Carl Truman on Martin Luther’s forgotten insight:
At the heart of this new theology was the notion that God reveals himself under his opposite; or, to express this another way, God achieves his intended purposes by doing the exact opposite of that which humans might expect. The supreme example of this is the cross itself: God triumphs over sin and evil by allowing sin and evil to triumph (apparently) over him. His real strength is demonstrated through apparent weakness. This was the way a theologian of the cross thought about God.
The opposite to this was the theologian of glory. In simple terms, the theologian of glory assumed that there was basic continuity between the way the world is and the way God is: if strength is demonstrated through raw power on earth, then God’s strength must be the same, only extended to infinity. To such a theologian, the cross is simply foolishness, a piece of nonsense.
Now, some will respond: But the theology of the cross has not been forgotten; it is often talked about and discussed and even preached. But here’s the rub: in the Heidelberg Disputation Luther actually refers not to a theology of the cross but to theologians of the cross, underscoring the idea that he is not talking about some abstract theological technique or process but rather a personal, existential, real way that real flesh-and-blood theologians thought about, and related to, God. A person’s theology, whether true or false, good or bad, is inseparable from the individual’s personal faith.
November 7th, 2011 | 1:12 pm
From the linked-to article, “Sad to say, it is often hard to discern where these theologians of the cross are to be found.”
Scratch any small Lutheran church in the Midwest. You’ll find it.
November 7th, 2011 | 2:16 pm
What is more important for the church to remember than this early monastic influenced theology of suffering (an inherited concern over pure love of God, that is, love of God that does not use God as a means to any other good) is the later Luther’s theology of the external Word. Crucifying contrariety cannot provide much in the way of assurance, and does not directly rely on the Sacraments. Ultimately, the assurance and power of the Gospel that propelled and sustained Luther was to be found in holding to the promise of the Gospel and the faith which held it. In this faith Christ Himself was present. This is a more fruitful theological insight than the spiritual dialectic of contrariety.
November 8th, 2011 | 1:50 am
Vivendo, immo moriendo et damnando fit theologus, non intelligendo, legendo aut speculando. (Living, nay dying and being damned, make a theologian, rather than comprehending, reading, or speculating.) Luther, 1520, on Ps 5:11.
November 8th, 2011 | 8:22 am
Your article points out yet another way that dear brother Martin was a God-send to the medieval church. But the church was too full of its own power to listen.
Maybe we need some “apologists of the cross” in the Roman Catholic Church.
If God reveals Himself by doing the exact opposite of what we would expect, maybe that’s exactly what the church does. As the “principle of unity” we expect Rome to foster unity among Christians. Instead, papal arrogance has caused all the major splits in the church.
November 8th, 2011 | 10:09 am
Run, don’t walk, to the works of Paul Zahl, Gerhard Forde, Mark Mattes, Steven Paulson, Rod Rosenbladt
Mockingbird Ministries hammers this point regularly and with great vigor: mbird.com
November 8th, 2011 | 2:55 pm
I revisited this excerpt and found the first line rather objectionable. This spirituality of the cross/contrariety is not “new”. It is an intensification of a received tradition. If it is in fact “new”, then we of the Augsburg Confession are liars, and we have in fact invented novel doctrines. The rhetoric of “newness” in Luther interpretation often serves a revisionist agenda, which perfectly contradicts the dominant note of the Lutheran reform – that it is in continuity with the ancient Catholic faith. As for the authors highlighted by MRS, I have additional concerns for their particular theological projects within Lutheranism, or at least in regard to Gerhard Forde and his “radical Lutheranism”. At the very surface of some of his works are claims that there is an absolute disruption (annihilation even) of the old fallen creation in favor of the new eshatological reality after justification that leads to problems in regard to the first and second articles or the Creed, and perhaps the third as well – as they are all organically related.
November 8th, 2011 | 3:07 pm
But, perhaps most important for ecumenical concerns, the rhetoric of “newness” is often deployed in Luther research of both protestant and Catholic varieties in order cement a supposedly ultimate disjunction between the Reformation (with it’s romantically styled “breakthrough”) and all previous theological tradition of the church. This objectified interpretation then becomes a boundary marker for instantiating and prolonging confessional schism on inappropriate grounds. Is Luther and the tradition that looks to him ultimately a deeply catholic movement in the church, or is it the beginning of a faith of a different genus entirely. I think our Confessions commit us to the former and explicitly deny the latter.
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