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What have great interpreters of Luther’s theology of the cross understood by his project? What themes unite them? What divides them? In what way do they take into account the complex power dynamics of the sixteenth century? I have divided the six theologians to be examined into three models: crisis or conflictive interpretations, proclamation interpretations, and mystical or sacramental interpretations. I recognize that distinctions are never as clear cut as models seem to imply; yet models do alert us to broad, important options in interpretation and are useful in this sense.

Crisis or Conflictive Theology of the Cross

Loewenich

In the height of the Luther Renaissance that began the last century, Walther von Loewenich offered a fresh and appreciative study called Luther’s Theology of the Cross. While others had preceded him in examining this concern, he offered the first sustained and appreciative attempt at understanding Luther’s theology of the cross within the whole corpus of the reformer’s theological writings.1 Loewenich breaks with prior interpreters in two ways. First, he sees the theology of the cross as the decisive element in all of Luther’s theology. Thus he attempts to formulate the positive relationship between, for example, the use of the “Hidden God” in the relatively early Heidelberg Disputation, Luther’s mid-career Bondage of the Will, and the later Lectures on Genesis. He argues that what on the surface appear to be contradictions can in fact be harmonized. Yet by the fourth edition of this book, he expresses reservations about the harmoniousness he had seen.2

Secondly, Loewenich appreciates the theology of the cross and is unwilling to view it as an unfortunate, medieval, monkish remnant as prior interpreters had. He understands the theology of the cross as more than a point of historical debate; it becomes a contributing resource in contemporary theological construction. This new appreciation occurs within the crisis of Post-World War I Germany. Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Eduard Thurneysen, and other crisis theologians felt disillusionment at the support that their liberal teachers gave to the German government’s war policies. In light of this crisis, they pursued a new direction for theological activity. God is the great negation of all human assertions. Humanity stands in a perpetual state of crisis before God. Yet, these theologians’ generic critique of humanity also represented a conflict between alternative human communities of discourse. The concept of God’s universal negation pitted the theologians of crisis against their liberal teachers. The conflict that they identified was not only between God and humanity, but also between certain humans who glimpsed God faithfully and others who had betrayed the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Their critique profoundly shifted power relationships in twentieth-century theology. Older great lights grew dim as a space opened for others to shine.

Loewenich’s interpretation of Luther chants along with the protest of the crisis theologians at several points. He rejects Schleiermacher’s liberal program for theological discourse. He turns from all that smacks of mysticism with its turn inward. He offers a virulent criticism of ecclesial infatuations with “theologies of glory.”3 He renders a universal judgment on humanity and its religious pretensions. Loewenich clearly marks the limits of human reason. Over and against all such arrogance, he declares with the crisis theologians the power of the word and the freedom of God.

Loewenich’s own involvement in this conflict with the liberal theologians and their ecclesial pretensions opened him to see parallel elements in Luther’s theological context. The starting point of this interpretation is the recognition that Luther’s theology of the cross was forged in the midst of a public struggle with the church of his day. Having experienced the betrayal of God’s mission within his own church, Loewenich will not miss the decisive role that Luther’s ecclesiastical struggle played in shaping his theology. Luther’s theology was forged in its combat “against a church that has become secure and smug.”4 That church had lost its divine direction. Loewenich recalls Luther’s accusation:

Truly, this wisdom of the cross and this new meaning of things is not merely unheard of, but is by far the most fearful thing even for the rulers of the church. Yet it is no wonder, since they have abandoned the Holy Scriptures and have begun to read unholy writings of men and the dissertations on finances instead.5

Both in the introduction to the book, and in the last pages of the second part, this theme frames Loewenich’s interpretation. The theology of the cross functions “in a critical way against the papacy.”6 Loewenich writes:

We dare never forget that Luther’s theology of the cross cannot be dismissed as the brooding product of a lonely monk, but it proved its worth for him when he stepped forth into an unprecedented battle. Luther practiced this theology in the face of death. Here every sentence is soaked with his heart’s blood. If anywhere, then in Luther’s theology of the cross “doctrine and life” are in agreement.7

The “we” that begins this quotation is not incidental, and certainly does not refer solely to Luther interpreters. The warning is to the church of Loewenich’s day. “Are we not today experiencing a return from a theology of glory to a theology of the cross similar to the one we observe in Luther? Hence our work is motivated by a living concern.”8 Even more specifically, the “we” is directed to Lutherans who have formally affirmed the theology of the cross, but denied it in their living.

While the Lutheran church has clung faithfully to the “for the sake of Christ” (propter Christum) it surrendered Luther’s theology of the cross all too quickly. The theology of glory that Luther opposed has made a triumphal entry also into his church. One occasionally wonders whether the doctrine concerning the cross has not even been forced to pay tribute to this theology of glory.9

This focus on the theology of the cross as forged in public combat has particular implications for the way that Loewenich chooses documents for study. The texts he sees as most important were written at the time when the Reformation became a public event. Thus the Heidelberg Disputation, written in 1518, is the necessary starting point for understanding the theology of the cross.10 This “basic document of the theology of the cross,”11 along with others of that period such as operationes in psalmos of 1519 to 1521,

is the work of a man who suddenly finds himself removed from the quiet monastery and placed into battle with the world and must daily be prepared for martyrdom. He is doing theology in the face of death. All props that do not stand firm in the presence of the ultimate have been dropped.12

Because of this commitment to the public battle, Loewenich is uninterested in tracing the theology of the cross back to Luther’s experience as a monk; while he does incorporate later writings, he always understands them as further developments of the central insights of the earlier, conflictive period.

Loewenich proclaims with utmost clarity that the theology of the cross is first and foremost an epistemological claim. Over and over again he states this; “. . . in Luther’s theology of the cross we are not dealing with paraphrases of the monkish ideal of humility, but with a distinctive principle of theological knowledge. . . .”13 The theology of the cross “has its place not only in the doctrine of the vicarious atonement, but it constitutes an integrating element for all Christian knowledge.”14 “What is involved here is the question about knowledge of God.”15 “The theology of the cross rejects speculation as a way to knowledge. . . . If the cross becomes the foundation of Christian thought, a theology of the cross results. For the cross cannot be disposed of in an upper story of the structure of thought.”16 The theology of the cross “involved the question of theological method, not just a practical-ethical question.”17 He chastises one interpreter because he “does not speak of the significance of the cross for knowledge, criticism and theology.”18 And finally, when Loewenich had reached the end of his work, he summarized his project in this way: “The goal of my investigation was to show that the theology of the cross was a theological principle of knowledge for Luther.”19

What then was the shape of this knowledge? Loewenich builds upon theses nineteen and twenty of the Heidelberg Disputation, which are decisive for Luther’s understanding. They read:

That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.20

Loewenich summarizes the aspects of Luther’s theology of the cross in five points. He states:

1. The theology of the cross as a theology of revelation stands in sharp antithesis to speculation.

2. God’s revelation is an indirect, concealed revelation.

3. Hence God’s revelation is recognized not in works but in suffering, and the double meaning of these terms is to be noted.

4. This knowledge of God who is hidden in his revelation is a matter of faith.

5. The manner in which God is known is reflected in the practical thought of suffering.21

Questions of epistemology run through all of these aspects. The last four aspects clarify the first claim about knowing through revelation rather than speculation. What does Loewenich mean by each of these points?

First of all, the theology of the cross is a theology of revelation. As such, it stands against every human attempt to speculate about the nature of God on the basis of creation or reason. Over and against the scholastic theologians of his day, Luther asserts that metaphysical speculation does not lead to knowledge of God, but rather blinds us to God’s presence as it was radically revealed in the cross of Christ. God is most clearly known in the cross of Christ, that event where all “Christian thinking must come to a halt.”22 This knowledge of God flies in the face of all human attempts to understand God; “The cross makes demands on Christian thought—demands which must either be acted on or ignored.”23 While the scholastic theologians try to define God in terms of their own church’s quest for satisfaction, that is, in terms of power and might, God chooses to be revealed in the cross of Christ in terms of lowliness and weakness.

Thus, this revelation is hidden or concealed. God reveals Godself by hiding in what appears to speculation to be the very opposite of God. This brings Loewenich to Luther’s understanding of the hidden God. Loewenich recognizes that this doctrine undergoes evolution throughout Luther’s career, but he sees the decisive key to understanding its central insights in the Heidelberg Disputation. Knowledge of God should be available in the created order, but due to human sin, we cannot see it, but rather abuse the knowledge. God is hidden by our blindness. This, however, is not the final word, for “God wants to be known, his being seeks revelation.”24 This is the key to Luther’s doctrine of God including the notion of hiddenness. Because of the abuse of creational knowledge of God, God must be revealed in a concealed manner. But this concealment is for the sake of revelation. This concealed revelation takes place in that one place where human beings would not think to look for the reality of God: in the cross. How odd! For the Disputation makes clear what is visible in the cross where there is “nothing else to be seen than disgrace, poverty, death and everything that is shown us in the suffering Christ.”25 Who would look for God in this wasteland of poverty? Yet, precisely under the form of suffering God wills to reveal Godself. Loewenich follows Luther in calling attention to this revelation on Golgotha, but also in contemporary “sufferings” and “crosses.” Thus Luther attacks the philosophically sophisticated epistemology employed by his rivals. The scholastic theologians confidently support the tyranny of the church with their abusive knowledge of God. Loewenich summarizes Luther’s criticism of them in another document of this period:

Just as the theology of glory prefers works to sufferings, glory to the cross, power to weakness, wisdom to foolishness, so philosophy would rather investigate the essences and actions of the creatures than listen to their groanings and expectations.26

Crucial to Luther’s understanding in this period is that:

The hidden God is none other than the revealed God. God is hidden for the sake of revelation. . . . The hidden God is none other than the crucified God. Who is a theologian of the cross? A theologian of the cross is one who speaks of the crucified and hidden God.27

This equation of hiddenness and revelation is an explicit rejection of interpretations of Luther that see hiddenness as the antithesis of revelation in his thought. Within this schema, hiddenness had been equated with the terrifying powerfulness of God in and of Godself. There God is an all-consuming, threatening reality. Loewenich argues that Luther is explicitly rejecting this concept in favor of God made known in suffering and crosses.

Having laid out this understanding of hiddenness, Loewenich moves toward that text that he believes might jeopardize his claim that the theology of the cross is present in all of Luther’s work: The Bondage of the Will. This text has been appealed to by those interpreters of hiddenness whom Loewenich reproaches. Loewenich notes that Luther emphasizes the need for God to be revealed. God hidden from all sight offers no hope, but only condemnation. This God has chosen to become the preached, revealed, worshipped, clothed God for our sake. Note that the God who reveals Godself is none other than the same God who is normally hidden from us. The theme again is that “God must conceal himself in the word in order to be able to reveal himself. The revealed God is the clothed God.”28 A shift in terminology has taken place in relation to the meaning of hiddenness, but the dynamic that Luther indicated in the Heidelberg Disputation continues to dominate his discourse. What is more, the clothed God comes out on our behalf. “The revealed God is unconditional salvific will.”29 Yet Luther has more to say about God.

While we are dealing with the revealed God we dare not forget about the hidden God. God has indeed revealed himself in his word, but God is greater than his word. God has not confined himself within the limits of the word. God’s supreme attribute is his freedom.30

Here enters the problem. The hidden God might just override the “unconditional salvific will” of the revealed God. Hiddenness and revelation are no longer equated but may be diametrically opposed. “But can the unity of the godhead still be maintained under such conditions? . . . Has this not made revelation illusory?”31 What happens to the certainty of salvation that the Christian had received?

Loewenich says that the key through this conceptual bog is in the role of faith. Faith knows that God exists beyond the revealed word, but does not seek God in that beyond. In fact, the experience of God’s hiddenness from all sight is precisely the thing that calls for faith to cling to the God clothed in the word. Faith, by its very nature, is for Luther trust in what one cannot see. If we are to believe in God’s goodness, then we must not be able to see it clearly or no faith would be required, but only sight. The same is true when the faithful confess their belief in the church. The church is not equated with that which holds itself before our eyes as church, but is a concealed and hidden reality inviting faith in the unseen. Also the righteousness of God must be incomprehensible so as to require faith. Thus, argues Loewenich “we can conclude that if the revealed God is really to be present for faith, he must also be the hidden God. Consequently the revealed God would be none other than the hidden God.”32 A shift has taken place in the meaning of the hidden God. “In the former the idea of the hidden God means that revelation in principle is possible only in concealment; in the latter it means that also in the revealed God secrets remain. Both lines intersect in the concept of faith.”33

We shall return to the importance of faith shortly. First we need to note the function of the hiddenness of God in The Bondage of the Will. The hidden God is a “warning against all too confident arguing with God’s thoughts. . . .”34 It checks human assertions about their knowledge of God as well as their assertions about the faithfulness of the visible church. The hidden God introduces the element of tentativeness and risk into all human claims about God.

Loewenich finishes his survey of this concept with Luther’s lectures on Isaiah (1527–1530). Many of the themes already discussed endure in these lectures: God is incomprehensible until “covered”; faith sees God where God is so deeply hidden as to appear nothing; the papacy trusts in its own great visible power. Yet the simultaneity of hidden and revealed give way to a dynamic of succession. The God who first seems hidden becomes visible for us through our perseverance in prayer and faith. Once again, Loewenich insists that the heart of Luther’s theology of the cross is revelation. The question remained for Luther: how will we properly know God? The error of many interpreters is to lose this epistemological thrust and to drag Luther’s understanding into the realm of metaphysics. In that case the continual tension and movement required by the faith that knows of God’s broken presence is supplanted by “a rigid side-by-side relationship of two hypostases.”35 This error only occurs when the later emphasis on hiddenness as absence is not understood in relation to the more fundamental understanding of hiddenness in suffering as seen by the eyes of faith.

Faith is related to hiddenness, yet Luther has an even broader understanding of it. The eyes of faith look upon the cross and “a radical reversal of all existing orders of precedence and relationships take place.”36 The “crucified God . . . signifies the great No to reality.”37 As such, the crucifixion stands over and against human reason, understanding, and experience. Yet when faith clings to the cross, a whole new reason, understanding, and experience are the result for the believer. Faith equals understanding in the life of the Christian. Thus “[faith] is not only the negation of human possibility, but its realization as well.”38 We recall Luther’s earlier contextual observation that philosophically driven scholastic theology was the epitome of human reason in his day. Yet it avoided human groanings and the cross in favor of glorious speculation. “One who has caught something of the wisdom of the cross knows that reason is a ‘dangerous thing’ (WA IX, 187, 5ff).”39 But when faith clings to the cross it receives a whole new, wholly reversed reality.

Thus we come to Loewenich’s final point. Knowledge of God hidden in suffering corresponds to the new life that is given for the faithful to live. The epistemology is to be embodied in “practical suffering.” This suffering is summarized in four points:

1. Our life will be one of lowliness and disgrace.

2. Christ calls the Christian to a discipleship of suffering, trusting that it is in suffering that God meets us.

3. The “true meaning of Christ’s suffering can be discovered only in the act of experiencing, acting, and suffering.”

4. We are conformed to Christ as we experience the fact of the cross in our own lives.40

This brings Loewenich back full circle to Luther’s critique of the church of his day and its way of knowing. The suffering of the Christian life exposes the falsity of the church of his day41 that rejected the “treasure” of suffering that God offered to it. The church ignored the suffering of the neighbor, suffering that, more often than not, the church itself had inflicted upon him or her.

Loewenich has understood the theology of the cross in terms of its relationship to the conflict Luther had with the institutional church. Though Loewenich is helpful in this sense, does he goes far enough in mapping out the total conflictive context in which this thought takes place? Furthermore, is Loewenich right in his claim that Luther continues throughout his career to ask the same question in relation to the hidden God? Do not his shifts in the concept of the hidden God indicate shifts in broader commitments within Luther and his movement? Is it not the case that similar concepts came to function in very different ways as both the context and Luther’s own commitments within it underwent a change?

Althaus

In 1926, three years before Loewenich’s book was first published, Paul Althaus wrote an article titled “Die Bedeutung des Kreuzes im Denken Luthers.”42 The themes expressed in that paper have continued to be present in Althaus’ whole lifetime of work. Resonances with Loewenich and his interpretation are quite clear in Althaus’ career and at times Althaus’ own relationship to Loewenich is explicitly mentioned. His best work on the theology of the cross that has been translated into English translation is found in The Theology of Martin Luther.43

Resonating with Loewenich’s epistemological concern, Althaus locates the theology of the cross under the rubric of “The Knowledge of God: the Word of God and Faith.” Althaus begins the section with a footnote marking his conversation with Loewenich for his particular understanding of the Luther’s theology of the cross; this is rare in a book whose footnotes almost exclusively reference the reformer’s own writing. Althaus also follows Loewenich in holding up theses 19 and 20 as the heart of the Heidelberg Disputation. These, again, define the theologian of the cross and the theologian of glory in contradistinction. The two kinds of theologians are marked by different epistemological priorities. The first is attentive to God’s always paradoxical revelation in sufferings; the second is fixed on the “invisible things of God” or on “works”. Althaus echoes what Loewenich made clear in his third aspect of the theology of the cross when he asserts:

Luther uses “works” not only in the sense of God’s works but also in the sense of man’s works; and “sufferings” refers not only to Christ’s suffering but also to man’s suffering. Luther makes the transition from the one to the other as though it were self-evident.44

This self-evident transition brings Althaus to a recognition of the link between epistemology and ethics. “For Luther, concern for the true knowledge of God and concern for the right ethical attitude are not separate and distinct but ultimately one and the same. The theology of glory and the theology of the cross each have implications for both [epistemology and ethics].”45 Thus, Althaus introduces the effects of Luther’s critique on the combined forces of the scholastic theologians’ metaphysical speculation and the system of work righteousness orchestrated by their church:

Natural theology and speculative metaphysics which seek to learn to know God from the works of creation are in the same category of the work righteousness of the moralist. Both are ways in which man exalts himself to the level of God. Thus both either lead men to pride or are already expressions of such pride. Both serve to “inflate” man’s ego. Both use the same standard for God and for man’s relationship to God: glory and power.46

Althaus sees this important link that Luther makes as central to his thought. “Luther recognizes the inner relationship and even the identity of religious intellectualism and moralism. He shows that both are in opposition to the cross. These are two of the deepest insights of his theology.”47 Over and against the scholastic or churchly quest for glory and power stand the hard cross of Christ and our crosses. Captive to this reality, we know:

God meets us in death, in the death of Christ, but only when we experience Christ’s death as our own death. The death of Christ leads us to an encounter with God only when it becomes our death. Contemplating the death of Christ necessarily becomes a dying together with him.48

In this understanding, revelation is always hidden or concealed. The confidence with which church officials point to a historical institution and claim it as the empirical church only exposes their theology of glory. The theology of the cross stands against all such claims to glory and power achieved in God’s name. Faith knows another way. “To believe means to live in constant contradiction of empirical reality and to trust one’s self to that which is hidden.”49 No single breakthrough to reality occurs, but rather a constant process of struggle between human criteria and God’s hidden revelation occurs again and again. “Faith thus stands in constant conflict; and it comes to life only when it breaks through the reality accessible to reason.”50 Then it knows what is really real.

How does Althaus look at The Bondage of the Will in terms of the theology of the cross? The relationship that an interpreter assumes toward this document often indicates structural keys to the larger picture that he or she presents of Luther. Althaus sees Luther’s concept of the hidden God as taking a decisive turn by the time of The Bondage of the Will. From the early days of the Heidelberg Disputation, “the concept has a completely different meaning.”51 Luther moves beyond the appropriate concern of the Apostle Paul that God’s freedom be respected. Althaus claims that the concern for God’s hidden will in the later Luther threatens the graciousness of the promise known in Christ:

this knowledge of the hidden God lies like a wide shadow across the picture of God’s revealed will. In comparison to the Bible, a shift in emphasis has taken place. It is one thing not to hide the sobering fact that God also hardens men’s hearts and in the fear of God, to take it seriously as the Bible does; it is, however, quite another thing to take—as Luther does—the mystery that confronts us in the history of God’s dealing with men and with peoples, a mystery which certainly conflicts with God’s will to save as we know it, and develop it into a full-blown doctrine of God’s double will, of the duality and extensive opposition between the hidden and the revealed God. . . . We must ask whether Luther’s doctrine of the hidden God as it is presented in The Bondage of the Will does not abrogate the rest of his theology as we have come to know it. . . . Is it not immeasurably dangerous, even deadly, to man’s trust in the word of promise? It actually asserts that God, according to his secret will, to a great extent disagrees with his word offering grace to all men. 52

Yet Althaus, though concerned about the systematic implications of this doctrine, does see its usefulness as a necessary part of proclamation. The concept of the bondage of the will safeguards the sovereignty of God against all human attempts at control. The divine assurance offered is always in danger of being converted into human boasting.

Finally, we remind ourselves again that Luther declares that the hidden God and his secret activity must be discussed for the sake of the elect! In the final analysis, Luther does not establish a theoretical doctrine of double predestination as Calvin does. In spite of all appearances to the contrary, his theology is at this point completely untheoretical and pastoral. His idea of the hidden God, finally intends only to purify Christians’ faith from all secret claims and all self-security by proclaiming the freedom of God’s grace.53

While this warning against self-security is valid, in the end one wonders if Althaus has taken the importance of history seriously enough in his proposal. The attraction of Luther’s theology of the cross to the people of his day was not merely its resourcefulness as a generic critique of human pretension. Rather, they were drawn to Luther’s particular usage of this critique against the concrete pretensions of the church of his day. Moreover, the attraction to this critical function of the theology of the cross over and against the institutional church had to do with the complicity of the church in power dynamics that transcended strictly theological and ecclesial systems. The critique aimed at the church attacked not only its religious transgressions, but also the way its pretensions were concretely embodied in political, economic and social systems that robbed the people of life.

Proclamation Theology of the Cross

Ebeling

Gerhard Ebeling has not only written pervasively on the theology of the cross, but has also dominated current Luther scholarship in general to such an extent that he has set its paradigm. Within the area of Luther interpretation, Ebeling’s ruts run deep, and many interpretative vehicles have traveled in the direction that he has established.

In his important book Luther: An Introduction to his Thought54 Ebeling identifies the dynamics fundamental to Luther’s thought. Ebeling argues that Luther is a university professor responsible for an impressive linguistic innovation. He was a teacher and preacher profoundly centered on a commitment to the word of God alone. Beginning with the struggles of his own conscience, not with ecclesial abuses, Luther developed a complex theology fraught with pairs of contradictory claims that are never synthesized, but always held in tension. Tensions between law and gospel, freedom and bondage, God hidden and God revealed pervade his reflections.

In each of these pairs, the two contradictory poles depend on and feed off of each other. Each is necessary for the other. Take law and gospel. Luther’s concern is not that one swallow up the other, but that they be allowed to maintain their relationship of mutual tension and even hostility. The role of the theologian is to make proper distinctions between them so that we can understand the proper functioning of law and gospel in theology and the world. Making this proper distinction “is the touchstone of theology, the point which decides whether one has really grasped its true substance. . . .”55 Ebeling states that the law always makes demands upon us, while the gospel always is promise or gift. In the tension between the human experience of having demands made upon one’s conscience and the total graciousness of God’s gift in Christ, the Christian is justified by God. Justification is the centerpiece of Luther’s theology. It not only is the prince among other doctrines; it gives “a true significance to all other doctrines.”56 Justification occurs, when theology is properly understood, in a word-event.

Christian preaching is the process in which the distinction between the law and the gospel takes place. . . . the concern of Christian preaching is to put into practice the distinction between the law and the gospel, that is, to carry on the progress of a battle, in which time and again the distinction between the law and the gospel is newly at issue and is made in practice. . . . But if the process of preaching is what it claims to be, that is, the process of salvation, then as the distinction is made between the law and the gospel, so the event of salvation takes place. And the confusion of the two is not a misfortune of little significance, a regrettable weakness, but is evil in the strict sense, the total opposite of salvation.”57

Notice that making this distinction brings salvation while failure to do so flirts with damnation. The proclaimed word is existentially vital. It is neither abstract nor disinterested reflection.

The word is only apprehended as such in concrete terms when the relationship is understood between what it says and what it effects, that is, when it is understood as an active and effective word and so is not separated from the situation in which it is uttered and which is changed by the word, but is regarded as one with it.58

This effective word

possesses the character of an event with the power to bring about an ultimate decision. It has the power in so far as it touches and strikes man at his most sensitive point, the very heart of his being, where the decision is made as to what his position should be ultimately, that is, in the sight of God. Luther calls this point the “conscience” . . . What he means [by conscience] is that man is ultimately a hearer, someone who is seized, claimed, and subject to judgment, and that for this reason his existential being depends upon which word reaches and touches his inmost being.59

Those who have not been freed by the gospel are in bondage as they listen to the demands of the law made upon their inmost being. But the gospel comes through the word of grace, causing one to trust solely in a righteousness that is given from above and is not one’s own. This righteousness is

not the righteousness of works, but the righteousness of faith; not active righteousness, but passive righteousness, given as a gift; not our own righteousness, but a righteousness from outside ourselves, imputed to us and because of this never becoming our own possession, even when it is given to us. It is in the strictest sense righteousness accepted by faith. Thus the Christian is in himself and on the basis of his own powers a sinner; but at the same time, outside himself, on the basis of what God does, and in the sight of God in Christ, he is one who is righteous.60

The gospel trilogy is this for Ebeling. First, we have God hidden in Christ salvifically. Second, the word alone declares and effects our wholly external righteousness. And, finally, faith clings to the promise alone, renouncing all claims to intrinsic righteousness.

Ebeling has a different appraisal of the chief concept described in The Bondage of the Will than that of our two earlier theologians. If Loewenich and Althaus approached The Bondage of the Will from the perspective of Luther’s earlier writing, Ebeling moves in the reverse order. For Ebeling The Bondage of the Will interprets and correctly unfolds the underdeveloped structure suggested or hidden in the earlier writings. Thus, in The Bondage of the Will the hiddenness of God as omnipotence is not vanquished by the hiddenness of God as concealment in suffering, but rather the two definitions are maintained in mutual tension and even hostility. The latter depends for its vitality and effectiveness upon the reality of the other.

The question remains if one can actually live within this tension without resolving it in one direction or the other. Especially dangerous to our purposes is the possibility of being left with the omnipotent God whose presence casts a long shadow over the comfort available in the God who is present, though hidden, in suffering and shame. With the loss of focus on God’s hidden presence in suffering, the poor are also lost from sight or relegated once again to the margins of the conversation. It is amazing that one so concerned about the cutting nature of the word event is so inattentive to the particular way in which that word does cut. Ebeling writes passionately about a word event that is neither abstract nor disinterested, but he does so in a historically abstract and disinterested way. His concern with judgment is merely that it happens. He is attentive only to the abstract phenomenon of judgment; he shows no attentiveness to the content of the law. Human assertion and abusive quests for power are not understood in their historical embeddedness. What Vítor Westhelle expresses in relation to Lutherans is particularly appropriate as a critique of Ebeling. Westhelle correctly observes “that Lutherans are often too quick to talk formally about simul iustus et peccator and too slow to recognize the particular content of sin itself.”61

This lack of attention to the particularity of the law’s attack is not a fair reading of Luther. He is intensely specific about the way that abusive power, especially though not exclusively that of the church, has destroyed the life and well being of the people. For Luther, God’s judgment is concrete; it challenges the way that the neighbor is abused or neglected. Yet in Ebeling, the neighbor does not appear until the end of the whole project of theology. Only in the final pages of Ebeling’s book does he raise “the last question, that of the place of our fellow-man in what is said of God.”62 Yet Luther clearly does not leave the neighbor until his final chapter. Luther is grossly misread when the neighbor is bracketed out of the process until theology, for all intents and purposes, is over. For Luther, the neighbor whose suffering we create or ignore cannot be divorced from the working of law. God’s judgment is never abstract, but confronts a person in particular ways. Moreover, when the law is stripped of content and context, so is the gospel that follows it.63

Forde

Gerhard Forde, even more than any of our other writers, has employed the nomenclature of the theology of the cross with brutal persistence throughout his writing. In both his historical and his constructive work, Forde dips into the well of Luther’s theology of the cross. The focus here will be on what would become his final book, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518.64

In the introduction to this book, Forde expresses three reasons for this book that meditates on the key document of Luther’s theologia crucis. First of all, when it comes to Luther’s theology of the cross, “there isn’t much of anything in English one can recommend enthusiastically to the ordinary reader.”65 He acknowledges the indispensable contribution of Loewenich’s work, but believes “it is heavy going” for the beginner. Secondly, Forde writes this book because much of what passes for theology of the cross is only about sentimentalized victimization. Forde states:

Jesus is spoken of as the one who “identifies with us in our suffering,” or the one who “enters into solidarity with us” in our misery. “The suffering of God,” or the “vulnerability of God,” and such platitudes become the stock-in-trade of preachers and theologians who want to stroke the psyche of today’s religionists. But this results in rather blatant and suffocating sentimentality. God is supposed to be more attractive to us because he identifies with us in our pain and suffering. “Misery loves company” becomes the unspoken motif of such theology.66

This is not what Forde has in mind. This brings him to his third point. The theology of the cross can easily slip into a theology of glory with minimal, though immensely significant, shifts in the language employed. Forde wishes to learn Luther’s language precisely so as to “hold the language in place.”67 Forde will stick close to the Heidelberg Disputation, which he carefully notes not only describes the practice of being a theologian of the cross, but “itself is the doing of a theologian of the cross.”68 This means:

The Disputation itself, one might say, illustrates the manner in which theologians of the cross operate. Claimed, that is to say, killed and made alive by the cross alone as the story, theologians of the cross attack the way of glory, the way of law, human works, and free will, because the way of glory simply operates as a defense mechanism against the cross.69

Forde’s approach could also be seen as a kind of crisis theology of the cross, but it would have to carry a different sense than that which we applied to Loewenich and even Althaus. The conflict he alerts us to is not intrahuman; the crisis is a perpetual crisis of human beings in the presence of God Almighty. The crisis comes when “we in turn suffer the absolute and unconditional working of God upon us.”70 While Forde will have epistemological interest—he will ask about how we know God and what we must know about God—this epistemological interest is saturated with soteriology. To be a theologian of the cross means to be saved. Or, stated precisely, “the cross is the theo-logy.”71 The cross is God’s word as an attack on all human pretensions of righteousness in the presence of God. Conversely, being a theologian of glory is being lost. The theology of glory “is the perennial theology of the fallen race.”72 This theology is related to our sinfulness not only as a symptom of our fallenness; holding such a theology is the definition of sinfulness. The cross causes us to recognize that we have crucified Christ, that our sins have wrought his cross. Yet in the cross, where one stands condemned and is brought to give up on oneself, then and there the sinner is claimed by God and raised to new life. The cross does not stand apart from resurrection. Forde states, “The word ‘cross’ here and in the entire treatise that follows is, of course, shorthand for the entire narrative of the crucified and risen Jesus. As such it includes the Old Testament preparation, . . . the crucifixion and resurrection.”73

Forde divides the Heidelberg Disputation into four parts. The treatise begins with reflection on the law of God and the judgment it brings and ends with the love of God. The Disputation itself literally moves us from life under the law to new life in the love of God. Yet it does not do so lightly or superficially, but by moving us through a process of despair and subsequent hope, of death and then life. The Disputation operates on us in the following phases:

1. The Problem of Good Works (Theses 1–12)

2. The Problem of Will (Theses 13–18)

3. The Great Divide: The Way of Glory versus the Way of the Cross (Theses 19–24)

4. God’s Work in Us: The Righteousness of Faith (Theses 25–28)

The section on the problem of good works addresses “the basic question of the Disputation. . . . What advances sinners on the way to righteousness before God?”74 Through these theses, the theologian of glory’s attachment to good works as the means to righteousness is mercilessly attacked. The law of God brings demands against persons and judges them guilty of relying upon their own selves rather than upon God. Not a person’s evil, but their claims to any intrinsic or self-achieved righteousness are attacked. Not our evil works, but those which appear to be our brightest and best, are the grounds of our condemnation. God does God’s alien work upon us, so that later God’s proper work can be accomplished. God’s wrath comes out against the theologian of glory full force. This wrath of God is real and prevents us from sentimentalizing our understanding of God. Even as self-reliant sinners see their own works as beautiful, these attacks of God, God’s alien working on us, seem ugly and evil. We would deny them or at least claim that God is not “guilty” of this attack. Yet, we have it all wrong.

What we consider beautiful, our good works, are in actuality deadly. This sin is deadly because it “separates and seals us off from God. That occurs when the apparent goodness of our works seduces us into putting our trust in them. . . . We are in reality then, not just in theory, sealed off from grace.”75 Only fear of God in the recognition of the deadliness of our living offers us hope. “When then are the works of the righteous not mortal sins? When they fear that they are!”76 This first movement offers twelve punches that seek to destroy all creaturely confidence in good works.

In the next set of theses which Forde characterized as dealing with the bondage of the will, Forde shows how “Luther turns to the subjective side of the question.”77 Even after the old Adam or Eve, that is, the theologian of glory, recognizes the uselessness of good works, he or she will continue to hold to some bastion of human participation in the advancement toward righteousness. “. . . [W]e always come back to the question of the ‘little bit’ [we might contribute], one of the telltale signs of the theology of glory.”78 Only when this bastion is also destroyed, can we let God be God. We refuse to allow God to act unilaterally. We chip away at the totality of grace brought to us solely from God’s side. There must be some way that we advance our way toward God. Some merit, however small, must sway God in our direction. In the face of the God who saves by grace alone, the “fallen will cannot accept such a God. That is its bondage.”79 In the recognition of our bondage, we begin to hit bottom. We know that without intervention we are indeed lost.

Finally in thesis 16 another possibility presents itself. For the first time, Christ is mentioned. “When the theologian of glory has finally bottomed out, Christ enters the scene as the bringer of salvation, hope, and resurrection.”80 Hope is available, when we “utterly despair of our own ability” and allow God to do the deed to us and for us.

This brings us to the part of the Disputation that has commanded the most attention throughout history. Forde titled these theses the great divide. Forde points out, accurately I believe, that the leap directly into these theses has resulted in misunderstanding.81 When one moves into these theses without first being addressed by the critique of works and will, the result is the linguistic slip up that he warned of earlier. Suddenly, for example, thesis 21 wherein we are told that a theologian of the cross “calls a thing what it really is” becomes a call to critical realism, rather than a calling of sin and sinners what they really are in the presence of God. This leap to thesis 19 and following robs the Heidelberg Disputation of its attack on the theologian of glory. The first theses are necessary to bring the theologian “to a real existential crisis.”82 Forde emphasizes that the Disputation speaks here not of “theologies” but of “theologians.” The question in play is the existential state of the theologian in the presence of God.

These central theses pick up the mention of Christ from the earlier thesis and ask what Christ and him crucified reveal to us about God. Theologians of glory “see” the “invisible things” of God. Forde observes that “seeing” the “invisible” is an oxymoron.83 They claim to see “through” creation or divine action to a “sea of abstract universals.”84 But they will find only the threatening presence of God there and no consolations for their troubled consciences. This threat, as we have seen, is real and should be terrifying. The only way this voice of accusation can be silenced is by the cross. Looking through the cross into the beyond will not help; one must look at the cross itself where Christ hangs dying for us. True, salvific knowledge of God is there on the cross. Through this theo-logy, this word of cross, God saves us from the terror. “The cross therefore is actually intended to destroy the sight of the theologian of glory. In the cross God actively hides himself. God simply refuses to be known in any other way.”85 By suffering and the cross, the sinner comes to know God. And “the suffering Luther has in mind first and foremost is the result of God’s operation on the sinner.”86 In what Luther called Anfechtungen, the “terrors of temptation” and “the pangs of conscience” God is finally known.87 When this God is clung to in faith, we finally “suffer this unilateral action of God.”88 All theorizing, then, can finally stop. “Knowledge of God comes when God happens to us, when God does himself to us. We are crucified with Christ (Gal 2:19).”89 We are, in this process, totally passive, while God alone is acting upon us. In Christ, God sets aside the law, silencing it. It can no longer bully us about. The law’s jurisdiction ends where Christ’s begins.

The final section of the Disputation turns to the righteousness of faith. We have now had our attachment to the law, good works and the claims of the will stripped away. We have been turned to Christ crucified. This brings us to the end of the Disputation and to the creative love of God. In the cross we come to know that God loves the unlovely and thus makes them lovely. We have been crucified now to be raised. When the old Adam or Eve dies and is raised, we spontaneously turn to the neighbor in works of love. Knowing that God has done everything necessary, we move out in freedom. We see the “bad, poor, needy, and lowly” whom the theologian of glory cannot see. “They don’t even show up on the scale of values and are not regarded.”90 But theologians of the cross know that they are sinners and know their own poverty, yet they trust that the love of God creates precisely out of nothing. Finally, “The presupposition of the entire Disputation is laid bare. It is the hope of the resurrection. God brings life out of death.”91

Forde treats the Heidelberg Disputation as much more than a theological treatise; he understands it as an actual proclamation of the gospel and therefore an actual doing of the gospel. This is its excellence. It does not simply describe the cross or God, it—to use the necessarily awkward phrasing—crosses or does God to the reader. Theology at its best must serve this purpose; “theology is for proclamation.”92 Proclamation is the final move, the logical, ultimate step of comprehending the things of God. When the shape of God’s love is truly understood, we freely and spontaneously have to share the good news. To proclaim God’s love is to end—as both telos and finis—the argument. Forde says:

Theologians of the cross therefore come to understand that the only move left is to the proclamation that issues from the story. The final task is to do the story to the hearers in such a way that they are incorporated into the story itself, killed and made alive by the hearing of it.93

Proclamation, as for Ebeling, is what ultimately matters in the theology of the cross.

Through the preaching of the cross in the living present, not through theological explanations, we are defended from the terror of the divine majesty. Precisely against the threat of supposed divine timelessness and immutability we are claimed in the concrete word of the cross in the living present; through baptism and Supper we are washed and fed. We feel and taste the truth in the here and now. To believe means precisely to be claimed by the cross and its word, to cling to that and find one’s assurance there. The “solution” to the problem of God, that is, is not in the classroom but in church.94

The concerns raised at the end of the section on Ebeling are equally fitting in response to Forde. If anything, Forde’s approach is even less historical. Forde’s reading of Luther has God standing over and against all of humanity in an undifferentiated way. All alike are prone to the same temptations of glory and power. This is Forde’s appraisal of how the theology of the cross functioned in Luther’s day, but Forde carries it forward to today. Luther speaks across centuries of history directly to us. Time and time again, generic humanity is gathered up into the homogeneous “we.”

Once again the neighbors in need do not enter until the last pages of the book. Even then, they are quickly dismissed. Having noted that “the theologians of glory try to see through the needy, the poor, the lowly, and the ‘nonexistent,’”95 Forde makes a glorious move himself, subsuming the needy, the poor, the lowly and the nonexistent into the category of “sinner.” Through the quick move to generic categories, Forde renders the poor once again invisible. They get lost in a crowd of undifferentiated humanity. The theologian of the cross becomes another theologian of glory.

Sacramental Theology of the Cross

Peura

Out of the dialogue with the Eastern Orthodox Church, Scandinavian Luther scholars have come to a new understanding of Luther’s theology including his theology of the cross. They have focused on his early years so as to emphasize certain aspects of his theology that most clearly lie in continuity with medieval theology. The Finnish scholar Simo Peura’s book Mehr als ein Mensch?96 is a contemporary example of this approach. His understanding of the theology of the cross will be dramatically shaped by his work on Luther’s very earlier material.

To begin to understand Luther, Peura looks at his Psalm commentaries from 1513 to 1516. From this period, Peura articulates Luther’s understanding of the deification of the Christian. Here Luther’s dependence on late scholastic theology comes to the fore. Next, Peura looks at how this theme is upheld in relation to the themes of justification and God’s love as they are articulate by Luther in his 1515 and 1516 commentaries on Romans. Finally, Peura comes to our theme, considering the theology of the cross in light of deification. His basis for that study are texts from 1517 and 1519. While the third part of his study will be of most interest to us, we will need to retrace the steps his steps through deification since that dramatically shapes his own understanding of the theology of the cross. Without this background, it is difficult to comprehend how he could end up at such a different place than Forde and Ebeling.

In the early studies on the Psalms, Luther presents his understanding of deification. In the act of becoming flesh, God in Christ deifies the Christian. God bestows on the believing Christian his divinity understood as his “truth, wisdom and goodness.”97 Alternatively, God’s divinity can also be understood as “his name” which is Christ himself.

The above-mentioned determination of spiritual goods and of the name of God contains also an aspect that aims at the deification of the person (deificatio hominis). God is the whole blessedness of his saints; the name of God gives the Christian the goodness of God, that is, God himself. The spiritual goods are gifts of God (donum Dei) in the Christian. The attributes do not remain, therefore, simply in God; rather they actually are given to the Christian.98

This means that there is a three-fold coming of Christ the word to the believer. First and foremost, in the incarnation God becomes human. Next, the word comes as grace (Gnade) heard and clung to. Finally, the word takes form within the person as the gift (Gabe) of Godself. “In each of these, the arrival of Christ—though differently in each case—has the result of the deification of the person,” argues Peura.99 The thrust of his claim is that God in Christ offers two benefits: grace (the merciful declaration that makes the sinner just) and gift (the ontological presence of God in the believer.) The first benefit has been the exclusive emphasis of Ebeling and Forde; the second is the reframing of God’s benefits offered by the Finnish Luther interpreters. When God gives the sinner God’s own name, God really and truly offers God’s essence to them.

Luther also uses other terminology traditionally related to deification to make similar points. He speaks of participation in God, union with God, and the transformation of the person. “Through them all, however, the same point is legitimately made, that is, the actual-ontological character of the salvation realized by God in the person.”100

This leads to Peura’s work on Luther’s understanding of justification. Simply stated, Luther comes to understand justification as the basis for the internal structure of deification. The emphasis on justification protects the sovereignty of God. The gift always remains a divine gift, but this gift is really and truly received by the Christian due to the grace of God. The gift is not due to extortion on the part of the believer; the motive for the giving is located in the same God who gives through the word. The reason for the giving is not, therefore, to be found within the Christian. In fact any preparation within the believer that makes possible the act of reception is also the act of God through the word. Peura writes:

Luther understands God working in the word in a way analogous to God’s relating at the cross. God executes his work on the person in the same way that God has done so already to Christ. The persons must, if desiring to believe and assume the word, first become weak and foolish in order to be able become strong and wise in the power and wisdom of God. Glorification and exaltation presuppose kenosis and abasement.101

Through the word, God destroys the self that is a self-justifying self; the sinner is reduced to nothing.102 Through this reduction God creates a vacuum wherein God makes the person capable of bearing divinity.103 God bestows God’s name through a happy exchange as the sinner clings to God in faith and, solely by that faith, God justifies the sinner.104 Justification results in the real transformation of the person as the name of God, which is God’s essence or divinity, comes to reside, and this truly, in the Christian. This indwelling is not only founded in externality. The “real presence of God” indwells the believer as that person also dwells in the Godhead through participation (but not fusion) in the same. This transformation is integral and includes even the transformation of the human will together with other faculties such as the intellect.

Transformation realizes itself in this life above all through the faith that transforms the faculties of the person and leads him to knowledge of the divine will. Transformation thus refers to how—already at justification’s beginning—the whole person is renewed with his will again and again. The transformation of the will is important, because only thereby can the love of the new person increase.105

The transformation of the Christian leads to a new way of relating to God from the human side of the relationship:

The caritas dei works in the Christian so that the person wills and loves what the intellect has allowed him to comprehend. The love of God for the person changes the person who then loves God willingly and seeks God again and again. For that reason Luther understands here by the love of God a constant affection (affectus) for God.106

So a new being that is ontologically transformed has been bestowed upon the believer, and this gift yields a new activity. The being of God within the Christian translates into a new doing wherein the deified Christian loves with the actual love of God; put another way, the God who is ontologically present in the believer becomes the subject of his or her actions.

Peura’s interpretation of Luther differs dramatically from those we have already examined, yet he does claim as emphatically as they did that Luther’s theology is a theology of the cross. Deification does not nullify the theology of the cross, but rather is the firm foundation upon which Luther built his theology of the cross. In what sense does Peura see the confession of Luther’s theology of the cross within this framework?

First of all, the theology of the cross is a critique of certain aspects of scholastic theology since that theology of glory seeks to ground itself in a capacity that humans by nature possess. Peura writes:

According to Luther, the theologia gloriae leads inevitably to the false striving of the person to deify himself. This way of thinking rests upon assumptions of natural human capacity and finally on the idea of liberum arbitrium. Thus Luther sees in the theologia gloriae an intensification of human sin, because, at base, it would like to realize its own egoistic, self-willed aspiration to divinity.

By no means does it follows from this criticism of the theologia gloriae that Luther also rejects the true deification of the person as willed by God. On the contrary, over and against his criticism of the metaphysical basis for the theology of the love held to by the aristotelian scholasticism, he demonstrates that true deification (in the sense of an ontological transformation of the person) is the conditio sine qua non for true love.107

Thus the theology of the deification in Luther is also a theology of the cross because it sees God as the sole source of transformation.108 Though this transformation is an actual, ontological transformation of the person, it is so not as a human act, but as an act of God alone. The error of the scholastics was to attribute to innate human capacity what can be done in humans by God alone.

This first characteristic, that is, that God alone justifies and deifies, has implied the second characteristic that qualifies Luther’s theology as a theology of the cross. If God alone deifies, then the human being is not the subject or agent who brings about that deification. Thus, the word’s act of reducing us to nothing destroys all attempts at self-justification. God again creates out of nothing, and, in this case, through the word, God is also the creator of nothingness. The human being has no grounds for boasting in the gift that dwells in him or her, because that gift, even when received and rooted, never loses its givenness.

Next, this focus on deification does not lead to a theology of glory, because the theologian of the cross knows that the deification truly present is a hidden reality and remains so throughout earthly existence. Deification is not apparent to sight, though it has actually occurred. It is hidden under the opposite, that is, under the reality of the believer who is also a sinner. Only faith living under the sign of the cross is able to make the profession that God is certainly within the Christian bringing about deification.

Finally, the theology of the cross is manifest in that deification is a lifelong process of divine activity that is not ended until death and even beyond. People of faith recognize that sin remains within them even though they truly are united with God, and this recognition of their own sinfulness turns them outward toward God and the neighbor in need. This recognition of sin is so strong in Luther that he takes the descent into hell with the utmost seriousness, believing that one really does descend to hell, but that one is utterly and really transformed when in that very place God is present with and in one in hell; and this presence of God is a gracious presence wherein God is there in order to love transformatively.109

Luther held in short an “ontology of the cross” that recognized that God makes the Christian “mehr als ein Mensch,” thus the title of Peura’s book. The divinely transformed person is more than human on the basis of God’s indwelling. Peura is quick to add that Luther was not interested in specifying more than this about the meaning of the “more.”110

The threat to Forde and Ebeling’s approach that this interpretation poses is clear. Peura makes this explicit in his summary of his research. He writes:

interpretations which leave the real, ontological character of Luther’s thinking more or less out of consideration, cannot explain important intentions of the reformer satisfactorily. The deification of the person is not adequately understood as a phenomenon, when the being of God and the being of the person are grasped in exclusively relational terms (the relating of conscious “being”, cognitive or otherwise) nor when they are grasped in a way wherein the one being is and remains definitively outside of the other. . . . Luther’s thought form contains a certain ontology that can be identified neither with the modern personalistic, relational thinking nor with the middle age’s substance metaphysics. This study confirms the interpretation according to which Luther’s ontology is understood as an expression of a “real, ontological” thought form (Mannermaa 1989, 189–192) or, as it has been described, as an “ontology under the cross” (Forsberg 1984, 179). From the point of view of deification, this ontology implies a way of being that presents itself as standing in strong tension with human understanding: deification as being in God through participation in him is being in nothing of one’s own.111

Peura’s work is dramatically different from, and even contradictory to, that of Forde and Ebeling. Although he helps us to see things that had not been seen by the others, he does not help us in seeing Luther’s theology of the cross in its broader, historically-embedded context. The challenge that Luther brings is formulated in light of conflicts in ideas alone; the Reformation seems to be a clash of ideas or even, more specifically, ontologies. The public nature of the Reformation itself is lost in the process.

Though the interpretation of Luther lacks the interest in social context and reception that drives this study, it could provide some resources for the constructive challenge stated at the outset of ending the divorce between history and spirituality. This contribution could come by way of Peura’s confession that there is a real, actual presence of God in the person and thus in history. Though it is not the direction that I will take, the confession that God’s relationship to the world is not simply external, but is an actual ontological presence, might provide others constructive resources for addressing this same challenge in a different manner.

On a personal note, what first drew my attention to Peura was the way he offers an alternative to the near total dominance of Ebeling’s interpretation in Luther studies. The content of Peura’s interpretation does not lend dramatic assistance to my own program, nor do I at the end of the day find it compelling. Yet the dynamic challenge that Peura throws at contemporary ways of reading Luther opens a space of legitimacy for other alternative approaches. Peura’s attention to neglected or denied elements of Luther (indwelling, participation, deification) and the resultant re-reading offer hope to others like myself who have seen something different in Luther than generally has been observed. Peura and others amenable to his position have prepared the field of Luther scholarship for power shifts in the realm of interpretation. This resembles part of the dynamic that Luther unleashed in his own day’s field of discourse.

Prenter

Although Regin Prenter’s writing ante-dates the work of Peura, and though he is not as immersed in Luther research as a vehicle of ecumenical association with the Eastern Church, he does share some of Peura’s attentiveness to the sacramental presence of God in the lives of the faithful. In his brief article entitled “Luther’s Theology of the Cross,”112 Prenter articulates the need for connection between the historical cross of Jesus Christ and those crosses that we bear in our own historical lives. He writes, “This mysterious identity of the cross of Jesus Christ on Golgotha with our own is the essential element in Luther’s theology.”113 In light of this assertion, Prenter asks about the ways that Luther’s theology of the cross has been carried over—or, rather, not carried over—in contemporary theologies. He sees two ways that this “inseparable union” is denied in contemporary theology.

In Bultmann, Prenter sees a “theology of the cross without the word,” meaning a theology of the cross that may speak often of the word, but that allows the present now of existential decision to swallow up the importance of Jesus, the incarnate and crucified word. The rootedness in Jesus’ cross on Golgotha is forfeited and thus “[t]hrough this existentialist understanding of faith, the whole historical content or the historical basis for faith is made irrelevant.”114 Prenter offers a scathing criticism of this collapse into the present moment.

The existentialist theological interpretation is the modern version of a theology of the cross without the word. The fact that existentialist theology and preaching often refer to the “word of God” and to “proclamation” does not alter the situation at all. In the existentialist interpretation, the “word of God” is no longer the apostolic gospel, which in the name of God bestows salvation to the believer through these historical acts, but is merely the presentation of a particular possibility of existence, an understanding of existence which functions only as a challenge to the individual to choose this form of existence as his own.115

Luther’s focus on the forgiveness made possible through the vicarious suffering of Jesus tragically is lost in this theological trend. Bultmann and others have forgotten the scandalousness of God’s identification with human crosses through the cross of Jesus; the connection, when not altogether ignored, is made too lightly.

We must never forget what an unheard of boldness it is, to identify our own cross with that of Christ. When we consider the events of the passion, for example, it is almost blasphemy to mention our crosses in the same breath with that of Christ. It is certainly no foregone conclusion that such a thing should even be allowed, and it is only allowed because of the freedom which the child of God enjoys, given to us as a gift through our acceptance in faith of that redemptive act of Jesus Christ in which he suffered vicariously the punishment for our sins.116

As a comment on the then current interest in the theology of the cross, Prenter makes an important observation about context. He observes, “There has been a rediscovery of Luther’s theology of the cross in our century precisely in those countries where the church must fight against a totalitarian state.”117 With this observation, he demands that the word of the cross not be threatened from another direction. For the theology of the cross without the word is not the only way that theologians have sought to escape the historicity of faith. Modern orthodox theology has attempted to construct a theology of the cross upon the assumption of some kind of “two-realm pattern of viewing the world.”118 Contemporary Lutheranism demonstrates the danger

that the theology of the cross may give way to the predominance of a theology of the word without the cross. For where the church, as is the case in our modern secularized world, exists within the context of a strange, yes, perhaps even hostile world, she is always in danger of withdrawing into herself.119

If existentialism abandoned the historicity of the crucifixion of Jesus, orthodoxy stands in danger of turning from the historic reality of contemporary crosses suffered by humanity. In that paradigm, the only way that the cross is treated as contemporary is within the confines of sacred space, particularly in the preaching of the word within the context of worship. The intrinsic relationship between Christ’s cross and our crosses is lost rendering the word impotent. In such a position:

It appears as if the cross of Christ and our own cross belong only to a sacred world. We may preach constructively about it, but the historical reality of modern life seems to be a totally different realm from that in which the word about the cross fits, which consequently becomes something of a religious ideal, a theology of the word without the cross, not because it seeks to deny the cross, but because it no longer bears a living relationship to the cross in our daily existence.120

The cost of such a move is tremendous. The trinitarian God in the full sense has been denied. Christology so lords it over the entire godhead that not only false theologies of creation are abandoned, but also the true reality of God as Creator. When this occurs:

There is no more room for God in history. Our world and our history have become godless, and our God has no world and no history. So now we have arrived at a point where the only history we still ascribe to God is the so-called history of salvation, the history of the second article, which implies a restriction upon the first article, as if God is no longer Lord of secular history, but only of the history of salvation.121

Prenter turns to Luther’s work on the Magnificat to challenge orthodoxy’s restriction of God’s historical activity and lordship. In this commentary Luther holds history and creation together with the cross of Christ. When Luther addresses issues of poverty, he is speaking not of some spiritual poverty recognized in a sacred sphere, he speaks of actual, physical hunger and thirst as the medium of God’s creative activity. He asks the reader:

How do we come to identify the cross in the creation as the cross of Jesus Christ? Can we go along with this at all? And if not, must we then not admit that Luther’s theology of the cross is not relevant for us?122

Again, Prenter returns to the theme of vicarious suffering. Christ suffers on our behalf the cross that is laid upon sinners.

As we in the course of our own lives experience the punishment for our fall into sin, through suffering, through temptation, through death, it will become clear to us that, because he bore exactly the same on our behalf, because he, who possessed the power of divine love as no other human person lived and suffered for us—this all is no longer guilt and punishment for us, but the role of the children of God, which is permitted us through the gracious command of God in the gospel.123

He finally sums up the opportunity that Luther’s theology of the cross offers to contemporary theology:

we must concern ourselves for both life and the word of God with like honesty and determination, so that we neither play life against the word, as in the case in a theology of the cross without the word; nor play the word against life as is the case in all sorts of thinking in terms of two realms such as occurs in the orthodoxy entrenched in the church. For God is the trinitarian God. He is the God of life, the Creator; he is the God of the word, the Savior; he is the God of faith, the Holy Ghost, and this trinity as Father, in our common experience of life; as Son in the preached word; and as Holy Ghost, in our personal convictions, teaches us in the last analysis what it means: Omnia bona in cruce et sub cruce abscondita sunt. (All good things are hidden in and under the cross.) Therefore they cannot be understood anywhere else except under the cross; under the cross—that means, under the cross on which Jesus, our Redeemer, bore our punishment, and under the cross which my Creator has laid upon me in my suffering and in my death. For in both places we are talking about the same cross.124

In this short article, Prenter has brought us further along in our task than the last three authors combined. His constructive critique of the wedge driven between the cross of the incarnate word Jesus and the other crosses in creation holds in appropriate tension our concern to not take the incarnate and crucified word out of our world. He offers us clarity in our critique of Forde and Ebeling who have taken Jesus’ cross out of the realm of history. He reminds us that it is not an accident that people who suffer brutal abuses of power are turning to look again, not only with Luther but also with the original apostolic witnesses to Jesus, to the crucified Christ.

Critical Summary

We have explored three models of interpreting Luther’s theology of the cross. In relationship to the concern that the theology of the cross be situated within the political and social history of its day, we appraise the three models differently. The third model offers some clues for bringing together theology and social reality. It does this by providing a way to talk about the theology of the cross in terms of the total context in which we live. Especially Prenter recognizes the God-given possibility and necessity of understanding Christ’s cross always in conjunction with contemporary crosses. In the crosses of creation points of historical concreteness are provided in which Christ and context are related. One also could argue that Peura’s emphasis on the real, ontological presence of God in the believer also provides a foothold for God’s active presence in history.

The emphasis on the proclamation of the word in Ebeling and Forde, an element that the other two models also have noted to some extent, correctly identifies the nature of the Reformation as an oral event. Yet, the lack of interest in pursuing how that oral event functioned within the larger sixteenth-century context, including daily life lived outside of the church, robs what could have been a provocative historical observation of its force. The tendency, of collapsing historic distinctions through generic observations about humanity also speaks of the historical disinterest of this model. In Forde’s writing, Luther speaks directly to “us” across five centuries. The shape of sin in the sixteenth century remains with us today without any interesting variation. Even within the sixteenth century itself, peasant and priest, pauper and king stand before God in basically the same way. It is amazing that such a strong critique of power like that which Luther offers can be examined to the total neglect of actual power relations between distinct members of society. Finally, even the neighbor and his or her cross only enters the picture at the very end of the process. Ebeling illustrates this when only in the final pages of the book does he raise as his last question the reality of those in need of compassion.125 All of this indicates, as stated above, that Ebeling and Forde stand dangerously close to what Prenter characterized as a theology of the word without the cross. In their writings the poor are rendered invisible, and this is a sign of the theology of glory.

In my appraisal, the first model is best at helping us in our task of joining theology with history in the life and work of Luther. The recognition by Althaus and especially by Loewenich of the place of the institutional church and its abuses in the formation of Luther’s thought addresses my concerns for contextual interpretation. Yet, even here the church is primarily thought of as a religious institution. The perception by the people of Luther’s day that the church was a political, economic, and social agent of power is acknowledged, but this plays no significant role in the understanding of the shape of his theology. The next chapters will seek to redress this neglect.

One other comment needs to be made regarding all of these interpreters. They all reflect on Luther’s development in such a way that historic distinctions inevitably dissolve in the rush to declare Luther an unwavering theologian of the cross. All of them claim that Luther is consistently a theologian of the cross throughout his career. A clearer exploration of the ways that Luther’s theology of the cross took shape at different times in his life and ministry, as well as the ways that his practice diverted in significant ways from this fundamental commitment, might present us with a more accurate picture of the reformer and his theology. For example, one might ask how Luther diverted from the theology of the cross and its basic commitments in his response to the Peasants’ Revolt. Similarly one might ask about how his theology of the cross functioned or malfunctioned in relation to the Jews of his day or in relation to divergent Protestant groups. Did Luther betray the theology of the cross in his own quest for power in relation to these and other groups? It is clear to me that the critique that Luther himself offered at specific times might be turned against him. There is a deep irony in the claim by Luther interpreters and followers that Luther was a consistent theologian of the cross throughout his whole life. The irony is that the claim that one is consistently a faithful theologian of the cross sounds like the pious claim of a theologian of glory. For the theologian of the cross knows that she or he cannot maintain such unbroken faithfulness. Luther knew this profoundly and painfully in relation to himself. Yet he was able to rejoice that his own lapsing would direct attention to the one who alone is faithful, the God we know in Jesus Christ. In conformity to Luther’s self-critique, we shall begin to critique him in his own historically embedded theological confession; we do this so that our own theological reflection might learn from his lapses as we speak to a new day. We also do this aware that, God willing, others shall so reexamine our lapses in the future.

Finally, the relative lack of interest in the questions posed here on the part of our six authors is not to say that I shall not use observations from each of these models as I pursue my own interpretation. Having revealed something of these diverse contributions, I am confident that the reader will be able to see the places where each has influenced my thought as well as the ways that I have broken company with them. We turn now to the task of mapping the context in which Luther lived and worked in order to understand how Luther’s theology of the cross functioned therein.

1. Loewenich, Luther’s Theology of the Cross.

2. Ibid., 221.

3. Ibid., 12, 18.

4. Ibid., 12.

5. Ibid., 22.

6. Ibid., 128.

7. Ibid., 113.

8. Ibid., 14.

9. Ibid., 18.

10. Ibid., 171.

11. Ibid., 30.

12. Ibid., 82.

13. Ibid., 13.

14. Ibid., 17, 18.

15. Ibid., 16.

16. Ibid., 27.

17. Ibid., 169 n. 2.

18. Ibid., 173 n. 2.

19. Ibid., 219.

20. Cited in ibid., 18, from LW 31.40. There are some problems with this translation that I will address at a later point in the dissertation.

21. Loewenich, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, 22.

22. Ibid., 27.

23. Ibid., 27.

24. Ibid., 28.

25. Disputation, cited in Loewenich, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, 28.

26. Loewenich, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, 69.

27. Ibid., 30.

28. Ibid., 33.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid., 34.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid., 37.

33. Ibid., 38.

34. Ibid., 37.

35. Ibid., 44.

36. Ibid., 50.

37. Ibid., 51.

38. Ibid., 64.

39. Ibid., 75.

40. Ibid., 118–23.

41. Ibid., 128.

42. Althaus, “Die Bedeutung des Kreuzes im Denken Luthers,” 97–107.

43. Althaus, Theology of Martin Luther, 25–35.

44. Ibid., 26–27.

45. Ibid., 27.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid., 28.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., 33.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid., 277.

52. Ibid., 277–78.

53. Ibid., 286.

54. See also Ebeling, “Die Definition des Menschen und seine Mortalität.”

55. Ebeling, Luther, 111.

56. Ibid., 112.

57. Ibid., 117.

58. Ibid., 119.

59. Ibid., 119–20.

60. Ibid., 122.

61. Westhelle, “Luther and Liberation,” 51.

62. Ebeling, Luther, 265.

63. Westhelle, “Luther and Liberation,” 52.

64. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross.

65. Ibid., vii.

66. Ibid., viii.

67. Ibid., xi.

68. Ibid., xii.

69. Ibid., 12.

70. Ibid., ix.

71. Ibid., 3.

72. Ibid., xiii.

73. Ibid., 1 n. 1.

74. Ibid., 23.

75. Ibid., 37.

76. Ibid., 39.

77. Ibid., 49.

78. Ibid., 50.

79. Ibid., 53.

80. Ibid., 60.

81. Ibid., 69.

82. Ibid., 70.

83. Ibid., 72.

84. Ibid., 73.

85. Ibid., 79.

86. Ibid., 86.

87. Ibid.

88. Ibid., 87.

89. Ibid., 90.

90. Ibid., 114.

91. Ibid.

92. Forde, Theology is for Proclamation.

93. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 13–14.

94. Ibid., 75.

95. Ibid., 114.

96. All translations mine for Peura, Mehr als ein Mensch?

97. Ibid., 47.

98. Ibid., 48.

99. Ibid., 51.

100. Ibid., 295.

101. Ibid., 113.

102. Ibid., 194.

103. Ibid,, 120.

104. Ibid., 156.

105. Ibid., 157.

106. Ibid., 160.

107. Ibid., 178.

108. Ibid., 270.

109. Ibid., 301.

110. Ibid.

111. Ibid.

112. Prenter, “Luther’s Theology of the Cross,” 222–33.

113. Ibid., 224 (emphasis mine).

114. Ibid., 226.

115. Ibid., 227.

116. Ibid., 229.

117. Ibid.

118. Ibid., 230.

119. Ibid., 229.

120. Ibid., 231.

121. Ibid., 231.

122. Ibid., 232.

123. Ibid., 233.

124. Ibid., 233.

125. Ebeling, Luther, 265.