Confusing the Epistemic and Semantic Primacy of Christ

As some may know, I am the author of the so-called “WordAlone Fundamentals,” a set of affirmations that I think get at the heart of some basic agreements and differences within contemporary Lutheran theology (http://www.wordalone.org/docs/wa-fundamentals.shtml). I conceive these “fundamentals” really as proto-principles for Lutheran theological engagement. Given the centrality of the cross within Lutheran theology - - and the accents of law/gospel, the theology of the cross, the simul iustus et peccato, and the infinite being carried by the finite - - why is there such a plethora of methods and approaches (even real differences) within contemporary Lutheran theology? Why is the “real working theology” of the LCMS so very different from that of the ELCA? How does the working theology of the WordAlone Network differ from that encountered within many ELCA churches?

The “fundamentals” acknowledge a real parting of the ways within the Lutheran theological ethos, and locate that parting with respect to the following assertions:

1) Theological Realism: God exists and His existence and nature are logically independent from human awareness, perception, conception and language.

2) Semantic Realism: Assertions about the divine have definite truth-conditions. Language about the divine is not merely expressive of the individual uttering it, or merely rule-governed linguistic customs of a community.

3) Theophysical Causation: There is a causal connection between God and the universe. It is logically and metaphysically possible for God to bring about an event in the universe that would not have occurred had God not brought it about.

It is important to note that the tradition of theological reflection beginning with Kant, if consistent, must deny all three of these assertions. For Kant, God is an idea of human reason, and not an “empirical concept of the understanding.” Accordingly, God cannot be conceived as a substance sustaining causal connections with events within the universe. Post-Kantian options within theology begin with the assumption that theological language cannot have truth-conditions where God is figured as a substance sustaining properties, some of which are relational causal properties. Accordingly, theological language must be “doing something else.” It must be a discourse expressive or disclosive of human feeling (Schleiermacher), thinking (Hegel), or doing (late 19th century Protestantism).

To speak of these “fundamentals” as fundamental assertions within a Lutheran context, however, immediately brings charges that one has become “un-Lutheran.” A recent e-mail says that I have committed the cardinal transgression of not beginning my theology with the revealed God - - Jesus Christ. It says that if one starts with the existence of God without clarifying the nature of God, then one might end up with a “definition of God that then shapes what we can say about Christ.” It goes on to declare that things should be the other way around: Christ should determine “what we can know and say about God.” We must start theology where God wants himself to be known: the revelation of Jesus Christ.

In responding to this charge it is critically important to distinguish ontology, epistemology and semantics. I agree with the claim that Lutheran theology must begin with God as revealed in Christ. No Lutheran would want to deny Luther’s contention in The Bondage of the Will that God remains hidden in His aseity and that human beings gazing upon this deus absconditus shall be deeply perplexed and thrown into despair.

Yet this epistemic priority of Christ ought not be confused with ontological priority. Luther’s Trinitarian thought is continuous with that of western theology generally; he holds timeless eternity of the three persons within the inner-Trinity. Christ has epistemic priority for the believer, even though Christ does not have ontological priority with respect to God Himself.

Moreover, this epistemic priority of Christ must not be confused with a semantic priority. I deny any “theological atomism” which can find isolate meaning in the Christ event disconnected entirely from the semantic context within which that event arose. Years ago Pannenberg, in Jesus, God and Man, detailed the importance of the horizon of late Jewish apocalyptic thinking for the original understanding of who Christ was. The original event of Christ took place over and against a background of beliefs and values making possible the identification of Jesus with the Christ. (I speak here of necessary, not sufficient conditions for the identification.) Clearly, the epistemic priority of Christ is compatible with a semantic dependency upon context.

My claim is that, for Luther, Christ has epistemic primacy even though the identity of Christ is dialectically relatable to the hidden God whom Christ reveals. For Luther, what Christ means is conceptually linked to the God that stands over and against him, the God whom he fears. Luther’s question is this: How can I find a gracious God? That this God is revealed in Christ in no way undercuts the claim that there is first presupposed a meaningful category of ‘gracious God” conceptually linked to God as transcendent of human finitude.

Imagine what it would be like were Christ to have both semantic and epistemic priority. Presumably, humans confronting Christ would for the first time think about the dialectic of time and eternity, i.e., the very notion of the dialectic of time and eternity would flow from the encounter with Christ. Moreover, the notion that God is hidden in His aseity would have to arise, as would all thoughts of the divine, in the existential encounter with Jesus the Christ. But this would be to entirely reject any category of general revelation in Luther. There would be no human experience of order, history, goodness or beauty that would allow formation of the “God concept” independently of encounter with Christ. Furthermore, were this true, the witness of the various religious traditions with respect to the finite and infinite would have somehow themselves to be grounded in the revelation of Christ. (This would make the very notion of theism somehow dependent upon the revelation of Christ. But this is a falsifiable position because theism was around long before Christ was revealed.)

The assertion of theological realism and theophysical causation are meant only to recover the “God concept” Luther presupposed in his assertion of the epistemic primacy of Christ. Knowing a thing to be is quite a different thing than to have the semantic capacity to know the thing to be. My claim is this: There has been a gradual shift over the last two centuries in the concept of God, in the very meaning of ‘God’. This change has brought with it a shift in the underlying implicit “theory” upon which the discovery of Christ as Savior is possible. For moderns and postmoderns, Christ does not, and cannot mean the same thing as was meant in Luther’s time. (I speak of the meaning of Christ, but should this be problematic, one can easily construe it as the meaning of statements about Christ.) The upshot of all of this is that we now say the same things about Christ, but really mean quite different things about Him. In other words, our ontological claims are a function of the semantic fields we inhabit when making these claims. This state of affairs is fully compatible with the assertion of the epistemic primacy of Christ.

So why is it that the ELCA and LCMS divide when they seemingly make the same confession? Why is WordAlone theology “different” than that currently regnant within the ELCA? My claim is that different notions of God, of time and eternity, lurk in the background, determining the content (Gehalt) of Christ as “that which shows itself as itself.” Simply put, the identity conditions of Christ are not wholly established by the phenomenon of Christ Himself, but are partly determined by the background theory upon which the “observation” of Christ occurs. The “fundamentals” humbly wish to bring to the light this background theory so that there can be some continuity within Lutheran theology as to the most important thing: the reality of Christ and Him Crucified.