one denomination and between various denominations, is predicated on fellowship in the confessing of faith (Bekennen) as well as

140 fellowship in the confession of faith (Bekenntnis) in which faith finds its expression. It is, therefore, both meaningful and helpful, not least in the sense of making certain of one’s own identity, to also revert to texts that are several hundred years old, for they can be and are intended to be a guideline for the understanding of what Christian faith is, what Christian life is, and by that is meant how we can exist and lead our lives in the sight of God. Since the answers that can be found in the condensed form of the confessional documents of the sixteenth century (can) have a high degree of plausibility even for today’s contemporaries, they offer at the very least guidance for communicating faith today as well—Christian faith in its significance for our contemporaries. To this extent one can say: “It is essential in the confession of faith to take a public stand for experience that has been gained and truth that has occurred.” This is precisely what the Lutheran church attempts to do by reverting (not retreating!) to these confessional texts. These texts are not intended to be anything other than a rendering of the Scriptural truth, concentrated on the Gospel—hence the Gospel not understood as a collocation of correct propositions, but rather the Gospel understood as an event in which God imparts Himself, in which God communicates Himself to man and indeed salvifically—to man who has broken off the communication with God and, for the reason that he has broken it off, is not in a position to reestablish communication on the strength of his own efforts. The actual meaning and significance of the Gospel, which shines through in the emphasis on its effectualness in actu, is in conformity with both the New Testament and the confession of faith of the Lutheran Reformation. Hence, the confession focuses on the center of the Scripture, namely, the Gospel, of which Jesus Christ is the quintessence and the living reality. The confession of faith is accordingly not a comprehensive dogmatic work, as is, thoroughly in the Lutheran tradition of the Reformation, Johann Gerhard’s Loci Theologici. At the same time, however, it is admittedly the case that the confessions of faith of the sixteenth century are no longer liturgically suitable texts, such as the “ecumenical symbols” of the ancient church. Already in the early Middle Ages a development in the direction of a doctrinal confession began, which was then further formulated in the Reformation. It is none the less true, however, that the confession of faith, not least the (Lutheran) doctrinal confession, is an introduction to the Scriptures and at the same time centers the Scripture from within the Scripture. This movement has indeed an unavoidably self-referential structure. Hence, it is correct to speak of a “hermeneutic circle”: The confession of faith arises from the Holy Scripture and leads back into it. It is, however, necessary to ensure that the Word of Scripture is and remains prior to the word of the confession. And to this extent one can even say that the confession

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 141 of faith is constitutive for the church, albeit only in this derivative sense. (This standpoint tended to be viewed for quite some time in Protestant theology as “confessionalistic,” that is, as an embarrassment.) But then it must be ensured that the confession of the church is and remains subject to the judgment of Scripture, as has been formulated in a lastingly valid manner by the “Binding Summary” of the Formula of Concord. The confession focuses on the Scriptures and within the Scriptures on the focal point of the Gospel.

5. The Pastoral Dimension of Lutheran Identity

In these reflections, the pastoral dimension of Lutheran identity is already present—whenever namely reference is made to the Gospel, the embodiment of which is Jesus Christ in person. This dimension has the greatest significance for the resolution of internal church conflicts as well. The Reformation was in no way spared the most tempestuous conflicts, not only with the papal church, i.e., the faction of Christendom remaining under the Pope; there were also intense conflicts and heated controversies within the Protestant faction in general and within the Lutheran camp itself. With respect to the kind of conflict resolution evidenced in the Book of Concord, the attempt to resolve disputes in a pastorally responsible fashion can be observed repeatedly right up through to the latest text. The question that was always being asked was this: What is the pastoral relevance of the controversial issues and theological minutiae under discussion? What solution, in addition to its Scriptural conformity, is appropriate, helpful, and comforting? What is at stake if we fail to take a careful look at this particular matter, if we neglect to formulate precisely? As a rule the decisions then reached were rejections of extreme positions, both on the “left” and the on “right.” These extreme positions were rejected because they were viewed as posing a serious danger to the certainty of salvation. This can be shown, for example, in the articles on “Law and Gospel” in the Formula of Concord. The exposition is based on the premise that the Law is proclaimed falsely if it induces arrogance or despair. Hence, the decision was reached in the Formula of Concord to prohibit the Law from having the last word. To the contrary, in the proclamation of the church, it is the Gospel that must always have the last word because the Law leaves man in the situation of either persisting in pride or—at the other extreme— of falling so deeply into despair that he is bereft of all certainty about being able to survive before God. Both these responses to the Word of God as Law are deemed pernicious and therefore inadmissible. This position could further be illustrated by the doctrine of Holy Communion, or other examples. As Notger Slenczka, a systematician of Mainz University, rightly observes: “The decisions of the FC are accompanied in their entirety by a sure pastoral instinct and a knowledge of the truth of the Gospel—namely,

142 that it is not simply a doctrine but rather a teaching that liberates the sorely tempted from their solipsistic self-preoccupation and provides them with a sure foundation and thus a sure comfort in another—Christ!” Accordingly, the Lutheran confessions of faith are not simply “instruction about” the Gospel, propositions and theory, nor are they merely an “introduction to” the Gospel, but rather a guideline for making practical application of the Gospel in order to cope with certain existential situations, preeminently that of the human being standing as a sinner before God. To this extent, the confessional texts constitute a guideline for pastoral care: “The doctrinal confession leads to and guides the interpretation and proclamation of Scripture—and that in a particular pastoral context,” hence, precisely not in an abstract manner.

6. “Doctrine” as the Medium of Church Governance for the Safeguarding of Identity

It will be recalled that in Concord-Lutheran usage the confession of faith in the sense of “doctrine” has several dimensions which need to be distinguished from one another. First of all, in its fundamental sense, confession as doctrine means the proclamation of the Gospel, particularly the proclamation in public worship. This is what is referred to by the formulation “pura doctrina evangelii” in Article VII of the Augsburg Confession. Secondly, confession has the dimension of a theological determination as ecclesiastically binding knowledge (Erkenntnis) and is in this sense confession (Bekenntnis). That is the dimension designated by “magnus consensus” in Article I of the Augsburg Confession and is understood as an ecclesiastically binding determination. In the Formula of Concord, this tenet is taken up in the formulation: “We believe, teach, and confess!” This formulation includes all these dimensions—viz., personal confession, ecclesiastical obligation, and systematic theological reconfirmation. In the third place, that is, in a derivative manner, there is the exclusion, in the form of “doctrinal rejections,” of positions identified as contrary to Scripture. How- ever, here it is necessary to understand the line of argument and adhere to it procedurally: The position comes before the negation. The fourth dimension of the confession in the sense of doctrine is finally that of academic teaching. In the SELK, this dimension is ecclesiastically circumscribed, for instruction is carried out by the Lutherische Theologische Hochschule in Oberursel under the auspices of, and responsible to, the church for the purpose of training future theologians. “Church governance” is here understood as the self-regulation of the church for the attainment of its specific, i.e., God-given purpose, namely, the preaching of the Word of God in Law and Gospel, and the dispensation of the Gospel in proclamation and Sacraments. This fundamental principle is directed on the one hand against external influences on the work of the church; it is directed on the other hand against internal deviations from

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 143 the underlying standards of the church. In other words, it is not only a question of a defense of the church against external influences but also one of internal regulation. Such self-regulation can from the Lutheran viewpoint take place only by means of recourse to the church foundations from which it has grown and in accordance with which it understands itself. That means for Refor- mational churches, specifically Lutheran churches, that self-regulation can be effected only by reverting to the Holy Scripture and—in a derivative manner—to the confession of faith as its proper interpretation, whereby both are authorities that are outside and beyond the sphere of all that which is within our discretion or at our disposal. This principle is also manifested in the constitution of the SELK, and indeed in two regulations: firstly, that the status confessionis is unalter- able—for a contrary resolution would mean that this church is no longer this church; secondly, in the proviso that resolutions by authoritative bodies, particularly those of the church synods, which are contrary to the Holy Scripture and the confession of faith, are invalid. These two reserva- tions mean the following: there are regulative principles that are neither alterable nor at the disposition of the church, not even within its power of self-regulation. This is a self-imposed obligation of the SELK in the form of a prior consensus to which every person agrees who enters into the service of this church. This prior consensus also finds expression in the ordination vows of the ministry. Disagreement with these fundamental principles means disagreement with this church, which means putting into question the acceptance of church identity as set forth in its fundamental texts. That is to say that the church is guided by the interpretation of doctrine in the sense of these nondisposable and nondiscretionary underlying factors. At the same time the confession in its capacity as ecclesiastical frame of reference is thereby understood as a prior consensus. Although church governance is indeed legitimated by recourse to these nondiscretionary factors, it must at the same time be discursively transparent with respect to consensus and communication; it cannot be simply based on fiat. This basic principle is recorded in the Lutheran confession in the famous formulation that (episcopal) church governance takes place “not with human power, but by the Word—sine vi humana, sed verbo.” This is predicated on the priority of the Holy Scripture over the confession in accordance with the statement in the Book of Concord to the effect that confessional texts have derivative authority and, hence, do not have equal status with Holy Scripture. This means that they are in principle subject to criticism—criticism, that is, which is based on the Scripture. The identity of a church is therefore bound up with the demonstration of both the continuity with its foundations, viz., Scripture and confession, and the “substantial” conformity with these foundational elements—a conformity which must at all times be susceptible of discursive demonstration.

144 7. The Obligation to the Confession of Faith

Lutheran identity is, therefore, put into practice by demonstrating conformity to the fundamentals in all areas of activity—in every sermon, in church education, in the training of the upcoming church generation. It is therefore also required. Thus, the confessions of faith circumscribe and define a sphere, a framework, in which ecclesiastically legitimate proclamation is possible. It is a notable characteristic of the Lutheran church that, unlike the Roman Catholic Church (even after the Second Vatican Council), something along the lines of a papal or ecclesiastical magisterium, even a collegially circumscribed one, is foreign to it. Hence, there is no authority that is such simply by virtue of divine appointment (Amtsgnade). For the church, in accordance with the Reformational understanding, is something like a “community of interpretation,” even in the exercising of church governance by means of doctrine. That means that there are no single authorities that as such have monopolies of interpretation. This state of affairs follows from the fundamental Reformational concept of the church, which has reference to the “priesthood of all believers” without, however, being exhaustively determined by it. Reiner Preul, a practical theologian of Kiel University, has specified four very helpful rules for such a procedure of church governance by means of the interpretation of doctrine. Firstly, recourse to the Biblical and Refor- mational texts, hence, for us the Holy Scripture and the Book of Concord. Secondly, no privileged hermeneutics, i.e., no identity-reconfirmation strat- egies of a charismatic or any other “privileged” nature. For the interpretation of Scripture, as well as for the acceptance of the confession of faith, there must be a hermeneutical principle and procedure accessible to all and capable of being participated in by all. Thirdly, communication between the levels of responsibility, i.e., from the congregation up through the dis- tricts, the dioceses, the church administration, to the entire church and back again—here as well with free interchange, no separation of the levels from one another. Fourthly, at all levels of decision making it should be ensured that a high degree of theological competence is involved. This means that in all dimensions of church work, the decision mak- ers, at least those commissioned by the church, must continue to reflect anew on, and apply to our times, the Word of God, to which the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament give fundamental, exemplary, and inviolable witness. In this manner the life and work of the church takes place on the basis of the interpretation of, reflection upon, and application of the Scriptures and the confession of faith. For this reason, it appears necessary at all levels of church work to continue to take a fresh look at the confession of faith, which is bound by the Holy Scripture as the documented Word of God and therefore obligates the church in doctrine,

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 145 liturgy, self-expression, and governance. This raises the question of whether our churches are in need of something like a “Curriculum Confession.”

8. The Existential Dimension of Christian Identity

A truly confessional stance, as outlined above, is not simply a retreat to distant historical documents; it takes place as the recourse to the Scrip- ture and is thus a guideline for the profession of faith. It can be shown that such a guideline is preserved in the Lutheran confessions themselves, e.g., in Luther’s catechisms. Notger Slenczka has provided a fine illustration of this by reformulating Luther’s question “What is this?” in the Small Catechism in terms of a modern language game: One can express the question “What is this?,” which forms the introduction to the explanations in the Small Catechism, in existential terms and ask, “How does this affect you?,” or “What does this say about you?,” or “Where do you recognize yourself here?” For example: “‘I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.’ What does this say about you? ‘I believe that God has created me.’ ‘I believe in Jesus Christ our Lord, the only begotten Son of God.’ What does this say about you? ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord, who has saved me in order that I may belong to Him.’” The confession of faith functions as a guideline for the act of confessing one’s faith. In Slenczka’s reformulation, the transfer into our times— which has been discussed here and which is the duty of the church to perform—has already been accomplished and set down in an exemplary manner. Slenczka is therefore correct in emphasizing that the Lutheran Confessions are so copious that they require no addition. Properly read and understood, the Book of Concord is sufficient in itself and requires nothing further. But just in this manner, confessional statements or documents constitute a guideline for actual confessing, statements that articulate and make possible an understanding of Christian existence and church life that is at once Scriptural and contemporary—purely and simply by communicating the Gospel.

146 Luther Discovers the Gospel: Coming to the Truth and Confessing the Truth

Robert Rosin

I am a peasant’s son, and my great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were peasants.… That I earned a bachelors and masters but then took off the brown hat and gave it to others, that I became a monk, which brought me shame and greatly irked my father, that the pope and I clashed, that I married an apostate nun— who would have read this in the stars? Who would have foretold it?1

Who indeed? That was Luther (not me!). Someone once asked Luther about the value of astrology. Philipp Melanchthon, his co-worker, had an interest in such things. Natural magic, people called it in that day—not trying to manipulate nature but simply to read it. And many, like Melanchthon, meant well. After all, if God created the heavens and the earth and still held all things in His hand, then maybe He was trying to tell us something through the signs in nature, a little something about what might happen in daily life through a kind of natural revelation. But Luther would have none of it. Of course, no sparrow falls from heaven without God’s knowing and allowing, but sorting through all that swirls around us is far too complicated. Besides, Luther thought, what’s the point of trying to decode nature when all that really is necessary for our knowing has been revealed to us by God in His Word. So when asked about whether the heavens told us the future, Luther pointed to his own life story: a peasant’s son from peasant stock, he went to the university and got a bachelor’s and master’s degree but then abandoned law school— “took off the brown hat” of the student’s uniform—and entered the Augus- tinian cloister to become a monk, much to his father’s dismay and disgust. But he was hardly finished. Luther put it so casually: “the pope and I clashed.” Clashed?—that’s hardly the word for it. This was nothing short of a revolution, sparked by the confession of a monk who had never expected any of this back then, never in a million years. Oh yes, along the way he also married a run-away nun, as Luther put it—you can almost

1 Martin Luther, Werke (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883- ), Tischreden, vol. 5, no. 6250 [henceforth WA—Tischreden, 5, 6250].

Dr. Robert Rosin is Professor of Historical Theology at Concordia Semi- nary in St. Louis, MO. This article was originally presented at the twenty- first conference of the International Lutheran Council which met in Berlin, Germany, from August 27 to September 2, 2005.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 147 hear him laughing by now. Who would have read this in the stars? Who indeed? But that’s why history is so much fun. It is so full of surprises, of twists and turns we never could imagine. Sure, we plan, but as the German proverb puts it, “Der Mensch denkt, aber Gott lenkt.” That is, to make it rhyme, “Man proposes, but God disposes.” Not “dispose” as if to throw away (though we could just as well throw away all those great plans we make when we think we are in control). No, we can plan all we want, but God has His own plans in mind. Read Ecclesiastes if you don’t believe it. Luther certainly knew the message: the race is not always won by the swift; the battle is not always won by the strong; sometimes ordinary monks win and popes and emperors lose—that’s not in Ecclesiastes, but it might as well be—so fear God (that is, believe) and keep His commandments (that is, take up what He sets before you in life, in the vocations or callings God gives). Yes, Luther learned that and much more. And he spoke of what he learned and believed. He confessed. It is amazing what God does, how He raises up what Luther would call “outsized men” in history—“heroes,” but not necessarily the sort of great figures we can see coming, that is, people with a long pedigree that we expect to do great things. We expect the son of a king, generally speaking, to do kingly things himself some day. And God uses such people. But He also uses the obscure, those we would never expect to rise up and stand out—the son of a peasant like Luther. How many monks were there in that day? Yet one of those became—quite contrary to his own plan—a fellow who turned the church on its head (not to mention the empire in which he lived). That’s Luther: an obscure Augustinian friar, an ordinary university professor at a new institution still fighting for its existence trying to gain a measure of respect. Even more, here is a truly tortured soul whose own spiritual trials and tribulations drove him to distraction, though at the same time he was truly an “everyman,” that is, like so many others who would be satisfied with the smallest crumbs of comfort that might fall from the God Almighty’s table. Luther was doing it all as the church had taught him, as it had told him things worked spiritually—and he confessed that sort of message, but it brought no comfort. (More on that in a moment.) Then, amid his own struggles there came a beam of light, light from the Word. It took some time to sort things through. But as he did, the light grew until Luther was awash in the sunlight of God’s grace, a blinding, joyous light for Luther. He learned to look and find God where God looked least like Himself— hanging on the cross, in water in the baptismal font off in the corner of a church, in a piece of bread and swallow of wine that, in their own right, would never make a meal, yet as a gift—not our repeated, re-enacted sacrifice—these were more than enough to fill his soul. Luther learned to look for and find God in the contraries of life, to cling not to the logic of how he ought to get to heaven but in the illogical yet sure Word that was

148 promise, Gospel. It was a message of grace that he came to confess. But how did he get there? The apostle Paul had his Damascus Road awakening (though actually he learned only a little there; it really largely shook him up and then he would later learn much, taught, as Paul said, by Christ Himself). So what about Luther? We’ll get there in a bit, but first some groundwork. The term “confess” in our understanding is to speak forth about the Word (Christ) as well as the Word as a larger message (Gospel), that we trace back to the Word (the Scriptures, the revelation of God through His prophets and apostles/evangelists). “To confess” is first a personal action, an expression of what I (or you or Luther as an individual) believe, and one’s heart is truly in it. But there is also the matter of the individual’s intellectual commitment, not that faith or confessing is the equivalent of an intellectual exercise—we remember our dogmatics: we still have faith when sleeping, not to mention babies and other cases we can think of—but we know that God has given us our reason and all our senses and we do indeed think about and reflect what we believe. So we confess individually. But “confess” is also a corporate/collective matter—what the church believes. This is not the church creating dogma from the bottom up, not Schleiermacher in the nineteenth century creating doctrine, beliefs generated/defined by the community as it feels best. No, it is rather a matter of individuals who confess finding others who confess the same thing, read the same thing, understand and believe the same thing from the Scrip- tures, and then those who find themselves with this in common stand together and confess as a group, as a community, as the church. So there is one individual and then another and then another and then another— adding up to our confessing, not because we all are so brilliant as to think of such things or create such things, but the Holy Spirit has put faith in our hearts one at a time, and I reflect this, and you reflect this, and we reflect this. That’s how the Spirit works through the Word. That is ultimately what Luther’s discovery of the Gospel, what Luther’s confessing, what the Reformation is about. We look at what God has done, of course—but there is a little more to add (two words) that really makes a lot more: what God has done for me. Personal pronouns are crucial—letters written in gold, said Luther. There is a book by Carl Michalson called The Hinge of History that makes an important point of how to look at the Christian faith. (As the book moves on, I’m not so keen on what happens and where Michalson ends up, but the starting framework is worth noting.) Michalson says Christianity is like a hinge on a door: two parts that are both essential with a pin that holds them together. The two parts come together in Christ (who runs down through the middle). We see the two parts explicitly in the Second Article of the Nicene Creed. The one half is the historical facts: came down from heaven, was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. These are bizarre, one-of-a-kind, one-time facts or events, but events to be sure.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 149 Christianity certainly needs these facts. After all, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, “if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain.” So we need the events. But, as that Corinthian Bible verse says, the events do not stand alone. There is also faith. The second half of the hinge are the promises of God, promises not floating off in the blue but tied to events. So the event of the resurrection is accompanied by the promise: this resurrection is for you. It could, theoretically, have been just Christ’s resurrection, a vindica- tion of His life while we are left to find our own way. But God did not do that. He promises that this raising is also ours. Events + Promises = Chris- tianity. This is so fundamental we may miss the point, but it is always there: for you, for us. This is Christ’s body/blood given/shed for you.… Baptism opens the kingdom of heaven for you, etc. I was reminded of this point—the emphasis on the pronouns—a few weeks ago when I was in Cambridge for the funeral of Deomar Roos. Prof. Roos had taught in Brazil, and then had been at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, as a guest professor for almost two years before going to Westfield House. For some years he had suffered with cancer that would rear up and then be controlled again—but now it quickly got the better of him and he died. At his funeral, Reg Quirk told of visiting Deomar in the hospice where they read out of Isaiah, one of Deomar’s favorite books. Isaiah 43:1 was marked. Deomar wanted it for his funeral sermon text and on his tomb- stone in Hebrew, Portuguese, and English—but it had to be a better translation, he said, than the English he had at hand. The verse read, “I have called you by name,” but that was not good enough, Deomar insisted. The sense, the meaning of the text was stronger: “I have called you by your name.” As Reg reported, Deomar said the Gospel is in the personal pro- noun. God wanted him, even as He wants us all. It is important for us to make a point of this: events and promises that are my promises, our promises. When we confess, we talk about God, we give voice to “theology,” which simply means a talking about God. This talking about God is something a believer rightly approaches with some caution and does carefully. “Theol- ogy” is an attempt by believers to say, to reflect what God has revealed about Himself, to restate what God first says to us. We seek to put in other words, honestly and faithfully, what God’s message seems to be in particular circumstances in our life. To put it another way, we read what God has said in His Biblical revelation, and then we seek to restate those things in answer to life’s questions and circumstances. That’s speaking theology. (Of course, many of us were fortunate already to have heard and known these things early on from our fathers or mothers who told us as children of God’s love for us—but that ultimately has its source back in the Scrip- tures, so that is still a reading and applying of what God has Biblically revealed.) We speak theology with great care lest we confess not what God has said to us but what we think or what we would like God to say. We want to

150 be careful not to misrepresent God. As Luther put it in one of my favorite sayings of his—and I repeat this again and again to our students at the seminary with the hope that they will capture the same spirit—“Wenn zur Theologie kommt, eine gewiße Bescheidenheit gehört dazu.” That is, “When it comes to theology, a certain modesty is called for.” “A certain modesty”— this from Luther, the man who turned church and empire on their heads? Indeed! Luther came to see that he was not God (nor are we), and he did not presume to know the whole mind of God. But he did know (as can we) some things that God did tell him (and us), things we need to know and believe for forgiveness, for life, and for salvation, and also things for life in this world as His creatures, as His redeemed people in His creation. Luther could and would be bold. But he would also make plain that he was always ready to rethink, to reconsider, because he was not God. He was only trying to speak about God, to confess what he understood God to be saying to him and to us all as sinners in need of God’s salvation. So how did Luther come to this point? Yes, I know: I have hinted at this several times and have yet to start to answer the historical question of how Luther got to the point of discovering the Gospel. But we are finally to that point. There are many ways to understand this phenomenon in the early sixteenth century that we call the Evangelical Reformation or the Lutheran Reformation. A variety of factors are necessary to explain this movement— political, economic, geographic, cultural, and more. For example, it is fortunate the Reformation happened in the German lands, part of the Holy Roman Empire—a hodge-podge of some 250+ principalities or territories ruled by an elected emperor with limited influence and also distracted by wars with the Turk and the French to the east and west. So the evangelical message found wiggle room, so to speak, in many political entities on German soil. Things might not have gone as well in more unified France just next door. Economically things were tight but on the upturn, a time of inflation but also a time where artisans and craftsmen were starting to carve out an identity for themselves—and Luther’s theology of vocation, that is, of serving God also outside church callings, would resonate with these people. Geographically, it is fortunate that Luther was in Germany rather than Italy, for he benefited not only from the distance from Rome but also from Germany’s resentment of the way the Italian-dominated church hierarchy viewed the German people as a cash cow. The Germans, far more than any other people, sent wagon loads of gold over the Alps to Rome—and they came to resent it, and many would rally around Luther as an alternative, their German Hercules to clean house. Indeed, to get the Reformation right, we have to consider a variety of factors. But as I emphasize in classes at the seminary, while this all is true, at bottom the Reformation is fundamentally a theological movement. It is a rethinking of how to talk about God (theology!) that arose not as some abstract intellectual movement but as a very real, very personal quest for

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 151 a loving God. We are back to Luther: he had his own personal problems, but he found an answer in what God revealed to him in the Scriptures. And then, realizing these problems were shared by his students in class, not to mention his fellow Germans—indeed, his fellow human beings— Luther felt compelled to confess what he learned. He would speak forth of the love of God in Christ, to give an account of the hope that was in him. Luther’s personal reform prompted his personal confession, and his personal confession soon blossomed into a far wider reformation and confession of the church. I was struck by something that Prof. Koch said in his comments on Sunday when he talked about Luther’s understanding of oratio, meditatio, tentatio making a theologian. The oratio was a prayer not just in general but to be lead to the truth, to be led back into the Scriptures. And then the meditatio is not merely a thinking or meditating within, but to complete that “thinking about” a person has to tell others, to speak forth, to confess what is found. As you have heard, confessing is first an individual matter—I speak forth what I believe. Personal pronouns are crucial: no abstract position here but letters written in gold, as Luther remarked on the “for me.” Then I see more like-minded, like-believing people and we confess. That’s how things look in the abstract, in theory. But that’s not usually where we start in real life. A Luther (or any of us) is not dropped down into the midst of life from somewhere else, taken out of storage, from a sealed room somewhere and thrust into this world and told to figure things out suddenly from the start, from anew. Instead by the time we are old enough to think of what we are going to confess, to speak forth while intellectually aware of what we are saying, we already have been confessing. We have learned and absorbed a message from somewhere else. When a child is asked, “Who loves you and is your Savior?,” he or she says “Jesus,” not out of the blue as if this were some flash of revelation from heaven. Instead, children say that because parents or a pastor or a Bible school teacher have told them that. They believe, of course. They trust—that’s what Luther called faith: not simply credulitas or assensus, that is, intellectual credulity or assent, but rather it is fiducia—trust, a resting in the hands of another. A child can make a simple confession: “Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so.” But children know and believe that because they have been brought up with it. They have learned it. The same is true of Luther: he began confessing what he first had learned growing up, what had been told him and what he had absorbed from childhood on. But I do not want to be too hard on Luther’s parents. After all, they taught what they themselves had learned and what was typical. And it actually was a mixed message, because with the urging for moral good there was also talk of the goodness of God. The psycho-biogra- phers (Erik Erikson’s Young Man Luther especially) would like to look at this through Freud and portray a severe home life as the basis for rebellion against the church family. So problems with Luther’s father sparked

152 later rebellion against “papa,” the pope. And mother issues led to a clash with mother church, not to mention Mary. But evidence suggests Luther’s home was no more severe than most of his day. And he actually speaks well of his parents. In later life he spoke of his father taking him out to look at the heavens and talk of God’s power that held them all—not Gospel explicitly, but not judgment talk either. And when Luther was away from Wittenberg on business and word came that his father had died, Luther in turn reported that in a letter and remarked, “Never have I hated death so much.” That’s not exactly the thing to say if you are estranged from your parents. So they did leave some positive seeds. But, again, what they taught was typical of the religiosity of that day. So in a sense, the Reformation is un-learning that, turning away from one confession to another when Luther discovered what really brought him peace and joy. So what did Luther un- learn in order then to discover the Gospel? The late middle ages were highly religious and very confused. The influence of the church was everywhere. The medieval ideal was the priest or monk, those in religious vocations who served God by what they did. But whether in a sacred or secular calling, all people saw themselves as pilgrims. They fixed their eyes on the world to come and endured this present life, trying to avoid whatever might take them off course and keep them from heaven to come. And if they did not manage to finish well when death came, there was always purgatory for the final cleansing, though no one ever knew just how much that might involve (and the church was careful to be suitably vague). A person looked out for his soul and tried to obtain as much merit, as much good will in God’s eyes as possible. Righ- teousness for salvation was clearly seen as a quantity, something to be amassed till it was piled high enough to reach heaven. People in church vocations were, of course, not only on the right course, but they had the shortest route since all they did in their vocations was thought to be God- pleasing and obtained good for their souls. Other people in ordinary callings of daily life were taking the slow route. But the ordinary folk could gain merit as well. They could make pilgrimages honoring a saint at some shrine, and that the saint would, in turn, intercede for them in heaven. People venerated relics with the same goal in mind. The trade in relics was huge. Since the Crusades for the holy sites in Palestine, the trade in relics skyrocketed, and the church quickly realized this not only fostered piety but was big business. Luther’s own prince, Frederick the Wise, was one of the most active collectors with thousands of relics, so many that they were only all displayed on special occasions, spread throughout in the Castle Church in Wittenberg. A catalog identified the holdings for the pious who, if they properly venerated them all, could cut their time in purgatory by millions of days. Frederick had quite a collection—pieces of various robes once worn by the Virgin Mary and even breast milk from nursing her Savior-Son, thorns from the crown of thorns, pieces of the whip used on Christ, straw from the manger,

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 153 a rock on which Christ stood before His ascension, even a corpse from Herod’s slaughter of children in Bethlehem—it went on and on. Frederick easily had one of the largest relic collections in northern Europe. Relics not only fueled piety but also meant prestige. Cities vied for relics to outdo their neighbors. So Venice managed to obtain what was said to be the body of St. Mark for its cathedral, smuggling it out of Muslim- controlled Egypt in a barrel of pork that the customs officers would never touch. Or—as we were reminded at the recent visit of Pope Benedict to Cologne for the Youth Gathering—Cologne has the bodies of the three kings who followed the star to Bethlehem. (Though as German TV noted, the Bible never really does say “three” or name the kings—but three were nonetheless brought down the Rhine and entombed in the church where the jeweled coffins are still to be seen.) All of these have certificates of authenticity, of course. Note the background principle: there are those who have amassed more righteousness, more good than they need, so they can share it with others—saints can give it to those in need who honor them. Righteousness is seen virtually as a quantity to heap up in order to tip things in your favor and so to gain salvation. Another outlet for piety was the buying of indulgences. Originally these were a release from a temporal penalty imposed by a priest to remind the penitents of what they had done in order to avoid that again. But by Luther’s day the claims had been inflated so a plenary indulgence forgave sins past, present, and even future. The cost depended on how much you had to spend—a sliding scale reflecting your income and social position. Plenary indulgence was given infrequently at first and you had to go to Rome, but the church soon issued them more often, all the better to collect more through sales. And the salesmen came to your homeland—except to Elec- toral Saxony because Frederick had that relic collection and that was income for him. We know how things turned out then in 1517 when Saxons crossed the border to get the more valuable indulgences. Their attitudes— they were desperate but also callous and smug—would so infuriate Luther that he would write 95 Theses to call for change. Even then conservative Luther would be willing to live with indulgences as originally conceived, as a release from that reminder from the priest to keep people from sin- ning again. But more important would be Luther’s insights on what repentance really was: not do penance but rather be penitent. Penitence was not an action that gained merit but an attitude of heart and mind. No, there was no lack of religiosity in Luther’s day as he grew up— pilgrimages, relics, indulgences, the saying of the rosary and the interest in Mary were on the rise, and saints were sought out for help through life’s troubles. That kind of piety figured prominently in the famous story when, in the midst of the thunderstorm, Luther called out for St. Ann, the patron saint of miners. Luther’s father was a miner, so Luther doubtless heard her invoked often before. It was a natural reaction. Luther turned automatically to religion—but what kind of religion was it? And it clearly

154 rested on fear, on having enough righteousness accumulated to survive before Christ who so often was pictured as the judge sitting on a rainbow, lily from of one ear and sword from the other, a figure to be feared. That was the kind of popular piety that surrounded Luther, a spirit and outlook he grew up with and absorbed. And in a moment of crisis out on the road in the midst of the thunderstorm, he confessed what came naturally: a fear and desperation that filled so many. It was not a cold, intellectual calculation but a spontaneous reaction of the heart, prompted by what Luther believed. He tried to bargain with God, and he had a me- diator, an advocate—but it was St. Ann. Indeed, it is hard to run counter to such a system, especially when the powerful institutional church stands behind it.2 It is all too much. We shake our heads and wonder how people could be drawn into this. But young Luther was very typical of his era, or his culture. Had you asked what he believed, he would have confessed this approach. He believed in Christ, but that believing really meant focusing on the church and all it had to offer for obtaining merit for salvation. Luther’s entry into the monastery is really just an act of confessing this late medieval faith. He was troubled and had no peace. Had he done enough? What else was there to do? That thunderstorm was only the trigger that set off a personal spiritual explosion that was primed to happen. Law school would lead to a secular profession with temporal rewards. But the monastery was a sacred calling that could lead more easily to heaven. So Luther confessed not only with his lips but with his feet: he walked through the door of the Augustinian cloister in Erfurt, turning to say to his friends who walked with him to the gate, “After today you shall see me no more.” So he thought. And Luther tried hard as a monk to make the system work. As he once said, “If ever a monk gained heaven through monkery, it would have been I.” Hours spent in prayer, meditation, listing sin after sin in an effort

2 The power of church mixed also with civil rule greatly complicated matters. Over many generations the church had amassed tremendous wealth and vast property holdings in every European land. Bishops and abbots not only ruled their diocese or monas- teries, they ruled territories as well, wearing both ecclesiastical and civil-political hats, which often brought a clash of interests or at least greatly muddled things. On the eve of the Reformation the church owned a third of land holdings in England, for example, as well as in France, and half of Danish lands. The prince-bishop was a powerful figure. One of these who figures into Luther’s story is Albrecht of Brandenburg. Though not a cleric, Albrecht nonetheless managed to become (to buy himself) bishoprics of Magdeburg and Halberstadt—which made him a pluralist which was against church law, but a contribution to the church took care of that. And then he managed to become Archbishop of Mainz, one of the seven powerful men who elected the Holy Roman Emperor. But to get the post he had to borrow money from the Fuggers, a wealthy family with a vast private fortune from international business ventures. And to pay back the Fuggers and to help Rome looking for money to build St. Peter’s, Albrecht arranged for indulgences to be sold in German lands by high-energy salesmen such as John Tetzel. “When the coin clinks in the collection chest, the soul flies up to eternal rest.” Indulgence sales skyrocketed— except in Frederick’s Saxony since he had his own relic collection, but we’ve mentioned that.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 155 to purge his soul. But still no peace. Even when he became a priest and could offer up the continued sacrifice of the mass to gain merit, there was no ultimate comfort. When sent to Rome on business for his Augustinian order he took advantage of the system as he rushed around to churches and shrines to pile up the merits, almost sorry, as he would later say, that his parents were not yet dead so that he could have freed them from purgatory with his pilgrimages. This was a kind of confessing with his life and actions. It did not seem to matter whether he had been in secular life pointed to law studies or now in a sacred vocation as monk and priest. And it did not get any better when Luther was pressed into formal theological studies by his Augustinian order that wanted him ready for some future academic role. The formal classroom/textbook theology taught the same thing he’d grown up with and already confessed, only now the classroom theology did this in great hair-splitting detail. There were a variety of explanations for how this all worked, but the approach Luther learned goes (greatly simplified) something like this:

People are born sinful, but not completely fallen or helpless. There remains a spark of goodness, not enough to save but enough to prompt a person to at least try to do something good to please God. It is only logical to think this ability, this spark, is still there. After all, God is perfect and makes no mistakes; God has given us the law; therefore since God would not ask something of us if we could not do it, and therefore there must be some way in which we can respond to Him and keep the law. We may not do it perfectly or be able to do it on our own, but enabled by His grace, we can work at it—a process. And how do we get that grace? Well, remember the spark of goodness? That spark enables us to take the first feeble step. That little baby step does not save, but it earns us congruent merit, that is, merit similar to what God wants. He does not give heaven at this point, but He will give grace to help us work at getting there. As the famous phrase put it: facientibus quod in se est, Deus non denegat gratiam—“to those who do what is in them, God will not deny grace.” Do what (supposedly) comes naturally. From that humble beginning, God continues to infuse grace—so keep at those sacraments and keep working the system of popular piety, perfecting your faith until finally you obtain full merit, if not in this life, then in the purgatory to come. Then God rewards with heaven.

Note how the system works: it is quid pro quo, that is, you get this for that, heaven for effort. The key word is “ergo”—“therefore”—a system based on logic. If God gives Law and if God makes no mistakes, therefore there must be some way for you to keep it. If God gives Law, and if God also gives

156 grace and faith, therefore salvation must be some combination of faith and the keeping of the Law, that is, of faith and good works. It is all logical. It is all quite natural. Actually it is also Aristotle, built around the syllogistic logic of that ancient Greek philosopher whose method for organizing and thinking categorized what seemed so normal and became the method for thinking at the medieval universities. There would be many variations on logic over the years, but generally speaking, the roots were in Aristotle. It was such a good way of making sense of the world, or so it seemed. So, too, in theology. It is all so logical—but is it Biblical? No matter—it is what Luther would have confessed. So natural human tendencies (to try to do something for God) were reinforced by formal theology that explained or supported this sort of confession. But something else happened. Frederick the Wise opened a new university in Wittenberg. The Augustinian order agreed to provide professors. And after some twists and turns that we need not recount, Luther’s superior and confessor, Johannes von Staupitz, had him transferred to Wittenberg where Luther finished his doctoral studies and became professor of Biblical theology. It was not what Luther wanted to do, but monks do what their superiors tell them. Luther was still terribly bothered by his spiritual insecurities. Staupitz thought this might solve two problems at once—he’d get a much-needed teacher in Luther, and Luther would have to work through theology to teach his classes and in so doing, perhaps he would find answers to his spiritual problems. Luther did indeed—but not in the way anyone had planned! Universities in Luther’s day were firmly in the hands of the scholastics, the “school men,” that is, those who taught at schools. And whatever they taught, theology included, they used logic to approach the subject up for discussion. If this, and if this, ergo that—therefore that. If God makes no mistakes and if God gives Law and says “keep it for salvation,” therefore…. But Wittenberg was a new university without established traditions. At this same time when scholasticism still had a stranglehold on educational method, there was another approach to learning that was being championed by others who would have liked to be in the universities, but they were being kept out by the old guard, by the “school men.” The alternative came from the Renaissance, that rebirth of classical learning. The Renaissance looked at ancient culture and realized that people did not live or learn by logic alone. Syllogisms—if A and B, therefore C—could not provide the answer for everything. The studia humanitatis, the study of man, that is, the humanities, the liberal arts of Renaissance humanism, saw the value also of rhetoric, of how language is used to explain, to move, to persuade. Renaissance humanists explored the grammar, the language of texts, and they learned the original languages to appreciate what an author was saying. Luther showed some interest in this new learning even before he joined the Wittenberg faculty: he learned some Greek and started

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 157 Hebrew as well. But it was as a new university professor that things really came together with dramatic results. Like any new professor, even today, Luther scrambled to find significant ideas and new insights to bring to his students. Looking to various resources to comment on Biblical texts such as Psalms, Romans, Hebrews, Galatians, he used some of the text studies, the comments offered by Re- naissance humanists. Luther started to read Biblical texts differently, to understand the message differently. It took time, but after a few years Luther realized he was adopting a different method for speaking theologically: not logic but the grammar, the rhetoric of the text was important. Out of so many insights, perhaps the greatest was this: the righteousness needed for salvation is not a quantity of good to be acquired by us but a quality given to us. Not what we obtain, what we have, but how we are. The “favor Dei,” the “favor of God,” is God’s grace given not because we can keep the Law (because in ourselves we really can’t), but it comes despite what we are like in and of ourselves. Theology is not based on ergo/therefore. Luther hit on a different word he now confessed: “dennoch,” that is, “nevertheless.” God gives Law, as Paul says in Romans, but—reading the text now, not working out of logic—but God gives Law not to show us what we can do but to keep reminding us that we cannot, so that we will despair of our efforts and cling to Christ. Dennoch (nevertheless) is a very Lutheran word, a Biblical word. This new approach to theology was a new method, a new way of thinking. Luther denounced the old. We remember the 95 Theses because of the way they upset the system of the indulgence sales and sparked a public outcry. But arguably just as important—more important theologically— from that same year (1517) were Luther’s “Theses Against Scholastic The- ology.” There he wrote, “It is not with Aristotle (that is, with logic) that one becomes a theologian; in fact, the opposite is true: it is only without Aristotle that one becomes a theologian.… For Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light, and his Ethics [that taught ergo reward for doing good] is the worst enemy of grace.”3 The method is all wrong, Luther is saying. And to a former teacher Luther wrote, “I simply believe that it is impossible to reform the church unless the canons [that is, the church law] and decretals [that is, the papal rules], the scholastic theology, the philosophy, and logic as they now are are uprooted and another study installed.”4 University curriculum that centered on scholastic logic to unlock the Scriptures had to go. Logic led only to spiritual problems: when have I done enough? But the new learning of this Renaissance humanism pushed Luther back into the language of the texts, and it was in those Biblical texts that he found his answer to saving righteousness.

3 WA 1, 221-228. Luther’s Works (Philadelphia and St. Louis, 1957), vol. 31, pp. 9-16, theses 43-44, 50. 4 WA—Briefwechsel, vol. 1, no.74 (to Jodokus Trutfetter on 5/9/1518).

158 And what does all this have to do with “confessing,” our general topic? Luther grew up having learned one kind of theology and readily confessed that. Remember Luther’s remark: if ever a monk gained heaven by monkish effort, it would have been Luther. He believed and lived that theology, but it brought no peace. Forced to come up with classroom material, this new professor Luther turned to Renaissance humanism to help find new material. Humanism was not the answer but it gave him tools to read the texts, and there he found spiritual answers. He found comfort for himself. And then realizing that he was typical of countless others who also had no peace, Luther confessed these new insights that he found, and others found them comforting as well. The Reformation then can be seen as the product of a kind of educational curriculum movement and also as the product of an individual breakthrough that was multiplied among so many more as this new way, a reforming way of looking at God’s revelation, grew and grew. The new confession of one (Martin Luther) became the confession of many who were not echoing Luther but were saying the same thing as they also saw it where Luther did, namely, in the Scriptures. Although it grew out of Luther’s study and university classroom, theology turned out to be no abstract subject but rather a very personal en- gagement with God. We see that how we approach theology, the method we use for thinking and talking about God as we engage His Biblical revelation, makes all the difference in the world. That’s why we spend so much time not only on proclamation of the Word but also on education, on how we study—both professionals and laypeople—because how we learn shapes what we learn and what we then confess. Speaking from faith, Luther discovered the Gospel by God’s grace as God broke him down and then led him out of his dark night of fear and anxiety into the bright light of a sure confidence in God’s promises in Christ. Speaking historically, Luther discovered the Gospel when, after a long journey that he hoped would bring him personal peace, he was pushed instead into circumstances that came together to show him a new method of thinking theologically. And realizing that he was not unique but, in fact, was just like everyone else who takes God and sin and heaven and hell seriously, Luther rushed to tell others not only of his hope, but he taught them how he came to that hope. He confessed the Gospel. Others heard and rejoiced in that message and confessed it as well. And in the end that confessing swelled to reform the church. There was a new re-formed content (a confession) that was not held or shut up but was used (confessed!). Personally I have little patience for people who are pleased with their orthodoxy and pat themselves on the back that they have the right message but then do not do anything with it. In fact, because doctrine (teaching) is for use and not to be set on the shelf, I think it could even be argued that people who do have the right content but do nothing with it (that is, only “circle the wagons” in a defense posture) are not really orthodox after all. We pray in one Sunday morning collect (at least in the older Lutheran

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 159 hymnal we used in the LCMS) that we may read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Scriptures that we may embrace and ever hold fast that message. But in the other collect, we ask for the Holy Spirit and the wisdom that comes down from above that the Word, as befits it, may not be bound but be preached to the joy and edification of Christ’s holy people— but I think the point is not to look inward but to make that group of holy people larger. That means the doctrine has to be used. Luther, once he hit upon the evangelical message, certainly waded into the mess of the church of his day and used it with all the energy he could muster. There was no guarantee that positive things would come from Luther’s confessing, no guarantee that a reformation would happen. Luther could just as well have discovered the Gospel, told others, and yet have gotten no response. There is no accounting for whether or not the devil, world, or the sinful flesh will block that message. But Luther also realized he could not control that. It was only up to him to confess. Then it was up to the Holy Spirit to work and produce fruit. That’s one final lesson for us to learn. We also cannot control. We cannot read the outcome in the heavens or find it in the stars. We can only seek to use the best tools available (as Luther did), to make the best presentation, the best confession we can (as Luther tried to do), and then what follows is God’s doing. We might be disappointed, as Luther sometimes was, that more does not happen. But we can never be disappointed in what we have: the love of God in Christ, the confidence that by faith alone and by God’s grace alone we have life eternal. This is what we confess.

160 Luther at Worms and the Wartburg: Still Confessing

Robert Rosin

Late in the day on April 18, 1521, the imperial diet, that gathering of political representatives throughout the Holy Roman Empire, finally turned to the case of a trouble-making Augustinian monk, one Martin Luther. Rome had already condemned him as heretic and emperor Charles was certainly no friend, so it was no mystery how this surely would turn out. But it was necessary to do things properly and in order. Luther was, after all, a German university professor, and the emperor was to watch over the universities in his lands, so he could hardly let Rome simply reach in and pluck up a professor without giving him a hearing. The emperor had his own legal rights and privileges to defend. But as far as Charles was concerned, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. So the representatives gathered in the city of Worms on the bank of the Rhein to play out the drama. Since 1517 Luther had the empire in an uproar, and in the years since things only seemed to get worse. As one observer noted, “Three-fourths of the people cry ‘Up with Luther!’ and the other fourth cry, ‘Down with Rome!’” Yet as Luther would later remark, things actually could have been much worse. “I could have made such a play at Worms,” Luther wrote, “that even the emperor would not have been able to stop the bloodshed.” In fact in the days before, there had been an ominous sign that things could turn violent. A Bundschuh, a simple peasant’s boot made of leather laced tight, had been nailed to a wall in Worms. The Bundschuh was the symbol of peasant revolts that had plagued Germany in decades past. Would there be an uprising in Worms in support of Luther? That was not what Luther wanted, and rather than drag others into a fight, into a literal bloodbath he could have started, Luther fought his battles on his own two feet. Shown his writings set on the table before him, he tried to draw his opponents into a debate, to provoke a discussion of the theology. But they would have none of it. They asked bluntly if he would recant—to “rechant,” as Luther later would joke, would be to sing a different tune. With the weight of both Roman and imperial power on him, Luther made a simple, straightforward speech in what one historian called the hinge of history, a turning point in the relationship of faith and author-

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 161 ity. To the emperor and the representatives of the German estates Luther said,

Since your imperial majesty and your lordships are looking for a simple answer, I will give you one without horns or teeth [that is, no tricks, no playing games]. Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against one’s conscience. I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand. God help me. Amen.1

That is a confession. No mention of Christ or cross, but a confession nonetheless about the necessary matter of authority, about the basis for theology. The foundation: sola Scriptura, Scripture alone. At Worms Luther said “Scripture or clear reason,” but we should not think of that as two separate tools or criteria for judging. The Enlightenment would do that, and then it would quickly move to embrace reason above Scripture (if Scripture was to be thought of as some divine revelation from above). So the Enlightenment would use reason to trump and refashion Scripture. But Luther certainly did not have two standards in mind. “Ratio evidens” (clear/evident/plain reason) was a reasoning ability that had been shaped by the Word. Luther later says his conscience is captive to the Word of God, and he sees his reason the same way. Scripture is plain on many things, but at times we need to “fill in the gaps” in our theology, as we try to speak about God. So we do that, but always remembering that attitude of Bescheidenheit, of modesty, because I realize that I do not know the mind of God at this point but think I am in line or in harmony or concert with what God seems to suggest. And I always am ready to take another look at rethink, even as Luther said he was willing to do—to retract what he had written if others could show his thinking was wrong. But at bottom, since clear reason is that which is aligned with the Word, the actual bottom line, the foundation, is simply Scripture—sola Scriptura. Luther did not take his stand simply to be contrary, to be different from Rome. And he was not out to build a personality cult. It gave him no pleasure to have to say that, but as we heard a few days ago, he found no answers in the rituals, traditions, or the logic that Rome put forward. Instead Luther re-read the texts of the Bible. He looked at the grammar and at the rhetoric of the Scriptures with a new method, and he found comfort in Christ’s cross grasped by faith alone. Because he found Christ

1 Martin Luther, Werke (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883- ), vol. 7, p. 838 [hereafter cited as WA; thus: WA 7, 838]. Martin Luther. Luther’s Works (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1958), vol. 32, pp. 112-113 [henceforth cited as LW; thus: LW 32, 112-113].

162 in the Scriptures rather than in the decrees of popes and councils, Luther held fast to those Biblical texts. The Scriptures were the swaddling clothes that held Christ. Luther left the assembly hall with his hands raised and fists clenched like a medieval knight leaving the tournament field in victory. But at the same time he muttered to himself, “I am finished.” The end likely would not come that day. There were legal steps still to follow, though there was no accounting for what some zealous opponent might do on his own to rid Germany of this renegade. Realistically speaking, Luther could expect the worst as the story played out. But in fact the world had not seen the last of him. Luther’s friends remembered what had happened to John Huss a century earlier. Brought to the Council of Constance under safe conduct, the rules were changed—well, reinterpreted—once Huss was there, and he was burned at the stake as a heretic. So when Luther was given permission to leave Worms a week later—you did not simply travel around on your own in those days; you had to have the clearance of those in authority in a case such as this—Luther was quickly rushed out a side gate to head for home. The authorities were not particularly perturbed since Luther could always be arrested later when legal proceedings got to that point. But on the way back to Wittenberg, the group was ambushed by armed horsemen. Luther’s traveling companions “escaped” into the brush—of course they did; they were supposed to!—and Luther was benevolently kidnapped by agents of Frederick the Wise, who had made it sufficiently plain that he did not want anything to happen to Luther, yet Frederick did not want to be directly tied to the plot. Plausible deniability we’d call it today. His men took care of it, and Luther found himself in Wartburg Castle, high above the city of Eisenach where he had once gone to school and stayed with the Cotta family. Meanwhile back in Worms, Emperor Charles had one of the pope’s agents [Girolamo Aleander] draw up papers declaring Luther a stubborn schismatic and an obvious heretic, and a small group of delegates passed judgment on Luther although the diet already had offi- cially adjourned. Some would question the legality, but Luther was now an outlaw in the empire according to this Edict of Worms. On his way to Worms just weeks earlier, Luther had been hailed along the way as one who stood tall, who confessed theologically in the face of Rome’s criticism. But many pinned their political and economic hopes on him as well. As he came to Erfurt where he had once gone to university and then had entered the cloister, his old friend, Crotus Rubeanus (a humanist), organized a welcoming party of university faculty and students who greeted Luther as though he were a liberator from the days of ancient Rome, a hero to set right the grievances of the German people against present-day Rome that seemed to care little beyond collecting German gold to fill its treasury. But along the way others held up pictures of Savonarola, an Italian critic of the church who had enjoyed the backing of

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 163 both the people and rulers, only to see his support suddenly evaporate. The pictures were meant to be a warning to Luther: do you, Luther, really want to go through with this knowing how things have quickly turned sour in the past? Like Huss, Savonarola had been burned at the stake. Would that happen to Luther? Elector Frederick realized that Luther was condemned before he even set foot in Worms, and sent word through others that Luther should turn back and stay away. But Luther was determined: he would come, he said, even if there were as many devils there as tiles on the rooftops. And so he went. And when it was time, having asked for a twenty-four-hour delay to think things through again and make sure of his heart and mind, he stood now literally by his writings with the table there before him laden with his books, even as Luther stood by the theology that had taken charge of his heart. He confessed. But now what? Luther was hidden in the Wartburg. He had a room in a secure part of an already secure castle at the end of a passage past guards and up a short staircase that could be raised like a drawbridge. Only a handful involved in the plot knew he was there, and no one was going to get to him. It gave Luther time to think and reflect. Luther had a window that looked out on the wooded hills. The area around the Wartburg was known for the charcoal workers who worked in the forests. As they made the charcoal, the smoke from the fires hung low over the trees and ob- scured the view. But then would come a gust of wind and almost magically sweep the haze away, and all was crystal clear again. That, said Luther, reminded him of how God dealt with sin. Sin would hang low and cloud our view and plague us. But when a word of Gospel came, those promises simply swept the sin away, never to be seen again. So Luther had time to think and reflect. But what was going on elsewhere? If the point was to keep Luther out of the public eye, then it worked. He might as well have been dead. In fact, rumors quickly spread that he was dead, much to the dismay of those who had high hopes and who were thankful for the theology they had learned from him. Albrecht Dürer, one of the giants in German Renaissance art, spoke for many when he wrote, “O God, if Luther is dead, who will now bring to us the holy Gospel so clearly?” That’s a very good question, a good question on several levels. We talk of the Lutheran Reformation and Lutheranism today, but was Luther indispensable? Was it really his movement? (When we visited Wittenberg I noticed a snatch of graffiti on a wall: “These 1: Lutherkult abschaffen.” That is, “Thesis 1: Abolish the Luther cult.” Is that so? A cult? Hero worship?) Luther himself later bemoaned the fact that people were looking more to him than the message: “What is Luther? The teaching is not mine. Nor was I crucified for anyone. God could raise up many Doctor Martins.… How is it that I, a poor stinking bag of maggots, should come to the point where people call the children of Christ by my evil name?” Yet to be fair to the historical record, by the time Luther complained about people

164 talking about “Lutherans,” he had used the term himself a couple of times. It was simply a convenient way to identify those who held to a particular theological position, a confession. It was the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, who seems to have been the first to use the “Lutheran” label, though Warham meant it in a negative, critical way, as if this Luther business were a power cult. Yet the point remains: the name simply identifies. As long as words and labels are not stripped of their meaning, we know what they stand for. Today using a name or label is not always so simple. I can think of several ways people use and react to the use of “Lutheran” today, and there are probably more than what follows. And what I’m about to suggest are also quickly blended. To start, some using “Lutheran” would like to say that they have things all put together and have a clear view of the truth that others do not echo, so those others have no right to use it because they are not Lutheran. Now we are into definition and the problem of who has the right to decide. It seems to me that while I understand this and may also think that the “other side” is not Lutheran in terms of the content of what is confessed in some parts or even as a whole, until I am made the Lord High Mayor with power over definitions and labels, there is little point in my trying to reserve the name “Lutheran” while telling others to find something else. True, I can say that and claim it is a matter of principle, but practically speaking others will do what they want. And pragmatically speaking, if there is indeed a chance to come to some understanding or to win people over to my understanding of the term, and more importantly to the theological position I have come to believe and confess, I may just have to throw out the window a chance to get others to hear what I confess and convince them of that (though it is, after all, the Holy Spirit who finally will convince in matters of faith—but you get my point, I hope). This argument over who can claim “Lutheran” revolves around what makes up that theological position. How wide does the label stretch? What is essential and what can be ignored? Can there be variations and even differences? And how different can the differences be? Ques- tions like these are legitimate. Just what does it mean to be Lutheran? Those who laid claim to that name in the Reformation era had to sort through these questions already in the second half of the sixteenth century, so this is nothing new. By 1555 in the Peace of Augsburg, the Holy Roman Empire was willing to recognize two legitimate confessions in its lands, Roman Catholic and Lutheran. So just what did Lutheran include? We’ll hear about those sixteenth-century arguments tomorrow from Pro- fessor Kolb. We heard about modern problems with the Lutheran label last Satur- day from Professor Klän when he talked about the Lutheran church in Germany today in light of the Leuenberg Concord drawn up to bridge Luther, United, and Reformed. Are the Lutherans still Lutheran when on one hand they say they have certain theological positions that go with that

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 165 name, but on the other hand they agree to live alongside or within or among those who have other positions that contradict the Lutheran ones? In effect they take what once was confessed, what was said to be part of a Lutheran position, and now turn it into an option. They almost make the Lutheran theological ideas or principles adiaphora, except that adiaphora are things on which Scripture does not speak but is silent—but that is not the case for these doctrinal issues drawn from Scripture, Biblical teaching that was restated as doctrine, a theology—and yet it is being sidestepped here. Scripture does speak. Those are teachings that are a product of a hermeneutical foundation, but under Leuenberg we are simply supposed to let these teachings slide or overlook what is said. Can a person cut back on doctrine that way and still be Lutheran? There is yet another way to look at the “Lutheran” name or label. The name is claimed by people today who are not trying to have it both ways as with Leuenberg, but rather who will say quite openly, “Of course we do not think the same things Luther did in his day. But we are in the historical line since Luther, and so we are entitled to use the name.” “Lutheran” is back there somewhere in their family tree, and so they still use the term because there is this thread running from here to there. Never mind where it is snagged along the way. It is a little like me saying that I’m German. Well, this is true (sort of) since my great-grandparents came from Hessen and Pommern (though Stolp in Pommern is now Slopsk, so that would make me half Polish)—but the point is there is a German connection though it is really historical rather than present and active. Or I could say I’m from Minnesota or Nebraska because that’s where my parents grew up, though I’ve only visited there. I’m much more comfortable saying that I grew up in Chicago! This (Chicago) is not just a matter of the sort of historic link I talked about a moment ago but really goes to identity, to what makes me me. But I would never presume then to say that the ideas I learned growing up in Chicago should be considered German. The roots may go there on paper, but I do not “live there” intellectually, so to speak. Yet in the church today something else often happens. People will on one hand admit that ideas have changed. This is usually accompanied by talk of the old being outmoded or old-fashioned in an effort to help push them out the door and to get rid of them. Instead, the argument goes, we have learned to think rightly or in a high-minded way—add those modifiers to gain acceptance. So while the position admittedly is different from a world gone by, we still deserve to keep the original label, or so the argument goes. Well, it makes me feel good to be German (it does!), but to be honest, that is little more than a label whose substance has changed. Not too much of Pomerania here but lots of Chicago. But—turning now to church and theology—what usually happens is that people want to insist that what they now confess is the legitimate evolution of Lutheranism, even though their theological positions may actually contradict what once was confessed. The only way to get by or get away with this, I think, is to go back to the

166 issue of what falls under the tent or label of “Lutheran,” though now we find that tent is a whole lot smaller than once thought, than even Luther thought. In any of these cases, I do not want to question the personal sincerity of people, but I do want to pay attention to how the label “Lutheran” is applied. Is it Lutheran because the doctrinal substance now confessed has been maintained since the Reformation? Or is it Lutheran in one of these other ways of speaking? It’s worth discussing. I’d like to think I understand what Lutheran ought to be, but others think the same about their view. There’s an old Scottish prayer: “Lord, grant that we may ever be in the right, for we shall surely never change our minds.” Thankfully that is not in our prayer book. Instead we discuss, confess, and do it with patience and prayer that God might give us wisdom. Indeed, talking about “Lutheran” in terms of a position, an identity, a confession, is not always so easy. It was not easy in Luther’s day either. It took a while till labels settled in on theological positions. We tend to put the Reformers into camps rather quickly, but we have the benefit of hind- sight. They took longer to sort things out. In the early years of the Refor- mation with so much attention on Luther, the problem is slightly different. At that point there was that danger of this becoming more about the messenger than the message. As we saw, some people such as Albrecht Dürer strongly identified the Gospel renewal with the Wittenberg professor. Hans Sachs, one of the well known “Meistersänger” or troubadours wrote a famous poem to the “Nightingale of Wittenberg” who brought Law and Gospel clearly before the people. But Luther was worried that people might lose sight of the theology and focus instead on the theologian, that they might neglect the confession and idolize the one who confessed. In fairness, both Dürer and Sachs really are concentrating on the substance of the message, though in Dürer’s case, he was understandably upset that the messenger might have been lost. You don’t want to lose someone who has brought you that kind of message. Yet if asked, Dürer no doubt would have agreed with Luther that God could indeed raise up many Martin Luthers to get the work done. Luther was simply God’s “out-sized man” for the moment. But it is an interesting question: what would happen if the messenger were not there, if Luther were taken out of the picture? In the Wartburg, Luther had plenty of time to think about that and to think of what he’d done both in Worms and earlier in Wittenberg. His Roman opponents taunted him: “Are you alone wise?” In other words, “What makes you so smart? Who are you to come along and stand against centuries and generations of the church? Isn’t this really your own personal, private crusade, an outlet for your own ego? And does not truth finally reside in the church at large as it moves through history, and does not authority finally rest with Rome in the pope, the descendent of Peter and the Vicar of Christ?” Those challenges and more were all concentrated, all wrapped up, in that simple question, “Are you alone wise?”

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 167 At the Wartburg Luther had time to consider that question and to sort through answers. Actually, the temptation to flatter himself and to turn this all into a personal campaign had always been lurking there. But Luther could look around and find evidence to prove he was not in this alone. The most basic proof lay in what had been going on in his study and in the classroom at Wittenberg. As Luther scrambled to come up with lecture material—a good professor always rethinks and revises, but it’s especially hard the first time starting from scratch—Luther found hints of where to go in the work of others he read, in those humanists who commented on the language and the grammar of the texts. Those were only hints and Luther would have to put the puzzle together, but it is evidence nonetheless. And then when Luther walked into the lecture hall he found a room full of students who deep down had the same spiritual questions and problems as he. And as he focused more and more on the Gospel in his lectures over the decade, he saw how that resonated with students. So he wasn’t alone. Turning from his present to the past, Luther found evidence in history. He found voices that said some of what he himself had been finding. (History was another subject that had been neglected by the scholastics. After all, with their method, their approach, you can think through anything with syllogistic logic. Present circumstances are all that matter—no historical context. You don’t need history to help guide you. It’s only interesting in terms of illustration to sprinkle in after you’ve put everything together with logic.) But Luther found evangelical witness, evangelical confession, in history. The voices from the past were not always many or loud, but they could be found, though often drowned out by the institutional church in the same way Luther was being shouted down. Are you alone wise? “Hardly!” Luther could reply. More, in those years from the 95 Theses until Worms and then in the early 1520s, Luther found other theologians hitting on the same basic ideas he found in the Scriptures. Johannes Brenz eventually had to leave Heidelberg after his evangelically oriented lectures drew a threat of im- prisonment. Brenz moved on to become a key reformer in southwest Ger- many. Martin Bucer heard Luther defend his theology in 1518 before the German Augustinians, although Bucer was not an Augustinian but a Do- minican. (I wonder how he got into the meeting!) But Bucer had been studying on his own and then heard of Luther so he came. Bucer never fell easily or comfortably under the Lutheran label. Circumstances in his background and factors in the unique setting of Strasbourg where he led reform would cause him to part company with Luther on some issues, but in general Bucer was on an evangelical path, finding the way on his own. Those are two of the better known, and there were certainly many more. Luther was encouraged when he looked around and could find others pop- ping up here and there with an evangelical witness that came not from Luther but from the Bible. Luther may have been the senior figure, so to

168 speak, and he was getting the headlines at the moment, but he certainly was not a solo voice. Are you alone wise? Hardly! Just listen to others confess. But even if he were all alone, would that mean that Luther ought to give up and confess something else? Not necessarily, though that is not really how it works. Luther did not (and we should not) theologize in a vacuum, in isolation from voices around that raise questions and challenges. Those voices provided a valuable sounding board and a testing. Ultimately Luther would make his decisions and confess, but not without running things through the refiner’s fire to make sure he had a legitimate basis for what he was saying. So Luther would write and publish. As he did, he got feedback from colleagues around him and from critics as well. His thinking matured. From the perspective of others, as Luther published they could see ideas unfolding. It is interesting to watch these alli- ances shift leading up to Worms and the Wartburg. As Luther wrote and published, he gained support, but he also lost support of some who had first been attracted to what they saw happening at Wittenberg, but then as they saw more things developing, they decided Luther had gone down the wrong path or had gone too far. We’re talking about humanists here. Their work on the languages, grammar, and rhetoric of texts, and on history (for the necessary context) were all crucial as Luther plunged into the Bible. From his side, Luther valued the tools that Renaissance humanism had to offer—the stress on languages, for example. Luther also came to appreciate that humanism approached learning with a different spirit and a different method. Method is very important for Luther! Even if you are not entirely clear on the outcome, if you approach with a new method, you will get a different product. We heard that earlier in the week: the theology will not change in the church, Luther wrote, until the old method is discarded (that is, until scholasticism was thrown out) and a new study (that is, the liberal arts pressed by the humanists) is installed in its place. Through the years of the fifteen-teens Luther strongly advocated curriculum change at Wittenberg. The university’s charter theoretically opened the door to humanist studies, but universities traditionally had used scholasticism. But because humanism was helping Luther solve his theological problems, he wanted it there in the university in a formal way. He agitated and got language professors as regular faculty members. Melanchthon came as the Greek teacher. You could learn a language informally on your own time at universities, but not as part of the regular course of studies. Like many universities today, there were those who taught informally. On the kiosk bulletin board today you see something like “Learn Korean—Tuesday and Thursday evenings—call…” which is a nice opportunity and expands your knowledge, but that is not required and gets you no credit for your degree. That happened with Greek in Luther’s day. There were competent Greek teachers to be found along with texts to use, so Luther learned Greek studying with Johannes Lang,

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 169 a fellow Augustinian, while still in the Erfurt cloister. Luther took up He- brew soon after, doing it on his own. But now Wittenberg would formally offer the languages and require them of students. And the preparatory schools, the gymnasia, would eventually retool their own curricula to start early on with languages, pointing toward university. So Wittenberg led the way by making classical Latin, Greek, and He- brew full “partners” in the liberal arts curriculum. No other university had that system at the time, so Wittenberg quickly became a model that others would follow just to keep up as students “voted with their feet” and swelled Wittenberg’s enrollment. Beyond that, Luther also made sure that scholastic logic was scaled back. And history was also introduced. Mean- while the humanists were watching what was going on at Wittenberg and applauded Luther. They saw him as a friend of the New Learning. It’s interesting that during this time, Luther used the word “reformation” not for larger changes in the church. For that he talked of preaching the Gos- pel. At first “reformation” referred to curriculum change at the university. But something happened. Many humanists wanted reform in the church, but they saw or understood that in terms of institutional change and personal moral reform by the clergy. Especially the humanists older than Luther were so attached to the Roman church that they could not stay with Luther when he said “faith alone.” The older humanists believed in Christ but they also saw Him as a model or blueprint they needed to follow—the philosophia Christi, the philosophy of Christ. That was still a mix of faith and works, that old theology that Luther would reject. They wanted a purer, simpler piety, and they hated the dogmatic hair-splitting of the scholastics (even though the substance of the theology in the end was the same, just without all the intricate logic and technical language). The humanists also were horrified by the luxury in the institutional church with its vast wealth, but they could not bring themselves to go with Luther down that evangelical path. They came to see Luther’s reform as radical theological change that struck at the core, and that was simply too much for them to accept. It is an interesting footnote that every German humanist who was older than Luther finally backed away from the Reforma- tion as a final theological position and did not ultimately commit to the evangelical cause. Their old ties to the Roman church seem to have been too strong. This loss of support among the humanists did not happen overnight. Already privately in 1516 Luther expressed his concern about Erasmus, the most famous of the humanists, because Erasmus insisted that when Paul said in Romans 5 that we are freed from the law, Erasmus said that meant only Old Testament civil and ceremonial law while the moral law still had to be kept for salvation. In the years that followed, these theological differences would eventually erupt into the open and Luther would write “The Bondage of the Will” making plain that we do not come to God, but He chooses and converts us. And in salvation, the Law only kills.

170 The older humanists liked Luther’s condemnation of indulgences because of the excess, but again, they worried about grace alone. They especially liked Luther’s rejection of Aristotle’s logic in Luther’s “Disputation Against Scholastic Theology”—Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light. But they worried about Luther’s 1518 Heidelberg Theses that condemned the idea that we have free will to climb to God. “God’s love does not find its object,” Luther wrote, “God’s love creates its object. Human love finds its object.”2 That was plainly against the idea of God finding that spark of goodness within us, something lovable. In fact, there is no spark, nothing godly to like. You love something because you find something attractive there. You choose a spouse not because you cannot stand the other person (unless you are the prophet Hosea, and then he really did not choose; God did the match-making). You are attracted to your wife or husband. Human love is “therefore/ergo” love. But God does not find the lovable because the lovable is not there. Nevertheless God loves us because He creates the very thing He wants to loves. But the older humanists worried still more, now that Luther’s freedom would lead to moral irre- sponsibility. Then came a series of widely read treatises that pushed older humanists to the breaking point. The first was Luther’s sermon on “Two Kinds of Righteousness.” We heard about that from Prof. Kolb. And where is the Law? Where is my part to make myself presentable to God? This again seemed morally risky to the older crowd. Then in less than a year in 1520 Luther issued three bombshells. “The Address to the Christian Nobility” put forth a radical design even while relying on a centuries-old idea. The church, the bishops, were resisting the Reformation, dragging their feet when it came to promoting the Gospel. Could nothing be done about this? Rome had erected a wall (metaphorically speaking) between sacred and secular vocation, and claimed that only the sacred had anything to say about the church. But that was a false distinction, Luther said. All vocations can be God-pleasing when filled by Christians. And princes should look to the example of the emperor who had centuries of historical prece- dent being the protector of the church—so do your jobs and make it easier for pastors to proclaim the Gospel. Yet older humanists worried about the issue of authority. Luther’s next 1520 treatise that shook things up was “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church” where Rome and its priests held Christians hos- tage with the way they treated sacraments. For Rome, sacraments were a way to exercise power as priests stood as mediators between God and people. In fact, Luther argued, sacraments were God’ gifts of grace (not the priests possessions or weapons). And by the way, there are not seven sacraments anyway, Luther claimed, because it’s saving grace that finally counts. Fi- nally in 1520 came Luther’s “Freedom of a Christian.” All you need to hear

2 WA 1, 353-354; LW 31, 39-41.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 171 are the two famous sentences: “The Christian is the perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. The Christian is the perfectly dutiful servant of all subject to all.” We do not become free by combining faith with our efforts. We are free! End of discussion. Then because of that, we truly can be servants—but not to get anything from God. It’s the same pattern as the “Two Kinds of Righteousness.” This was too much for many of the humanists and they distanced themselves from Luther. They were with Luther on the criticism of morality and the church’s institutional failure, but Luther was striking at the heart of theology—Gospel, authority, priestly power, and more—and that was simply too much. Every humanist who was older than Luther eventually stayed with Rome. But at the same time, many (though not all) of the younger crowd rushed to his support. The point here is this: Luther put out his ideas to test them. At the same time, while he obviously would like the support, he finally cannot alter what he believes to be the Biblical message simply to gather more support. As Luther once put it, “Peace if possible, but truth at any rate.” Luther confessed what he believed. Some would have none of it, but others searched the Scriptures themselves, like the Bereans did even with St. Paul, and they decided Luther was right—really the Bible was right. But note how this involves a balance. Luther was not willing simply to take something for granted because the church said so. In fact those answers brought no comfort. But he also did not decide on some theological position simply to be contrary. He decided to confess what he did because he looked first into the Scriptures and then put his theological ideas to the test, putting them out before others and against what the church had taught through the centuries. But confession, belief, doctrine need to be used. We confess not to hear ourselves talk or to talk merely to ourselves or to pat ourselves on the back for being guardians of the truth even as we drive people away with our self-congratulatory attitudes or with the way we go about trying to teach and witness to that truth. This is all included in what Luther did. There are ragged edges all along the way when it comes to application, but that’s just the way it is this side of the parousia as long as God builds His church through sinners He saves and then sends out to witness. Are you alone wise? The answer is clear by now. Luther was always willing to rethink, but at the same time he was not paralyzed by questions. He moved forward while at the Wartburg and beyond. While there he occasionally went out in disguise, and he could find out about the reaction to Worms and to the Gospel on the loose. Back in Wittenberg some said the Reformation had not gone far enough or fast enough. Andreas Karlstadt, another professor, read the Bible like a new rule book: “Let no man call you master,” said the New Testament, so he gave up academic degrees and titles—not quite what Jesus had in mind. Karlstadt forced the laypeople to take the Lord’s Supper in both kinds, bread and wine, even though they traditionally were not used to this. In principle, giving the cup was correct,

172 but Luther’s approach was to preach the Gospel and be patient as other issues were worked through. Rather than give comfort in the Sacrament, Karlstadt brought anxiety as the people were still working things through. And then came the iconoclasm, the destruction of church art—graven images, Karlstadt and the radicals argued. If people worshipped the images, then they had to learn differently, but the art could also teach the illiter- ate. All this threatened to get in the way of the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins by grace alone grasped by faith alone, so Luther did something about it. He made a quick trip back to Wittenberg to preach against the excesses—a kind of public confession of what the evangelical Reforma- tion is all about. Also during the time in the Wartburg, Luther offered resources to help others see the Gospel and confess it. He wrote “On Monastic Vows,” in which he argued that both celibacy and running off to the cloister were less valuable to society than living a normal life in the tasks God might send. In other words, that supposedly sacred vocation of monk was less valuable than the Christian freed to live as a servant of all in daily life. Monks claimed to practice contemptum mundi, that is, contempt for the world. But Luther sees true contempt as rolling up your sleeves and stay- ing put, not going anywhere. We stand there squarely on two feet, confident that we are redeemed and are put into a world Christ has reclaimed as His own, so nothing is going to be surrendered or conceded to Satan. Luther dedicated the writing to his father as if to say “you were right—I should have stayed in school and out of the cloister.” (What if he had?!) But the most important Wartburg work was Luther’s translation of the New Testament. In eleven weeks he gave the Germans what arguably was the most important contribution for confessing the Gospel, putting the texts into the hands of the people to read for themselves in language they could readily understand. Are you alone wise?—“Read for yourselves,” Luther could say. They would see what he had found and could confess the same. There is much more to point to in the aftermath of Luther’s stay at the Wartburg—sermon books, catechisms, and more. In a sense, everything was aimed at confessing some part of God’s truth that revolved around the central message of saving grace promised in Christ. Circumstances prompted Luther to respond to problems at hand. He is called an “occasional writer,” not because he wrote once in a while. There are over 120 thick volumes in the set of his complete works. That’s not writing once in a while, that’s responding to a lot of occasions. And that’s yet another important part of confessing: there is a truth to be had, but we never come to the end. It is applied in so many ways and in so many circumstances. That does not make truth relative. It means rather it is inexhaustible. It also means we have to be very aware of our circumstances, of the world in which we live. Context, context, context when it comes to confessing. Luther’s age was highly religious but confused. Today, as Pope Benedict XVI said just over a week ago at the Youth Gathering in Cologne (and I

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 173 think at least on this part he’s right), our age is highly secular (certainly in Europe and North America and likely elsewhere), and much has happened that has challenged and targeted the Gospel in a different way than in Luther’s time. That does not mean the Biblical message is yesterday’s news. It’s today’s news and tomorrow’s hope—but we have to look around and figure out how to get the intellectual foot in the door to best engage the world. Once Luther came clear on just what that message was, he spent his life pursuing it. He spent his life confessing. “Non moriar sed vivam et narrabo opera dei”—“I shall not die but live and declare the works of the Lord.” This was Luther’s motto from Psalm 118. It speaks of the activity of confessing and of Luther’s attitude of confidence and trust, speaking forth a message of God’s wonderful saving works given to him. And that was just what Luther did no matter how many tiles or devils there were on rooftops all around. Luther’s life ended where it began, in the village of Eisleben. He stopped there while traveling, and already in bad health, he died of a heart attack in February 1546. On his deathbed he was asked, “Do you confess Christ, the Son of God, our Savior and Redeemer?,” to which Luther replied with a single word, with a loud and clear “Yes.” In the end, it was the most important confession Luther (or we) could ever make.

174 Here We Stand: Confessing the Faith in Luther’s Footsteps from Worms to Smalcald

Robert Kolb

The scene is so familiar we take it for granted: a black-robed monk standing before an emperor, appealing to Scripture and conscience against the ecclesiastical and imperial powers of his day, confessing his faith in a simple, straightforward way. In fact, relatively seldom in the history of the church has a monk or priest or pastor been summoned to testify before the highest secular governmental power. Christians, clergy and lay, have often been confronted by junior officers of the mighty and have often laid down their lives in that situation because of their faith. The constellation of the authority placed in pope and emperor in the late middle ages in Germany made this particular face-off possible. It fea- tured a professor from a small university on the eastern frontier, so new it had hardly begun to make a reputation for itself, and the most powerful political ruler in Europe between Charlemagne and Napoleon. Their encounter came about because Emperor Charles took seriously his responsibility as the Christian ruler of the people God entrusted to his leadership and care and because Luther’s conscientious execution of his doctoral oath, to teach the Holy Scriptures faithfully to God’s church, had earned him a European-wide reputation and given him the potential to cause serious social unrest across Charles’s German empire and beyond.

Luther’s Anthropology: Two Kinds of Righteousness

North Americans find this particular juncture of what they label “church” and “state”—both because of the emperor’s interest in religion and because of the theologian’s appearance before the legislature—so peculiar in part because they artificially “separate” what cannot be separated in human experience, the religious aspects of life that define its meaning and purpose and the social conventions and organization of daily life, including its political forms and activities. Luther had a much more holistic view of what it means to be human. Not only because the political system of his time demanded his presence in Worms but also because he believed that emperor and pope both were servants of God, albeit with their own respec-

Dr. Robert Kolb is Mission Professor of Systematic Theology and Director of the Institute for Mission Studies at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO. This article was originally presented at the twenty-first conference of the International Lutheran Council which met in Berlin, Germany, from August 27 to September 2, 2005.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 175 tive spheres of life, Luther placed himself in the midst of legislature of his empire to give answer to the political authorities and to testify to the Word of the Lord. Luther believed that the human creature, as the product of God’s creative grace and imagination, is designed to live in two dimensions, in relationship with God and in relationship with other creatures. The reformer labeled his anthropology “the distinction between two kinds of righteousness,” and he called this distinction “our theology” in 1535. Already in 1518/1519 the Wittenberg professor had begun to experiment with the language of two distinct but inseparable “kinds of righteousness,” that is, a definition of what it means to be God’s human creature that embraced two quite different ways of fulfilling God’s design for our humanity. Throughout his career Luther was searching for and testing new ways of expressing the Biblical message that would serve to carry his new conception of who God is as our Creator and Savior, and who we are as His creatures and children. Medieval theologians, for all the variety among their positions, agreed that human beings are truly and fully human beings in their obedience to God’s law, in their carrying out God’s commands. God’s grace became therefore an aid or means of helping sinners to overcome their sinfulness and produce the works that would prove their righteousness in God’s sight. Luther found this view inconsistent with the Scriptural definition of what it means to be human. He believed that God’s grace is His favor, His merciful disposition, His unconditioned will to love His human creatures. Explanations of why God is so disposed toward us defy all human rationalization. As Creator and Savior, God is Lord and Father, not a senior partner or a big brother, as medieval theologians seemed to imply by their focus on the human contribution to re- establishing the relationship with God broken by sin. Therefore, in Wittenberg the distinction was made between what it means to be a righteous human being in relationship to God and what it means to be a righteous human being in relationship to other creatures. Luther’s definition of what it means to be human was shaped by the distinction between the identity which God as creator gives to His creatures and the performance or activities with which that identity expresses itself within the this-worldly relationships God has fashioned for human life. Luther compared the righteousness of our identity to the earth as it receives the blessing of rain.

As the earth itself does not produce rain and is unable to acquire it by its own strength, worship, and power but receives it only by a heavenly gift from above, so this heavenly righteousness is given to us by God without our work or merit. As much as the dry earth of itself is able to accomplish and obtain the right and blessed rain, that much can we human creatures accomplish by our own strength and works to obtain that divine, heavenly, and eternal righteousness. Thus we can obtain it only through the free imputation and

176 indescribable gift of God.1

That leads the Christian conscience to say,

I do not seek active righteousness. I ought to have and perform it; but I declare that even if I did have and perform it, I cannot trust in it or stand up before the judgment of God on the basis of it. Thus I put myself beyond all active righteousness, all righteousness of my own or of the divine law, and I embrace only the passive righteousness which is the righteousness of grace, mercy, and the forgiveness of sins.2

He did not use the analogy of parent and child, but this analogy is appropriate to clarify what he meant with this distinction. God is the parent, who brings human creatures into existence without consultation or commitment from these children. Christ told Nicodemus that entry into the kingdom of God is new birth, birth from above, not from the power or contribution of the new child of God. No human performance or accomplishment can cause human beings to exist or to die as sinners and be reborn as children of God. At the same time, like human parents, God has expectations of His children. He has a plan for human life, and He demands, for their own welfare, that they live according to that plan. Thus, Luther believed in the righteousness of human works, but he limited the validity of that righteousness to their life among other creatures. Trying to offer the heavenly Father some merit of his own in order to qualify as the Father’s child would have been an insult to the Creator. It would have placed trust in his own doing instead of in the One who gave him life and who restored that life through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. Luther believed that this distinction of two kinds of righteousness creates clarity regarding our relationship with God. It makes it clear that God acts only on the basis of His favor and His steadfast mercy. It aids in our understanding and description of God’s acting through Law and Gospel in the vertical dimension of our lives, in which we receive His grace apart from all conditions and in which we respond with a trust that defines our being and bestows our identity upon us. This distinction also creates clarity regarding our relationships with other creatures, particularly other human creatures. It makes it clear that God has designed human life in interdependence with other creatures and that we are called by God to love others within the context of His design for human life, according to His prescriptions. It aids in our understanding and description of the ser-

1 D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883-1996) [henceforth WA] 40,I: 43,18- 25; Luther’s Works (Saint Louis/Philadelphia: Concordia/Fortress, 1958-1986) [henceforth LW] 26:6. 2 WA 40, I: 42, 26-43, 15; LW 26:6.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 177 vice to God and neighbor that makes human life fulfilling within the structures the Creator fashioned for our existence on this earth. Therefore, the memory of Luther’s testimony before the emperor in Worms reminds us of one important element in Luther’s way of practicing theology and the Christian life, this view of what it means to be human. The reformer stood before Emperor Charles V in Worms as a human being. He was confident that he was God’s child simply because God had told him so in his Baptism and in all the other means of grace that express God’s promise in Christ. He confessed his faith to Charles and the other representatives of the German governments assembled in the diet because the confession of the faith is chief among the good works that trust in the Lord and Savior produces (cf. Rom. 10:8-15).

Martin Luther: Confessor and Martyr

One of Luther’s students, Ludwig Rabus, pastor in Strasbourg, composed the first Protestant book of martyrs, publishing the first volume of his martyrology in 1552, two years before those of the more famous martyrologists, the English Puritan John Foxe and the French-Genevan Calvinist Jean Crespin. Rabus numbered Luther among his martyrs because the Strasbourg pastor defined a martyr as a witness to the faith, first of all. Luther had suffered for the Gospel, even though not fatally, but his suffering qualified him less for the title, in Rabus’s view, than did the power of his witness. The scene at the Diet of Worms reminds us that the public confession of our faith is an integral element in a Lutheran understanding of what it means to be human and what it means to bear the name of Christ. Baptism calls God’s chosen children to faith and to faithfulness. It defines us as those who have died as sinners so that we might be raised to walk in Christ’s footsteps in new life (Rom. 6:3-11), and we who have died to sin are prepared in our Baptisms to die physically for the faith if it serves the Lord’s good purposes. Western European, North American, and Australian Lutherans tend to forget that the martyr’s face belongs to the profile of our confession. In the sixteenth century in German and Scandinavian lands there was relatively little martyrdom required compared to England, the Netherlands, and France. But by the end of the sixteenth and in the seventeenth centuries Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, and other central European Lutherans stood under severe persecution for their faith by Habsburg, Vasa, and other regimes. In this last century Estonian, Latvian, and Russian Lutherans suffered torture, deportation, and execution under Soviet tyranny, as did other Lutherans across Europe at the hands of the National Socialist and Soviet occupation forces. The persecution goes on today among our Afri- can and Asian fellow confessors. Martyrdom is a part of the history of all Christians and a significant element of our Lutheran past. That is a reason why it is vital for the Lutheran confession of our Lord

178 in the twenty-first century that North American Lutherans, for instance, listen to and learn from those of you whose memories of martyrdom are recent and direct. As our society becomes more and more openly and ag- gressively hostile to important elements of God’s plan for human living and as our governments become ever more erratically selective in which elements of that plan to which they give lip service, we must learn from you how to bear witness in an antagonistic and sometimes intimidating environment.

Confessing the Word of the Lord

Such witness, in our deeds but in its native form in our words, reflects Luther’s definition of our humanity as created in the image of God. For Luther recognized that the Bible reveals God as the Creator who speaks, who has brought all reality into existence by speaking. In his Genesis commentary he observes regarding Genesis 1:20, “If the Word is spoken, all things are possible.” He called the creatures of God “nothing but nouns in the divine language,” and he defined God’s Word as the instrument of God’s power. That power expresses itself in promises to His people, the professor told his students: “We must take note of God’s power that we may be completely without doubt about the things which God promises in His Word. Here full assurance is given concerning all His promises; nothing is either so difficult or so impossible that He could not bring it about by His Word.”3 Reality rests on God’s Word alone, but the new reality of the Christian life rests on the word spoken from the cross. That word is God’s wisdom and His power, but it seems like a weak and foolish word, Luther recognized in formulating his theology of the cross. It is a word which reveals God as a God whose essence is mercy and steadfast loving kindness. It is a word that creates trust in Him and submits to no human attempt to tame it by experiment and sign or by reason and logic. Like Paul, we should not rely on wise and persuasive words of our own but rather count on the Holy Spirit to demonstrate His power as we confess our faith, so that the faith of others may not rest on our wisdom but on God’s power (1 Cor. 2:4-5). That does not mean that Luther did not use the advances in communica- tions theory formulated by his colleague Philip Melanchthon in his research and writing on God’s gift of human rhetoric. It does mean that both men acknowledged that when we have exercised all the dominion God has given us to aid the Gospel, the Holy Spirit still uses the means of grace and these human gifts and skills when and where and how He wills through the means of grace (CA V,2). Those means of grace, Luther recognized, come in oral, written, and sacramental forms. They direct the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as God’s power

3 LW 1:49; WA 42:37, 5-24.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 179 to deliver the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to sinners, as God comes to speak new life into His people by sharing with them the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection. Luther’s concept of the “living voice of the gospel” reminds us that this word that bestows life and salvation is a word that God addresses directly to His people. The distinction that Gerhard Forde makes between “proclamation” and “explanation” captures Luther’s dynamic understanding of how the Holy Spirit works within and through human language.4 “Proclamation” is direct, primary discourse which en- gages two persons in a conversation, with the language of “I” and “you.” “Explanation” is third person, secondary discourse, in which you and I may stand back as observers, often with the illusion that we are in charge of what we are observing. Theologians indeed must engage in explanation as they assess and analyze the words of Scripture in order to formulate proper teaching and proclamation of God’s Word. But the native form of God’s address to us comes, according to Luther, when he uses our words to tell sinners directly, “Your sins are forgiven,” “Christ died and rose for you and says, ‘I claim you for my Father,’” “God is telling you, ‘I love you in Christ and have made you my child.’” In this “for us,” “for me,” “for you” Luther heard God speaking from His heart and re-creating and renewing His chosen children.

The Smalcald Articles as Luther’s Written Confession of Faith

Luther did not confess his faith in detail in Worms. There he simply held to what he had explained and asserted in earlier writings. Fifteen years later he was called upon to confess his faith in writing. He had actually written his own “confession” of the entire creedal faith in 1528, at the end of his Confession on Christ’s Supper, according to the outline of the Apostles’ Creed.5 In 1536/1537 his prince, Elector Johann Friedrich of Saxony, called on his leading theological professor to compose another such personal confession. Luther complied as he fulfilled another request from Johann Friedrich, to set an agenda for the witness of the Evangelical governments of the empire at the papally called council that finally took place in Trent. Luther knew that those to whom God has given His truth have responsibilities to confess it ecumenically as well as evangelically. Melanchthon had done that at Augsburg, and the elder colleague gave himself willingly to a task in spite of doubts about the probabilities of mea- surable success. At a meeting in the Hessian town of Smalcald in February 1537 the Lutheran governments decided not to use Luther’s new confession. They preferred the Augsburg Confession, with the addendum of Melanchthon’s “Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope,” as this

4 Gerhard O. Forde, Theology Is for Proclamation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990). 5 WA 26:499-509; LW 37:360-372.

180 agenda. Nonetheless, the theologians at this diet of the Protestant estates decided to subscribe Luther’s Smalcald Articles as a personal confession of faith. During the 1540s and 1550s many Lutheran churches adopted this document as an official statement of their faith. Luther structured this confession in three parts. He began by confessing his faith in the historic confession that God is Trinity and Jesus Christ is one person, with two inseparable but totally distinct natures, divine and human. The creeds require that much of those who wish to be saved, those who hold to the universal faith delivered to believers by God’s Word. This served as the common foundation and fundamental definition of what it means to be Christian. Those who deny this confession cannot be regarded as believers in God.6 As he drafted this section, Luther wrote that the papal party “believes and confesses” this doctrine, as did his own followers, and then crossed out “believes,” leaving “confesses” standing alone.7 Luther seemed to be saying that in the arena of public confession the public statement determines the discussion, and evidence to the contrary must be combated through our confession of the truth, not by our accusation and attempts to persuade others that they are not teaching what they say but rather what we think they really mean. Our call to witness to fellow believers of other confessions places us under the same rules as our witness in evangelism and edification. We do not persuade by “wise and persuasive words” but with the simple confession of the trust that demonstrates the Holy Spirit’s power (1 Cor. 2:4). The ecumenical responsibility God imposes upon His church calls for confession of the faith independent of our hopes for success. Luther’s second item on the agenda for the council treats what he holds to be “the first and chief article of faith.” It speaks of Christ’s “office and work,” or our redemption. Luther needs only a few passages from Scripture to set forth the heart and core of his faith. He begins by assert- ing that Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and rose for our justification (Rom. 4:25). In His death He has buried our sinful identity; in His resurrection He has restored our humanity, brought us into the new life, and set us on the path of this new life following in Christ’s footsteps (cf. Rom. 6:3-11). His next three passages recognize Christ as “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), the one “on whom God has laid all our sins” (Is. 53:6), through whose blood, apart from all human merit, on the basis of God’s grace the liberation of sinners from their sin has been accomplished (Rom. 3:23-25). In line with his elimina- tion of the worthiness of any and every human act or performance or obedience to the Law from our relationship with God, our passive righ-

6 Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1930, 1991) [henceforth BSLK], 414-415, The Book of Con- cord, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 300. 7 BSLK, 415; Book of Concord, 300-301.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 181 teousness in His sight, Luther insisted that only faith constitutes the righteousness of the human creature before God. For Paul had said, “We maintain that a human being is justified by faith apart from the works of the law through faith,” for “he alone is righteous and the one who makes those who have faith in Jesus righteous” (Rom. 3:28, 26). If this much is not clear and clearly confessed, there will be confusion and doubt instead of consolation and assurance among the people of God. Luther laid down his definition of God’s saving action in Jesus Christ and his definition of true human righteousness in relationship to God as the article of faith regarding which “one cannot compromise or concede even if heaven and earth or whatever is not to stand collapses, for there is no other name through which we can be saved, as Peter says (Acts 4:12). Through his wounds we are healed (Is. 53:5).” Luther believed that his entire Reformation, “everything we teach and live against the pope, the devil, and the world,” rested upon this foundation. Everything is lost, he claimed, if we do not remain certain of this, if we doubt it.8 The Lutheran understanding of what makes us righteous in God’s sight and how God makes us righteous in His sight remains our first and foremost contribution to ecumenical conversation, for it is the most important gift we have to give brothers and sisters in the faith. Martin Chemnitz regarded it as the chief difference between Lutherans and Roman Catho- lics. In his Examination of the Council of Trent he wrote:

It is regarding the good works of the regenerate, or the new obedience, that there is now the chief controversy between the papalists and us, namely, whether the regenerate are justified by that newness which the Holy Spirit works in them and by the good works which follow from that renewal, that is, whether the newness, the virtues, or good works of the regenerate are the things by which they can stand in the judgment of God that they may not be condemned, on account of which they have a gracious and propitiated God that they may not be condemned, on account of which they have a gracious and propitiated God, to which they should look, on which they should rely, in which they should trust when they are dealing with that difficult question, how we may be children of God and be accepted to eternal life.9

In offering the Lutheran counter-definition of what makes the regenerate righteous in God’s sight, Chemnitz contended that Paul’s “excluding phrases,” the particulae exclusivae—such as “without the works of the law” and “by grace alone”—required defining the trust that God creates as the

8 BSLK, 415-416; Book of Concord, 301. 9 Martin Chemnitz, Examen concilii Tridentini, ed. Eduard Preus (1861; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972), 153; Examination of the Council of Trent, Part I, trans. Fred Kramer (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1971), 481-482.

182 response to His love for the human creature as that which makes believers righteous in God’s sight. Abraham was his example. Paul talked about him in Romans 4 both before and after his conversion from idolatry.

But when he had obeyed God in faith for a number of years from the very beginning of his call, from Genesis chapters eleven through fifteen, then he was certainly renewed in the spirit of his mind and adorned with many outstanding works and fruits of the Spirit, according to Hebrews 11:8-10. In the very middle of the course of the good works of Abraham, Moses in the Old Testament and Paul in the New Testament put the question: “What then was the justification of Abraham before God for the inheritance of life eternal?” It is to this already regenerate Abraham, adorned with spiritual newness and with many good works, that Paul applies these statements: “To one who does not work but trusts Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.” To this Abraham he applies also this statement: “David pronounces a blessing upon the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works.” But that at that time the already regenerate Abraham was certainly not without good works but had performed many truly good works through faith, the Epistle to the Hebrews testi- fies in chapter eleven. And yet the Holy Spirit through Paul clearly removes and takes away from the operation and works of the renewed Abraham the praise and glory of justification before God to life eternal.10

The same could be said of Paul himself, according to Chemnitz.

The apostle Paul says of his works which he performed while he was a Pharisee, before his conversion, Philippians 3:4-7: “If any other man thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more; … as to righteousness under the Law blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.” However, of the works which he did after his renewal, when he had labored more than the others, what, I say, does he say concerning them with respect to the article of justification? Let the reader examine the passage, and he will find that Paul not only uses the past tense of h`gou/mai [I counted] for the works that preceded his conversion but that he also by means of the particle avlla. menou/n moves forward and uses the present tense h`gou/mai to show that also after his renewal he does not attribute to his works his justification before God to life eternal. On the contrary, when trust in righteousness before God to life eternal is patched on these works, he declares

10 Examen, 154; Examination, I:483.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 183 them to be refuse and loss. And he shows at the same time what was his righteousness before God to life eternal at the time when he wrote this epistle from prison, yes, what will be his righteousness, when he attains to the resurrection of the dead....

That righteousness Chemnitz defined as “that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God which depends on faith.”11 Chemnitz knew but one source and cause for the righteousness which human creatures bring before God: God’s favor, His unconditional and undeserved mercy, and in this definition he was only echoing what Luther had taught. The challenge for our confessing the Biblical message and for our con- tributing to the ecumenical conversation on the Biblical teaching regarding salvation lies in faithfully repeating these insights from the confessors that set the Lutheran tradition in motion more than four hundred years ago. The places in which this confession need to take place are clear. The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification does not even recognize that this definition of what constitutes human righteousness is an issue. The document places it neither among critical differences or points on which there is agreement. This particular Lutheran witness to our tradition falls silent at the point at which Luther and Chemnitz, among many others among our forebears, thought we had the most to offer to the conversation among Christians about the very heart of the Biblical message. For even the theologies which emphasize prevenient grace do not accurately and adequately convey the Biblical message of salvation when they fail to capture the fact that our righteousness in God’s sight rests alone upon His mercy and does not consist in grace-wrought works. Even as His reborn children who practice new obedience, our identity as God’s children in His sight does not consist of this new obedience which His grace produces in us. It consists alone in His favor and steadfast loving kindness and in the response of trust that love creates in us. To teach that our works constitute any part of our merit in God’s sight, even if they are works produced by grace, denies the Scripture’s teaching regarding God and what it means that He is Creator; to teach this denies the Scripture’s definition of what it means to be human and how sinners are restored to that humanity. Likewise, from our circles should come a clear reaffirmation of Luther’s definition of salvation and righteousness, of who God is and of what it means that we are His human creatures, in response to the widespread suggestion that Luther’s doctrine of justification can be best represented through the concept of “theosis,” “divinization.” Luther’s strong doctrine of creation and his deep conviction that the Creator is totally other than His creatures, even though He comes near by taking on human flesh, led him to teach that the forgiveness of sins through Christ’s death and resur-

11 Examen, 155; Examination, I:486.

184 rection restore our humanity rather than lift us above it. We do not become “like God,” but rather we become the creatures God made us to be in the first place, in regard to our relationship with Him. To look for signs of the divine in ourselves leads us into a false view of reality that diminishes the Biblical divide between Creator and creature. God crossed that divide in the incarnation, but there is no reason in a Biblical view of reality to posit a similar crossing of the divide that brings human beings into some form of divinity. We were created to be human, and we are restored to that humanity through Christ’s death and resurrection, which buries our sin and raises us up as His new creatures. In recent comments on the Joint Declaration Dominican theologian Albert Schenk calls for a new period of “ecumenical honesty” in discussing the unresolved tensions that frame contemporary Christian thinking about God’s saving act in Christ through the Holy Spirit’s delivery of His benefits. This is a call which theologians in our circles must answer positively. We must leave behind tendencies inherited from another era that left us too often in our own corner and betrayed the model of Melanchthon at Augsburg, where his contemporaries described his confession as comparable to that of Daniel in the lions’ den.12 Luther reinforced this view of salvation by discussing three areas of medieval teaching and practice that ran counter to and thus undermined this view of salvation through the bestowal of the righteousness of faith. He knew that our positive teaching is vulnerable to misinterpretation if we do not point out to our hearers that certain ideas in our cultural world of thinking are opposed to the Biblical truth we confess. The rejection of false conceptions of reality must accompany our sharing of God’s revelation regarding Himself and the reality of our humanity. The first of the areas which Luther showed were undermining trust in Christ embraced a number of sacred or religious activities. Medieval popular Christianity had urged believers to practice these sacred activities in order to merit God’s favor. They included the mass above all, and a series of beliefs and rituals that stemmed from the abuse of the Sacrament of the Altar, including purgatory, heeding spirits that appeared with special instructions, pilgrimages, pious organizations that prayed for the dead, relics, indulgences, and the invocation of dead saints. In addition, Luther warned against the per- version of the Christian faith worked by confidence in monastic vows as an aid to salvation and by submission to the papacy, which had corrupted rather than promoted God’s Word.13 Luther had placed his own faith in each of these, and the weight of his guilt had caused these false expressions of religion to collapse and let him fall into the hell of despair. His anger at such devilish deceptions sounds through in the critique of the

12 Robert Kolb, Confessing the Faith, Reformers Define the Church, 1530-1580 (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1991), 54-55. 13 BSLK, 415-433; Book of Concord, 301-310.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 185 Smalcald Articles. In the third section of his Smalcald Articles Luther confessed his faith regarding fifteen topics that were falsely understood in much of medieval theology but which, he believed, could be profitably discussed with learned, reasonable people or even within the Wittenberg circle itself. In these brief treatments of these topics Luther related the subject at hand to the life of the believer or the life of the church. His presupposition of two kinds of righteousness underlies much of his discussion. The first two topics, on sin and on the Law, flow into the third, on the life of repentance. Luther’s preaching and teaching aimed at aiding believers in the struggle that results from the mystery of the continuation of sin and evil in the lives of the baptized. He pointed out that original, inherited sin, cannot be imagined until Scripture has brought the revelation of God to the sinner. As he listed what Adam’s sin had visited upon us, the first five fruits of that original disobedience concern the righteousness of faith, or the unrighteousness of human doubt of God’s Word and denial of His lordship: “unfaith, false faith, idolatry, mistrust toward God, being without fear of God, presumption, despair, blindness and, sin summary, not knowing or paying attention to God.” From that defiant orientation toward life flow the actual sins that break God’s other commands: “lying, swearing by God’s name, not praying or calling on God, not paying attention to his Word, being disobedient to parents, murder, adultery, stealing, deceiving, and so forth.”14 When trust in God does not lay the foundation for life, then the righteousness of human love also gets twisted out of shape, both in relationship to God in praise and worship, in relationship to other creatures in care and concern for all their needs. The Law addresses human creatures who are ignoring God in the midst of their lives. Through threats of punishment and promises of benefits it attempts to keep order in sinners’ lives. Often rather optimistic about civil righteousness and what the Law in human hearts can produce by way of upright conduct, Luther here shows his pessimistic side. The Law often produces the opposite effect than the restoration of outward order, instead causing the sinner to rebel and to sin the more to prove his independence from God. It may also produce false religion if sinners try to present the works it demands to God as a source of their own merit. But the Law is designed to crush the sinner under its hammer blows. It thus arouses the repentant heart, which the Holy Spirit turns to the promise of the Gospel. To it human beings are to cling in faith.15 Luther followed his description of the rhythm of repentance in the believer’s daily life and his critique of the false practices of the papal party in cultivating a deceptive form of repentance with an article on “the Gos- pel.” It does not treat the content of the Gospel of Christ but rather the

14 BSLK, 434; Book of Concord, 310-311. 15 BSLK, 435-438; Book of Concord, 311-313.

186 “resources and aid” that the Gospel of Christ gives to combat sin, namely, the means of grace. He includes oral proclamation, the forgiveness of sins, “the real function of the Gospel,” and then Baptism, the Sacrament of the Altar, the power of the Keys or Absolution, and the mutual conversation among Christians that delivers the consolation of the Gospel. Luther then expanded his agenda for council on the means of grace by treating Bap- tism, the Lord’s Supper, and the Office the Keys and Absolution in separate articles. In 1538 Luther revised the Articles that he had written more than a year earlier so that the document might be published. At that point he expanded the text of some articles, including that on confession and absolution. There he rejected the theology of the Schwärmer that wanted to find the Spirit of God and His wisdom within themselves, apart from the proclamation of the Word. God comes with His grace through the Holy Spirit only in that external Word, proclaimed or in Scripture. Satan deceived Adam and Eve by creating doubt in that external Word and turning them into their own inner thoughts. Proclamation and Scripture and Bap- tism are God’s avenues and tools for claiming His children as His own and causing them to grow in trust toward Him.16 A variety of forms of mystical searching for God and our true humanity have commanded public attention through what is loosely labeled the “New Age Movement.” This attempt to find God by looking inside ourselves coincides with the individu- alism and the desire for personal independence of our times. It also coincides with mystical patterns of Christian piety, in hesychastic and other forms, that have too often led people away from the assurance of the forgiveness of sins and new life in Christ. Lutherans have struggled with the temptation to move away from God’s conversation with them in the oral, written, and sacramental forms of His Word and to seek inner peace through inner means. True peace that passes our understanding comes from the words of Christ in preaching and conversation, in absolution and recalling our Baptism, in receiving the Lord’s Supper with other members of Christ’s body, the church. The Word of God shapes the life of the church or empowers His people in their wisdom under the Holy Spirit’s guidance to shape their practices as the assembly of God’s people. Luther believed that the council could attend to a number of concerns in the life of the church which had been subject to abuse in the late medieval church, according to the Wittenberg theologians: excommunication, ordination and call of pastors, clerical marriage, the definition of the church, the manner in which to preach of coming to righteousness in God’s sight and good works, monastic vows, and humanly ordained customs in the church. Here he dealt with matters involved in proper trust in God, for instance, when he rejected monastic vows, but for the most part he considered matters pertaining to love for

16 BSLK, 453-456; Book of Concord, 321-323.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 187 the neighbor and the order of life together in the church. Luther got into the habit of confessing his faith at the Diet of Worms. He never lost the habit. He was certain that confessing the faith is a part of the call to be God’s child that all believers have received in Baptism. His new insights into the Gospel of Jesus Christ compelled him to be experi- menting with the best proper ways of expressing the Biblical message within the context of the culture to which God had called him as a minister of the Word. The summons of Pope Paul III to council had provided him the opportunity to set forth his confession regarding proper teaching anew, and others had joined with him, he reported in the preface to the first printing of this document.17 Many others have joined him in this confession of the faith in the intervening four and two-thirds centuries, and we are called to continue to use the words of the Smalcald Articles as a guide and foundation for our bringing the power of God in his Word to the people of our societies and cultures in the twenty-first century. The challenges of evangelistic, ecumenical, and edificatory proclamation of life and salvation make these the most exciting and challenging time in our history, and we must pray for the Holy Spirit’s wisdom and power and the courage to meet his call to testify to life and salvation in Christ.

17 BSLK, 453-456; Book of Concord, 321-323.

188 The Formula of Concord as a Model for Discourse in the Church

Robert Kolb

The appellation “Formula of Concord” has designated the last of the symbolic or confessional writings of the Lutheran church almost from the time of its composition. This document was indeed a formulation aimed at bringing harmony to strife-ridden churches in the search for a proper expression of the faith that Luther had proclaimed and his colleagues and followers had confessed as a liberating message for both church and society fifty years earlier. This document is a formula, a written document that gives not even the slightest hint that it should be conveyed to human ears instead of human eyes. The Augsburg Confession had been written to be read: to the emperor, to the estates of the German nation, to the waiting crowds outside the hall of the diet in Augsburg. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, it is quite clear from recent research,1 followed the oral form of judicial argument as Melanchthon presented his case for the Lutheran confession to a mythically yet neutral emperor; the Apology was created at the yet not carefully defined border between oral and written cultures. The Large Catechism reads like the sermons from which it was composed, and the Small Catechism reminds every reader that it was written to be recited and repeated aloud.

The Formula of Concord as a “Binding Summary” of Christian Teaching

In contrast, the “Formula of Concord” is written for readers, a carefully crafted formulation for the theologians and educated laypeople of German Lutheran churches to ponder and study. Its careful crafting was intended to reconcile feuding theologians and to formulate precisely teachings which they could accept, enabling them to live together in doctrinal harmony. Yet the document did not call itself a “Formula of Concord.” The book in which it was published indeed claimed the title “Concordia.” But the title page of the Epitome of this Formula deemed what followed a

1 Charles P. Arand, “Melanchthon’s Rhetorical Argument for Sola Fide in the Apol- ogy,” Lutheran Quarterly 14 (2000): 281-308. Dr. Robert Kolb is Mission Professor of Systematic Theology and Director of the Institute for Mission Studies at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO. This article was originally presented at the twenty-first conference of the International Lutheran Council which met in Berlin, Germany, from August 27 to September 2, 2005.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 189 “Binding Summary” regarding certain controverted articles of faith, and the Solid Declaration labeled itself “A General, Clear, Correct, and Defini- tive Repetition and Explanation of Certain Articles of the Augsburg Con- fession.”2 The Formula of Concord was conceived as part of a larger effort at achieving agreement and harmony within the German Lutheran churches by repeating the confession made at Augsburg, setting forth an analogia fidei, here described as a “binding summary,” roughly the term that Andreae had used (“Kirchen Begriff”) in 1574 as he composed what is called the “Swabian Concord.”3 This essay describes how its authors actually worked to achieve harmony by recapitulating the Biblical teaching confessed at Augsburg in such a way that that teaching would be clarified in regard to the issues that divided Lutheran theologians in their time. They did so by providing a “binding summary, basis, rule, and guiding principle” for “how all teaching is to be judged in accord with God’s Word and how the errors that have arisen are to be explained and decided in Christian fashion, as the orientation to the use of the Solid Declaration states, paraphrasing the title and opening heading of the Epitome.4 The designation “binding summary replaced the term corpus doctrinae as the title of the effort to repeat the Augsburg Confession’s teaching in the final stage of the development of the Solid Declaration’s text, in the revisions from the Torgau Book of May 1576 to the Bergen Book of May 1577. The Book of Concord bore the heading “Concordia,” followed by the invocation of the name of hwhy and then the title, “Christian, Recapitulated, Unani- mous Confession of the Teaching and Faith....” The Book is an act of confession itself, designed to repeat in concord and agreement what had earlier been confessed in Lutheran churches, “with an appended declaration— well-grounded in the Word of God as the only guiding principle” or binding summary—a rule of faith in action and application—regarding the disputes that had arisen in Lutheran circles since Luther’s death.5 The Book of Concord understands itself as a repetition of earlier confessions and a declaration of the principles upon which the controversies of its own time were to be adjudicated on the basis of Biblical teaching. Since the early 1530s Wittenberg theologians had used the term “Body of Doctrine” first of all as a synonym for the analogia fidei or regula fidei, the authoritative summary of Biblical teaching that should guide public proclamation of the message of Scripture—the fundamental hermeneutic

2 Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche (11. ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992 [henceforth BSLK]), 767, 833; The Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 486, 524. 3 His title for the manuscript was “Schwebischer Kirchen begriff zu einer Heilsamen Vnion in Religionsachen,” but the editor, H. Hachfeld, labeled it “the Schwäbische Con- fession,” Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftliche Theologie 36 (1866): 234. Andreae labeled the activity in which he was engaged the work of “Concordia” in a letter to Duke Julius of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, October 4, 1573, ibid., 231. 4 BSLK 833 and 767, Book of Concord, 526 and 486. 5 BSLK 1; The Book of Concord, 3.

190 of the church. By the 1550s some in the Wittenberg circle were also em- ploying the term for a specific set of documents that summarized and expressed that guiding set of axioms for pure and proper presentation of God’s Word. Martin Chemnitz wrote in 1561, “the body of teaching of our churches, which we judge to be the true and lasting doctrinal content of the prophetic and apostolic teachings, is expressed in the content of the confessions which we accept, that is, the Augsburg Confession, its Apology, and the Smalcald Articles.”6 Shortly before his death Melanchthon wrote prefaces for German and Latin editions of a collection of his writings that bore the title Corpus doctrinae, giving the term a third definition, as the generic title for a tome that collected authoritative expressions of public teaching in Lutheran principalities and cities within the German empire.7 To avoid the impression that the Book of Concord was a hostile attempt to set aside Melanchthon’s theology and replace the Corpus Doctrinae Philippicum, the Concordists decided to do without the phrase Corpus doctrinae that had quickly become the standard term for such a collection of documents that was designed to summarize and regulate public teaching. They found their synonym in “binding summary, rule, and guiding principle” more than adequate for describing what they were trying to accomplish. They were seeking to establish a hermeneutical standard to judge and guide public teaching in expressions that delivered God’s Word to the church. In 1577 the repetition of the teaching of the Augsburg Confession was necessary not because those outside the Lutheran communion demanded it but because among the teachers of the Confession disagreements had erupted as they attempted to interpret and convey Luther’s and Melanchthon’s insights in new situations in a new generation.8

Interpreting Luther’s Legacy

These disagreements revolved around two fundamental theological problems raised by Luther’s own particular way of approaching traditional challenges to the proper expression of the Biblical message. As a student of what was formerly labeled the “Ockhamist” philosophy and theology of William of Ockham and Gabriel Biel, the young Martin Luther had learned that God is almighty and that He had been able to fashion any world that He wished. In the Old Testament the Ockhamists had discovered the Cre- ator who holds all things in His hands and who exercises responsibility for

6 De controversiis quibusdam, quae superiore tempore circa quosdam Augustanae Confessionis Articulos, motae & agitatae sunt, Iudicium, ed. Polycarp Leyser (Wittenberg: Simon Gronenberg, 1594), 5, translated in Sources and Contexts of the Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb and James A. Nestingen (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 201. 7 On this entire development, see Irene Dingel, “Melanchthon und die Normierung des Bekenntnisses,” in Der Theologe Melanchthon, ed. Günter Frank (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000), 195-211. 8 BSLK 11-12; Book of Concord, 12-13 (§20).

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 191 all in His creation. He had revealed the plan He had made for His human creatures through the church, above all in Scripture, and this Word from God is utterly reliable because the almighty God is utterly reliable, Luther had come to believe as a result of His instruction. At the same time Biel, the teacher of Luther’s teachers and author of one of the textbooks from which he received fundamental orientation to theology, emphasized human responsibility for all that God has placed within human dominion. Subjecting the Biblical understanding of God’s commands for His human creatures to Aristotle’s interpretation of human responsibility, Biel taught that human beings must do their best in order to earn God’s grace if they are to merit salvation. Instead of reproducing this harmonization of divine responsibility and human responsibility with such a synthesis, Luther affirmed both of these Biblical concepts of responsibility and held them in tension. This resulted in his using the proper distinction of Law and Gos- pel as his fundamental description of God’s ways of working with fallen human creatures and his basic orientation for interpreting the Word of God. His recognition of the dual responsibility of God and human creature produced his understanding of what it means to be human in two kinds of righteousness. It also generated his assessment of human existence in two realms. Inseparably linked to this paradox of dual responsibilities in Luther’s theology was his honest confrontation with the mystery of the continuation of evil in the lives of the baptized. Luther’s theology of the cross permitted him to “call a thing what it really is,”9 and so he could acknowledge the primary reality determined by God’s Word, that God’s chosen people are fully righteous, and at the same time recognize that these same believers are also fully infected by sin. Thus, he continued throughout his career to insist that the whole life of the Christian is a life of repentance,10 a life of the Holy Spirit’s repeating the killing and making alive that He executed decisively in our Baptism. The struggle to present both sides of the paradox of the two responsibilities within the context of the mystery of continued evil among Chris- tians produced a number of disagreements among Luther’s and Melanchthon’s disciples. In trying to emphasize human responsibility Georg Major defended the proposition that good works are necessary for salvation. His opponents affirmed that new obedience is necessary for Christian living but rejected Major’s expression as a betrayal of the Gospel. Johann Pfeffinger, Viktorin Strigel, and others tried to secure a proper sense of

9 The wording of the twenty-first thesis of Luther’s “Heidelberg Disputation” on the theology of the cross, WA 1:354, 21-22; LW 31:45. Cf. Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 81-90. 10 The first of the Ninety-Five Theses, D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883-1993) [henceforth WA], 1:233,10-11; Luther’s Works (Saint Louis/Philadelphia: Concordia/Fortress, 1958-1986) [henceforth LW], 31:25.

192 human responsibility by taking seriously the activity of the will, even though they maintained that God saves by grace alone. Their opponents believed that their language, making the human will a material “cause” or factor in conversion, or repentance, and claiming that it has a “manner of action” [modus agendi] in the process of turning from sin to God, undercut full divine responsibility for salvation. Fearful that any talk of a positive use of the Law in the Christian life would tip the balance from human responsibility to divine responsibility, thus blurring Luther’s distinction of two kinds of righteousness, the reformer’s students Anton Otto, Andreas Poach, and Andreas Musculus rejected Melanchthon’s third use of the Law even though they practiced its second use on their congregations with the fury of an avenging angel. Such tensions inevitably arose among Luther’s and Melanchthon’s disciples because the reformer’s pastorally creative approach to the paradox of God’s total responsibility for all and the total responsibility of human creatures for that which God entrusts to them was not easy to reproduce in every situation in which His disciples were called to craft their proclamation. The second area of disagreement within the Wittenberg circle resulted from the failure of some to grasp Luther’s concept that God effects His saving will through selected elements of His created order. The Ockhamist affirmation that God could have, by His absolute power, have constructed any world and law He wished, prevented Luther from becoming entangled in any principle limiting God, such as that formulated by some Calvinists in the later sixteenth century, “the finite is not capable of conveying the infinite.” As a good Ockhamist, he believed that if the Word of the Lord said it was so, it was so. He also had learned that God is a God of His material creation, interested in its particulars and able to use them for His saving purposes. He was convinced from Biblical data that God has selected certain elements of His creation—the human flesh assumed by the second person of the Trinity as Jesus of Nazareth, the human language of the Gospel, the sacramental elements—to fulfill His saving purposes. Therefore, there was nothing to prevent him from believing that a God who wanted to converse with His human creatures could do so also by giving them His body and blood in His Supper. He was confident that nothing prevented the second person of the Trinity from assuming human flesh in a most intimate and complete fashion, in a manner that would preserve the full integrity of both His divine and human natures while permitting them to share their characteristics. This teaching, the “communication of attributes,” was not the reason he believed that Christ’s body and blood were present in the Lord’s Supper, but he found it a good explanation of how it might be possible that the Lord fulfilled the promise of His special sacramental presence. But some of Luther’s and Melanchthon’s students, without benefit of Ockhamist training, instead influenced by the revival of Platonism and Neoplatonism, were dubious about how the “spiritual” of the Son of God

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 193 and the “material” of bread and wine could come together with saving power. For reasons of effective polemics, as well as the appearance of com- plicity, these Wittenberg students were accused of “crypto-calvinism.” In spite of their good relationships with Zurich, Geneva, and Heidelberg, they were probably not decisively shaped by Calvinists or Zwinglians but were rather working out elements of Melanchthon’s attempts to express the Biblical message accurately and clearly. These students, who became the successors of Luther and Melanchthon in the electoral Saxon ecclesiastical establishment in the late 1560s and early 1570s, did indeed draw different implications from Melanchthon’s thought regarding the Lord’s Supper than did other close adherents of their common Preceptor, such as Martin Chemnitz, David Chytraeus, and Tilemann Hesshus,11 but they claimed to be, and tried to faithfully represent and advance what they understood to be the Wittenberg Reformation. Concern to avoid magical and supersti- tious use of the Sacrament, in the manner of much of popular medieval practice, drove some of Melanchthon’s followers in this direction in the 1560s. Chemnitz, Chytraeus, Hesshus, and others certainly shared this concern, but they did not believe that a spiritualization of the sacramental forms of God’s Word solved the problem. Instead, they held to Luther’s understanding of the Word, also in its sacramental form, as God’s actual means of re-creating sinners through Christ’s death and resurrection, and as a means by which God entered into conversation and relationship with His chosen children. This reaction to the spiritualizing direction of the Crypto-Philippists led to disputes over the Lord’s Supper and Christology, which also disrupted the harmony of the Wittenberg circle. Placing the thought of the Wittenberg reformers at the disposal of a new generation of pastors and people after Luther’s death would have involved tensions under the best of circumstances, as is always true when the heirs of an intellectual revolutionary sort out the legacy left them for use in their own generation. In the case of Luther’s heirs the inevitable controversy was fueled by bitter feelings of betrayal that grew out of the defeat of the leading Evangelical princes in the Smalcald War of 1546-1547. Duke Moritz of Saxony had sided against his Evangelical fellow princes and won the title and much of the territory of his cousin John Frederick for himself, in what was seen by many students of the reformers as perfidi- ous betrayal. At Wittenberg, now under Moritz’s control, Melanchthon believed that he could save Lutheran pulpits in Saxony for Lutheran preachers by working with the new ruler God had given him through the for- tunes of war. He employed the principle of using adiaphora to fend off persecution. Many of his former students found that an indefensible betrayal of the recently departed Luther, and their stinging rebukes of what

11 The spectrum of interpretation of Melanchthon’s thought among his disciples is demonstrated in the study of critical reactions to the Formula of Concord by Irene Dingel, Concordia controversa, Die öffentliche Diskussionen um das lutherische Konkordienwerk am Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1996).

194 Melanchthon considered good-faith efforts to preserve the faith evoked a bitterness in him that made reconciliation seem, humanly speaking, impossible.

Campaigns for Concord

To resolve such differences leading princes and theologians of the churches of the Augsburg Confession had exerted much effort over a quar- ter century, seeking the elusive goal of concord: Concordia. How important concord in public teaching was for the Lutherans can be sensed in the frequent repetition of the idea that there was unanimous consent to the form of teaching presented in the Formula of Concord.12 The term “Concordia” could refer to a pactus or foedus in medieval Latin, as well as to harmony and agreement in general. It had been used to designate a formulation that brought together disparate theological parties since at least 1534, when Erhard Schnepf and Ambrosius Blarer came to agreement on the Lord’s Supper in the “Stuttgart Concordia” as they introduced the Reformation to Württemberg. When Melanchthon drafted the “Wittenberg Concord,” a statement on the Lord’s Supper which both the theologians of Strassburg, led by Martin Bucer, and the theologians of the Wittenberg circle, led by Martin Luther, could accept, he found that “Concordia” served as a worthy title for efforts at reconciliation. “Concordia” became the designation that Andreae and his fellow Concordists applied to their efforts at restoring agreement among the Lutherans, as they forged their chief instrument in reconciliation in 1577 from the confessional tradition of the Lutherans. “Concordia” described the heart-felt goal of all adherents of the Wittenberg Reformation amidst the controversies of the 1550s and 1560s. Two major patterns developed in the search for concord that began in 1552, within months of the outbreak of controversy over the so-called “Leipzig Interim” and the issues it raised, initially that of the related questions of public confession of the faith and the use of concessions regarding adiaphora to protect the church from persecution. The first path toward concord sought agreement under the leadership of the princes on the basis of simple statements regarding the controverted issues, without condemnations of false teaching and false teachers; this approach preferred rather an amnistia, a forgetting or ignoring of the specific errors which had caused controversy. The second path toward concord looked to theologians rather than princes to lead the way to agreement, with detailed statements of proper teaching and with clear condemnations of both false teaching and false teachers, so that all readers could clearly understand the issues at stake. The so-called “Philippist” party generally preferred the former approach, the so-called

12 In addition to the expressions in the title itself, BSLK 1, Book of Concord, 3, see the preface, BSLK 3-4, 6-8, 14-15; Book of Concord, 5-6, 8-9, 15 (§3-5, 9-16, 23).

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 195 “Gnesio-Lutherans” practiced the second. [Apart from a brief counter-offensive in 1558-1559 the Philippists avoided public confrontation over doctrinal issues to the greatest extent possible until 1569; in that year, after the collapse of a major effort at reconciling differences sponsored by the Gnesio-Lutheran Duke Johann Wilhelm of Saxony and the Philippist Elector August of Saxony, the Altenburg Collo- quy, the electoral Saxon ecclesiastical establishment lodged charges of heresy against the Gnesio-Lutherans on five counts: (1) their use of Christological arguments in explanation or defense of the true presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, (2) their rejection of the third use of the Law, (3) their teaching that original sin is the substance of the human creature, (4) their affirmation of the predestination of a specific number of elect children of God, and (5) their rejection of the Biblical definition of the “Gospel” as a message of both repentance and the forgiveness of sins.13 (Not all Gnesio-Lutherans held all of these positions.) The Wittenberg Philippists thus expanded the agenda of controversy by adding to the list of issues raised against them by the Gnesio-Lutherans during the 1550s: concessions in adiaphora that betrayed the confession of the church and teaching the necessity of good works for salvation and the cooperation of the human will in conversion. The agenda of controversy in the 1550s had also included the common Gnesio-Lutheran and Philippist rejection of the doctrine of justification taught by Andreas Osiander and growing Gnesio- Lutheran concerns—shared by the south German “Swabian” party of Johannes Brenz and Jakob Andreae—regarding the teaching of the true presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper that gradually refocused from Calvinists and Zwinglians to those within Lutheran circles (largely the electoral Saxon ecclesiastical establishment) during the course of the 1560s.] After the experience of many failures to make progress in the search for concord, from princes and theologians, from Philippists and Gnesio- Lutherans as well as the Swabian theologians of south Germany, Jakob Andreae embarked on yet another attempt to restore Lutheran harmony in 1568-1570, at the command of and with the support of his prince, Duke Christoph of Württemberg. He tried to reconcile divergent parties and positions with five very brief and general articles—on justification through faith, good works, the free will, adiaphora, and the Holy Supper—, without any hint of the rejection of false teaching, to say nothing of false teachers.14 Though he refashioned the articles as he negotiated with different groups, this endeavor failed, too. Obviously, the Gnesio-Lutherans remained

13 Robert Kolb, “Altering the Agenda, Shifting the Strategy: The Grundfest of 1571 as Philippist Program for Lutheran Concord,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999): 705-726. 14 One version of the Articles was edited by Heinrich Heppe, Geschichte des deutschen Protestantismus in den Jahren 1555-1581 (Marburg: Elwert, 1853), 250-254, translated in Robert Kolb, Andreae and the Formula of Concord, Six Sermons on the Way to Lutheran

196 suspicious of Andreae’s efforts, but his mission of concord also foundered on the opposition of the Philippists in electoral Saxony to his own doctrine of the Lord’s Supper and his Christological support for his sacramental understanding. Andreae left northern Germany to return home in 1570 a disappointed man. Determined, however, to bring fellow adherents of the Augsburg Confession together in a common repetition of its teaching, he drafted Six Christian Sermons on the Divisions among the Theologians of the Augsburg Confession in 1573. These printed sermons treated an expanded list of disputes and divisions, embracing not only the traditional Gnesio-Lutheran agenda of controversy but also the Philippist accusations against their opponents: justification by faith, good works, original sin, the free will, adiaphora, Law and Gospel, the third use of the Law, and the person of Christ and the communication of attributes.15 In these sermons Andreae greatly expanded his treatment of each of the divisive issues and included specific rejection of false teaching in the text and of false teachers with identification of the source of the false teaching in the margin. His new effort for concord followed the Gnesio-Lutheran model for seeking agreement. Furthermore, his sermons embraced the positions of the main body of Gnesio-Lutherans in sharply repudiating Philippist positions on a series of disputed questions. He also claimed common ground with the majority of Gnesio-Lutherans by condemning some more radical Gnesio-Lutheran positions, such as the definition of original sin as the substance of the sinner, the alleged “antinomianism” of Andreas Musculus and others, and Nikolaus von Amsdorff’s use of Luther’s judgment, “good works are detrimental for salvation.” Andreae asked colleagues in north Germany, including Martin Chemnitz and David Chytraeus, to endorse and promote his new call for unity. Chemnitz, Chytraeus, and others advised Andreae that only a higher level of theological discourse could solve the problems, and so in 1574 he composed the “Swabian Concord.” Chemnitz and Chytraeus offered im- provements in what is known as the “Swabian-Saxon Concord.” Impatient with the slow pace of reaction to Andreae’s document, Elector August asked the government in Württemberg to undertake a new effort. Duke Ludwig joined the courts of Henneberg and Baden in commissioning the “Maulbronn Formula,” completed in January 1576. These two documents stood at the

Unity (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1977), 58-60. On other versions of these articles, see Inge Mager, “Jakob Andreaes lateinische Unionsartikel von 1568,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 98 (1987): 70-86; and Hans Christian Brandy, “Jacob Andreaes Fünf Artikel von 1568/69,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 98 (1987): 338-351. 15 Sechs Christlicher Predig Von den Spaltungen so sich zwischen den Theologen Augspurgischer Confession von Anno 1548. biss auff diss 1573. Jar nach und nach erhaben. Wie sich ein einfa[e]ltiger Pfarrer und gemeiner Christlicher Leye so dardurch mo[e]cht verergert sein worden auß seinem Catechismo darein schicken soll (Tübingen: Gruppenbach, 1573), translated in Kolb, Six Christian Sermons, 61-120.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 197 disposal of August of Saxony when he began his new reform effort in 1576. At meetings in Torgau in May/June 1576 and Bergen in May 1577—with an intervening invitation for criticism of the Torgau draft sent to all Evan- gelical churches in Germany—, the Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord was carefully crafted as an instrument of reconciliation from the drafts of Andreae, Chytraeus, Chemnitz, and the Maulbronn theologians, with significant additions to their work formulated at Torgau and Bergen. [The core committee of six representatives that was responsible for the text of the Solid Declaration was constituted according to territorial, political representation, not by theological “party affiliation.” Christoph Körner of Brandenburg entered too little into public controversy that he cannot be definitely assigned to any of the groups in the Wittenberg circle of the 1560s and 1570s. His colleague, Andreas Musculus, had not closely associated with the Gnesio-Lutherans but fits their profile in his churchmanship and his theological positions. Jakob Andreae represented the theology of the south German “Swabian” party around Johannes Brenz. Nikolaus Selnecker had clearly been closely associated with the Philippists. David Chytraeus and Martin Chemnitz were devoted followers of Melanchthon but also close friends of many Gnesio-Lutherans and, perhaps apart from Chytraeus’s synergism, should be identified with them. The assertion of the existence of a “middle party” to which the two of them belonged does not conform to historical fact.16 ] [Andreae’s original draft, in the Swabian Concord, determined large parts of four articles of the Formula of Concord, including two which treated controversies that had largely died out, V (on the definition of Law and Gospel) and X (on adiaphora), and XII (on sects outside the Lutheran churches). In addition, two-thirds of article VI, on the third use of the Law, came from his pen, but with additions necessitated by the presence of Andreas Musculus, whose position Andreae had expressly rejected earlier, at the table in Torgau. In addition, Andreae, Chytraeus, and Chemnitz shared responsibility almost equally with each other for the treatment of justification in Article III. In the Swabian Concord Andreae had added God’s election or predestination to the list of issues treated in the Six Christian Sermons, and one-third of the text of the Formula’s article on the subject (XI) reproduced his thoughts, but two-thirds of that article came from Chemnitz’s supplement. Andreae shared with Chemnitz the responsibility for the final treatment of Christology although one-third of that article came from adjustments made in the text at Torgau and Bergen.] [Chytraeus produced half of the text of Article II, on the freedom of the will, with extensive supplement from the Maulbronn Articles, and almost eighty percent of the Formula’s discussion on the Lord’s Supper came from his pen. Chemnitz wrote three quarters of the article on original sin (I),

16 For the argument for a “middle party,” see F. Bente, Historical Introductions to the Book of Concord (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1921).

198 and two-thirds of those on good works and predestination, as well as making considerable contributions to those on justification (III) and Christology (VIII). The Maulbronn Articles provided nothing for four articles (III, IV, VI, XI), little for three others (I, V, VIII), and only ten (VII, X) to twenty (II) percent of three others. At Torgau the committee went beyond the manuscripts it had before it primarily in expanding Articles III, V, VI, and VIII. Bergen altered above all articles II (25%), VIII (15%), and I (10%). At Bergen the committee totally redrafted the ninth article, on Christ’s descent into hell, which had been first composed at Torgau.] Their work rested upon the presupposition that “the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments” are “the pure, clear fountain of Israel, which alone is the one true guiding principle, according to which all teachers and teachings are to be judged and evaluated.” The Scripture alone served them as primary authority for the teaching and life of the church. All other presentations of God’s Word proceed from Scrip- ture and are subject to it. Indeed, the Concordists recognized the secondary authority of summaries of Biblical teaching in the ancient creeds and in the Augsburg Confession, along with the expositions of it in the Apology, the Smalcald Articles, and Luther’s Catechisms. They were offering the Formula of Concord as a repetition of the teaching contained in Scripture and the documents named as secondary authorities for public teaching.17 Even though they treasured the teachings of the ancient fathers and accorded special respect to the entire corpus of Luther’s writings, they did not place the fathers or Doctor Luther in their list of secondary authorities. They cited the patristic evidence when it was helpful and even added a semi-official appendix, the “Catalog of Testimonies,” to the Book of Con- cord to demonstrate that its Christological teaching agreed with that of the ancient church. They cited Luther to define what it meant to be Lutheran, in defense of their own interpretation of the intent of his teaching on controverted articles against others’ points of view, and second, to support (but not establish) their interpretation of Scripture.18 But their arguments claimed a Biblical basis at all points. Resolving differing uses of Scripture by the theologians of the Wittenberg circle in their address of the burning questions of the day was the challenge of Concordists. The text of the Solid Declaration largely followed Andreae’s lead in the Six Christian Sermons, rejecting Philippist positions, embracing the teaching of the main body of Gnesio-Lutherans. But especially with the help of Chemnitz and Chytraeus, the Torgau committee built upon and expanded Andreae’s attempts to recognize valid concerns among the Philippist and radical Gnesio-Lutheran teaching in conflict with the fundamental teaching espoused by the Formula. At a number

17 In the “Binding Summary, Basis, Rule, and Guiding Principle” of the Solid Declara- tion, BSLK 834-839; The Book of Concord, 526-529. 18 Robert Kolb, Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, and Hero: Images of the Reformer, 1520-1620 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 55-74.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 199 of points just how this careful crafting took place can be observed. In two articles disagreement separating the members of the Torgau committee had to be resolved. At other points, to one extent or another they had held differing positions, at least in accent and formulation of their teaching. Nonetheless, they shared a common point of view to a large extent but strove to take seriously conflicting positions among those who had engaged in controversy.

[Disagreements among the Concordists on the Descent into Hell (Article IX)

When the Torgau committee decided to add an appendix to article VIII, on Christology, by affirming against the Heidelberg Catechism that Christ descended into hell bodily, thus demonstrating that His person could be in the tomb and in hell at the same time,19 there were also tensions in the room. Article IX’s treatment of its subject is unique in the Formula of Concord in that it offers only the briefest of summaries of proper teaching on Christ’s descent and then refers readers to Luther’s so-called “Torgau Sermon” in order to learn that the less said about the subject, the better. The affirmation that “the entire person, God and human being, descended to hell after his burial, conquered the devil, destroyed the power of hell, and took from the devil all his power” favors the interpretation of Melanchthon’s disciples at the expense of Andreae’s earlier position. He had followed Johannes Brenz in explicating the descent into hell in terms of Christ’s sufferings on earth while the former Wittenberg students held to the position that Luther and Melanchthon had embraced, that Christ descended as part of His triumph over the devil and forces of hell.20 The Torgau committee made its point without entangling itself in the cross- currents of interpretation within the Lutheran churches of the time.]

Disagreements among the Concordists on the Third Use of the Law (Article VI)

Article VI, on the third use of the Law, posed a similar problem. Melanchthon had developed the concept of the third use of the Law, the application of the Law in the life of the believer, in response to the popular antinomianism that had shocked him and Luther as they conducted the visitation of Saxon parishes in 1527/1528 and to the theological

19 Robert Kolb, “Christ’s Descent into Hell as Christological Locus in the Era of the Formula of Concord: Luther’s ‘Torgau Sermon’ Revisited,” Lutherjahrbuch 69 (2001): 101-118. 20 David G. Truemper, “The Descensus ad Inferos from Luther to the Formula of Concord,” S.T.D. thesis, the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 1974.

200 antinomianism of his friend and former student Johann Agricola, who taught that the Law played no role in the believer’s life.21 Luther concentrated on an ever sharper proclamation of the second use of the Law;22 Melanchthon tried to develop a more finely analytical presentation of the way in which the Law functions in the Christian life. In the 1550s, in the turmoil created by his colleague Georg Major, with his defense of the proposition, “good works are necessary for salvation,” some Gnesio-Lutherans who sharply rejected the proposition as it stood were willing to concede that “good works are theoretically necessary for salvation in the doctrine of the law.” Others recognized that formulation as contrary to Luther’s distinction of two kinds of righteousness. They included Nikolaus von Amsdorff, Anton Otto, and Andreas Poach.23 In a parallel dispute at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder, also in the late 1550s, Abdias Praetorius defended the necessity of good works against Andreas Musculus, who feared that any mention of necessity, as Melanchthon had expressed it in his third use of the Law, would lead to an abandonment of Luther’s understanding of salvation by grace alone. Mus- culus insisted that believers produce good works spontaneously, apart from any necessity or compulsion from the Law, out of a “free and merry spirit,” insofar as they are people of faith.24 Otto, Poach, Musculus, and their supporters all applied the Law in its accusing and crushing force to parishio- ners and readers of their printed works with fervor, and so it is unfair and inaccurate to label them “antinomians” as did the Philippist polemic against the Gnesio-Lutherans and as Jakob Andreae did in his Six Christian Ser- mons. This part of Andreae’s proposal for concord occasioned a genuine difficulty when the committee to compose the Formula of Concord was created by August of Saxony in consultation with other princes. For his fellow elector, Johann Georg of Brandenburg, sent the general ecclesiastical superintendent of his lands, Andreas Musculus, as one of his two delegates. Musculus faced not only Andreae but also three faithful students of Melanchthon, all steadfast adherents of his view of the third use of the Law, Martin Chemnitz, David Chytraeus, and Nikolaus Selnecker, across the table in Torgau in 1576. The treatment of the topic of the Law in article VI shows how the committee worked to take seriously concerns from both sides of a dispute and honor the concerns of each. Andreae’s Swabian Concord had emphasized the human responsibility for obedience to God in treating the ques-

21 Timothy J. Wengert, Law and Gospel: Philip Melanchthon’s Debate with John Agricola of Eisleben over Poenitentia (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997), 77-210, esp. 200-206. 22 James M. McCue, “Luther and the Problem of Popular Preaching,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 16 (1985): 33-43. 23 Matthias Richter, Gesetz und Heil: Eine Untersuchung zur Vorgeschichte und zum Verlauf des sogenannten Zweiten Antinomistischen Streits, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 132-207, 251-291. 24 Ibid., 208-250.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 201 tion of a third use of the Law; Musculus had rejected it in order to safe- guard God’s responsibility for His gracious re-creation of sinners through the forgiveness of sins. Article VI begins with a section take from the Swabian Concord, revised slightly at Torgau, which affirms that because of the mystery of the continuation of sin in believers’ lives, they need the Law, indeed to confront them with their sinfulness but also to teach them the daily practice of the Law of the Lord (SD VI:1-9). Chytraeus added a few sentences at this point to confess that the Gospel creates the new obedience of believers and the Law, unable to empower this new obedience, reproves sin as the Holy Spirit’s tool for killing, while the Gospel serves as His tool for restoring and comforting (SD VI:10-14). However, Musculus’s concern wins affirmation in the next paragraphs. Works of the Law are distinguished from works of the Spirit, for two different kinds of people try to fulfill “the unchanging will of God, according to which human beings are to conduct themselves in this life,” a definition which aids the Melanchthonian assertion of human responsibility. The attestation of divine responsibility then follows in words acceptable to Musculus: “When people are born again through the Spirit of God and set free from the law (that is, liberated from its driving powers and driven by the Spirit of Christ), they live according to the unchanging will of God as comprehended in the law, and do everything, insofar as they are reborn, from a free and merry spirit. Works of this kind are not, properly speaking, works of the law but works and fruits of the Spirit ....” (SD VI:17, 15-19). Andreae and Chytraeus both contributed to the closing paragraphs of the article VI with a strong reminder that the sinfulness of the believer’s flesh makes the continued proclamation of the Law necessary. Andreae’s effort to meet Musculus’s concern can be heard in his statement that Christians “are personally freed from the curse and condemnation of the law through faith in Christ and ...their good works, though imperfect and impure, are pleasing to God through Christ...they act in God-pleasing way...not because of the coercion of the law but because of the renewal of the Holy Spirit—without coercion, from a willing heart, insofar as they are reborn in their inner person” (SD VI:23, cf. 20-25). Article VI makes clear that God alone is responsible for the believer’s new identity as a child of God and for the motivation to meet God’s expectations for human exercise and performance of obedience to Him. It also makes clear that humans are created to exercise responsibility through the obedience which alone can come from the Holy Spirit’s power. Con- cerns of both sides in the debate over the third use of the Law were taken seriously. The two sides of the paradox, Law and Gospel, are held in tension. Those who approach this text without realizing the underlying structure of understanding may find it confusing, but it is clear that here members of the Wittenberg circle were practicing the paradox of divine and human responsibility.

202 [Honoring Concerns from Two Sides on Good Works (Article IV)

The discussion of the third use of the Law grew out of the controversy over the proposition “good works are necessary for salvation.” In the mid- 1520s the reforming pastor of Magdeburg Nikolaus von Amsdorff and his reforming school rector Georg Major had been threatened with death by local Roman Catholic opponents, in part because they rejected this teaching. In the 1550s, reflecting in part political exigencies in the wake of the Leipzig Interim, in part his own concern for public order and Christian morality or human responsibility, Major embraced the phrase. Amsdorff was shocked. He readily acknowledged that good works are necessary for Christian living, but his concern for maintaining total divine responsibility for the salvation of sinners moved him to attack Major, igniting a generation of controversy.25 Andreae joined the Gnesio-Lutherans in condemning Major’s proposition, but article IV respects Major’s fundamental theological concern regarding public order morality and the new obedience of believers. Chemnitz supplemented or revised Andreae’s original draft extensively in this article. After the usual description of the controversy, Chemnitz added to what his colleague had written his own observations regarding the agreement that united all Lutherans: that God wills believers to do good works, that faith and the renewal of the Holy Spirit produce good works, that these works are acceptable to God because of Christ, in spite of their imperfection (SD IV:7-8). In a lengthy discussion he affirmed that since the Augsburg Confession and its Apology used the term “necessary” with regard to works, it could continue to be said that believers necessarily perform good works.26 However, this necessity must be carefully defined. Chemnitz endeavored to explicate the nature of human responsibility under God’s grace (SD IV:14-30, 34-35). His text had to be revised, however, probably under Musculus’s glare, to make it crystal clear that this necessity is not a coercion since “the people of the New Testament are supposed to be a willing people” who “sacrifice with a free will, not reluc- tantly or under compulsion, but from obedient hearts” (SD IV:17). Chemnitz himself strove to make certain that the necessity of good works was excluded from any role in justification and in the preservation of faith, righteousness in God’s sight, or salvation. Into his discussion Chytraeus placed

25 Timothy J. Wengert, “Georg Major (1502-1574), Defender of Wittenberg’s Faith and Melanchthonian Exegete,” in: Melanchthon in seinen Schüler, ed. Heinz Scheible (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997), 129-156; Robert Kolb, “Georg Major as Controversial- ist: Polemics in the Late Reformation,” Church History 45 (1976): 455-468. 26 This position was not controverted by most of Major’s opponents; even Nikolaus von Amsdorff had prepared a manuscript for publication (though it was not published), entitled “Instruction on Good Works, That They Are Not Necessary for Salvation But for a Christian Life,” see Robert Kolb, Nikolaus von Amsdorf (1483-1565), Popular Polemics in the Preservation of Luther’s Legacy (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1978), 163-164.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 203 his own warning against the idea that Christians can practice evil works (SD IV:31-33), another avowal of human responsibility. Chemnitz strengthened this point by dealing gently with Amsdorff’s repetition of Luther’s “good works are detrimental to salvation,” taming the reformer’s defence of divine responsibility with a view toward the threat of immorality, that is, a failure to exercise divine responsibility. Amsdorff’s use of the phrase against Major that had aroused little objection even in the polemical atmosphere in which he advanced it, perhaps because Philippist opponents as well as Gnesio-Lutheran supporters had recognized its significance as an attestation of the inappropriateness of ascrib- ing righteousness in God’s sight in any way to human activity or performance.27 Chemnitz rebuffed the position gently, however: “when asserted without explanation, it is false and offensive. It may weaken discipline and public order, and it may introduce and strengthen a crude, wild, presump- tuous Epicurean way of life” (SD IV:39, 38-40). Having made clear that God is totally responsible for the salvation of sinners, completely apart from their works, he here had to make certain that human responsibility not be weakened so that hearers of Lutheran preaching would understand that they were recreated by God for obedience in faith.

Honoring Concerns from Two Sides on Freedom of the Will and Predestination (Articles I, II, and XI)

Related to this controversy on good works was the dispute over the role, contribution, and power of the human will to conversion and repentance. Melanchthon had taught all his students to be concerned about the activity of the will—an anthropological question—for a series of reasons, some of which never became factors in Luther’s discussion of bound choice, a matter of soteriology. Luther and Melanchthon shared worries about public order and morality after the parish visitations of 1527/1528, but Luther never confronted Roman Catholic negotiators who accused the Lutherans of “Stoic determinism,” of teaching “Manichaean necessity,” of making God a cause of evil. Melanchthon, as electoral Saxony’s chief ecclesiastical diplomat, did. Luther simply proclaimed the Gospel. Melanchthon had to teach future preachers and teachers the principles of communication, and good rhetoric demanded attention to psychological factors. Thus, the younger colleague did not hesitate to assert the freedom of the will to act so that the integrity of the human creature and the responsibility of human action be preserved. The older colleague never abandoned his in- sistence that apart from the Holy Spirit the active, “free” human will could make only a bound choice in matters of the human relationship with God.

27 Robert Kolb, “Good Works Are Detrimental to Salvation: Amsdorf’s Use of Luther’s Words in Controversy,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme IV (O.S. XVI) (1980), 136-151.

204 The differences between the two were matters of focus and accent more than of substance. Their students, however, in their endeavors to defend God’s responsibility for salvation and human responsibility for obedience, fell into disputes about how to make each clear. The debate was complicated by the inability of the time to recognize presuppositions and paradigms behind the formulations the theologians were using. Johann Pfeffinger, superintendent and professor in Leipzig, tried to address the problem by using an adult model for the person who is being converted. God’s grace is as free as the warmth of the sun, but to enjoy the free warmth of the sun the person must walk from the cellar to the open air. Gnesio-Lutheran opponents of this position began with the presupposition that to enter the kingdom of God the sinner must be born again, must be like a little child. Viktorin Strigel, professor of Jena, tried to solve the problem by using Aristotelian anthropology and suggesting that original sin is an accident which adheres to the human will, damaging its ability to trust in God but not taking away its ability to act (he termed this a modus agenda). Strigel’s Gnesio-Lutheran colleague Matthias Flacius preferred using only Biblical language but argued that in Aristotelian terms, while the material substance of the fallen creature remained, the formal substance of the sinner—the ability to fear, love, and trust in God above all things—was lost. Thus, he could use Luther’s occasional label for original sin, “essential sin,” and the reformer’s observation that the sinner at heart is now cast “in the image of Satan.” Such language offended Strigel’s and Flacius’ patron, the Gnesio-Lutheran Duke Johann Friedrich the Middler, and many of his Gnesio-Lutheran friends, and thus Flacius’ attempt to clarify the problem of the bondage or freedom of the will led to a serious division within Gnesio-Lutheran ranks.28 The Formula of Concord thus had to deal with three positions regarding the question of the will. Was it the will of an image of Satan, a creature turned essentially or substantially into sin in terms of its relationship to God? Was it a corrupted will, totally bound away from God but God’s creature and not a creation of the devil? Was it a will totally dependent on God’s grace but still able to act in some way or other to prepare itself for reception of grace? The first article of the Formula decisively rejects Flacius’ use of Aris- totelian language (SD I: 54) and does so with repetitions of the unfair accusation that his position was Manichaean (SD I:3-4, 26-47). Also here the Concordists tamed Luther’s sometimes extravagant use of Flacian-like language by interpreting the reformer’s use of Flacius’s terminology directly (SD I:53) and also alluding to his treatment of original sin as a deep corruption of the human will (SD I:8, 33, 61-62), reformulating their treatment of Luther yet at Bergen (61-62). Chemnitz and his colleagues appar-

28 Wilhelm Preger, Matthias Flacius Illyricus (Erlangen: Blaesing, 1859-1861), II:310- 412.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 205 ently believed that Luther’s efforts at expressing total divine responsibility sometimes actually failed to do so in a way that held God’s grace in proper tension with the integrity of the human creature. Thus, they chan- neled his theological ebullition into useable, respectable forms, making wild streams navigable for a new generation of the uninitiated. Indeed, the Concordists confessed with the Apology of the Augsburg Confession that the will has become corrupted “with a deep-seated, evil, horrible, bottomless, unfathomable, and indescribable corruption of the entire human nature and of all its power, particularly of the highest, most important powers of the soul, in mind, heart, and will” (SD I:11). Article II makes it clear that “the natural, unregenerated human mind, heart, and will are not only completely turned away from God in all divine matters, but are also perverted and turned toward every evil and against God. Like- wise, they are not only weak, impotent, incapable, and dead to the good, but through original sin they have also been tragically perverted, poisoned through and through, and corrupted” (SD II:17). Therefore, “just as people who are bodily dead cannot on the basis of their own powers prepare themselves or dispose themselves to receive temporal life once again, so people who are spiritually dead in sins cannot on the basis of their own strength dispose themselves or turn themselves toward appropriate spiritual, heavenly righteousness and life, if the Son of God has not made them alive and freed them from the death of sin” (SD II:11). Strigel’s use of the term modus agenda to affirm the integrity of humanity by describing the still active will of the fallen sinner was rejected (SD II:61). Melanchthon’s attempt to explain the role of the will in conversion with Aristotelian “factors”—the Holy Spirit as the effective factor, the Word as the instrumental factor, the will as the material factor—was rejected as misleading for students (SD II:90). These formulations, designed to affirm total divine responsibility for salvation, were clearly efforts to attract the disciples of Flacius, who had died two years before the Formula of Concord was completed, back into the fold, an effort that did not meet with complete success.29 At the same time Formula of Concord Article II takes seriously the concerns of the Melanchthonian school. Chytraeus and Selnecker had certainly repeated Melanchthon’s point of view often, in passages that sound as “synergistic” as those of Pfeffinger and Strigel.30 Chemnitz had shared his preceptor’s concerns that God not be the cause of evil; that was the entire point of his treatment of the topic “on the freedom of the will” in his 1561 “Judgment” on the controversies besetting the Lutheran church.31 He, too, wished to reject “Stoic determinism” and to convey to his fellow-

29 Dingel, Concordia controversa, 467-541. 30 Lowell C. Green, “The three causes of Conversion in Philipp Melanchthon, Martin Chemnitz, David Chytraeus, and ‘the Formula of Concord,’” Luther Jahrbuch 47 (1980): 89-114. 31 Chemnitz, Iudicium, 20-30, translated in Sources and Contexts, 204-208.

206 pastors the insights of Melanchthonian rhetoric regarding moving the hearts and minds of their people to faith. Thus, Article II states, in Chytraeus’s words, that even though Scripture “compares the unregenerated human heart to a hard stone...or to an unhewn block of wood, or to a wild, fero- cious beast,” “that does not mean that the human being after the fall is no longer a rational creature, or that human beings can be converted to God without hearing and thinking about the divine Word, or that they cannot understand or freely do or refrain from doing what is good and evil in external, temporal matters” (SD II:19; cf. the reinforcement of this point added at Bergen). One constant charge made by Melanchthon and his disciples against Flacius and his followers was that the latter regarded the unreborn sinner as a block of wood or stone, a charge they denied.32 Chytraeus met the concern of the Philippists also by acknowledging that “a person who has not yet been converted to God and been reborn can hear and read this Word externally, for in such external matters...people have a free will to a certain extent even after the fall, so that they may go to church and listen or not listen to the sermon” (SD II:52). The deterministic “madness of the Stoics and Manichaeans” was rejected alongside the exaltation of the power of the will in conversion practiced by coarse Pelagians, papists and scholastics, and synergists (SD II:74-77). Luther’s description of the will in conversion as “pure passie” is interpreted as not teaching “that conversion takes place apart from the proclamation and hearing of God’s Word” nor does it teach “that in conversion the Holy Spirit engenders no new impulses and initiates no spiritual effectus [working] in us” (SD II:89). The integrity of the human creature is preserved while the impotence of the will to contribute anything to its turning to God and the necessity of the means of grace as God’s tool for turning is clearly confessed. This point is reinforced in article XI, on predestination. [Predestination had not been a major source of public disagreement among Luther’s and Melanchthon’s students in the 1550s and 1560s, in part because most of them avoided discussion of it. However, in the later stages of the synergistic controversy, Cyriakus Spangenberg had published a presentation of Luther’s understanding of God’s election of His chosen children to salvation and had thereby evoked a small exchange of views with the Wittenberg theologians.33 Spangenberg repeated Luther’s belief in the particular election of every individual believer to salvation without the slightest hint of a doctrine of double predestination, but the Wittenberg attack expressed concern that Spangenberg denied that God wants all to

32 On one such exchange, see Robert Kolb, “Nikolaus Gallus’ Critique of Philip Melanchthon’s Teaching on the Freedom of the Will,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 91 (2000): 87-110. 33 Spangenberg’s De praedestinatione. Von der Ewigen Vorsehung/ und Go[e]tlichen Gnadenwahl. Sieben Predigten (Eisleben: Georg Baumann, 1567) was attacked in the Wittenberg theological faculty’s Endlicher Bericht und Erklerung der Theologen beider

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 207 be saved and that believers should trust God’s promise in the means of grace rather than any speculation about whether they had been chosen by God (a point Spangenberg himself emphasized).] [Article XI contains extensive sections from both Andreae (SD XI:1-3, 65-96) and Chemnitz (SD XI:4-64). Spangenberg’s assertion regarding the particular election of every individual believer is confirmed (SD XI:23,54), but Article XI also met the Philippist concern to maintain clearly that Christ died for all sinners and that God wants all to be saved (SD XI:28), and that God in no way is a cause of evil (6-12, 79-86), important elements in the defense against charges of “Stoic determinism” lodged by Roman Catholic theologians against the Lutherans since Melanchthon’s earliest diplomatic contacts with them around 1530. The article’s focus on God’s revelation of His election through the means of grace (SD XI:13-14, 29-38, 68-72, 77) should have pleased both sides. For both relied on God’s Word of promise as the instrument of the Lord’s saving will, even in the midst of disagreements about how best to hold God’s responsibility for salvation and the human responsibility of faith and obedience in proper tension when treating the topics on God’s predestination of His children and their use of the will He had given them.]

And Other Articles

The attempt to meet the concerns of both sides in specific controversies is not equally apparent in every article of the Formula. In Article III, on justification, the adversaries rejected were Andreas Osiander and Francesco Stancaro, with their opposing views of salvation through the indwelling of the divine nature alone or the actions of the human nature alone, and Roman Catholic teaching at Trent. Here no effort to acknowledge the propriety of their concerns is to be found. Osiander’s inability to understand Luther’s teaching that God’s Word creates a new reality by creating faith in the forgiven sinner, and his corresponding definition of the righteousness of faith as a Neoplatonic divinization through the indwelling of Christ’s divine nature was sharply rebuffed as a betrayal of Luther’s confession of God’s salvation in Christ. The Tridentine resolution of the paradox of divine and human responsibilities with a synthesis that included some grace and some works was also repudiated. Articles VII and VIII also offered no room for the spiritualizing views of the Wittenberg crypto-Philippists, but as Chytraeus revised the article on the Lord’s Supper and as Chemnitz rewrote that on Christology they

Uniuersiteten/ Leipzig vnd Wittemberg… (Wittenberg: Hans Lufft, 1570), 185a-198b. Spangenberg replied in Kurtze Antwort vnd Gegenbericht/ Der Prediger/ in der Graffschafft Mansfeldt… Auch M. Cyriaci Spangenbergs su[e]nderliche Antwort/ auff derselben Theologen/ uber jhn gefelletes Endurtel (Eisleben: Andreas Petri, 1570), E2a- K3a. See Robert Kolb, Bound Will, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method from Martin Luther to the Formula of Concord (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 198-226.

208 did repeat their long-held views in ways that reached out to other expressions of Lutheran teaching. Chemnitz did not make any concession to the Wittenberg theologians’ antipathy toward the Christological argument in behalf of the presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, but he decisively shied away from the more extravagant versions of the argument found in the Swabian sacramental argumentation.34 Chytraeus also clearly rejected any spiritualizing of the presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord Supper, but he was also sensitive to concerns enunciated by the Philippist theologians who parted company with their spiritualizing colleagues in 1574, in the crisis of so-called “Crypto-Calvinism” in Elector August’s lands. Their attempt to find ways to bring Luther’s and Melanchthon’s views of the Lord’s Supper into harmony in the Torgau Articles of 1574 found parallels in Article VII.35 The address of the mini-controversy over the proper definition of Law and Gospel in Article V conceded that the Philippists were not wrong when they taught a wider denotation of the term “gospel,” as had their Flacian opponents, but affirmed, with the Flacians, that the strict or proper definition of “gospel” excluded preaching of repentance and the Law. Article X avoided any mention of the Flacian contention in the adiaphoristic controversy that limited and restricted the power of the prince within the church, for both Philippists and Swabians had believed that God used governmental officials for the benefit of the church and permitted them to exercise a strong hand in the governance of the church. But the carefully crafted synthesis of assertions from Andreae’s and Chytraeus’s drafts, as well as the Maulbronn Formula, did concur at all other points with the Gnesio- Lutheran emphasis on the freedom of the church to make decisions in neutral matters (adiaphora), the importance of liturgy and other customs and practices for the clear proclamation of the Biblical message, and the necessity of uncompromising and clear confession of faith, also in the use of otherwise neutral matters, when such confession is necessary. The path to concord took the Lutheran churches of the 1570s on a long, circuitous route. It was never certain that a majority of Evangelical churches could find a common expression of unity in teaching until it actually happened, and then only two-thirds of German Evangelicals adhered to the settlement.36 Great were the political and theological energies invested in what often seemed a frustrating effort doomed to failure. Suc- cess came for a number of reasons, some quite mundane. There would have been no Formula of Concord without the willingness of Elector Au-

34 Bengt Hägglund, “Majestas hominis Christi”. Wie hat Martin Chemnitz die Christologie Luthers gedeutet?, in Luther Jahrbuch 47 (1980), 71-88. 35 On the Torgau Articles, see Irene Dingel, “Die Torgauer Artikel (1574) als Vermittlungsversuch zwischen der Theologie Luthers und der Melanchthons,” in: Praxis Pietatis. Beiträge zu Theologie und Frömmigkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit. Wolfgang Sommer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Hans-Jörg Nieden und Marcel Nieden (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1999), 119-134. 36 On the opposition to the Formula, see Dingel, Concordia controversa.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 209 gust of Saxony, Duke Christoph of Württemberg, and Duke Julius of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel to invest large amounts of money in the fi- nancing of the campaign for concord. There would have been no Formula of Concord without the sheer stubbornness of Jakob Andreae, whose diplomatic skills overcame his difficult personality as he never gave up trying again to gather these willful Lutherans together, right up to his final— successful—effort in writing the preface to the Book of Concord to garner still more support.37 Success came, however, also because of the dedication of Andreae and his colleagues to the confession of the faith and the unity of the church. They did not shy from rejecting positions they believed betrayed or mis- represented God’s message given to the church through the apostles and prophets. But they recognized at the same time that differences can arise in good faith because different people approach issues from different concerns. Without benefit of modern epistemological analysis of the role of presuppositions and agendas in human thinking, they were striving to take seriously the concerns and perspectives of almost all of those who wanted to pass on the witness of Luther and Melanchthon to their generation. Disciplined by Scripture and committed to bringing to clarity the various concerns and considerations of their fellow theologians, Andreae, Chemnitz, Chytraeus, and their colleagues sought to repeat in appropriate fashion for their day the confession of Augsburg. Their proposal not only expressed agreement among a majority of the heirs of the Wittenberg reformers at their time. It has served as an expression and confession of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for more than four hundred years and continues to offer a model for theological discourse in the church.

37 Irene Dingel, “The Preface of the Book of Concord as a Reflection of Sixteenth Century Confessional Development,” Lutheran Quarterly 15 (2001): 373-395.

210 Grammarian’s Corner

Word Order, Part III Participles

ERRATUM: In the January 2006 installment of Grammarian’s Corner, the first footnote (concerning predicate nominatives) was placed inaccu- rately in the text as printed. It should have been placed after the fourth sentence rather than after the third.

In the first two contributions to this series, we considered, first, general issues of word order, and then, word order as it pertains to articles, nouns, and adjectives. This essay continues the “word order and adjective” theme, examining the word order of participles, forms of verbs that have adjectival characteristics. Participles, as do adjectives, occur in both attributive and predicate positions. Again, as with adjectives, those in attributive position will follow an article directly, while those in predicate position will not be so placed. Here are examples:

1. Attributive:

a. o` levgwn th.n avlh,qeian a;nhr e;rcetai, or b. o` avnh.r o` le,gwn th.n avlh,qeian e;rcetai. c. o` qeo.j euvlogei/ to.n le,gonta th.n a`lh,qeian a;ndra, or d. o` qeo.j euvlogei/ to.n a;ndra to.n le,gonta th.n a`lh,qeian.

2. Predicate:

a. o` avnh.r h=n le,gwn.

How are we to understand the participles in each of these two positions? In many respects, exactly the same as we understood adjectives previously, though some features are more complex. 1. Those in attributive position are parallel to attributive position adjectives that describe a noun directly. Unlike simple adjectives, however, participles contain within themselves a verbal component which must be reflected in the understanding and translation. Thus, 1.a can be translated “The speaking the truth man is coming,” which may be rendered more “clearly,” “The man, the one speaking the truth, is coming” (closer, literalistically, to 1.b). These are parallel to the following sentences, which contain simple adjectives:

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 211 1.a. o` avgaqo.j avnh.r e;rcetai, or, 1 b. o` avnh.r o` avgaqo.j e;rcetai.

Such sentences would normally be rendered as “The good man is coming,” or “The man, the good one, is coming.” Likewise, sentences 1.c and 1.d, above, can be rendered “God is blessing the man speaking the truth,” with the understanding that this could also be rendered, “God is blessing the man, the one speaking the truth” (closer, literalistically, to 1.d). 2. Participles in predicate position do not modify a noun directly, even as was true with basic adjectives in predicate position. If the verb eivmi, is employed in the sentence, the participle also has a predicate nominative function and may be so translated. Thus, sentence 2.a, above, may be rendered “The man was speaking.” This is parallel to the following sentence, which contains a simple adjective as a predicate nominative:

2.a. o` avnh.r h=n avgaqo,j.

This may be rendered, “The man was good.” Note that in all instances above, the gender, number, and case of the participle is congruent with that of the noun it modifies. (Thus, in 1.a, 1.b, and 2.a, since the participle modifies the subject of the sentence, avnh,r, which is masculine, nominative, and singular, it also must be masculine, nominative, and singular [le,gwn], while in 1.c and 1.d, it modifies the object, a;ndra, which is in the accusative case, so it, too, must be accusative [le,gonta]). Readers reasonably familiar with Greek will notice, however, that we have oversimplified greatly to this point. First of all, the renderings into English of the attributive position participles (1.a-d, above) were awkward and unidiomatic, to say the least. Smoother would be the following trans- lations: “The man who is speaking the truth is coming,”1 and “God is blessing the man who is speaking the truth.”2 Second, most predicate position participles do not occur with the verb “to be” and thus are not capable of being rendered as a predicate nominative (i.e., as a predicate nominative of progressive action).3 More occur in structures such as the following:

(2. Predicate)

b. le,gwn th.n avlh,qeian o` a;nhr e;rcetai. c. o` avnh.r le,gwn th.n avlh,qeian e;rcetai. d. o` qeo.j euvlogei/ to.n a;ndra.n le,gonta th.n avlh,qeian. e. o` qeo.j euvlogei/ le,gonta th.n avlh,qeian to.n a;ndra.

1 Or, “...who speaks the truth....” 2 Or, “...who speaks the truth....” 3 This is often called a “periphrastic” construction.

212 Both of these observations indicate that there is more afoot with participles than meets the eye when one confines talk simply to the matter of word order. In our next installment, we will, therefore, turn to participles once again, to discuss more fully their nature and the various features of their usage. James W. Voelz

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 213 Homiletical Helps on LW Series B —Epistles

Fourth Sunday of Easter 1 John 3:1-2 May 7, 2006

The season’s context: The preacher will want to remind his listeners that we are still rejoicing in the warmth and the light of Easter life. Everything that we say throughout the year, but perhaps especially during these weeks, should call attention to God’s action for us. Everything we can possibly say and exhort can be done only because the Father sent His Son to suffer, die, and give new life. The Gospel pictures of the Sundays of Easter simply will not let us forget who is the Actor: The resurrected Christ breathes His peace and overcomes Thomas’s doubting mind (Second Sunday of Easter). He announces His peace and sends witnesses into the world (Third Sunday of Easter). The Resur- rected Christ is both the door to the sheepfold and the shepherd (Fourth Sunday of Easter). He is the life-giving Vine (Fifth and Sixth Sundays of Easter). The resurrected Savior intercedes with His Father for us (Seventh Sunday of Easter). All of these action verbs remind us where our salvation originates and how He has carried it out. The Sunday’s liturgical context: For many years we referred to this day as Sunday of the Good Shepherd. The resurrected Christ cares for us as a shepherd. That lesson from John 10, together with the day’s Psalm 23, or even the Acts 4 reference to the shepherd king David’s Psalm 2 sung together with the suggested Hymns of the Day (LW),—“At the Lamb’s High Feast” and “The King of Love My Shepherd Is”—are pointing to the most obvious theme of the day. Simply put, even when preaching on the 1 John 3:1-2 text, the preacher would do well to relate this message to the strength of the message and the beauty of expression of the spoken and sung shepherd theme. In a sense, he might want to make it a type of commentary on the Good News incarnate in the Good Shepherd. The context of 1 John: With a remarkable economy of words, yet through dozens of simple verses, the entire Epistle weaves two basic themes through a variety of settings: (1) We really only have life through faith in Jesus Christ, which establishes our existence in Him as a result of His love. (2) We will live out our loving relationship in Christ as we live lives of love for others. The Epistle is also instructive in articulating the same themes through their opposites…where there is no love or no life for others there is no relationship with God. Confession of faith in Christ lived without love is a lie. Summary verses: 1 John 1:5-7. The text (1 John 3:1-2): Although there are only two verses here, they readily support at least three textual themes:

1. A God beyond comprehension has lavished His love on us. The adjective podapos together with agape call us to consider a surprising, expansive love. The idea behind this interrogative adjective seems to be to get us to ask, “What is the boundless nature of this love that the Father has here?” 2. He calls (kaleo) us His children (teknon). Here we might want to reflect a bit on the layers of meaning within that word kaleo. We are named or called. Naming a person tells the one who is doing the naming how he/she

214 wants to identify that person. The verb also has the idea of calling out…of letting others, perhaps even enemies, know who this person is. When we read here then that this Father has called us His children, we are thrown into thinking about The I Am who came to Moses in the Bush, The I Ams of John’s Gospel (today the Good Shepherd and next week the Vine), and how now we are named His children. And we are (kai esmen). His declaring us His own and calling us out and over against the world is enough to make us what we are because He makes to be what He wants. 3. Being called that by God brings a reaction from the world. The world has known neither Him nor us. The idea of the knowing (ginosko) here goes beyond casual identification. It goes to the heart of familiarity…even, as in the case of the Biblical understanding of this word in marriage as the intimacy of husband and wife. No wonder then that there should be such reaction against the children of God who call themselves Christians. The children of the devil (v. 10) through their resolute action identify themselves over against God’s children because they are rebelling against the God of those named by Him as His. 4. Verse 2 takes us into the future. According to verse 1 we already know who we are, viz., children of God. Verse 2 admits to not having a clear picture of what that might mean for the future. That same verse, however, ends with an affirmation that when that future is revealed, we shall be like Him. The kai esmen (we are) of verse 1 is replaced with esometha (we shall be). Here a phrase from 2:28 is instructive: “so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.” Here John used what would seem to be a play on words parresia for confident and parousia for coming as a preface for the words of verse 2. Without a doubt we live in the here and now of our daily lives. Nevertheless, for the Christian who through faith in Jesus Christ struggles through daily living between the constant attacks of the Evil One with sin, confession, and a repentant life in Christ, there is a confidence in forgiveness (1 John 2:1-2) which gives birth to new life of love toward the neighbor, which ultimately is validated as the hungry are fed and the naked are clothed, the homeless housed and the unloved are loved again. That then gives confidence to stand in judgment at His coming. Sermon suggestion:

Lavishly Loved…Lavishly Loving

The lavish nature of the love of the Father is that He sent the Good Shepherd to be leader, protector, and defender…even to the point of death. (Here the preacher could introduce the sermon with the tie to the Gospel for the day, the Psalm and the hymns sung to the Good Shepherd.) We have a Lavish Father who has sent us His Son as the Good Shepherd…as shelter, leader, and defender to the point of death.

I. The boundlessness of God’s love is seen in His naming us His children while we were still His enemy. Applications of Law here might include how: A. We don’t want to bear His name—we prefer our own—viz., Best Dad, Best Mom, Best Student, or Best Executive of the Year. B. I might think I am worthy of His name…but a whole lot of the world…should be excluded…the poor, the rich…Whites, Blacks, undocu-

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 215 mented Hispanics, and Asians. II. We cannot expect the world to know Him, praise His name or want any part of ours. 1 John is full of opposites…. If you are hating you are not loving. If you say you love and do not…you are a liar… (The preacher might want to take some of the examples he knows from his context to show the subtleties of self-deception). Being an “ethical American” might not be the same as being a “loving Christian.” III. The Good Shepherd has a future for us. He will come again to take us to His ultimate place of refuge and to feed us His banquet…. Then all of the perplexing contradictions of today…all that isn’t quite clear to us now will be resolved. We shall see things clearly, and He will let us be in Him. Douglas Groll

Fifth Sunday of Easter 1 John 3:18-24 May 14, 2006

The season’s context: Once again, this day reminds us that throughout the Eas- ter season we are encountering the resurrected Christ who is the Actor for us. (See “The season’s context” for the Fourth Sunday of Easter). The Sunday’s liturgical context: A saving God is seen once again as the Source and Actor in all of today’s lessons. God is active in placing Philip on the road between Jerusalem and Gaza so that he could minister to the Ethiopian eunuch. Acts tells us that he had been in Jerusalem to worship. He must have been an Ethiopian Jew who returned to Jerusalem for worship knowing that his participa- tion in temple activity might have been limited since his mutilation as a eunuch could exclude him from entering the temple. Yet his instruction and Baptism sings of God’s reach to the nations to fulfill Isaiah 11:11 and Zephaniah 3:10. The univer- sality of God’s love beyond the borders of Israel is echoed in today’s Psalm 22:27 where we hear of the ends of the earth returning to the Lord. In the Gospel lesson, the Father as gardener grafts the church into His Son, the Vine. Our epistle is an almost natural extension of the teachings of the Gospel. Where in the Gospel those who are grafted to the Vine bring forth much fruit, here those who belong to Him bring forth fruit “not in word or speech, but in truth and action” (v. 18). The preacher will want to take into account an additional factor that in a sense brings particular cultural pressure on homiletical considerations for the day. Today is Mother’s Day. Although the preacher might want to keep this focus on the margin of the liturgical worship, the congregation faithful come expecting to hear some tie to what has become a key day in American culture. The 1 John context: See “The context of 1 John” from the Fourth Sunday of Easter. Notes on 1 John 3:18-24: Central to understanding our text, and perhaps the entire Johannine corpus, is a review of the reality of God’s unmerited love (agape) which sets the theme for our text. This is so crucial since, in reality, this is what distinguishes the Christian’s love from that of the world. Both Luke (6:32) and Matthew (5:46) paint a picture of the seeming absurdity of Jesus’ mission. Both of these texts express a rejection of love as that logical love in which we love those who love us and hate those who hate us. “Not so!” says the Biblical witness. “We don’t really get it right until we love those who hate us.” That was the context of Jesus’

216 coming to save us. That is His agape love for us. That is why our text for today can start off with “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” We do that, however, because we are in an almost previous relationship as set forth in verse 23. Our primary command, out of which all love flows is faith in Christ’s unmerited love for us. As our pistis grasps His unmerited love, our love for the undeserving flows out of that relationship. Luther really grasped this in his commentary on this section:

“The crowd judges friendships by their usefulness.” Accordingly, John does not say: “Let us love those who are saintly, agreeable, and rich.” No, he says: “Let us love the brethren,” in such a way that then nothing but the brotherhood is loved and regarded; for a brother is loved out of a sense of duty, not because of usefulness and not because of praise. All the gifts we have should serve those who do not have them. For example, he who is learned should serve him who is not learned; he who is rich should serve him who is poor; he who is sensible should serve him who is foolish, etc. It is easy to love Paul and other apostles. They serve you even after their death. But to love those who are weak, troublesome, and unlearned—this indeed is to love truly. Otherwise there is no brotherhood, but there is carnality. In short, it is the duty of Christians to serve, not for their own advantage but for the advantage of the brethren (LW 30:279).

It is the relationship of life in the forgiving Christ, validated by our unmerited love for the neighbor, which in turn then gives us confidence to be called God’s children. John seemed to know how unstable our own self-evaluation can be. Some- times our hearts condemn us for the good we do and also for the bad that surges from a sinful heart. If we had to trust in our own daily, hourly, or even minute-by- minute evaluations, we could only despair. Our lesson is Good News in the sense that we are assured that we work out of the relationship that exists because we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ. By the Spirit He has given us…remember how John’s Gospel reminds us that Jesus breathed on His disciples (John 20:22), we don’t just love the lovable but extend ourselves through the Christ who lives in us to exercise love for all people. Because we have this relationship, we do not shrink for fear when we have come up short or feel guilty when we know we are too happy to be Lutheran because we are shielded by the Christ in whom we live. Once again we listen to Luther:

Even if our conscience makes us fainthearted and presents God as angry, still “God is greater than our heart.” Conscience is one drop; the reconciled God is a sea of comfort. The fear of conscience, or despair, must be overcome, even though this is difficult. It is a great and exceedingly sweet promise that if our heart blames us, “God is greater than our heart” and “knows everything.” Why does John not prefer to say that He has done or can do everything? When the conscience blames, then man is distressed and says with David in Ps. 40:12: “My iniquities have overtaken me till I cannot see”; see also Ps. 49:6. Then a sinner sobs and says: “I do not know what I ought to do.” But in opposition to this darkness of the heart it is said: “God knows everything.” One’s conscience is always fearful and closes its eyes, but God is deeper and higher than your heart and examines it

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 217 more intimately. He gives us a light, so that we see that our iniquity has been taken away from us. Satan often disturbs our conscience even when we do what is right (LW 30:280).

Sermon suggestion with a possible Mother’s Day focus:

Walking the Walk as a Parent…Walking the Walk as a Child

Introduction: This is the Fifth Sunday of Easter. The Sunday’s general theme is that the Resurrected Christ, the living Vine, has grafted us into Himself so that now we bear fruit of active love, superseding our natural tendency to talk the talk rather than to walk in Christ. Especially this day we want to think how this theme makes a difference for our attitudes and actions toward our parents (i.e., our mothers and how it affects mothers). In our text in particular John invites us go beyond talk about love by actually loving others out of whom Christ has made us instead of talking about what everyone knows we should be.

I. Good mothering is not necessarily natural. Especially this day there may be the temptation to so emulate what we hope our mothers should be that we might forget what they were and what they are: A. A part of a sinful humanity. B. Capable of heroic action and dastardly darkness. C. Prone to talk of love…not necessarily of actions of love for those beyond the immediate family. D. Intoxicated with many words from modern media…NBC’s…The More You Know? public service announcements. “Do you know where your children are after 9:00 p.m.? Millions and millions of words from Oprah or Dr. Phil…. We hear a lot of loving with words and tongue. E. In this epistle John invites us outside the purely programatic form of talking about the good and encouraging everyone to be that. He invites us to think about what we do and how we act on the basis of relationship with Jesus Christ in whom we trust and how we love others because of that. II. Mothers and children alike pass judgment. A. This could be a day for great guilt as tens of millions of mothers’ children remember at least one thing we did, have done, or are continuing to do to sadden our mothers. We pronounce ourselves guilty! B. This could be a day for great guilt as tens of millions of mothers feel guilt for areas of failure…. “If only I had done more!” They pronounce themselves guilty! C. The Good News of our text is that because of our relationship to God through Jesus Christ in whom we trust we no longer stand condemned for being good parents before God but dead wrong according to our culture or wonderful parents according to our culture but dead wrong before God. III. We live new lives as mothers and children boldly with confidence even before His coming because we live in Him and we do God’s will joyfully. Even when we fail as parents or children we know in whom we live. 1 John 2:27 tells us we are confident parresia at the coming parousia. We can dare to love all of God’s children (not just our own lovable ones) but even those who are difficult. We can also as extend the hand of love to mothers who are less than graceful,

218 protective, engaging, and physically and mentally healthy because we know from Christ how to go about loving. Douglas Groll

Sixth Sunday of Easter 1 John 4:1-11 May 21, 2006

Proposed theme: “Testing the Spirits to See If They Belong to God” The central points proposed: Today, as in the time of John the apostle, there are many voices claiming to be the voice of God. With such a cacophony, it is difficult even within the Christian community to discern whether the word is a word from God or a word from a false prophet. Saint John suggests that there are two standards to apply: the first is whether the witness is to Christ, the Son of God who came in the flesh. Any other representation of God other than through the incarnate, “in-the-flesh” Jesus who came as an expiation for our sins is a false teaching and is, in fact, anti-Christ. The second standard is whether the message is one of love. Any message contrary to love, such as hate, violence, and destruction is a false message and is, in fact, anti-Christ. Notably missing from these two standards is the number of people who respond or listen to the prophet. Worldly teaching brings a response from the worldly. Divine teaching brings a response from those who are believers in Christ. Proposed illustrative stories: Peter and Julie were mesmerized by the teaching of the new minister in town. Youngish in appearance and delightful in his sermon- izing, he drew an increasingly large attendance at his parish. Frequent appeals to the example of Jesus as to self-sacrifice and as to ethical living made clear and lucid points to his ever-expanding audience. Peter and Julie were drawn into the new pastor’s style and message as were many others. “He preaches really good sermons telling us how to live as Jesus did,” Julie said to Peter. “Perhaps we should join his church?” she continued. “How do we know if his message is true to the Scriptures?” Peter wondered out loud. “Are there any standards?” The next Sunday the new pastor’s sermon was about Jesus’ plan for sexuality, and that all people who were not heterosexual should either become so or be deported from this “Christian land”; and, if not deported, put into prison. Julie and Peter were confused because, in their private devotions, they had been reading 1 John. Sandra and Luke were married for four years. As their marital conflicts in- creased and their financial situation became more distressed, their conflicts esca- lated into violence. Luke hit Sandra and claimed that since he was “head of the household” in God’s order, and was a follower of Jesus Christ, he has every right to keep her “in line.” Luke claimed that this was his “righteous” duty. Sandra was not as knowledgeable about the Bible as Luke, and did not know how to judge his religious argument. Coming from her own family-of-origin where violence was a regular occurrence and suffering from a sense of inferiority about herself, she wondered if Luke was right and that violence was what she deserved. Fictitious Good Hope Lutheran Church was wracked with controversy. At the latest congregational meeting, members were yelling at each other, attacking their reputations and their integrity. This followed an opening prayer and devotion by the pastor that focused on Jesus being the Savior who forgives the sins of all and unites us all together into one family. Some family Good Hope was! When ques-

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 219 tioned afterwards about their behavior at the meeting, practically everyone was able to excuse their behavior as needing to be done to defend the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Proposed outline:

I. Theme. II. Point(s). III. Illustrations of the reality of difficulty in testing the spirits, especially when those spirits are concealed with a Christian veneer and language. IV. The test: Is Jesus as the incarnate Son of God and the one whose life, death, and resurrection forgives our sins being taught, and is the behavior being demonstrated that of a God of love and care? V. God’s Spirit draws us to this examination of others and of ourselves. VI. God in the person and work of Jesus Christ forgives us our own false spirits and gives us grace and power to see and discern the other spirits at work.

An example of this examination at the foot of the cross: The first place to begin to test the spirits is with our own. If it is possible that we ourselves are led by spirits other than the Holy Spirit (and it is!), and if we can live and behave in ways that are contrary to the spirit of Christ (and it is!), then led by God’s Holy Spirit and in conversation with others in the Christian community, we become aware of this in ourselves. Every behavior of ours that is not based in and connected to the God- incarnate Savior Jesus Christ and does not reflect the God of love needs to be brought to the foot of the cross where our God of love and forgiveness recognizes our sin but sees it through the work of His Son. Bruce M. Hartung

Seventh Sunday of Easter 1 John 4:13-21 May 28, 2006

Proposed theme: “Love, Hate, God, and Human Relationships” The central point proposed: Among humans, even among Christians, hate and other forms of anti-love do exist. We cannot hate our fellow Christians and still truthfully say we love God. All of us, therefore, fall short of the clear command “Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” God’s love in Christ overcomes all our imperfections, even our fallen expressions of anti-love, as God wraps us in His perfect and perfecting love and power. This enables us to love more fully as well as to return again and again to God’s love in Christ when we fall short. Proposed illustrative stories: Fictitious Saint Stephen by the Sea Lutheran Church was engaged in a long-standing multigenerational conflict between at least two opposing groups. This conflict neutralized every attempt to reach out into the community. If a person from Group “A” suggested something, a person from Group “B” could be counted upon to oppose it, and vice-versa. At voters’ assembly meetings some things did get passed, but without much real passion because so much energy had been taken up in the oppressive and long-standing conflict. Criticism (on the side), negativity (on the parking lot), innuendo (at small gatherings of like- minded persons), and dislike (genuine and visceral) reigned. But these were Lutheran Christians. They smiled when they disagreed, said they loved everyone, including

220 God, and lived their outward piety without regard for the distance between it and what was really happening inside their souls. Sarah and Jacob Walther, both life-long Lutheran Christians, knew their marriage was going downhill. Warmth was missing, perfunctory interaction was the norm, and often intense conflict was present with no corresponding close and reconciled times. They became more and more hurtful to each other. Finally, they filed for divorce. It was messy. The dislike and hatred was very obvious by then. “Hell hath no fury” than a person of either gender scorned. In the midst of it all, both professed faith in God, exuded pleasantness when they came to church (at different times), and regularly spoke evil of their soon-to-be-no-longer partner. George Luther and Samuel Harms were the best of friends (at one time!). They grew up in the same church, went to the same grade school, buddied and partied a lot. They were also very competitive. They went to different colleges, and both returned to the general area where they grew up, joining the same church. But they were competitive in business, in love (for they had courted the same woman), and in the church. Friendship went to dislike; dislike went to anger; anger went to hate. Both went to church regularly, both served on various boards (but never together), both took Communion regularly, and both claimed Jesus Christ as their Lord. But you could tell whenever they were forced to be together that the animosity ran deeply. To their friends and respective spouses the other could not be mentioned without a negative comment. Proposed outline:

I. Theme. II. Point. III. Illustrations of the reality of dislike and hate as examples of anti-love. IV. “If anyone says ‘I love God’ but hates his brother (sister), he is a liar.” V. God’s Spirit draws us to the cross where God’s love in Christ embraces us. VI. God’s Spirit in our Baptism places us in a community of believers where God’s love prevails.

A central evil proposed: “The warning against hating the brethren takes on particular theological significance in 1 John. To hate the brethren is to live in the sphere of darkness rather than light.… Hate becomes a demonic metaphysical power” (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 4, p. 692). An example of being drawn to the cross: Saint John encourages us to take stock of ourselves. If hatred and anti-love are real human experiences (which they are), and if they can be active among Christians (which they can), and if they are demonic (which they are), we must, led by the power of the Spirit, become aware of them in ourselves. All my (our) hate and hatreds, all my (our) anti-loves come to the foot of the cross where God who is spirit, light, and love tenderly wraps me (us) in the perfecting and all-embracing love of Christ. As powerful as hatred is, the power of God’s love is greater. Bruce M. Hartung

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 221 The Day of Pentecost Acts 2:22-36 June 4, 2006

Stepping Back to Take It In

This text is important enough—not only as a sermon text but also as a text that shapes the whole life of the church—to justify a break with the usual “Helps” format. That we might see the significance of the events and the words of that day, let’s “step back” for just a moment and review what has been happening in Luke’s story. We cannot talk about Pentecost without talking about Easter; Luke has made certain of that. The only evangelist whose Easter celebration is longer than forty days, Luke is also the only evangelist to provide “continuous coverage” of what was happening to the eleven/twelve from the time of our Lord’s death until the time when people began to serve as His witnesses in the world. The importance of the first Eastertide is eclipsed only by that of the first Easter morning. The forty-day period between our Lord’s resurrection and His ascension forms the crucial con- necting hinge that joins Luke’s Gospel and Acts. Acts 1:3 gives Luke’s summary of what was happening during that period, but we cannot read his understated summary without recalling the examples Luke gives of those “many proofs” in Luke 24. And it is in Luke 24 that we see the disciples finally “getting it.” Jesus “opens their minds to understand the Scrip- tures,” teaching them how to read with understanding all that had been written of Him by Moses and the prophets and poets of Scripture (cf. Luke 24:44-47). This same passage also suggests what our Lord must have “spoken about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3), for He not only shows Himself to be the fulfillment of His Father’s saving purpose, He also explains to them how it is that this good news will now be spread into all the world. But how could this be? How could these eleven men (even giving their number betrays their disappointing and tragic history!) who abandoned, denied, and betrayed their Lord now be His witnesses? That the promise of the Father should be sent upon them—that’s just about impossible to believe even for us who have been trained by Hollywood in the suspension of disbelief! Clearly the preaching of repentance and forgiveness has already begun. Now notice exactly what manner of men ask the question of Acts 1:6. People like Simeon and Anna, waiting for Israel’s consolation, proved to be exceptional indeed as Israel’s collective rejection of the One who comes in the name of the Lord, showing their complete failure to be God’s chosen instrument for blessing all the families of the world. As Jesus gathered around Himself a new twelve, our hopes were raised that Israel could be restored from within but, if their chronic failure to understand Jesus had not already dashed those hopes, the disciples’ behavior in the garden and on that fateful Friday most certainly did. “Israel, my Son” was reduced to one, but this One, whom Israel killed, God raised. And this same One has presented Himself alive, bringing restoration and hope to an Israel in ruins. “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” That is to say, “Could it be true—it’s too good to be true—that we, who betrayed our calling and our Lord, could it be true that we can still have a role to play as You claim Your world?” And their Lord responds, “I cannot give you all the details, but you will be my witnesses.”

222 Back in Jerusalem, Peter, speaking as no one but Jesus has spoken thus far, uses Scripture to interpret the events through which they have just lived, and on that basis the eleven restore their number to twelve. A new Israel, defined solely by its relationship to Jesus, is poised, ready, waiting—but for what? What does Pentecost bring? What does it mean? Preaching points: This long introduction leaves me just enough room to answer those questions.

1. Peter’s first response (2:16-21) is that it means that the last days are here, and they are days of salvation. We will continue to marvel at His choices, but God will choose men and women who will speak so that others may hear and call upon His name and be saved. And they will do this with power from on high. 2. Why should this be happening now? It has been fifty days since Jesus’ death and resurrection. Did Jerusalem even remember Jesus? How many had even known of His death? Was anyone but this band of 120 still thinking about Him? Do you remember the headline from April 16 (fifty days ago)? Peter must make it clear that what is happening here is connected to the death of Jesus of Nazareth (2:22- 35). Death took Him, but Death could not hold Him. David prophesied about resurrection, but His body was “seeing corruption” not far from where Peter was standing. [Note how no one shouts out, “Well, Jesus’ tomb is right here, too!” Had that tomb still held a corrupting body, Peter’s preaching could have been exposed as nothing but folly and deception.] Peter seems to be saying, “No man keeps his promises from the grave. Jesus promised to send the Spirit, and you have just witnessed it. You, therefore, are just as much witnesses of His resurrection as we are.” 3. The more I read Luke’s account, the less comfortable I feel about calling Pentecost “the birthday of the church.” If we mean by church a community of believers, that is already present in Acts 1. Perhaps it would be better to call this day “the birthday of the mission department!” That same Spirit still animates us, the Lord’s witnesses here and now, still grants us a vision of a world redeemed by Christ crucified, still transforms the nightmares of this world’s doom into a heavenly dream, and still fills us with anticipation for the coming “great and magnifi- cent day” of our Lord’s return. And that Spirit still works to form us into witnesses with eyes that see and ears that hear the wonders of the Lord, witnesses who boldly declare: “Let everyone know for certain that Jesus the crucified, is both Lord and Christ!” Jeffrey A. Oschwald

The Holy Trinity (First Sunday after Pentecost) Romans 8:14-17 June 11, 2006

Notes on the context and the passage: In the eighth chapter of Romans Paul concludes a lengthy passage on the Christian life. In this passage he urges Chris- tians, who have been united to Christ through Baptism, to refuse to allow sin any longer to reign in their bodies (chap. 6); to depend on God through Jesus Christ, who delivers from the sinful flesh and the terrible conflict it causes in Christians (chap. 7); to recognize that the Spirit is already at work in the sons of God, leading them to hope in the final redemption and helping them in their weakness through inter-

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 223 cession (chap. 8). In the pericope from Romans 8, Paul teaches that Christians are sons and children of God. This account, brief though it may be, is explicitly Trinitarian, which means that the account is given in terms of Christ and the Spirit. So, on the one hand, Christians are sons of God because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (8:14). We can see this from the way we call out to God: “Abba! Father!” This is, Paul explains, nothing less than “the Spirit himself testifying with our spirit that we are children of God” (8:16). Therefore, if we are God’s sons and children, then we are also His heirs. But, on the other hand, if we are heirs of God, we are also fellow heirs with Christ. Paul explains this identity in terms of suffering and glorification: “If it is true that we suffer with [Him] so that we may be glorified with [Him].” We should not understand this suffering primarily in terms of rejection or persecution for the sake of the faith (as in Matt. 16 or Mark 8). Certainly rejection may be involved (see 8:18), but the context shows that the suffering that Paul refers to here involves the death of “our old self,” and glorification begins with the raising to new life. Verse 13 shows this, as Paul says: “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if, by the Spirit, you put to death the works of the body, you will live.” This understanding of “death and resurrection,” moreover, reflects the understanding developed earlier in both chapters 6 (vv. 3-11) and 7 (vv. 4-12). Notes for preaching: The pericope is the Epistle for the Feast of the Holy Trin- ity. Observing this festival reinforces the importance of paying attention to the Trinitarian motifs that run through this section of Paul’s letter to the Romans, particularly in these verses. But paying attention to these motifs would be important on any occasion, and so the preacher would not be stretching the text in raising and dealing with them. Yet the ultimate goal of the sermon should be consistent with the goal of the passage itself. This goal is straightforward: to assure hearers that they are sons of God and, therefore, in line for a glorious inheritance, not only because God promises it but also because God promised it for Christ. Still, there may be challenges in preaching this text and reaching this goal. One likely challenge lies with mistaken understandings about “sonship.” Confusion over sonship is often the result of Christians identifying Christ with us according to His human nature, that is, by virtue of His incarnation. Such a view is, of course, “most certainly true,” but when Christ is identified with human creatures only in this way, we tend to see His Sonship as entirely unique. For instance, this can happen with the Small Catechism. When we confess that Jesus Christ is “true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary,” it becomes logical to conclude that we should attribute Christ’s Sonship solely to His divine nature. Certainly, we should see Christ as Son of God in terms of His unique relationship to God (“begotten”), but we should not understand his Sonship exclusively in terms of the divine nature. And, therefore, it becomes logical that Christians would understand themselves also as “sons of God” merely in an external or improper sense. Of course, we need to make a distinction between the Sonship of Christ and the sonship of Christians. But frequently the distinction made is radical. This happens with much thinking that God treats us “as if” we are sons, or that God considers us sons merely “for the sake of Christ.” Such talk often presupposes that we are not and cannot be “sons,” and so our sonship is simply nominal (“in name only”) and in no sense proper or personal. If a “Christological docetism” treats Christ only “as if” he were true man, then this view might be called an “anthropological docetism,” because it treats the saints

224 only “as if” they were true sons of God. Paul teaches us otherwise. God does not merely call us “sons,” but He makes us “sons” and deals with us as “sons.” God does not simply declare “sonship”; He enacts it. “Son,” here, is a relational term; that is, it designates a relationship with God. How does the relationship come about? Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, “for all who are led by the Spirit are sons of God.” Sonship, of course, has benefits, and these benefits are “sons” and “children of God” through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and, accordingly, as heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. I believe that it often would be easier to see this if we recognized that Christ’s own divine Sonship were a matter not only of sharing the divine substance of God the Father, but also in being Son because He has communion with God through the Holy Spirit. In fact, it might be helpful to explain how Christians are sons of God by first explaining how the Holy Spirit’s presence and activity in Jesus showed that He is God’s Son and Anointed One. This is the way Paul identifies Jesus as God’s Son at the beginning of the epistle (1:4), and Christ Himself does so when He speaks at the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4). But from conception through resurrection we can see that Jesus Christ is God’s chosen one and Son through the Spirit who dwells in Him. Once this is seen, we can see more fully how we, too, are sons of God in the same Spirit who dwells in us. Joel P. Okamoto

Second Sunday after Pentecost 2 Corinthians 4:5-12 June 18, 2006

Textual considerations: Paul found himself in an awkward position. The false apostles who questioned Paul’s authority at Corinth had done so in a manner that placed Paul’s character at the center of the conflict. Paul, the apostle who sought to preach Christ crucified, found himself and not Christ at the heart of spiritual conflict. Corinth, the church that Paul had already counseled about dividing over God’s messengers (1 Cor. 1:10-18), was being divided yet again over him. In response, Paul does an amazing thing. He uses the rhetorical form of a peristasis catalogue to answer his opponents and to counsel the church at Corinth, and, as he does this, he turns this rhetorical device on its head. Today, when we hear this text read, one of the most memorable portions is the peristasis catalogue (2 Cor. 4:7-12). From the image of “treasure in jars of clay” that opens it (v. 7), to the rhetorical cadence of contrasting parallelism that holds it together (vv. 8-9), to the climactic paradox that concludes it, celebrating life in death (vv. 10-11) for the sake of yet more life (v. 12), Paul writes with oratorical brilliance. Such oratory is an aggressive move. Paul had been accused of writing forcefully but of being unimpressive in person (2 Cor. 10:10), and so now he uses forceful writing in personal defense. With forceful writing and brilliant oratory, he counters his opponents. In the face of their accusations, Paul demonstrates that he is not afraid of his accusers, that he is not ashamed of his gifts (expressing apostolic authority through letters), and that, even now, when his accusers hold his writing up for ridicule, he will use that which is ridiculed to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and, thereby, to serve the confused and conflicted Christians in Corinth. The peristasis catalogue (a familiar device in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence, as seen in 1 Cor. 4:8-13; 2 Cor. 4:7-12; 6:3-10; and 11:21-29) traditionally

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 225 served as a form of self-revelation, even self-justification. Today, people say you can “see what that person is made of” when that person undergoes trial. In the same way, the catalogue of hardships gave a speaker the opportunity to display his character and his worth. As the speaker listed hardships that he endured, he would be able to reveal aspects of his character that he hoped his hearers would value. It might be his courage under fire, his unwavering dedication to a cause, his peace in the midst of conflict, his contempt for adversity, or his endurance in the face of suffering. Paul, however, turns this convention upon its head. As he records his hardships, he reveals not himself but his God. Paul argues that his life experience, filled with suffering for the sake of the Gospel, reveals the power of God and the wisdom of God who has placed His treasure (v. 6b) in jars of clay. Paul is not arguing that all occasions of suffering reveal God’s power or that somehow the authenticity of a preacher is dependent upon suffering for what he says. Instead, Paul is using his person and life experience (the very things being called into question by his opponents) to take himself out of the picture and to proclaim God’s work in Christ. When his opponents place him in the center of spiritual controversy, Paul bows to Jesus Christ and thereby leaves the stage. Paul takes what his opponents have ridiculed (his forcefulness in writing) and what one would expect to be a traditional defense of oneself (the peristasis catalogue) and defiantly uses them to proclaim Christ. Where does this leave us? Consider how Paul’s work encourages a congregation to move beyond a focus upon personalities, upon success or even failure (as if all conflict in a congregation were proof that Christ is being faithfully proclaimed), and instead to confess how God has placed the person and work of Christ at the heart of our congregational experience, of our communal ethic, and of our way of speaking of ourselves and of others. Whether using the gifts we have been given, recounting our life experiences to one another, defending ourselves against accusation, or suffering as we serve in Christ’s name, we do so aware of God’s working in and through these things to point others to Christ. So often congregations can develop into communities that focus upon particular personalities or upon conflicts that have occurred in the past. Yet these people and conflicts have not been contemplated and discussed to the point where they point us back to Christ. While a casual reader might assume that Paul’s opening sentence encourages us never to look at ourselves or at our congregation when preparing to preach (“we preach not ourselves”), Paul’s actual words encourage more than a glance. They encourage a long hard look so that any person, any conflict, any life experience that might be used to lead people away from Christ can be used to preach Christ instead. Paul encourages such a long hard look at one’s life, one’s members, and one’s congregational history here–not so that we may preach ourselves but so that we may not be distracted by ourselves or divided by ourselves, but discover that even in these things God is at work, bringing life to others through our dying so that all might know the life of Christ. Suggested sermon structure:

“When Christ Holds Center Stage”

Text: Explain how Paul found himself placed center stage in the struggles at Corinth and how Paul preached in such a way that his hearers were able to see Christ rather than the apostle Paul. Paul brings his life struggles into the spot- light (the peristasis catalogue) but does so in such a way that he bows to his Lord

226 Jesus and Christ holds center stage. Application: Appropriately and concretely identify issues or behaviors that threaten to upstage Christ in the congregation; then, like Paul, reveal how God is at work in such situations, turning our eyes from these earthen vessels to the treasure therein, to the gracious work of Christ that brings life to us and to others through us. David Schmitt

Third Sunday after Pentecost 2 Corinthians 4:13-18 June 25, 2006

Context: 1. In the epistle: Paul wrote to the Corinthians to address a series of pastoral problems within the congregation, but he also has occasion to recall the hardships and trials of his own ministry (4:1-12; 5:1-15). This lesson is part of a longer passage that reveals the fragility and vulnerability the apostle had experienced in bringing Christ to the Gentiles. 2. In our world: Among the (largely unrecognized) handicaps that North Ameri- cans suffer is that of having more material blessings than we literally know what do with—wisely. This results in our thinking that every problem can be solved (and quickly!) and that what really counts in life is of an earthly, temporal, and perhaps even material nature. That means that we rely on ourselves for much more than we are able to deliver to ourselves and our loved ones and that we do not take evil seriously enough to know what to do with disappointments. The sermon addresses these handicaps and problems common in our culture on the basis of Paul’s attitude expressed in the text. Textual notes: 1. Throughout Scripture, Biblical writers operate with the presumption that our speaking Creator accomplishes what He wills through His Word, and that human creatures reflect His image and way of doing things when their faith speaks (e.g., Rom. 10:8-17). That is probably not what Paul intended in verse 13. Instead, he is quoting Psalm 116:10, “I kept my faith even when I said, ‘I am greatly afflicted.’” In the context of chapter 4, he is saying that despite all the discouragement he has suffered, his faith continues to turn to God in the midst of his afflictions. (Paul’s contemporaries knew the psalms well enough to be able to fill in such blanks.) The apostle is confessing with the psalmist’s words, echoing what he had just written, acknowledging God’s lordship and control over his life. 2. Paul viewed Christ’s resurrection as the determinative factor in his life. The gift of life he had received in his Baptism, on the basis of the resurrection of Jesus (Rom. 6:3-11; Col. 2:11-15), and the hope that springs from it permeated his thinking and molded his way of looking at everything that he experienced and encoun- tered (v. 14). 3. God’s mercy and kindness were on the move, spreading and claiming ever more people through Paul’s ministry. He presumed that this grace of God produces thanksgiving in the lives of all believers (v. 15). That thanksgiving, ultimately based upon Christ’s resurrection, shapes the way in which we live and view the world around us. 4. Paul found encouragement and faced the future confidently because his hope in Christ enabled him to be utterly realistic about the fact that his outer nature was wasting away but at the same time enabled him to place earthly

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 227 tribulations in the context of the resurrection (vv. 16-18). He continues this thought in chapter 5. Such encouragement and hope arise as God freshens up [vvavnakaino,w] the way we think (cf. Rom. 12:2) through the message of the resurrection, on the basis of the new birth which the Holy Spirit has effected through our baptisms (Titus 3:5). God makes all things new (Rev. 21:5), even our lives when they turn shabby or shoddy and seem in shambles. Outline: Resurrection Reality

Introduction: Being an apostle, the chosen instrument of God, did not insure happiness and ease. Paul knew how difficult life could be as the Lord made His strength perfect in the apostle’s weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).

I. North Americans tend to think that we can solve all problems and do so with material goods. This reflects the handicap of our not sharing the view of reality presented by the Biblical writers regarding the seriousness and power of evil and the eternal dimension of true human living. II. We do have good reasons for feeling tired, discouraged, defeated. III. But we are who we are, reborn children of God, and so our faith, like that of the psalmist and Paul, confesses the resurrection in the face of evils we cannot make go away or alter. IV. The Holy Spirit is renewing the way we think about reality as He turns us (in repentance) back to His view of reality, centered on our Lord’s resurrection. Robert Kolb

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 July 2, 2006

One of the more persistent exegetical difficulties in 2 Corinthians is sorting out who Paul is talking about when he says “we.” When is he talking about a we which includes all believers? An easy example is 3:18, “we all (h`mei/j pa,ntej)...are being transformed.” When, on the other hand, does we refer particularly to those who exercise the office of public ministry, such as Paul himself and Timothy? And when, finally, does we seem to be ambidextrous—both the we of all believers and the we of apostles and evangelists and pastors are appropriately applicable? The pericope in view belongs, I think, to this last category. To be sure, the preceding material in chapter four focuses on the risks to those whose ministry is public, in behalf of the larger believing and witnessing community. And yet that ministry in behalf of the community embraces the community—I detect in the apostle, in this letter and in others, a desire for and the exhibit of a mutual appreciation between the public ministry and the priesthood of all believers. In part, this is an appreciation of the persons who exercise these offices: The “saints” are Paul’s encouragement and reward, by their faith and growth in faith and life. Paul (and the other apostles and evangelists) are (to be) the people’s encouragement, by their bold proclamation of the Gospel in place where it had not yet been heard. And yet Paul argues a different line: the ministry is important; the minister is not— having the ministry of the Gospel is something that issues from the mercy of God (2 Cor. 4:1); ministers are earthen vessels; the power of the ministry is God’s and

228 not the ministers’ (4:7). If the ministries (popular and pastoral) of the Gospel depended on the power of the persons...well, it’s a good thing they don’t. And “so we [people and pastors] do not lose heart” (4:16). The reading in view enlarges on the briefly stated polarities of outer nature and inner nature, of seen and unseen, of transient and eternal (4:16-18) by using metaphors of housing and construction. The opening embedded eva.n clause is a bit awkward; word-by-word it runs like this: “if the earthly of us house of the tent is destroyed....” The genitive tou/ skh,nouj is appositive (cf. BDF §168 on concatenated genitives); it accents the temporal and temporary nature of human life—“if our earthly house, which is but a tent, is destroyed....” But notice that Paul doesn’t say simply that “we have a house (oivki,a) from God,” but an oivkodomh,. The lexica identify two categories for this term: one, building as a process; the other, a building as a finished product. Does the apostle have one or the other, or both, in mind? I suspect that the answer is yes. Process involves time, and God is not governed by time. To make it clear that he is not talking about any contingency of completing the construction, Paul returns to the word oivki,a: a house, a finished product, not (human-) handmade [but] eternal in the heavens. Paul shifts metaphors in verses three and four, from construction to clothing. If the point of the previous image was to assure of the permanence of the divine inheritance, here the apostle emphasizes that the apparent loss represented by getting rid of the tent is actually not loss, but an exchange of something less for something more: the mortal for the immortal. And this exchange is not just a by- product but the goal and product itself. It isn’t that God is preparing something for us, but that in the present life he is preparing us. On the ground of the assurances in the first part of the text, the second part, verses six through ten, returns to an assertion of confidence: “So we are always of good courage” (ESV). First of all, this positive declaration balances the negative expression of 4:16, “we do not lose heart.” Further, the participial, genitive absolute constructions signify that the trustworthiness of these assurances constitutes an immovable, unshakable datum for a constant courage and knowledge that in- forms and empowers a believer’s daily life/vocation. Where we are living and carrying out our vocation at present is not home. Nevertheless, we conduct ourselves not as if we could ignore who (and whose) we are, but in full and willing accountability to our true identity and belonging. A recent television journalism program examined the misconduct of American mili- tary personnel on station in foreign lands. Now, I suspect that such conduct by some of our personnel overseas is probably not incongruent with their behavior stateside. But if it could be maintained, at least rhetorically, that Americans generally are well-behaved, respectful visitors when they visit foreign lands (are away from home), then perhaps it could be argued that they do so precisely because of their devotion to America, because they want to honor their home even while they are away from it. How much more should/will Christians, whose home is with the Lord, devote themselves to pleasing Him, even while they are “away,” that is, here? filotime,omai compounds file,w and time,w; the result seems to be more than simply an “aim” (ESV) or “goal” (NIV). The lexica include measures of ambition and devotion. Only the LORD’s chesed endures forever, but it seems that filotimi,a (though the noun does not occur in the NT) is the appropriate response not by itself, but ambition, devotion in order to be pleasing (euva,restoj, another compound) to God.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 229 Verse ten presents an interesting problem: Who is included in pa,ntaj h`ma/j? All people? Or the “all of us” of the believing community? How one answers could depend on whether one reads fau/lon or kako,n at the end of the verse. The combination of avgaqo,j and kako,j, which is supported by several significant manuscripts, is reminiscent of the OT tob wera‘ (good and bad, good and evil). This seems to leave open the possibility of the universal judgment. fau/loj, on the other hand, tends to refer to things that are less valuable than those which are avgaqo,j, but not to penalties. This word seems to narrow the “all of us” to the church, but its use asserts that the Christian who has behaved like a rude guest in this world can (and should) expect a reward commensurate with his behavior. It is important to reiterate: The aim is to please God, not to earn a greater reward. Nevertheless, if Christians value—treasure what has been promised, it stands to reason that they will try hard to live to please God. Sermon outline: The text divides itself neatly into two parts (vv. 1-5 and 6-10), in a relationship which moves from because to therefore. The preacher can choose, however, to reverse the order: to articulate the “therefore” along more hortatory lines, and then proclaiming the Gospel via the promises of better, permanent housing/clothing. Just to get you started, however,

Courage for Christians

I. Where do we get it? II. How do we live it? William W. Carr, Jr.

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 July 9, 2006

In the previous reading (2 Cor. 5:1-10), especially verse nine, the apostle declares his own wholehearted commitment to please God on the grounds of what is promised. This is the “First Table” of Christian response. In the present reading, we encounter the “Second Table,” and it is important to consider the verses which connect last week’s reading to this one: “Knowing, then, the fear of the Lord, we [seek to] persuade men.” The nuance of seeking/trying is derived by treating the present form pei,qomen as conative (cf. e.g., BDF §319). The “fear of the Lord” may seem, at first, to be an extension of the apostle’s remark about appearing before the judgment seat of Christ, but I think that, rather, this phrase/term is informed by Old Testament usage, especially in the wisdom literature: That one is wise who lives his/her life in tune with the created order, but that means he/she lives in tune with the will and purpose of the Creator. But that means in tune with—with faith in—YHWH, who made Himself known to Israel as Re- deemer first. “We try to persuade men; we are already transparent to God; I hope that we are equally transparent to your consciences.” Here “men” refers to those who are not of the household of faith. We cannot hide from God; that’s plain enough. Our conduct should make plain within the churchly community our minds and motives but, above all, our faith. Paul’s readiness to proclaim the Gospel, indeed, the whole counsel of God, even when it puts him at risk, should be testimony enough—it

230 should “go without saying” that he is a bold and faithful witness. Paul is at the painful disadvantage of trying to call attention to his work without having it sound like he’s trying to call attention to himself. It is the work that is important, not the one who does it. On the matter of “transparency,” both forms are perfect passive. The coming to transparency is past, and with God, Paul believes, there is no question that he conducts himself with integrity. But the apostle wants the Corinthians to be equally satisfied, inwardly convinced of his integrity—it is difficult to imagine anything more complimentary than to be so regarded. He wants them to know and be confident of what is in his heart, in contrast to those who judge only according to appearances. “For if we are ecstatic, [that’s for] God; if we are serious, [that’s for] you.” In his first letter Paul had expressed his preference to “speak five words in [his] mind” rather than “ten thousand words in a[n ecstatic] tongue” (1 Cor. 14:19). It is well for a Christian to be exuberant, but it is not exuberance that does such great things; it is rather being able to “give an answer for the hope that is ours, and doing so with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15, 16) toward the one who gives us a hearing. “For the love of Christ constrains us.” There may be no single word in English that is adequate to translate sune,cw here. Control (ESV, NASB), compel (NIV), overwhelm (New Jerusalem Bible)—none of these is a “bad” translation, though each will have its advocates and opponents. We might expect that Paul would include some kind of enunciation of activities that he (and we) are constrained to do; that the apostle leaves any such thing unsaid leads to the understanding that everything about a Christian comes under the constraint of Christ’s love: what we believe, what we think, what we say, what we do. If there is anything particular that he has in mind, it would seem to be the work of trying to persuade others (v. 11). Christ’s love is constraining, compelling, “because we have concluded this” (or arrived at this conclusion): “that one died for all, consequently, all died; further, he died for all, in order that those who live no longer live for themselves but for him who, for them, died and was raised.” One of the nuances of sune,cw is an element of security: Christ’s love secures us. To be sure, that means it sets boundaries, but it also means that it provides a clear point of reference for life—the boundaries and the reference point of Christ’s love are to be preferred over any other alternative. The compelling character of Christ’s love changes how a person perceives the world and its people: “Thus (w[ste), for our part, from now on we know no one according to the flesh. If we used to know Christ according to the flesh, we do not know him so any longer” (v. 16). We now view every person as one for whom Christ died and was raised again. We want them to know and to believe that, and so we try to persuade them. “Thus (w[ste), if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation (or a new creature)” (v. 17). There are only two kinds of people: those who still are kata. sa,rka and those who are, through faith, kainh. kti,sij. Kata. sa,rka is not something that has to do with creation as such; it refers to what might be called the hermeneutical consequences of the Fall. It has to do with worldview. The one who is a kainh. kti,sij is one whose worldview has been changed; the creation language emphasizes that this change is received, not acquired “by [one’s] own reason or strength.” The new- creation act is God’s act in Christ to reconcile the world to Himself. Paul doesn’t actually say it in so many words, but the “ministry of reconciliation “is the new-creation version of the divine imperative to “be fruitful and multi- ply ” (Gen. 1:28). Whether one is a pastor, who is “a called and ordained servant of the Word,” or is “merely” among the baptized, it is “by virtue of,” it is in the faithful execution of, their respective offices that they “announce the grace of God,” His

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 231 forgiving and reconciling work in Christ. “We are Christ’s ambassadors” (v. 20). I think that this is another of those ambidextrous occurrences of “we” (see the preceding material forthe Fourth Sun- day after Pentecost): it refers both to ministers of the Gospel, and to Christians in general—the difference is the place where one is sent. This means, however, that Paul is not making some new or additional appeal to the Corinthians; he is not urging them to “be reconciled to God”; they already are. Notice that deo,meqa has no object; Paul is simply describing the appeal that is extended by pastors or lay people to the unconverted, the ground of which is the Great Exchange: God made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we may be the righteousness of God in Him. In the reading for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Paul argued on the basis of an assured promise (future) for lively Christians living in the present. Now, in this reading the apostle has argued that zealous witness in the present is grounded in accomplished redemption (past). As Luther said in the Large Catechism, “[C]reation is now behind us and redemption has also taken place, but the Holy Spirit continues his work without ceasing until the Last Day, and for this purpose he has appointed a community on earth, through which he speaks and does all his work” (LC II, 61 [Kolb-Wengert edition, 439]). Sermon outline:

Christ’s Love Constrains Us

I. Christ’s love has reconciled us to God and secured us. II. Christ’s love transforms our view of people: we see them as people for whom Christ died and rose, who need to hear the message of reconciliation. III. Christ’s love inspires our efforts to persuade those who are outside the church. William W. Carr, Jr.

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost 2 Corinthians 8:1-9, 13-14 July 16, 2006

Context: 1. In the epistle: In his discussion of the several problems with which the Corinthians were struggling in their attempt to live out the Christian life, Paul has reminded his readers in chapter 7 (especially v. 10) that the godly distress or pain that leads to repentance benefits all concerned. The apostle’s situation was somewhat parallel to ours as we receive those from outside the faith who need new programming to cultivate their Christian disposition and character. All believers, in fact, need to be called to repentance–to a recasting of our way of thinking, to the cultivation of the mind of Christ–each day. Paul continues the discussion of the offering for the saints discussed in our text in chapter 9. 2. In our world: Christians often are victims of the wrong thinking of the cultures in which they live. This wrong way of thinking blinds them to the expectations God has for them. For instance, many German Christians during the Third Reich were deceived into attitudes that regarded Jews, Slavs, and others as sub- human, unworthy of the kind of treatment they wanted others to demonstrate toward themselves. It may be that God’s judgment will fall upon us for our blind-

232 ness to our own sinful exploitation of distant peoples as we enjoy a standard of living incredibly far above theirs without doing anything to help them raise their own standard of living. We do that in the midst of a worldwide economic system that we as individuals are powerless to change, but we do it without any sacrifices that aid them in the limited ways we can. Textual notes: 1. The word ca,rij (v. 1) embraces every form of God’s loving disposition toward His people. This ca,rij also elicits a response of thanks (euvcaristi,a) in believers, as this text shows. For God’s nature as one who gives is reflected in the readiness to give and sacrifice of us whom He created in His image. 2. Generally, North Americans think that joy and poverty are mutually exclu- sive (v. 1). The rapid growth of the Christian faith in places of extreme hardship, such as sub-Saharan Africa in our own time, seems inexplicable to us. For those who believe that happiness consists largely in having the most toys, it is impossible to imagine how the Macedonians could have had so much joy when they were afflicted and impoverished. That reveals how limited and impoverished our view of life is in our God-forsaking society. 3. The Macedonians recognized that it is far more blessed to give than to receive, and so they begged, even pleaded!, to participate in helping their Jewish brothers and sisters, whom they had never seen. They did so because, as the Lord had claimed them as His children, they had given themselves to Him and to His apostle, Paul. They did not do so to earn joy; that, they received with the gift of becoming children of God. Joy cannot be earned; it must be delivered from the outside, as the angels did to the shepherds (Luke 2:10). They did so to enjoy the joy of being part of God’s family in His special way (v. 4). 4. Why could this be so? The Corinthians had a foundation for the joy they could have by participating like the Macedonians, in the offering. Paul presumes that their faith, their experience with God’s Word, their knowledge of God’s goodness, their serious commitment to the Gospel and their love for the apostle himself, would all play a role in motivating them to give (v. 7). So he does not believe it necessary to command them to give generously. He cannot imagine that they themselves would want to do anything else but sacrifice for fellow believers in Jerusa- lem (v. 8). 5. Such an attitude reflects God’s own way of going about His business. Christ was “rich” in ways that exceed our imagination of what that word could mean, but He exchanged His riches for our poverty, and we are to think as He does according to Philippians 2:5-11. This passage recalls Luther’s description of the joyous exchange between Christ and the sinner, who trade off righteousness for sin, condemnation and death for life and peace. 6. Verse 15, a reference to Israel’s experience in the period of total dependence on the giving hand of the Lord in the wilderness (Ex. 16:18), must be read with verses 13-14, which lays down the principle of Christian sharing with those in need, a principle which richly blessed North Americans have the privilege of putting into practice in far more extravagant ways than any of us have yet dared to imagine. Outline: (En)Joy in(g) Giving

Introduction: In our materially blessed society it is easy to become an Ebenezer Scrooge or a Silas Marner unawares. First, we do not realize how blessed we are since most of us seldom, if ever, see the searing poverty of others in our own regions,

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 233 to say nothing of that of other nations, up close. Second, our society cultivates in us the silly idea that what we store up in our own barns (Luke 12:13-21) can really secure the good life for us.

I. Our material goods hold us captive in what amounts to a cruel idolatry. II. Christ has come to exchange His riches for our poverty and liberate us from the impoverishment of a worldview that counts material blessings as sources of security. III. We must become more imaginative as individuals and as a congregation in finding ways to share our blessings, material and spiritual, creatively–and also re-creatively. This is a means by which God gives us true joy and peace. Robert Kolb

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 July 23, 2006

I don’t know. I wanted to clear that up right away. If you were hoping to finally get the answer to your question, “What exactly was the thorn in Paul’s flesh?,” then you are going to be disappointed again. The entry in BDAG for the word sko,loy, the word translated “thorn,” tells us that the word originally designated “anything pointed.”1 In classical usage, it could designate a variety of “pointed things”: the point of a fishhook, a scalpel, the stake or “pale” of a palisade, a thorn. In our text, it is used in a figurative sense of “something that causes serious annoyance.” Put the emphasis on the word serious in that definition; the gloss “thorn” should not mislead us into thinking of a tiny irritant. If the word could indicate the pale upon which one was “im-paled,” (i.e., the stake sometimes used in torture), a sko,loy was not simply a nagging pain that would go away if Paul would just focus on his work and on the grace of God. I think one of the best recent parallel metaphors is Morpheus’s reference in “The Matrix” to “a splinter in your mind,” a nagging question that won’t let you go, that drives you mad.2 BDAG notes seven different suggestions for physical maladies that might have been Paul’s “thorn,” and then references others who hold that the problem was spiritual, moral, emotional, or mental. None of these views has won for itself a majority following. Before you investigate any or all of them, note carefully Barrett’s warning that assumptions about Paul’s health and the nature of this “thorn” are both out of place here. Paul’s physical health must have been overall quite good, otherwise how could he have endured the list of hardships he chronicles in 2 Corinthians 11:23-33?3 On the other hand, given that list of hardships, the possi- bilities for resulting chronic ailments seem almost limitless.

1 Frederick William Danker, ed., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (3d ed.; Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000) s.v. sko,loy. 2 The Wachowski Brothers, “The Matrix,” (Warner Bros., 1999). 3 C. K. Barrett. A Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1973), 315.

234 Rather than the text’s greatest frustration, I suggest that the inability to identify this devilish angel is the text’s greatest gift to the preacher. Paul points us to the effects rather than the nature of his “thorn.” That enables the preacher to apply this text to all who suffer similar effects from “thorns” of body, soul, or mind, rather than limiting him to the members of his congregation who, like Paul, suffer from malaria, leprosy, or hysteria. Consider, then, a sermon that focuses on the following three questions. These could possibly serve as an outline, but they should at least get your homiletical juices flowing. 1. “Q: What was this thorn in the flesh? A: I don’t know, but you probably have a pretty good idea.” That is to say, “I, as a scholar and interpreter of the text, cannot answer this question on the basis of research, but you as one of Paul’s fellow believers and workers probably have a pretty good idea of what he’s talking about based on your own Christian experience.” Remember that this “thorn” was given to Paul—who had been granted a glimpse of paradise, of glories unutterable, of revelations of surpassing greatness—to contain his pride. Paul was a “sent one”; he could not retreat into his memories of the glories to come, hide in the splendor of these revelations, forget the world for whom his Christ had died. Was it a physical pain that reminded him of his humanness? Was it heartache at the suffering and injustice of a fallen world? Was it the torment of the knowledge of his own sinfulness that he wanted to conquer himself for the sake of his Lord? Whatever it was, it was not to be removed. 2. “Q: How did God tell Paul, ‘My grace is sufficient for you?’ A: I don’t know, but you probably have a pretty good idea.” I am surprised at how incurious readers are with this question. Perhaps God spoke in a very definite way, a dream or vision, perhaps, or some other sign. The verb “he has said” is in the perfect tense, and most suggest that means the message remained valid for the rest of Paul’s life. Perhaps it was an audible “no” from heaven, but I’m tempted to think the message came in Paul’s day-to-day experience of the grace of God in Christ Jesus—the same way God “spoke” to Paul and taught him the secret of contentment (Phil. 4:20—com- pare v. 10 or our text) and convinced him that nothing could separate us from God’s love in Christ (Rom. 8:38-39). 3. “Q: Why didn’t God relieve Paul of this affliction? A: Here the text does give us a clear answer: to keep Paul from being elated or, to borrow from 1 Corinthians 8, inflated.” Paul plays the fool but is by no means foolish. In spite of the surpassing knowledge he has been granted, God puts a pin to the balloon of self-importance and self-exaltation. Paul is brought “right back down to earth,”4 where the love of God will build up others through Paul’s service. Not only that, but when

it is evident that Paul is weak, it will be equally evident that the power and miracles and conversions could not be coming from a human source but from Christ working in and through Paul. Thus weakness makes Paul most translucent so that one can see the source of the real power and light.5

Translucent witnesses. Who among us cannot see that as justification enough for our continued weakness and suffering?

4 Ben Witherington III, Conflict & Community in Corinth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 462. 5 Ibid., 463.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 235 Still, we cannot stop here. God may refuse to take away the “thorn” so that His purposes will be accomplished, but His purposes always include our greatest good. It is also for Paul’s sake that the “thorn” remains. This is another example of the hungry being filled with good things. Who but the weak, the suffering, the powerless can experience the all-sufficiency of God’s grace, the power of Christ dwelling within them? The “thorn” is another of love’s wounds. Given in love. Gladly received. For the sake of Christ. All for the sake of Christ. Jeffrey A. Oschwald

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost Ephesians 1:3-14 July 30, 2006

Notes on the context and the pericope: Like most Epistle lessons in the Sundays after Pentecost, this pericope is part of a series of selections from a certain book of Paul (in this case, of course, the letter to the Ephesians). Its most relevant liturgical context, then, is simply the rest of the letter, and not the Gospel, Old Testament lesson, Introit, etc. Furthermore, it is not hard to find the place of this pericope in the letter to the Ephesians. It is a doxology that praises God for His whole plan and work of salvation, and it introduces a much longer account of this plan and work of salvation (chaps. 1-3). This longer account, in turn, serves as the reason for the apostle to urge the saints in Ephesus to lead lives worthy of their calling (4:1). Turning to the pericope itself, we might start by observing that Paul’s doxology is comprehensive, and comprehensive in two respects. First, it is comprehensive in the sense that Paul praises God for all His blessings (v. 3). But it is also comprehensive in that the account extends from eternity to eternity. God’s blessings proceed from His own predestination of the saints. God has chosen them from “before the foundation of the world” to “be holy and blameless in his sight” (v. 4) and to be His sons (v. 5), and it results in lives “for the praise of his glory” (v. 12) and the unity of all things in heaven and on earth (v. 10) and the saints acquiring possession of their inheritance in the eschaton (v. 14). Paul’s account of God’s plan and work of salvation is not only doxological and comprehensive but also thoroughly Christological. God’s election and all its blessings are “in [Christ]” (v. 4) and “through Jesus Christ” (v. 5). This means, first of all, that God’s love and salvation are on account of Christ because “in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (v. 7). But this also means that God’s will has been manifest through Christ because He displays or sets out “the mystery of [God’s] will” (v. 9). Moreover, to be “in Christ” is to be one in Christ. The saints are one “in Christ,” just as God has planned “to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (v.10). Finally, as the one through whom there is redemption, by whom God’s will is made known, and in whom all things are united, Christ is therefore the object of faith (v. 13) and hope (v. 12). Furthermore, Paul also speaks of God’s plan and work of salvation worked out through the Holy Spirit. In other words, just as God’s will and work are “in Christ,” so also it is “with” the Holy Spirit (although the pneumatology here is considerably less pronounced). When the Gospel was preached and Christ was believed upon, the Holy Spirit was given to mark the saints (v. 13) and to guarantee their promised inheritance (v. 14).

236 Notes for preaching: This passage, so sweeping in scope, so deep in theological topics, and so rich in God’s grace, may tempt preachers to try to do too much in a single sermon. Instead of suggesting a particular sermon, I will suggest a few different kinds of sermons, in the hope that one proves, if not helpful, at least stimulating. One option would be to do what Paul does. Here the preacher, as one who shares the office of the ministry, would join the apostle in praising God for all His blessings, especially for the saving grace shown and believed by the congregation. Paul continues to explain and extol God’s salvation in the rest of the chapter and into the second chapter, but since the next pericope starts in the middle of the second chapter, it would pose no liturgical difficulty to take these verses also into consideration. This approach, however, would require the preacher not only to continue with the rest of the epistle but also to continue to adopt the same stance. Another option would be to lead God’s people to praise their God for His plan and work of salvation, just as Paul does. Here, the preacher would seek to lead hearers to make Paul’s hymn of praise their own. In other words, he would work to have hearers to join Paul in saying, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Again, it might well be helpful to draw also from the subsequent verses of the first and second chapters. A third option would be to focus primarily on the content, which is God’s plan and work of salvation. One way to do this would be to expand on Paul’s outline of the divine plan and work of salvation, showing how God made known and worked out His salvation through the people of Israel and then in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This story is implied here, but the fact that it is indeed implied may be seen in the later chapters, where Paul highlights the grace of God by reminding the Ephesians that they were Gentiles, not Israel, and so they were “strangers to the covenants of the promise” (2:12). But in Christ they were “brought near” to God and made one with all the people of God. Such a sermon would not only be helpful in presenting once again the rich story of salvation but also serve as the appropriate prologue to dealing with the rest of the letter. Joel P. Okamoto

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 237 “On the reading of many books...”

THEOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Vol. 13. By G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz-Josef Fabry, eds. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. 653 pages. Cloth. $60.00.

THEOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Vol. 14. G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz-Josef Fabry, eds. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. 702 pages. Cloth. $60.00.

With these volumes, appearing so close together, this prestigious project stands very close to completion. Volume 13 presents eighty-seven words from #Aq to [;yqirI, I and volume 14 another seventy-seven ranging from [vr to !kv, which leaves one final volume to finish out the series. The format of these volumes is consistent with previous volumes. Some of the entries are understandably shorter, and cover only a page or two. However, entries for words that carry strong theological import can run some thirty pages (arq, har, x;Wr, yD;vyD;v;, [b;v,,) or more (sixty pages for bWv). The longer entries include discussions of cognate languages, etymology, conceptual synonyms, usage in Septuagint (and occasionally other versions), Qumran, apocryphal, and rabbinic sources. More than was the case in earlier volumes, nuances of usage are also traced through the various Scriptural traditions (e.g., narrative, wisdom, psalms, prophets, apocalyp- tic). A sampling of some of the theological blockbusters in these volumes includes, in addition to those already indicated, head (also first or beginning—varo), compas- sion (~x,r,), heal (apr), evil ([vr), remain/remnant (rav), dwell (!kv), as well as Sheol and Sabbath. As has been noted previously, some of the most rewarding and insightful entries in TDOT are the shorter ones that deal with words that occur less frequently or seem more prosaic. The entry on “lip, speech, language” (hpIfI), for instance, reflects a range of meaning from the physiological to the cultural to the ethical and spiritual—distinctions likely reflective more of an Enlightenment than an He- braic mindset. The brief discussion of “adversary” (!jIfI and its derived form ~jf) moves helpfully from the underlying verbal meanings (personal quarrels, conflicts of war, legal struggles) to a discussion of issues and options for understanding the figure of “the satan” in Job, in Chronicles, and in Zechariah. Intriguing also was the discussion of how the usage of “remnant” reflects attempts to redefine the meaning and identity of Israel. Cautions have long been noted about the methodological approach of TDOT, as about its predecessor TDNT. Overemphasis on (an often speculative) etymology or cognate analysis can be misleading because words develop in meaning. Words further take on special meaning in context. Perhaps that caution prompts the hesitation in the article on “adversary” to move beyond citing a menu of options for understanding the impact of the satanic figure in Job. In any case, TDOT is not a short-cut to either exegesis or exposition. Nor do all the authors commend themselves equally with exegetical or theological insight. TDOT is, however, an extremely rich resource for the discerning student, particularly for those who have invested deeply in learning the languages and historical/social realities of a world

238 very different from ours. Our reverence for Holy Scripture demands that we use the finest tools available, and TDOT is among them. While not cheap, it is of the quality that it will be used more often and more profitably than many other resources. Henry Rowold

JEREMIAH: SMYTH AND HELWYS BIBLE COMMENTARY 15. By Terence E. Fretheim. Macon: Smyth and Helwys, 2002. 684 pages. Cloth/CD-ROM. $65.00.

Each commentary in this new series employs a wide array of art, photographs, maps, and drawings. An accompanying CD-ROM reproduces the commentary text, the Sidebars (more involved discussions) and the visuals. Chapters explore a textual unit, and the discussion centers around two sections: Commentary and Con- nections. No translation is offered, but there are a number of Sidebars where Fretheim discusses textual difficulties and possible emendations. In terms of words and verses, the book of Jeremiah is the longest book in the Bible. It is also one of the most complex as is evident in several ways including its structure and flow of thought, the person of Jeremiah, the historical setting of individual texts, and its relationship to a much shorter Greek version. Jeremiah taxes one’s interpretive capacities at every turn, whether the issues are literary, historical, or theological. Yet for all of its difficulty, the book’s depth of reflection on divine action and human response, as well as the range and rigor of its rhetoric, keeps it very much alive for those who dare enter this massive theological master- piece. Terence Fretheim offers a clear map to travel through this difficult terrain. For example, in well over two hundred Sidebars he discusses geography, ancient Near Eastern deities, Israel’s history, word studies, and the like. Fretheim also inter- acts with scholars such as Abraham Heschel, Walter Brueggemann, William McKane, Robert Carroll, Ronald Clements, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and especially inspiring are the snippets from Daniel Berrigan’s work in Jeremiah. One of the most compelling questions of the book of Jeremiah that regularly punctuates the text either explicitly or implicitly is (e.g., 5:19; 9:12; 13:22; 14:19; 16:10; 22:8): “Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness?” Fretheim accents the prophet’s answer by means of lex taliones, or, more popularly understood as “what goes around comes around.” For example, God’s not listening to the people (11:11-17) corresponds to the people’s not listening to God; God has forsaken because the people have forsaken Him (2:13, 17, 19); God has abandoned (7:29) because the people have abandoned Him (15:6). Another theme woven throughout this commentary is Jeremiah’s fellowship with the feelings of God. The prophet lived not only his personal life but also the life of Yahweh. The text communicates not only the logos of Yahweh’s Word but also His pathos. One way to understand this dimension of the book is that Jeremiah eats Yahweh’s Word (15:17) and therefore embodies the Word in his ministry. And so sorrow, lament, weeping, wailing, grief, pain, anguish, regret, and anger are all ascribed to both Jeremiah and Yahweh. Fretheim’s focus on this aspect of the book enables readers to see that judgment and lament texts need to be related to each other, for to divorce one from the other is to miss this key component of God’s workings in Jeremiah.

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 239 This same line of thinking accents another of the commentary’s major themes— Yahweh is a relational being, living and dynamic; one whose ways of relating to the world are best captured in the language of personality and activity. Fretheim beats this drum often and several times mentions that it is ironic some Christian theologies have difficulty with this language, for in Jesus Christ God has acted anthropo- morphically in an unsurpassable way. With this emphasis on God’s personhood, Fretheim contrasts the God of Israel with classical theism where God knows everything and controls everything; in so doing Fretheim posits a kind of open theism. He supplies his own ongoing metaphor on what Jeremiah is finally saying. Israel’s trip over the waterfalls is certain—her sin has brought the nation to the point of no return. This happened a century earlier due to the sins of Manasseh. But Yahweh is the kind of God who picks the people up from the rocks below the falls and continues to be about the business of building and planting the future, even when it does not look like He’s got much to work with! Fretheim also rightly highlights another ongoing message in Jeremiah—the moral order affects the created order. That is, because of human sinfulness it does not rain. The land is made desolate and polluted, and animals and birds are swept away. Moral order adversely affects cosmic order; human sin has a deeply negative effect upon the environment. This is just the opposite of claims made for Baal worship on the land’s fertility. Yet, in failing to connect these texts to the Pentateuchal blessings and curses in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 (as Fretheim does, for example, in his discussion on cannibalism) he misses the rhetorical nature of Jeremiah’s message—namely, that these cataclysmic changes in nature indicate that the people are under God’s curse. Another weakness in the commentary is that Fretheim believes only exilic readers are in view of the author(s) of these texts. This quote is representative: “These verses have been shaped to speak to an exilic audience that has already experienced the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile” (60). In this move, the original audience and the oral qualities of Jeremiah are subsumed under a redactional prerogative. In privileging the Sitz im Literatur over the Sitz im Leben Fretheim omits the idea that versed in an oral tradition Jeremiah could have written his texts to be heard and not only to be read. If the Homeric epics in their written form still retain oral structures, it seems worthwhile to attend to this possibility in the studies of Jeremiah. The problem is that as a redaction critic Fretheim retains as a cardinal doctrine of his education that originally prophetic texts were disparate units now blended into one. With redaction criticism the reader is not confronted with the “historical” prophet, still less, the oral communication of the prophet, but rather with the “presentation” of the prophet, to use a term introduced by Peter Ackroyd. Whereas form criticism believed oral utterances lay “in, with, and under” the received text, redaction criticism has essentially abandoned the task of discovering the original prophetic words. The idea is that the oral nature of texts has been completely subsumed due to the many redactional layers placed over the original text. Unfortunately, Fretheim’s commentary is built upon these methodological presuppositions. Another flaw, though much more minor, is that it is not until the end of his commentary that Fretheim defines what he means by “exiles.” The reader is left wondering if he means exiles left in Judah, those in Babylon, those in Egypt, or a combination thereof. In chapter 40 and following the reader is offered a clear definition of who the exilic audience of the book actually is—those who are in Babylon.

240 And why Fretheim consistently translates Torah as “law” and not as “revelation,” “instruction,” “teaching,” etc. is a mystery. And yet these are only minor bumps in the road—for few interpreters of the Old Testament go so quickly and reflectively to the heart of a text as does Terence Fretheim. He is attentive to theological substance and stylistic detail. As a Lutheran interpreter of the Old Testament, he winsomely discusses incarnational and sacramental aspects of the text. His Law and Gospel discussions—especially in terms of the relationship between the Abrahamic and Sinaitic covenants—are simply outstanding. So if one wants to hear the word of Yahweh afresh in the study of this most important prophet, Fretheim’s commentary gives the reader a whole new set of ears for careful listening. Reed Lessing

GOD SAYS, “MOVE!”: GO WHERE HE LEADS. Discipling Series: Empowering and Mobilizing God’s People. By Waldo J. Werning. Lima: Fairway Press, 1997. 306 pages. Paper. $18.95.

Christianity is facing the greatest change in history in culture, church forms and methods. In many cases the doctrines and goals are the same, but the methods and means clash. “One is legalistic and moralistic, while the other centers on grace, true freedom, and trust. Both involve the name of Jesus Christ, but one depends strongly on familiar words and codes, while the other relies only upon God” (vii). The message of this book is “about spiritual maps and mobility in God’s mission—the Biblical measures and models we are to seek in our personal lives and in church work to go where God leads…. It shows the church in a worldwide battle for offering meaningful faith while often struggling to keep pace with the population explosion and avoiding compromise with culture” (viii). The first chapter provides decisive information on discovering and discerning God’s mission and spiritual maps. God’s mission means movement through the work of the Holy Spirit. This requires mapping, carefully planning our goal and activity. This involves the expression of our theology, doctrinal beliefs, and our faith. This map/plan must be based on and driven by God’s Word, and on good, God- pleasing tradition. This always involves making changes from tradition to be faithful to the Scriptures. And through the Holy Spirit’s work not to be an institutional but a true Biblical Christian. This also involves adopting a planning pyramid which begins with a clear vision and ends with a properly aggressive ministry. It is crucial to remember that God’s Word guides us to a true map about Him. Included are five maps (plans) on crucial teaching based on crucial issues. Chapter 6 carefully looks at the realistic map Scripture provides about us as Christians. Chapter 7 stresses the importance of adopting a true Christian community map as the body of Christ. Chapter 8 stresses the importance through the Spirit’s work of making and keeping a healthy church. Included is a careful study of twelve aspects on the human and subjective level versus the Biblical and objective level to maintain strong Christian relationships. This also includes the great need to follow Matthew 18 in facing conflicts and properly correcting them. Successful church leadership requires short- and long-range planning based on Biblical principles to become a life-giving church. This includes urging every

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 241 Christian to develop a vision/mission statement, also to reveal the purpose and goal of his or her life. This also involves for God’s people as the church “to be instructed by the Word of God and empowered by the Holy Spirit to obey the Great Commission of Jesus Christ” (166). Included is a short and longer version of a summary of a mission/ministry statement, a spiritual map for a functional New Testament church. The longer version includes the following: “(Name) Church is a Christian community dedicated to the fulfilling of the Great Commission of Jesus Christ by: (1) equipping/ discipling; (2) worship; (3) prayer; (4) fellowship; (5) service and giving; (6) witnessing.” Included for each is its brief Biblical meaning and key passages (166-167). Included in this chapter is “God Calls Pastors to Lead the Church.” In 2 Timo- thy 4:2 Paul briefly stresses the need for competency in the pastoral ministry. Ministers have the authority from Christ to speak and properly apply God’s Word as the loving shepherd of the flock, also to educate Christians for maturity. Very helpful is a careful description to “Be a Life-Giving Church.” Provided are the following:

Priorities of Religion/Ritual/ Priorities of a Life-Giving Program-Giving Church Church

Behavior/Action-Centered Grace (Law/Gospel) Centered Controlled by What’s Expected Controlled by Christ’s Love Satisfied with Serving Consumers Effectively Making Producers Hung-Up on Styles/Rules Hung-Up on Gospel/Substance

It is important “to work within the congregation of which one is a member, and affect change through making a positive influence by offering Biblical insights for change” (200). What basic principles need to be followed to reach our goals?

1. Basically our goals should revolve around doctrinal and relational matters. 2. Church members should expect strong Bible study involving a maxi- mum number of members of all ages. 3. Also interpersonal sharing of the Word through various ways of edifying. 4. Biblically relevant worship services for praising God should be expected. 5. A balance of substance and style, not dead orthodoxy nor shallow activism. 6. “Members have a right to expect the church to encourage them to be involved in ethical issues of the world, in which God’s commands are an issue, such as abortion” (201). 7. “The congregation should be an Ephesians 4 full-service church in which opportunities are given all members to be equipped and sent into various areas of service and ministries on the basis of the abili- ties God has given them” (201). 8. As the Scriptures show, Christian congregations should be Life-giving churches (201).

242 Poor stewardship practices which ignore basic Biblical principles often drain churches of spiritual vitality for use of the full resources God has made available for sharing the Gospel locally and worldwide. It is important always to remember that Jesus’ Great Commission says, “Go, make disciples…teaching…baptizing….” Some feel that the church’s budget is the guide for giving. But this often results in ignoring the guidelines which God has provided. “An effective approach is the use of a pre-budget every member stewardship education program, conducted before the budget is presented or even adopted. The writer points out that stress on tithing can result in causing spiritual and also moral problems. The Scriptures provide guidance on proper giving in keeping also with our deep gratitude for the tremendous grace and love of God. The writer wrote considerable pages to carefully share the proper meaning of this. Chapter 10 stresses that Biblical stewardship theology and practical help make the church functional. Appendix II provides a very helpful leader’s guide. It warns that church leaders need to be prepared for institutional barriers, “alliga- tors” during the next two months, lack of time, and parish crises. It also provides in very helpful detail how to plan to travel to four different destinations: (1) The congregation’s spiritual migration; (2) Produce a New Testa- ment Biblical model/map; (3) Encourage members to go on a personal, spiritual pilgrimage; and (4) Stewardship progress. God says, “Move” is an extremely helpful resource for every congregation to carefully use to properly evaluate itself, its proper Biblical message and activity and seek through the Holy Spirit’s work to more properly grow to be more truly effective as God’s local institution for His people and to share the Gospel with others. Erich H. Kiehl

RELIGION IN ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA. By Jean Bottéro. Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001. 246 pages. Cloth. $34.95.

As one of the world’s foremost experts on Assyriology, Jean Bottéro here presents an accessible and definitive account of one of the world’s oldest known reli- gions. Bottéro begins with brief but thorough introductions to the history of religion, Mesopotamian history, and the available source materials. He then draws on documentary and artistic evidence of hymns, prayers, magical incantations, and rituals, as well as personal letters, to show how ancient Mesopotamian religion was practiced both in the public and private spheres and how it developed over the three millennia of its active existence. Finally, he traces the many influences that Mesopotamian religion has had on Western civilization, including the Old Testa- ment. Bottéro begins with a lucid discussion on the region’s history. The Sumerians developed writing around 3200 B.C., and their cuneiform writings (cuneus means “wedge” in Latin) laid the foundation of what we know about this culture. In about 2300 B.C., Sargon the Great, through a series of wars, annexations, and conquests, put an end to the ancient regime of city-states and ushered in the golden age of Sumer with its capital in Akkad. Another benchmark in Mesopotamian history arrived in 1800 B.C. when Hammurabi reorganized the land around his capital of Babylon. This kingdom, lasting only one hundred years, was overrun and the resulting political landscape for the next millennium witnessed a constant battle

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 243 between the Assyrians in the north and the Babylonians (later called the Chaldeans) in the south. The Persian Achaemenid dynasty—inaugurated by Cyrus the Great in 550—held sway until the emergence of Alexander and his program of pan-Helle- nism that extinguished what was left of the ancient empire of Mesopotamia. Hav- ing been replaced by Akkadian, and later by Aramaic, the last cuneiform document known dates from the year 74 A.D. At the end of the second millennium, the god Marduk—named Bél in subsequent Akkadian and Aramaic texts and a “third generation” of the gods—took the place of Enlil in the Mesopotamian pantheon as head of the universe, just as Enlil had earlier replaced Anu. Hoping to impose and justify this elevation of Marduk, the Babylonian clergy wrote Enuma elis, “When on high”—a magisterial apology for the supremacy of Marduk who defeated Tiamat by slaying her in two and building the framework of the universe out of her remains. To quote a section from the Enuma elis: “He [Marduk] split her [Tiamat] in two, like a fish for drying, half of her he set up and made as a cover, heaven. Spreading half of her as a cover, he established the earth” (79). But Marduk never completely replaced Anu, Enlil, and Ea as Mesopotamian religion preferred accumulation (even if it was illogical) to substitution. The Mesopotamians did not demand clarity in their religion. I gleaned the following from the book and present it as a general potpourri of Mesopotamian religion. There is no cosmogonic myth that deals with the origin of the whole cosmos, and when Marduk slew Tiamat, it was not an ex nihilo act of creation. Mesopotamians did not have any eschatology, but magic, exorcism, and divination played important roles. Sin (however it was defined) was punished by the gods. Women freely served in all clerical functions, yet it was the king who remained at the center of every liturgical rite. Prostitution (via the qadistu—“the consecrated one”) and homosexuality were a regular part of the cult. This last component means, of course, that ancient Mesopotamians did not overtly concern themselves with morality. Bottéro writes: “This must have been one of Moses’ great revolutions in Israel: to replace the purely material maintenance of the gods with the single and sole ‘liturgical’ obligation in life to obey a moral law” (169). In terms of the religion’s understanding of the deity, the divine, in its multiple, personalized presentations, was above all considered to be something grandiose, inaccessible, dominating, and fearful. The gods and goddesses did not attract people in the manner of being desirable in terms that enchanted the heart as in a true form of love. Rather, the deities were very high authorities whom people were obligated to serve. They were distant and haughty bosses, masters, and rulers and, above all, not friends. The verb “to like/to love” appears only sporadically with the name of a deity as its object. These deities (some have counted over 2,500 of them) often are portrayed in the texts as having the attribute of “supernatural brilliance” or “divine splendor.” The world was entirely in the hands of these gods who could be as capricious as people so much so that in Akkadian the phrase “to have luck” is equivalent to the phrase “to have a god.” True monotheism was completely un- known in Mesopotamia; there are, however, traces of henotheism which admits a plurality of gods but is interested in and attached to only one of them. This system of relationships between the deities reflects Mesopotamian social and political roles. That is, the people mythologically transposed their society upon their pantheon. And so without ever having seen them, people were convinced that the gods, like themselves, had real bodies based on an improved model of their own. The cult was therefore based upon the god’s needs—which were similar to that of the Mesopotamian people. So the gods needed to eat and drink, be

244 clothed and cared for, and they had an unquenchable desire for an opulent and carefree life in big houses with luxurious celebrations. Hence, the worship life involved providing the gods—just like subjects provided their king—with “room and board.” The benefit of this book is that the reader is presented with a religion geographically close to Israel. This then invites a comparison between Mesopotamian and Israelite theology. Such an exercise reaffirms the uniqueness of Israel’s religion and brings to mind the words of Moses and Miriam at Yam Suph: “Who among the gods is like you, Yahweh?” (Ex. 15:11). Answer—no one, not even one! Missing from Mesopotamian religion are Yahweh’s characteristics of imminence, compas- sion, historical deeds, eschatology, morality, etc. This is a must read for those who seek to be drawn into the larger world of the Old Testament. Reed Lessing

ROMAN WIVES, ROMAN WIDOWS: The Appearance of New Women and the Pauline Communities. By Bruce W. Winter. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. 253 pages. Paper. $26.00.

Professor Winter’s monograph aims to show that “the behavior of a certain type of woman” lies exposed by the laws of Augustus, the philosophical writings of some Stoics and Neo-Pythagoreans, as well as the literature of the poets, play- wrights, satirists, and historians of the late Roman Republic and early Empire. Contrasting their behavior to that of the traditionally modest Roman wife and widow, Winter joins other ancient historians in identifying such as the “new woman.” The “new woman” is “a woman in high position, who nevertheless claims for herself the indulgence in sexuality of a woman of pleasure” (21). For Biblical scholars, Winter’s monograph is important because he argues that the rights, privileges, responsibilities, opportunities, and [often immoral] behavior of the “new woman” provide the sitz im leben for pastoral care concerning women in the letters to the Pauline communities (xi). For readers interested in substantive sitz im leben study relating classical secular literature to the Bible, this book is a treasure house of information and a joy to study. Winter divides his monograph into three major parts. Sections I and III present evidence from Greek and Latin classical secular writings with regard to the personal and civic behavior of women, respectively. Part II examines 1 Corinthians 11:2-16; 1 Timothy 2:9-15; 5:11-15, and Titus 2:3-5. The book has an Appendix, “Women in Civic Affairs,” with Greek citations concerning Iunia Theodora and Claudia Metrodora together with the English translation by R. Kearsley. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography and indicies of subjects, modern authors, Scripture, and other ancient [literary and epigraphic] sources. In part I, Winter presents evidence of the attitude and conduct of the “‘new’ Roman woman,” drawing on sources as diverse as Sallust, Cicero, Catullus, Propertius, Ovid, Plautus, Suetonius, Horace, Tacitus, and especially the 17 B.C. marriage legislation of Caesar Augustus. The laws of Augustus made promiscuity a public crime, gave incentives for having large families and penalties for not getting married or having children, and even limited the class within which one could marry. Building on the Roman concept that “You are what you wear,” the laws also set standards for the dress of women which were so strict that Valerius Maxi- mus, writing during the rule of Tiberius, cited an example of a man divorcing his

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 245 wife because she did not wear a veil in public. Winter’s presentation establishes a context for the writings on women to the Pauline communities and demonstrates that “the Christian movement was not the only one that argued for a view of marriage and sexual morality where men and women operated with faithfulness and integrity against what had become a significant, alternative lifestyle for wives” (74). Winter begins his Biblical study (part II) by examining 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 in the light of a rich array of classical references. Winter presents evidence that modesty was a prized feminine virtue in Roman Corinth and by removing the veil “the Christian wife was knowingly flouting the Roman legal convention that epito- mized marriage” (96). He thinks that the aim of 1 Timothy 2:9ff. was preventive rather than remedial. Of special interest among the many citations was the letter of Seneca commending his mother for modest decorum and disregard of jewelry, pearls, paints, and cosmetics. In addition, she showed no shame of the number of children she bore, never concealed a pregnancy, crushed no fetus by an abortion, and never wore “see-through” clothing (98). With regard to the young widows addressed in 1 Timothy 5:11-15, Winter cites a variety of ancient writers, most effectively Petronius’ story of Eumolpus, describing the promiscuous behavior of young widows. Unlike his interpretation of the danger noted in the 1 Timothy 2:9ff., Winter thinks that the guidelines in 1 Timothy 5:11-15 are “descriptive, evaluative and prescriptive” (140). The influence of the “new” woman in the Christian movement has given opponents “opportunity to discredit it” (140). Winter examines Titus 2:3-5 and, by showing how Cretan culture and the role of women differed from other parts of the Roman world, demonstrates the unique challenges facing Titus and the church he served. The Cretan culture, on the one hand, enjoyed more freedom and, on the other hand, “to play the Cretan” was a Greek expression meaning “to lie.” Winter suggests that the Christian instructors did not understand or teach the unique, transforming purpose and power of Christianity. By conforming more to the Cretan culture of the past and the influence of the “new Roman woman,” the Cretan Christian women’s neglect of personal morality and household manage- ment responsibilities “contradicted their confession of the grace of God that was bringing salvation to all” (169). With regard to activities in the public arena (part III), Winter presents classical Greek and Latin evidence demonstrating that certain women did have significant roles in government, education, and philanthropy. Of special interest for this reviewer was Winter’s exploration of the possibility that Junia (Rom. 16:7) and Iunia Theodora, a “high-class woman” who was a federal patron in Corinth circa A.D. 43 or 57, was one and the same person. In the end, he rightly recognizes that there is not enough evidence to confirm the equation. After reviewing the role of women in commerce, law, and politics, Winter concludes that “the new roles for women enabled Christian women to contribute to a wider sphere of service” (204). One obvious strength of Winter’s work lies in collecting significant and abun- dant relevant classical Greek and Latin writings to elucidate the context of Chris- tian witness in certain New Testament passages. Readers interested or skilled in sitz im leben methodology will love this book. However, as the sharp focus of Winter’s study is its great strength it could also pose a danger for some readers. The plethora of Greek and Latin information should be balanced with awareness of the influence of the LXX and intertestamental Jewish writings in the Pauline writings and churches. For this reviewer, the book serves as a thought-provoking reminder that Chris-

246 tian morality is part of the Biblical message and important for Christian witness in our own decadent culture. I think that this book will encourage mission-minded Christians to seek moral links in non-Christian cultures that are parallel to Chris- tian morality. Recognizing the influence of both good and bad people of the Graeco- Roman culture in which the Christian church was planted and grew will encourage contemporary Christians to be both faithful and hopeful in our proclamation as well as the importance of the public morality supportive of “Christian lifestyle evangelism.” As a student told me not long ago, “I am thinking of becoming a Christian. I’m watching to see if it is real.” Winter reminded me that early Chris- tians knew they were being watched and that we can learn from them for both theological and evangelistic reasons. Robert Holst St. Paul, MN

CHRISTIANITY IN THE MAKING: Vol. 1, Jesus Remembered. By James D. G. Dunn. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 2003. xvi + 1019 pages. Cloth. $55.00.

This volume is both exhilarating and frustrating: exhilarating, because it opens up new vistas of understanding for the life of Christ Jesus; frustrating, because it defers again and again to the tradition-historical approach. In the preface to his Jesus Remembered (3), Dunn raises three questions: (1) “What was it about Jesus which explains both the impact He made on His disciples and why He was crucified?” (2) “How and why did it come about that the movement which took off from Jesus did not after His death remain within first- century Judaism and became unacceptable to emerging rabbinic Judaism?” (3) “Was the Christianity which emerged in the second century as a predominantly Gentile religion essentially the same as its first-century version or significantly different in character and kind?” Jesus Remembered is a detailed response to the first question. The remaining questions Dunn plans to answer in two more volumes. In part one, the author recounts the history of the conflict between faith and the historical Jesus. He concludes this section with a challenge: “…whether a Jesus presented by faith and through faith can still be heard outside the churches, in the forums of the world’s discourse” (136). In part two, he focuses on sources, both written and oral, as well as the historical context. His conclusion is that “the shape and verbal variations of most of the Synoptic tradition are better explained by such an oral hypothesis than exclusively in terms of literary dependence” (336). Part three deals with the mission of Jesus, beginning with John the Baptizer as His forerunner and mentor, Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom, and the gathering of disciples. Dunn states, “…we could sum up Jesus’ vision for the present as ‘living in the light of the coming kingdom’” (610). In part four, he moves from Jesus’ activity to His self-understanding. On the basis of the Synoptic tradition, he attempts to discover who Jesus thought He was and how He saw His role. He comes to the conclusion that “it was his proclamation of the kingdom which was important; the identity of the proclaimer was a secondary matter” (762). The last section of the volume has as its subject the climax of Jesus’ mission. Here he discusses Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. At the conclusion, he expresses his own conviction in these words “ ‘the resurrection of Jesus’ is not so much a criterion of faith as a paradigm for hope” (879).

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 247 What impressed me about the book was the author’s challenge to the hitherto basic assumption that “the shape and verbal variations of the Synoptic tradition” are best explained on the basis of literary dependence. He used Kenneth Bailey’s insight into oral tradition as the basis for his approach to understanding and evaluating the Synoptic tradition. Bailey, through his experience in Middle East village life, came up with the idea of an “informal controlled tradition.” Dunn defines informal controlled tradition as follows: “In informal controlled tradition the story can be retold in the setting of a gathering of the village by any member of the village present, but usually the elders, and the community itself exercises the ‘control’” (206). Such informal control has three corollaries: (1) the community exercises some control over its tradition, (2) the control varies depending on the importance of the tradition, and (3) the core of the tradition is the most firmly fixed element. Armed with this understanding of oral transmission Dunn then sets out to test the Synoptic tradition. First he looks at the narratives, such as the centurion’s servant (Matt. 5; Luke 7), the stilling of the storm (Matt. 8; Mark 4; Luke 8), the Syrophoenician woman (Matt. 15; Mark 7), and others. He concludes, “In almost every case examined or cited above it is clearly the same story which is being retold. Rather the variations exemplify the character of oral retelling” (223). Next he turns to teachings of Jesus, such as the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6; Luke 11), the Lord’s Supper (Matt. 26; Mark 14; Luke 22; 1 Cor. 11), sermon on the mount/plain (Matt. 5; 6; 7; Luke 6; 12; 13; 14), and others. His conclusion is that “These were remembered as teaching given by Jesus while he was still with his disciples, and treasured both as such and because of its continuing importance for their own community life and witness” (238). The examination of the Synoptic tradition confirms for Dunn “the relevance of the oral paradigm” in which the core is fixed and the elaborations vary. After testing out the oral paradigm, Dunn proceeds to apply it to the mission and person of Jesus and concludes with His death and resurrection. He holds that the resurrection of Jesus likely did take place because of the empty tomb tradition and the report of the women’s being the first ones to see the risen Lord. He even states that he personally affirms the resurrection (879). He considers it a metaphor, however, because “the resurrection of Jesus…did not permit itself to be explained in terms of current or previous analogies” (877). His general conclusion is: “Through that tradition of Jesus it is still possible for anyone to encounter the Jesus from whom Christianity stems, the remembered Jesus” (893). The results of the oral paradigm which Dunn champions mark a tremendous advance over the generally negative estimate that most of the Synop- tic tradition goes back to the disciples and their followers rather than to Jesus. The frustrating matter in the volume is the constant limitations to which the implications of the oral paradigm are subjected to by the tradition—historical approach. Dunn has to work with the scholarly consensus of the Markan priority (146). The Greek source Q, while not as compelling as the Markan priority, “remains a persuasive working hypothesis for the substantial majority” (147). Dunn uses the Q material and the Gospel of Thomas in his investigation of the Synoptic tradition (586, 588, 592, 597, 712, 718, 720, 742). We further find frequent statements in this volume to the effect that a certain point of information in one or more of the Gospels is “developed tradition,” even though the account may recount words of Jesus (341, 558, 561, 590, 567, 662, 663, 664, 714, 848). Another matter of concern is the claim that the Synoptic Evangelists try to cover up matters of embarrassment (351). The reason for all this is that Dunn undertakes to commend

248 Jesus as seen by faith and through faith to the discourse of the world’s forum. Because of this he cannot go much beyond challenging the basic claim that the Synoptic data do not take us beyond the Easter experience of the disciples. He concludes that the Synoptic tradition gets its characteristic shape from the “remembered Jesus.” All in all this is an excellent volume. We can learn much from Dunn on how to approach the Synoptic Gospels constructively via the oral paradigm and maybe even go further by reclaiming the elaborations as well for historical considerations. Such an accomplishment would be a historical boon for confessional Lutheranism. It is not that we can prove faith, but we can show that faith is founded on solid historical information coming from our Lord Himself. Jakob Heckert Ann Arbor, MI

MARTIN LUTHER. By Michael A. Mullett. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. xv + 284 pages. Cloth. $95.94. Paper. $19.95.

LUTHER AND HIS WORLD. By Graham Tomlin. Oxford: Lion Publishing, 2002. 190 pages. Paper. $14.00.

Anyone being informed of the publication of yet another Luther biography might reasonably ask: Why? Do we really need another? Scholars will continue to read Brecht’s definitive three-volume work. It is unlikely that professors (for good or ill) will soon cease introducing their students to Luther as interpreted by established names such as Oberman and Marius. And the number of “popular” Luther biographies is virtually uncountable. So it is somewhat surprising that yet two more have recently come off the press. Even more surprising is that both have been penned by British authors. Despite a few prominent names from an earlier generation, the British, as a general rule, “don’t do Luther.” Despite the questionable necessity of new biographies, then, it is both refreshing and encouraging to see British authors attempting to introduce Luther to a British audience. But the question, of course, is: Which Luther is being introduced? Though Michael Mullett is clear that “Luther has to be understood in religious terms” (262), he immediately advertises that his will be a “liberal interpretation” of both Luther and his reformation as milestones in “the history of human freedom” (1). That is, Luther “forefathered our modern age with its realisation of, or aspiration towards, freedom of thought and expression, respect for rights, the up- holding of plurality and variety, the freedom of the media, and the whole progressive democratic programme inherited from the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions” (263). In spite of such a conclusion (or is it a presupposition?), however, Mullett does an admirable job of portraying Luther the theologian. And he does so while avoiding many of the pitfalls associated with Luther interpretation, especially as evidenced in previous British scholarship. So, for example, while noting that Luther’s first Psalms lectures “do indeed represent major ingredients of the initium theologiae Lutheri” (57), he also realizes that, when posting the ninety-five theses, “Luther was not yet the fully-fledged reformer of later years” (76). In fact, Mullett will go so far as to say that even Luther’s 1520 Address to the Christian Nobility “belongs to a period before Luther had fully become a Lutheran” (109). Analyzing Luther’s eucharistic theology, Mullett

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 249 allows himself the convenience of speaking of “consubstantiation,” but wisely in- forms his readers that Luther himself “totally rejected” the term (112). When he comes to the often contentious matter of Luther’s place in the events of the Peas- ants’ Revolt, Mullett argues convincingly that the reformer’s position on social justice and social order before, during, and after the event was “underlyingly consistent in content” (166). Also refreshing is his treatment of Luther’s pastoral endeavors, especially his contributions to hymnody. While explaining Luther’s ad- aptation of earlier hymns and adoption of popular contemporary tunes, Mullett refuses to perpetuate the myth of Luther’s use of “bar tunes.” Nor does he—in contrast to many British Luther scholars—insist that Luther was a convinced proponent of double predestination. Despite the close attention to primary sources evident in the above, however, Mullett does manage to reach some more perplexing conclusions. One clunker that should have been excised early on is his description of Luther as a spokesman for “a puritanical regime of sobriety and restraint of pleasure” (101). More serious, however, is the analysis of Luther’s relationship with his co-reformer Philipp Melanchthon. For instance, he too readily accepts that, by the 1540s, Melanchthon had abandoned Luther’s doctrine of the Sacrament and “taken up the eucharistic theology of the Reformed Churches of Switzerland and Strassburg” (229). Though often suggested, this remains a questionable conclusion; not least because on this point Luther himself would insist as late as 1545 that “I have absolutely no suspi- cion in regard to Philipp.” But more attention is given to Melanchthon’s role in drafting the Augsburg Confession, which, according to Mullett, is where the real differences between Luther and his colleague begin. The Augsburg Confession, he argues, opened “a clear rift within Lutheranism,” which, “pitched the intractable Luther against the conciliatory Melanchthon” (205). What is more, he asserts that Melanchthon’s 1530 Confession was “disowned by fundamentalists on his own side” (207). But Luther’s alleged rejection of the document is difficult to square with his immediate announcement that he was “tremendously pleased with it.” Perhaps most disingenuous in this regard, however, is Mullett’s attempt to establish Melanchthon’s ecumenical credentials by claiming that the Augsburg Confes- sion “offered a formula on justification that was in some ways close to the one eventually adopted by the Catholic Church’s Council of Trent” (223). One final—and admittedly petty—criticism of Mullett’s work has to do with the illustrations. The few black and white prints tucked into the middle seem to have been included as an afterthought; and even then the accountants, rather than the author or the art department, appear to have had the final word. This is something which certainly cannot be said of Graham Tomlin’s short biography. Early on Tomlin notes that his illustrations serve, in part, as proof that the Reformation was not universally suspicious of the visual. The point may seem trivial, but it is nothing of the sort for a national audience whose early reformers revelled in the wholesale destruction of ecclesiastical art and architecture. Luther, on the other hand, took every opportunity to press the visual arts into the service of educating the laity. This is something Tomlin not only highlights, but also continues in his own work with a vast number of paintings, woodcuts, engravings, and photographs illustrating his narrative. As an introduction to Luther’s thought, Tomlin’s work also succeeds by including dozens of well-chosen quotations in the margins of the text. Also much appreciated are the many sidebars introducing and explaining contemporary movements, people, and ideas. The narrative, too, offers a fine survey of Luther’s life and thought. Despite,

250 like Mullett, appearing to endorse the “liberal interpretation” of Luther (via a back cover blurb which credits the reformers with bequeathing to the world “a heritage of spiritual freedom and equality”), Tomlin also notes that recent sociological and economic interpretations of the Reformation cannot do full justice to the movement or Luther’s part in it. Supporting this point in his discussion of Luther’s famous stand at Worms, for instance, he notes that the “ultimate standpoint to which he appealed was not reason or conscience, but to the manifest teaching of the Bible” (112). Since Tomlin recognizes this, it is a slight disappointment that he can at times be vague about what Luther actually believed to be Scripture’s manifest teaching. For example, his sacramental theology receives little explication. De- scribing the Sacrament of the Altar, Tomlin will refer to it as “a simple sign of God’s word of forgiveness” (95) and “primarily a representation of the promise of God” (96), in such cases minimizing what he admits is a “strong sacramentalism” in Luther’s theology (97). Many will also be troubled by the vocabulary with which Tomlin describes justification. Siding with those who favor an early date for Luther’s “theological breakthrough,” he explains that “when Luther writes of how ‘the merciful God justifies us by faith,’ he means that God makes us righteous” (57, emphasis mine). As does Mullett, Tomlin laments that Luther was not more irenic in his approach to reform. And for this reason, he argues, “Luther’s influence on the later Reformation was less than it might have been. The mantle passed to Calvin in Geneva, and to Zwingli and then Bullinger in Zurich” (176). Such a view accounts for the strange fact that, in his final chapter on Luther’s legacy, Tomlin nowhere mentions the continuing existence of a Lutheran church, the largest body of Protes- tant Christians in the world. In the final analysis, this lacuna is representative of a weakness shared by Tomlin, Mullett, and the majority of those who favor the “liberal interpretation” of Luther. He is portrayed primarily as a critic of the old faith. As a result, his serious (and often more damning) criticisms of alternative reform movements are given far less attention, and then largely treated as regret- table episodes in Luther’s career. Despite offering a number of welcome correctives to earlier British scholarship, then, both works suffer from the common presupposition that Luther only initiated a Reformation that had to be “completed” by others. In this, though, it must be said that both authors simply follow many earlier scholars. It is where they depart from their predecessors that they are most to be commended. And both authors do deserve commendation. Despite the criticisms offered above, Mullett’s biography is unquestionably a worthy successor to Bainton’s aging classic. And Tomlin’s short work, for its content as well as its style, deserves wide acceptance as an easily accessible introduction to Luther and his world. Korey D. Maas Oxford, England

CONCORDIA JOURNAL/APRIL 2006 251 Books Received

Dever, Mark. THE MESSAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT: Promises Kept. Wheaton: Crossway, 2005. 544 pages. Cloth. $29.99. Duncan, J. Ligon and Susan Hunt. WOMEN’S MINISTRY IN THE LOCAL CHURCH. Wheaton: Crossway, 2006. 192 pages. Paper. $14.99. Fahlbusch, Erwin, Jan Milic Lochman, John Mbiti, Jaroslav Pelikan, and Lukas Vischer, eds. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CHRISTIANITY. Vol. 4 (P-Sh). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. 984 pages. Cloth. $100.00. Grudem, Wayne. EVANGELICAL FEMINISM & BIBLICAL TRUTH. Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2004. 864 pages. Paper. $29.99. Grudem, Wayne, Leland Ryken, C. John Collins, Vern S. Poythress, and Bruce Winter. TRANSLATING TRUTH: The Case for Essentially Literal Bible Trans- lation. Wheaton: Crossway, 2005. 157 pages. Paper. $14.99. Hummel, Horace D. CONCORDIA COMMENTARY: EZEKIEL 1-20. St. Louis: Concordia, 2005. 615 pages. Cloth. $42.99. Köstenberger, Andreas, gen. ed. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO TRUTH. Wheaton: Crossway, 2005. 173 pages. Paper. No price given. Lange, Lyle W. GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD: A Study of Christian Doctrine. Milwaukee: Northwestern, 2006. 793 pages. Cloth. $45.50. Lincoln, Andrew T. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT JOHN. BLACK’S NEW TESTAMENT COMMENTARIES. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2005. 585 pages. Cloth. $29.95. Lutze, Karl E. …A LOT ON MY MIND, LORD. Valparaiso: Orchard House, 2005. 113 pages. Paper. $18.00 ($5.00 shipping). Malek, Roman, ed. THE CHINESE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST. Vol. L/2. Institute Monumenta Serica and China-Zentrum, Sankt Augustin, 2003. xvi+ 452 pages. Cloth. EUR 60.00. McWilliams, Warren. WHERE IS THE GOD OF JUSTICE? Peabody: Hendrickson, 2005. ix-xxvii + 259 pages. Paper. $16.95. Nolland, John. THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. 1579 pages. Cloth. $80.00. Schwarz, Hans. THEOLOGY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT: The Last Two Hundred Years. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. 610 pages. Paper. $45.00. Smith, R. Scott. TRUTH AND THE NEW KIND OF CHRISTIAN: Effects of Postmodernism in the Church. Wheaton: Crossway, 2005. 206 pages. Paper. $14.99.

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