The Subject of Theology According to Luther
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[edit] Introduction
What is the proper outline of a Dogmatics? It should somehow reflect the true subject matter of theology. Luther, in 1532, once defined the subject matter of theology as "knowledge of God and man" (cognitio dei et hominis, WA 40.2:327, cf. AE 12:311).[1]
[edit] The definition in its context
What did he mean by that exactly? The quote is taken from his lecture on Ps. 51, one of the traditional "penitential psalms." Since Ps. 51:5 is one the classic proof texts for the doctrine of original sin, Luther starts out his lecture by pointing to this more profound definition of sin (profundius definitionem peccati: esse radicem et morbum ipsum, 316) by David in his psalm who, on occasion of the Bathsheba episode, doesn't get stuck on the surface-level of sin (although he broke all 10 Commandments, 320), but goes to the bottom of it.
This is different, according to Luther, from Scholastic theology where he saw an undue emphasis on actual sins while at the same time the integrity of man's nature was upheld. Says Luther (ibid., 316f.):
since they [the Scholastics] did not understand [David's] definition of sin, they also didn't understand grace; and when it is not understood, then it is impossible to comfort and lift up consciences; for those who do not unterstand sin, grace and mercy, righteousness, cannot comfort anyone.
Instead of directing afflicted sinners to the grace offered in the gospel, they pointed them to works of satisfaction such as fasting and going on pilgrimages. This misdirection Luther describes as signs of a "worldly, civil theology" (theologia ... mere mundana, Civilis, 317) leading straight into despair.
Luther presents David as an example of true self-knowledge: he was a great leader of God's people -- but his downfall was greater yet. Out of his downfall, says Luther, David "begins to understand this whole sin." If such a man can fall so low, "then there is nothing good in man" (322), not because he does this or that actual sin, but because he is born of sinners.
This leads Luther, against the Scholastics again, to state: The things of nature are corrupt (323). These naturalia include: man's right judgment and good will toward God. Due to this corruption, "man ... does not think rightly about God" (324), e.g., "when we are in afflictions, our heart imagines God to be angry, thinks him to be a Judge, tyrant, persecutor; when it is joyful and in sins, it persecutes the word" -- experiences in the world become stumbling blocks. Man, instead of knowing himself to be a lost sinner, in his blindness approaches God by means of works which he considers pleasing to God in and by themselves. This is what it means to sin "naturally" which is followed by many a carnal sin.
The true reason for sin is this that we simply are turned away from God; reason is blinded; whatever it thinks concerning God is an idol. The will is not properly affected toward God and man. ... There is no good will toward wisdom, righteousness; everything is bent (omnia incurvata), I seek from God, from all creatures what pleases me. ... Our sin is called: "In sins I have been conceived," sin is the turning away of the will, the corruption of all the powers of man within and without so that no part of man does its duty; this is what it means not to know God: not to judge rightly about him and to be full of concupiscence, anger, and, later, of restlessness of heart, disease, death, and countless illnesses of the body. That is: "On the day you sin, you will surely die." By this we know ourselves; reason and the Gentiles do not. It is blindness; it cannot think of anything of God, word, life, death, what is an eye, hand, etc., since it does not know that it is a creature of God and that it is corrupted by sin and punishment (325f.).David thus not only speaks of his own example;
he teaches the doctrine of the spiritual religion (doctrinam religionis spiritualis, 326) so that we arrive at the true knowledge of God, sin, ourselves, grace, repentance, justification ... the Holy Spirit speaks in David, instructing us in the knowledge of ourselves and of God ... If the knowledge of God is not there, despair follows. The point is not disputing. 'I acknowedge' (agnosco) properly means 'to feel.' Not that you examine the sin you've done, but that it presses hard on you and you cannot get it out of your sight; but 'to recognize' (cognoscere) means to recognize oneself as a sinner. The lawyer does not dispute concerning man, theology does not dispute concerning man, whether he has a tall or small body, but it instructs him so that he would know who he is, to recognize himself as a sinner and to recognize sin, that he cannot escape it. This makes for despair, when I perceive that reason, will, words, deeds are worth nothing before God, and I am reduced to nothing (redigor in nihilum, 327) ... There, beyond that recognition of sin, God opposes the recognition of grace and righteousness. There the heart is lifted up again and even begins to perceive: even if I am a sinner, I trust in God who does not lie. 'He is just,' Rom. 3. God wants mere sinners. If he is justifying, there must be righteousness with him so that he justifies the godless. The argument can be put this way also: theological recognition of sin, sinner; theological recognition of the just, justice. We do not dispute concerning God, but concerning man the sinner or defendant, subject to death and sin -- not concerning [God] seated in majesty, but concerning the righteouensess of God or the justifying God (Non disputamus de deo, sed de homine peccatore vel reo, morti et peccato subiecto, -- non sedente in maiestate, sed iusticia dei vel iustificante deo, 327).Then Luther comes to the definition alluded to above:
Recognizing God and man is divine and properly theological wisdom. And it is such recognizing God and man that one is finally redirected to the justifying God and sinful man, so that the proper subject matter of theology is the guilty and lost man and the justifying and saving God (ut proprie sit subiectum Theologiae homo reus et perditus et deus iustificans and salvator). Whatever is sought beyond this argument and subject is plain error and vanity in theology, since in the sacred letters we do not hope for possessions, health for the body or political matters which are all deliverd into our hands and are created (327f.).Theology, properly understood, first begins with man's fall into sin and death, "there theology starts and calls man back from the fall and the power of the devil etc." (328).
Theology deals with the saving God and man thus fallen etc. It is therefore necessary that man recognize himself and to feel by experience that he is such a one, that is, simply lost, guilty, in sins. And he not only ought to [know] that he is under the power of the devil and guilty of eternal death, but also that God is is Redeemer (328f.).
[edit] Summary and further thoughts
To summarize and add some futher thoughts:
1. Proper (theological) knowledge of man is to know man as a sinner under the devil. Proper (theological) knowledge of God is to know God as man's justifying Savior. One could say: the law (and gospel) provides us with the knowledge of man and sin (cf. WA 40.2:369, 373; see Ebeling, I:257 n. 153); the gospel with the knowledge of God and grace (deus vestitus suis promissionibus, 330). Counter to any reason, knowledge of man precedes knowledge of God as sin precedes grace, law precedes gospel, death precedes life. It does not originate in man's reason but is given from God (divinitus datur, 316).
The true "spiritual wisdom" (318, 332) consists in precisely this: that here the God who hates sin and man who hates God are brought together in God's merciful promises that bring about the sinners cry for mercy (332, 337f.), not man's endless preparations suggested by nature (332f., 339).
It is necessary, and possible, to distinguish between the peccator non sentiens and the peccator sentiens. The former does not feel his sin, does not care about / know God and himself -- the sayings concerning God's wrath are applied to him (333f.). In the sensible sinner, on the other hand, who knows his sin (and himself) from the law, the law already has done its work (334): "God does not hate the sensible sinners (peccatores sentientes), but very much loves them as the most acceptable sacrifice" (335, cf. Ps. 51:17). To distinguish law and gospel existentially is the "golden art" (334):It is not [due to] the theology of reason but supernatural theology that the sinner sees nothing but mercy and nonetheless feels God's wrath since he, if he didn't feel it, would not say: 'Have mercy;' he thus indicates that he is under wrath and worthy of wrath, and nonetheless he fights thus that he drives away the spectacle of wrath and apprehends that of mercy. This is theology. It is not taught except in the holy letters and is doctrine of the holy Spirit; the words are put purely and chastely and are stated in the simplest way, but they are the real deal etc. Learn from this verse to distinguish between sin and sin, sinner and sinner and God and God. The angry God we direct at the insensate sinner (342).
The last sentence of the entire lecture on Ps. 51 reads: "The sentence stands firm that the Lord wants the afflicted to be consoled and the secure to be humbled" (470).
2. If this is (the) true (content of) theology, then theology is an eminently practical matter. Also Luther's three steps of oratio, meditatio and tentatio come to mind as the proper "method" for studying theology. For a theologian is, in the most basic and truest sense of the word, the believer[2] who rightly distinguishes law and gospel for himself -- and that means most of the time: who by faith dares to lay hold of the gospel despite an acute sense of his unworthiness under the law.
Since faith in the gracious God in Christ (gospel), while experiencing the angry God (law), is a gift of the Holy Spirit by the gospel, far beyond natural man's powers, one can also say that theology at heart is a matter of man's passivity -- as opposed to moral and intellectual activity.[3]
3. Man and God, as they are in themselves (nudus homo, nudus deus, deus in sua maiestate, 330), are no subject matter of theology properly speaking. Theology is not philosophy (psychology) or metaphysics (religious science). Both are not part of the "doctrine of spiritual religion;" they are part of "civil theology," of what we would call civil or world religion.
4. Civil religion directs man to save himself by his works; it makes God and fellow creatures man's servants on fallen man's terms and thereby shows that it knows neither man nor God. Spiritual religion points to God to save man who knows himself to be fallen and thereby shows that it knows both God and man.
[edit] Zwingli, Calvin, and Luther
Zwingli's book, De vera et falsa religione (On true and false religion), according to Ebeling (230f.), is different from this approach in that it deals with God from a "supralapsarian" (philosophical) perspective, while man is viewed in an "infralapsarian" mode. Calvin, in the various editions of the Institutions, taught a double knowledge of God and man: God as Creator (general) and God as Redeemer (Christian); man as reasonable creature (misfortune) and as believer (sin). Attempted is thus, again, the integration of philosophy (what man knows about himself and God on his own) and theology proper (what man knows about himself and God based on God's word).
Ebeling states (265f.): Luther, by focusing narrowly on "the doctrine of justification" (or the proper distinction between law and gospel) as the subject matter for theology, offers a meta-criterion for all of theology that does justice to man's current fallen situation. As seen, it permits a distincition between sin and sin, sinner and sinner, and God and God.
[edit] Conclusions
What does this all now mean for the outline of a dogmatical endeavor? Are not Zwingli and Calvin, granting all necessary criticism that is in place, the way to go? That is, we speak about man as he understands himself, even as a religious being (implying a discussion of god in himself? because that's the god man in himself sets up for himself); then we speak about man how he understands himself in light of God's law and gospel (implying a discussion of God's mercy in Christ). Doesn't Luther speak about more than the sensitive sinner and the merciful God, namely, also about the insensitive sinner and the angry God? In fact, he also speaks about the insensitive sinner's god, that is, his reasonable idol around which he fashions reasonable, works-centered religions.
Luther's definition of the subject matter of theology thus does not seem to be a attempt to eliminate everything except for the article on justification. It perhaps doesn't even offer any necessary natural outline (see the problematic attempts by Zwingli and Calvin), so long as everything in the theological endeavor is meaningfully connected to this central hub.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Cf. G. Ebeling, "Cognitio Dei et hominis" in G. E., Lutherstudien (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1971), I:220ff., where he compares Zwingli, Calvin, and Luther, all of whom use the formula somewhat differently. A detailed study of Luther's exegesis of the psalm in view of the preceding interpretations thereof offers Jack Brush (in the tradition of Ebeling's existential-hermeneutical approach), Gotteserkenntnis und Selbsterkenntnis: Luthers Verständnis des 51. Psalms (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), esp. 126ff. More recently and from a different vantage point: O. Bayer, Martin Luthers Theologie: Eine Vergegenwärtigung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 34-38, embedded in a sapiential understanding of Luther's theology. -- The 1538 print of Luther's 1532 lecture is translated in AE 12:303ff. The WA-references are to the original transcript of the lecture.
- ↑ Cf. G. Ebeling, "Lehre und Leben in Luthers Theologie," Lutherstudien (Tübingen: Mohr, 1985), III:42.
- ↑ Cf. esp. Bayer, Martin Luthers Theologie, 38-40.
