Seven Years Ago

About two months ago someone sent me this article I had written in late 2005 and that was subsequently published on the  WordAlone website in January of 2006.  The article talks about the need of a Lutheran House of Studies.   What is interesting about the article is the degree of continuity we have been able to achieve from the initial diagnosis of the problems to the establishment of the Institute of Lutheran Theology.   I submit it to readers of this blog who perhaps have never seen it.   Frankly, I had forgotten I had written it.   

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A wise person once said that wisdom is the gift of understanding the obvious. I have talked with many Lutherans who are concerned about the future of theological education in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Congregations sense that newly ordained pastors often think quite differently than those joining the clergy rosters 40 years ago. But granting this is so, why is it so? What understanding of this problem is available to us?

I recall three recent conversations that exemplify the problem.

In the first, a woman was talking to me about the sexuality issue confronting the ELCA, "How can my pastor be for allowing someone engaged in homosexual behavior to be a pastor? Doesn't it say in the Bible that we aren't supposed to do that, and hasn't Christianity always taught that?" I remember trying to explain to her how it had come about that Bible and tradition were no longer thought to clearly decide the issue. She was not impressed with my reply.

In another conversation a man said to me, "Why is everyone coming out of the seminary these days so politically correct? It seems like they care more about fixing society than they do about preaching the faith." When I told him about the justice perspective of the prophetic Biblical faith, he responded, "I am not against talking some politics in church, I just want to make sure we also talk about church in church, because we don't talk about that anywhere else."

Finally, I recall the words of an older gentleman who remarked, "When I was young, the pastor definitely had authority in our congregation. It was not just his word against ours. But when pastors get all agitated about stuff they don't know about—our last pastor was convinced that large, multi-national agribusiness was the work of the devil—then it makes us think they maybe don't know as much about what we are paying them to know about." I didn't know what to say to that because I remembered my own synod's passing a resolution directed against Cargill even though members of the economics faculty at our state university claimed those voting hadn't a clue as to what they were voting about.

The three conversations clearly display the problem. As a church what is our authority? If it is no longer Scripture and tradition, then what is it? As a church what is the focus of our message? If it is not the crucified Christ, then what is it? As a church what is our competence? If it is not the proclamation of the revealed Word into the concrete situation, then what is it?

It is obvious that things have changed in Lutheran theological education in America. Precisely what have changed, I think, are the teachable assumptions about authority, message and competence. Underlying these is an even more fundamental presupposition that confessional theological statements cannot be true—at least not in the way we had previously believed.

WordAlone, along with many other Lutheran reform movements, perceives that the classical loci of the Lutheran tradition have been de-emphasized within ELCA seminaries over the past 40 years. The following are my speculations as to why it is that we find ourselves in the current situation. Hopefully, there will be some gift of wisdom in my attempt to understand what, to many, is obvious.

One cause of the problem is economic. We must recognize that ELCA funding for its seminaries is much lower than the funding of the previous Lutheran bodies towards their seminaries. This change in economic policy has had tremendous repercussions. In order to survive and prosper, the seminaries have had to become more autonomous in their self-understanding than previously had been so, and they have thus had to offer curricula that can appeal to a broad range of students seeking theological education. As the de facto mission of the seminaries changed from the "in house" task of preparing Lutheran students for Lutheran ministry to the more general task of providing academic theological education to a broader constituency, the explicitly confessional nature of theological education was accordingly de-emphasized. (I am not claiming that anyone set out intending to do this.) The result has been that the ethos of Lutheran identity and confession no longer prevails in the student body of the seminaries. Many students today neither know the Lutheran tradition nor wish to adopt and advocate for it. This state of affairs is simply an unarguable fact about our current context and the economic realities that underlie it.

Secondly, the decline in teaching classical Lutheran theology is attributable in part to a change in the theological direction of ELCA leadership and significant numbers of the ELCA rank-and-file.

We live in a time in which the "truth-conditions" for theological language are routinely considered to be problematic. In an age of cultural relativism that often breeds ethical relativism, there is a profound awareness of the multiplicity of religious options and a sincere desire on the part of many not to be ethnocentric with respect to their own fundamental beliefs and world views. This awareness has tended to conflict with the prima facie particularity of Christian confession. While in previous times one could say "confessional proposition x is true because the state of affairs denoted by x obtains external to human awareness, perception, conception and language," this option seems to many today to be provincial, parochial, naïve and misguided. How can one's own confessions be true in this way without saying at the same time that everyone else's are wrong?

The result of this has been a general movement away from understanding confessional assertions realistically, and instead understanding them as mere expressions of one's own cultural values. Thus, a "theological irrealism" has taken up residency within the ELCA. Of course, to claim that such an irrealism is the only alternative to the robust realism of earlier generations is itself to commit the fallacy of false dichotomy. The denial of one simply does not entail the truth of the other, even though it may often seem that way to people in the pews. (The problem bequeathed by the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant was to try to give theological language truth-conditions without having to understand them realistically. The next 150 years of theological development tried to grant objectivity to theological propositions without making them about metaphysical objects. The problem today is that there has been a general loss of confidence in this entire project. Objectivity itself has become subjectivized, and normativity is customarily regarded as an expression of the self embedded in its immediate cultural context.)

Thirdly, with the loss of particular truth-conditions to theological language, there has resurfaced in our time the problem of authority.

While Lutherans once believed that Scripture itself could adjudicate conflicting claims, contemporary Biblical scholarship assumes that the sensus of Scripture is not easily located. Given the conflicting claims in Biblical scholarship about the real meaning of particular texts, a retreat to the letter and authority of the confessional documents has also seemed wrongheaded. Moreover, the real meanings of these documents are themselves open for scholarly debate. Given this present vacuum of authority, it is small wonder that voices have emerged urging a ratcheting up of the authority of the Church. When Scripture and Confession can no longer function to grant authority to the particularity of Lutheran theological affirmations, then something else is requisite, and that hoped for "something else" is identified by many as "the Church."

The paradox of the present ELCA participation in the ecumenical movement is this: Lutheranism began in the particularity of its theological affirmations over and against Catholic, Reformed and Anabaptist theology. Now, the ELCA is putatively, or supposedly, to "get over" these particularist affirmations in order to find unity with others within the Church catholic. Those holding to the particularity of these former affirmations are understood by many as undermining the unity of the Church. In a time when form prevails over substance, unity smells sweeter than truth.

There is a final point worth mentioning. There has been a widespread attenuation, or lessening, of emphasis on the scandal of the Cross in favor of a preoccupation with social justice issues.

The reason for this is not difficult to ascertain. Citizens of America generally embrace the traditional American values of individual rights and dignities. Advocating for social justice and individual dignity, while part of the Biblical prophetic tradition, is thus clearly consonant with the prevailing ethos of American culture. To speak for peace and justice is to state the deepest and noblest values of our civilization. But proclaiming the foolishness of the Cross is irreducibly counter-cultural. Advocating an ultimate eschatological, or end times, empowerment before God that does not entail immediate temporal empowerment is a position that has been, and will continue to be, criticized by enlightened, cultured despisers of religion. But Lutheranism must always find its center in the second article of the creeds, the scandal of the Cross.

The WordAlone Network's House of Studies project wishes to establish a structure for theological education that assumes the following:

• The authority of Scripture and Confessions
• The centrality of the scandal of the Cross
• The truth and particularity of traditional Lutheran affirmations
• The notion that the Church is primarily the hidden gathering of the faithful and not a visible means of divine grace
• The value of theological competence and student mastery of Scripture and other primary texts of the Lutheran theological tradition

We are at a crossroads. The WordAlone Network wishes to establish and implement structures that can perpetuate Lutheran confessional teaching in the face of contemporary social, cultural and theological resistance. The structural shape of the Lutheran House of Studies has not been determined. We remain at the preliminary stage of seeking input and interest in such a project. While we do not know the "hardware" particulars of the House of Studies, we do, however, have an idea of the "software" we wish to create. In creating the "software," we wish to begin with its critical component: good faculty willing to teach in the House of Studies and an attainable vision. Because we believe that good software can run in different hardware environments, we shall begin our efforts by identifying faculty and planning curriculum. 

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The Institute of Lutheran Theology, consisting in its graduate school called the Christ School of Theology and its various lay programming, is the fruition of what in 2006 was called a "House of Studies."  It exists to perpetuate the teaching of good Lutheran theology to those of any tradition called to preach and teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  While we are now are getting clarity on the hardware, the software has never been in doubt.   

Justifying the Individual

Though I have never posted a sermon before, I decided to post this one. It was preached at the Institute of Lutheran Theology shortly after the election. The text was Hebrews 10:11-25. Readers might think it wrong-headed, but as always I enjoy feedback and discussion.

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We had an election here in America.   Some say that it was the most important election of our lifetimes.   There is in America a fundamental parting of ways for those who deeply embrace the ideology of their parties.   Does one want smaller government with an emphasis on individual responsibility and innovation, or does one want larger government with an emphasis on what the power of the State can build and do?  One side concentrates upon the horizon of the individual, the other on the fabric of the community.  

Pundits and preachers on both sides proclaim the virtues of what we might call social/cultural atomism over and against social/cultural holism.  The first claims that the basic reality is that of individuality and groups are collections of individuals.  The second argues that the fundamental reality is community, and that individuals are merely the ways that communities have their being in a particular location.  Red states tend to reduce the behavior of wholes to the collection of the behavior of parts; blue states tend to claim that the behavior of the part is, in some sense, an abstraction from the behavior of the whole.  

Thus, when one claims, “it takes a village,” one is espousing a particular ontology about the logical priority of wholes and parts.   Since the study of wholes and parts is called “mereology,” to claim, “it takes a village,” is to adopt a particular “mereological ontology.”  So, you see, one can say a great many complex-sounding things about something that is really quite simple. 

But why would one say complex-sounding things about what is quite simple?  And, more to the point, why would one talk about parts and whole, red states and blue states?

Well, think about it for a moment.   Think about the great Christian narrative of creation, fall and redemption.  God made the universe good; the universe fell into being not-good and thus into being not-itself; and the universe through Christ became again what it is - - though it still retained the flavor of what it is not.  The process of the universe becoming again what it once most profoundly was is called in the tradition, “justification.”   We are made right again; like a well-tempered clavier, we are justified, rightly tuned again through the blood of Jesus. 

Traditional Catholic theology disagreed on many things, but one thing it mostly agreed upon was that ‘justified’ and ‘not-justified’ are antonyms.  The more just one is, the less unjust he or she can be.  If we are justified by Christ’s action, then we are not the unjust beings we were through the Fall.   Redemption brings forth a return to Paradise, a Return to Forever, a return to the time before time, the primal time of all Beginning, the state prior to the disruption, decay, and, in some sense, existence itself.  

Look at the text from Hebrews.   Christ has “perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”   This is the time of the forgiveness of sins, a time of sprinkling clean the conscience and ritually purifying the body, a time of promise and faith, of provocation to love and goodness, a time of the approaching Day. 

But attention to the text shows something quite complex happening.   While the Day of paradise has dawned in one sense, the habits of the old age remain.  This is why this is an approaching Day, and not a Day already attained.   The Day is dawning; Paradise is returning; the Old is passing away and the New is taking its place.   There is in this time of approaching Paradise, a time of perfection in that which is still not perfect.   While most of Catholic theology in one way or the other claimed that the more just was the New Day the less unjust was the Old Day, Luther and his Circle read Scripture and tradition in a way that allowed them to say that the New Day was totally present while the Old Day remained completely.   Lutheran theology claims thus that we sinners are wholly justified while remaining completely sinful: simul iustus et peccator.  

So have we got all of that clear?    - - I would think that most listening to this sermon would say, “Tell us something we don’t know.  We know that the Council of Trent condemned Luther for saying that sin remained after justification.  We know that we are simul iustus et peccator.”

Please bear with me if you know this already, and if my saying it again does not make it a clearer or a more effective Word for you.   What I have said so far is just setting the table for making the fundamental point.  I must now relate what I just said to what I said earlier.  Teachers and preachers are supposed to do that, after all, and because I am both, I will attempt to do it now. 

Justification for Lutherans brings back the Before in the not-Before.   It brings back Paradise outside of Paradise.  But what is the being of that which is not-Before and is now Before, of that which is not-Paradise but is now Paradise?  Is this being a being of individuals comprising groups, or is it the groups from which individuals are abstracted? 

You might think this a deeply irrelevant and tangential question.  What difference could this possibly make?

The difference, I aver, is profound and has everything to do with why Lutherans have split up and misunderstood each other so profoundly.   You see, Lutheran theology has always privileged the individual as the locus of justification.   I remember my old teacher, Dr. George Forell, would say there are no Christian institutions, only institutions in which there are Christians.   The term ‘Christian’ can accordingly only properly apply to individuals and not groups.   Individuals are justified by grace through faith, not groups.   Justification is the process of the individual becoming right with God, while his or her living out of that rightness is the Christian community or Church.  

But times are a changing.   In the nineteenth century the idea of a social group with a Geist or “spirit” gained ascendency.   With eyes on this world rather than the next, thinkers downplayed the idea of personal immortality in favor of the notion of achieving lasting being within the context of the group.  New eyes on the Old Testament thematized the notion of the Chosen People as a community of the faithful.  Justification increasingly became associated with a transition from social disorder to a melioration of that order.   This is, of course, exactly what one would think if one were to hold that the primary bearer of being is the community and not the individual. 

Time does not permit me to trace the subtle ways that this changed ontology changed Lutheran preaching.  In the Institute of Lutheran Theology, we explore these matters quite deeply.   The take-away, however, is that if primary being rests with the community, then the hearing of the Word must be a doing of the Word, for only in this way are communities changed.   Whereas in earlier times one could talk meaningfully about an “inner transformation” of the person, this is what is precluded in an ontology that takes the “inner” to be a mere abstraction of the real being of social order and community.  

The ELCA, the denominational body to which many of us previously belonged, privileged in their working theology an ontology of community.  Very subtly and gradually, sin became social fragmentation and justification become social integration.   Notions of individual resurrection were replaced by the idea of a resurrected community.   But the people of the pews did not abandon their previous ontology.   The blue state church, filled with individuals having red state commitments, imploded.   And here is where we find ourselves today. 

It is time today to understand what has gone wrong and return to a deep presupposition of Christianity itself:  We stand alone before a God that knows our every thought and breath; we stand naked underneath His eternal and wrathful divine gaze. 

Yet in the midst of this reality of being forever shut out of Paradise, a Word comes from God that is Himself God.   This Word claims us upon the horizon of our own being; He claims us not primarily as a people, but as me.   Listen!  You, yes, you yourself, are grasped eternally by the God whose justice can only reject you.  You, eternally have been grabbed and are being drug back to paradise.   God has a preferential option for you, not the social orders and structures you inhabit.   This is good news, exceedingly good news.   You yourself are precious and you yourself is where Christ is present! 

Had we remembered this, we would never have lost our way so deeply.  

Getting Clear on the Nature of Law

Lutherans have always argued about the law.  Is there only a first and second use, or is there also a third use?  Does the law go away when grace arrives?  Is the law eternal?   Is there sin prior to law, or  is law only possible on the basis of sin?  Is living out "the form of the Gospel" a living according to the law or not?   Moreover, are good works necessary for salvation, and, if so, how can there doing not be legalistic?

Lutherans have tried mightily to say precisely what separates law and gospel, and what makes Christian living free, that is, what makes it not living underneath the law.  While I will not answer all the questions above, I want to offer a fairly commonsense way of looking at things that might help us address these questions.

I like sometimes to step away from the particularity of Christian language and describe situations using another vocabulary.  The reason for this is that we can sometimes can get more clear on what we are asserting when we employ a vocabulary that is not that to which we are accustomed.   I will proceed in this way in the remainder of this reflection.

Broadly conceived, the Christian story is one supposing that the way that things are simply is not the way things are supposed to be.   God created the universe good, but it is no longer so.   How this came to be is, of course, a matter that is not altogether clear.   How precisely is a wholly good creation nevertheless one in which elements of it become disoriented from the good?   But the mystery of the Fall is not my concern here.    I am interested merely in the distinction between the "is" and "ought."   The world is a particular way, but it ought to be a different way.

Theories of atonement specify how it is that the way things are, but are not supposed to be, nonetheless becomes again the way things are supposed to be.   In traditional language, God who is displeased with the world, nonetheless comes to accept the world.   That which is displeasing becomes pleasing to Him.

Law in Christian theology is tied to ought.   God intends the world to proceed X-ly, but the world does not proceed in this way.   The "is" of the world does not correspond to its "ought."  In a late medieval sense, law is that which is reasonable, promulgated by a competent authority, and capable of being enforced.   The contour of the world which is, is not that which is reasonable, promulgated by God, and capable of being enforced by Him.

When talking about law in the first and second senses, Lutheran theology clearly wants to address the "supposed to be-ness" of things.   We might use a semantics of possible worlds in discussing this.   Because we are speaking of conformity with God's will, we should probably avoid "deontologically possible worlds" (or some such jargon) in favor of speaking about worlds varying in conformity with divine intent.   A world fully in accordance with divine intent would thus be very distant from us, while one wholly not in accordance with this intent would be proximal to the actual world.

What I am thinking of is conceiving a World set S with the actual world and a set of worlds w1, w2, w3, etc., where the higher number indicates greater conformity with God's will and greater distance from w0, the actual world.   The first and second uses of the law can thus be analyzed as follows:  God demands x, is to say that there is some world w such that w is not the actual world and that w is, in fact, suitably distant from the actual world, and that x is in w, though x is not in the actual world.   To say that God wills x is simply to say that x is in every world w in S.  In other worlds, the w containing x is now actual.

What about the third use of the law?   Is it also to be analyzed in this way?

I think that we must make a distinction here between two senses of 'law'.  The sense which I have alluded to above clearly carries the weight of the "ought."   Traditional Christian natural law theory evinced this sense.   There was a "way that things are supposed to go" to things, even if things did not go that way.   The way that things were supposed to go was a simple as 'bodies ought to fall'.

But at the birth of modern science the old "way that things are supposed to go" of things, the teleological sense of things was lost and replaced by "the way things inexorably do go" of things.  Laws that once spoke of the divine ought were replaced by universal regularities that were, in some sense, necessary.  That two objects attract each other directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them is not the way things ought to be, but merely the way that things are.   Laws of motion express how things simply are.  With respect to physical actualizations, there are no worlds other than the actual world that could be different than the actual world.

If we understand the third use of the law descriptively in this fashion, then we are simply saying that the actual world with its particular contour could not have been other than it was given certain conditions.   What I am saying is that the particular contour of the Christian life is free because it simply could not be other than it is; its freedom is found in its necessity.   We are freed by Christ and as free men and women in Christ we are what we are given the conditions that God has wrought in Christ.

When listening to Christian preaching, one must ask if the preacher is advocating that a world that is not the actual world should be the actual world.   If she or he is advocating this, the law is being preached.   On the other hand, if the preacher is describing what is the case and cannot be other than the case for the one graced by the Living Christ, then the "form of the gospel" is being described, and there is occasion for the law's "third use" - - which is not the law at all.   Law avers that a world that is not the actual one should replace the actual one.  The Gospel discomfits this way of proceeding, claiming that the actual world needs no replacement.

More needs to be said to justify the claim that the actual world is necessary when the Gospel is preached and lived.   Surely there are physically different actualizations of the preached and lived Gospel!

But what I am claiming is that the Gospel is necessary in the sense that there is no longer any set of worlds, w1, w2, w3, etc., such that there is nomological distance between these worlds and the actual one.   All of this can and should be made more clear, but the general point should be apparent.

Thinking Truth Non-Propositionally

"I am the Way and the Truth and the Life."

I regard the statement as true.  As such, it is a  propositional truth.   Precisely how a  statement is a propositional truth is a matter of considerable debate, of course.   Some say it is true because regarding it so issues in desirable effects.  "Truth is what works," declares the confident pragmatist.

Others say it is true because it coheres appropriately with a wider class of statements.  It is consistent  with them, and it, and the wider class of statements, mutually presuppose each other so that there are no arbitrary and disconnected statements from which the statement is deducible.   Getting clear on the coherence theory of truth is never easy because it is not perspicuous what the precise boundaries of coherence are.  

Many say that the statement is propositionally true because it appropriately states what is the case.   Getting precision on what is the case apart from the statement, and what the appropriate way is in which the statement and the extra-linguistic states of affairs relate, is not altogether facile.  What constitutes the criterion by which to adjudicate when a statement appropriately states the case?  If there is an isomorphism between statement and the reality it depicts?  If so, what are the relata of the relations isomorphically obtaining?

In the absence of clear criteria which unfailingly picks out the truth of a putative propositional truth, some claim that the truth of propositional truth is primitive.  One need not have some elaborate theory of meaning which, when appropriately satisfied, delivers truth.   One could start with truth and discern that  meaning in some way is derivative upon that.

Whatever be one's theory, the notion that truth is propositional is standard fare in philosophical thinking.   A philosopher can give alternative accounts of how the truth of "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life" is true.  This much is certain.   But the philosopher runs into a brick wall when trying to think the content of the proposition in which  utterer is identified with Truth itself.  What could this mean?   How could truth be non-propositional?   How can truth be non-linguistic?  What does it mean to say that 'Jesus' is 'Truth'?

One might at this point say that 'truth' just means 'reality', and that Jesus is thus 'real'.   But this way of proceeding is fraught with much difficulty because to say 'Jesus is Truth' is clearly intended to say more than 'Jesus is real', for one would quite glibly say 'the ball is real', but never aver 'the ball is truth'.

There are two more promising steps forward, one Hegelian and one Heideggerian.   Hegel famously claimed, "Diese Gegenstaende sind wahr, wenn sie das sind, was sie sein sollen, d.h. wenn ihre Realitaet ihrem Begriff entspricht" ("Objects are true if they are as they ought to be, that is, when their reality corresponds to their notion."). [Enzyklopaedie, Wissenschaft der Logik (1830), 213, n. 127] Accordingly, Jesus is 'truth' in that he corresponds fully to the concept of what it is to be the God-man.  But is this "correspondence" really non-propositional?   Think what it would be to specify how a thing corresponds without using concepts expressible in language.  How could one thing not be another thing in the absence of that which differentiates?   And how can that which differentiates not finally be expressible in language?

Another way forward is Heideggerian.  Famously Heidegger argued that alethia (truth) is a unconcealing (Unverborgenheit) or as an Entbergung or "unveiling."   Early on Heidegger found the phenomenon of unveiling as the ontological ground for the possibility of truth.  However, later Heidegger admitted that die Frage nach der Unverborgenheit als solcher ist nicht die Frage nach die Wahrheit.  (Maybe he realized that if truth needed an ontological ground in unconcealing, falsity needed one in concealing.)   Whatever might be thought of Heidegger's turn away from truth as unconcealing in his Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens, he remained convinced that truth had something to do with correctness, and that correctness had everything to do with unveiling.  But how can one claim that the experience of unveiling ontologically grounds truth when this experience could as easily be described as truth's effect?

Given what has been said, how is it unquestionably possible for Jesus to be 'the Truth'?   Moreover, if Jesus is identified with God's self-revelation, then how can that revelation be true?   The standard move here is to distinguish between the objective, historical process of revelation and the subjective interpretation of that revelation.  (One might claim a la Pannenberg that a distinction holds between the "outer revelation" and the "inspiration" as the interpretation of these events in the Biblical witnesses.)  While the first is putatively non-propositional, the second is not.  But what is it to be a manifestation of God in and through historical events, that is, in and through particular things?  Furthermore, how could such a manifestation be non-linguistic?  If Stacia is a "true friend," but Bob is not, then what is it about Stacia that distinguishes her over and against Bob; what is that "it" that is not in principle capturable by language?

Twentieth century theology, in its effort to escape the "propositional theory of truth" with respect to divine revelation - - the generally-regarded spurious claim that divine revelation is an impartation of information -- seems to lurch into a semantic crevasse of vanquished lucidity.   Simply put, one  does not know what one is talking about when discoursing about a revelation that is in principle non-propositional.   That God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself could, after all, be true, but what is true is the fact that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.  A revelation that cannot be expressed as fact is finally too amorphous to be revelatory; such a revelation is ultimately a night in which all cows are black.  

The Ruins of Christendom

The Institute of Lutheran Theology will sponsor a theological conference on October 23-24 at its administrative offices located at The Old Sanctuary in Brookings, South Dakota, called "The Ruins of Christendom."

The conference description reads:  "Like post-modernity, this post-Christian era features a retreat into the self, a retreat from objective truth, and a retreat from the objective reality of God as distinct and separate from the self.  This conference will explore how the preaching of God's Word as Law and Gospel breaks through the curvatus in se, establishes Christ as the Way, as the Truth and the Life; and reveals the one true God as an objective reality capable of theophysical causality."

ILT faculty members Dr. Jonathan Sorum, Dr. Jack Kilcrease, Dr. Mark Hillmer, Dr. Dan Lioy, Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt and Dr. George Tsakiridas will offer papers, and there is ample opportunity for discussion.    

At a time when the scandal of the Cross has become for many theologically supine, this ILT conference seeks to return to the pith of Christianity itself: the truth of the Divine's incursion into time, His diremption into suffering and death, and His reconciliation of the world unto Himself. This is all scandalous, of course.  How is it that a particular, concrete historical man suffered, died, was buried and then was resurrected, and that this particular One carries universality?   How does preaching Law and Gospel to our ontologically feckless and insouciant generation discomfit the refractory self?  How does the "wording of the Word" finally avoid theological irrealism?  All and more will be discussed.  Come and join us here!
  

Thinking about Causation

I have recently written a paper entitled 'Creatio ex Nihilo in Luther's Genesis Commentary and the Causal Question'.  The paper argues, inter alia, that the most straightforward way of reading Luther in the Genesis Commentary is to claim that he holds: 'God causally brought about the creation of matter from nothing'. 

In itself this does not seem a particularly controversial claim.  However, when understood within the dominant theological paradigm since Kant, this statement seems highly suspect.   "Of course," the paradigm claims, "God created the heavens and the earth.  Everyone believes that.  It is just that God did not cause the earth to be.  To claim that would be a pernicious category mistake!"

But why should this be?  Why would it be problematical to claim that God causally brought about the universe from nothing?   Is this not straightforward?

It is only straightforward, it seems, if one does not think too deeply about the notion of causality.  Prior to the Enlightenement, it seems, philosophers often mistook reasons and causes.   Within and after the Enlightenment, philosophers have tended to understand causality empirically.  Physical things causally bring about other physical things.  This is the causal game properly played.   To say that the game itself was caused is to violate the rules of the game.  

Thinking about causality has tended to cluster around three views:  1)  Regular theories of causation, 2) Subjunctive and countracausal theories of causation, and 3) Intrinsic relational theories of causation. 

Accordingly, (1) claims 'A causes B' is analyzable into 'A precedes B', 'A-things are constantly conjoined to B-things' and some other conditions about which there is disagreement.  (2) holds that 'A causes B' is analyzable into 'if A were not to occur, B would not occur', or many other candidates.   Finally, (3) holds that there is some intrisic connection between A and B such B is directly produced from A.  (Let us not attend to the air of circularity at this point.) 

Clearly, if one were to want to claim that the universe was brought about by God, they could not hold a regularity theory of divine causation because the production of the universe is a singular event.  This leaves only option (2), (3) or some hybrid thereof.   Now the question arises as to what general tactic is better:  Is divine creatio ex nihilo best understood counterfactually or intrinsically?   My purpose in this blog is to explore a bit the notion of an intrinsic causal relation and ask whether it is possible for it to be utilized as the best analysis of divine causality creatio ex nihilo.  I will leave discussion of counterfactual divine causation to another time. 

The notion of an intrinsic causal relation takes aim at any Humean account of causation claiming that causality must be understood in terms of constant conjunction, temporal priority and spatio contiguity.   Accordingly, such an "externalist" account presupposes a widespread patterns of occurances.  In contravention to this, an intrinsic view of causality holds that cause is an intrinsic relation of power, energy or necessary connection.  I believe that the distinction between intrinsic/extrinsic relationality matter maps well to the distinction between singular causal statements versus "non-singularist" proposals.

According to a singularist approach the truthmaker for a single causal claim is a local relation holding between singular instances.   On this reading, the causal relation does not depend upon occurence of events in the neighborhood of the event in question; the causal relation is intrinsic to the relata and their connecting processes.  Instead of regularities as the truth makers of singular causal statements, local connections are.

The critical point in thinking about an intrinsic relation is this:  'A is intrinsically related to B' if and only if 'the relation is wholly determined by A and B'.   Over and against accounts that would unpack a relationship between A and B as determined by the regularities among a wide set of events and processes, the intrinsic connection of A and B supposes that there is something in A and something in B such that 'A causes B' cannot help but obtain.  

But now let us think about 'God causally brings about the existence of the universe'.   What properties of God and the universe obtain such that it is indeed necessary that 'God causally produces the universe'?

The obvious answer, of course, is that God has as God's very nature -- one might say His natural property -- a production of initial matter/energy and the subsequent formation thereof.  One might then say of the universe that is has its natural property of being produced by divine agency.   Accordingly, 'God creates the universe' is true because there is a being that is God whose nature it is to create, and a universe whose nature it is to be created.  To claim that 'God creates the universe ex nihilo' is simply to claim that there is a being that is God whose nature it is to create all things from absolute nothing, and a universe whose nature it is to be causally produced by the divine from absolute nothing. 

Now all this at one level might seem trivial.   Have we not simply performed some crude semantic joke?  Is it not the cause that we simply have moved the causal problem of divine/universe interaction from relations and placed it in entities having properties? 

At this point one must remember what the point is.   The point is to try to give an account of causality that is philosophically defensible.   Clearly if cause is an extrinsic relation, then we cannot give an account of the singular causal statement 'God creates the universe.'   What I have suggested is that this singular causal statement is captured by appeal to an intrinsic relation which itself is captured by the natural properties of the relata.  

The question whether or not their are any philosophical grounds for asserting the truth of the single causal statement is not one I wish to entertain here.   I take it that theology has always claimed that 'God creates the heavens and the earth'.  My point here is simply to show that it is conceptually coherent to think such divine/universe causality.   As it turns out, it is no category mistake.  

Masters of Arts Degrees from the Institute of Lutheran Theology

Readers of this blog know about the Institute of Lutheran Theology, its theological commitments, and its STM and M. Div. programs.   Readers may have missed, however, our recent announcement of three new Master of Arts programs, one in Biblical Studies, one in Theology and another in Religion.   Please indulge me as I briefly address these new ILT programs.

All three degree programs are designed for those students already having a B. A. or B. S. who want to study classical theology and seek a real intellectual challenge.   The degrees are profitably pursued by those wanting a M. A. to bolster their present teaching position, for those church leaders seeking more education, and for those intellectually curious who realize that the attainment of  knowledge is itself an intrinsic end.   All three are non-thesis degrees requiring the successful completion of 33 hours of graduate credit.

The Masters of Arts in Biblical Studies (MABS) offers the following curriculum:


Required Courses:  Total Credits = 33
Core Courses (9 Credits)

• BT299: Introduction to Greek (0 cr.)
• BT 300: New Testament Greek (3 cr.)
• BT 310: Biblical Hebrew (3 cr.)
• BT 301: Lutheran Biblical Interp. (3 cr.)

Exegetical Courses (24 Credits)

Old Testament (12 Credits)

• BT 401: The Pentateuch & Writings (3 cr.)
• BT 402: Wisdom & The Prophets (3 cr.)
• BT 490: Topics in Old Testament (6 cr.)

New Testament (12 Credits)

• BT 450: The Gospels (3 cr.)
• BT 451: Paul & His Legacy (3 cr.)
• BT 452: Epistles & Formation of the New Testament (3 cr.)
• BT 491: Topics in New Testament (6 cr.)

The Masters of Arts in Theology (MAT) lists the following requirements:


Program Requirements: Total Credits = 33

• BT 301: Lutheran Biblical Interpretation (3 Credits)
• EPR 301: Faith, Knowledge, and Reason (3 Credits)
• EPR: 302: God, Logic, & Semantics (3 Credits)
• HST 301: History of Christian Thought I: Origins to 1500 (3 Credits)
• HST 302: History of Christian Thought II: The Reformation (3 Credits)
• HST 303: History of Christian Thought III: 1700-1900 (3 Credits)
• HST 304: Twentieth Century Theology (3 Credits)
• HST 351: The Lutheran Confessions in Context (3 Credits)
• HST 401: Creation & The Triune God (3 Credits)
• HST 402: Christology (3 Credits)
• HST 403: Church, Spirit, & The Two Kingdoms (3 Credits)

Finally, the Masters of Arts in Religion (MAR) offers this curriculum: 

Program Requirements:  Total Credits = 33

• BT 301: Lutheran Biblical Interpretation (3 Credits)
• EPR 301: Faith, Knowledge, and Reason (3 Credits)

6 credits in Biblical Studies: (courses with a BT prefix)

6 credits in Church History: (HST 301-304, 310, 350, 351)

6 credits in Theology, Ethics, or Philosophy of Religion: (HST 401-3, 450 courses with an EPR prefix)

9 credits in one of the three areas of specialization:

• Biblical Studies
• Theology and Church History
• Ethics & Philosophy of Religion

All courses are delivered in real-time using video-streaming technology that allows students to see and interact with the professor and with each other.   ILT permanent teaching faculty include Dr. Robert Benne, Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt, Dr. Mark Hillmer, Dr. Paul Hinlicky, Rev. Timothy Rynearson, and Dr. Jonathan Sorum.  Please check the Institute of Lutheran Theology website for more details on our programs!    

Acting in Conformity with the Law versus Acting From or Because of the Law

When Lutherans come to think about God's Law, they sometimes think and say some rather confusing things.   Oftentimes this confusion reigns because they don't properly distinguish from among the nature of law, its motivation and its effects.    

Properly speaking, the law is that which ought to be the case, as it is commanded and enforced by a proper authority: God.  While the law is not a description of what actually happens, it is the real reality of what should happen: That which ought to be is as that which ought to be.  Accordingly, Lutherans should be nomological realists; they should hold that the  law is something objectively present outside of human awareness, perception, conception and language.  Thinking of such a law is, however, prone to abstraction.

Over the last centuries, Lutherans have been busy trying to follow Luther's lead in not thinking about the law abstractly, but rather considering it concretely.  Accordingly, the law is not simply an eternal set of prescriptions, but is itself a power.  The law, in fact, accuses.  It kills.

But the question arises: In what sense can the law accuse and kill?   Even asking this question seems misguided to Lutheran insiders.   How could a Lutheran theologian seriously suggest that he knows not the sense in which the law accuses and kills?   Does he not get even the basics of Lutheran theology?

Seemingly straightforward questions that somehow get asked anyway generally suggest that there has been some adjustment in the underlying set of assumptions or paradigm.   If one starts with the reality of human existence and the human Urerlebnis of being held fully responsible for not being able to do what one ought (Elert), then indeed asking in what sense the law accuses and kills is like asking in what sense water is wet.   However, if one is serious about theological realism, then things change a bit.  The law gains an ontological vitality not entailed by its phenomenological contour.   Now the law is because God is.  The law becomes an expression of what God is in and through creation.   A divine nomological ontology now sharply distinguishes the law in se from its effects pro nobis, and from our own motivations to do the law.

Kant famously distinguished acting because of or from duty from merely acting in accordance with duty.  For Kant, the motivation for doing an action is what is at issue morally.  I can save the old lady about to be hit by the truck for a number of reasons, some quite selfish or misguided.   (Maybe I don't like to see the hoods of trucks dented or dirtied.)   To act solely on the basis that saving her is the right thing to do is to act morally for the right reason.   (Kant used the example of the shopkeeper who acted merely in accordance with duty - - and not from duty - - in not duping his customer because the shopkeeper wants to build a good reputation and a better business.)

The distinction between acting in accordance with a rule or acting from, because or due to a rule is helpful, I think, in getting clear on how the law accuses and kills.

God wills x but Bob cannot seemingly or easily do x.   This willing of x by God is real: it exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.   Now Bob can live "according to the law" by so acting with respect to x because of, from or due to x.  Such life under the law is itself a fundamental existential response to the reality of the law.   One can attempt to be moral and do what it is that one ought to do out of  proper motivation: One acts solely because this action is commanded by God.   While acting from the law is good for Kant, it is bad for Luther (and all of us generally) because to act because of the law is to prioritize, reify, and focus upon the fact of x.  Such prioritizing, reifying and focusing upon x can only push one further away from the author of x.

Fortunately, what is bad of Kant is good for Luther (and all of us generally).   While to act merely in accordance with duty is, for Kant, not really to be acting in a morally manifest way - -though he clearly says that such acting can be wholly appropriate - - acting in accordance with the law can be for Christians a highly laudable state.   (One should act so that one's right-hand does not know what one's left-hand is doing.)  Grace is eschewing a life lived "according to the law" so that one can "act in accordance with the law" and not due to the law.  Acting merely in accordance with the law is what grace accomplishes.   The law is taken up, not abolished.   What is abolished is acting from the law; what remains is acting in accordance with the law from proper inclination (spontaneous thankfulness) and not from the demands of the law itself.   Such an acting is neither accusatory nor nefarious; it simply is on the basis of He who is.

If we keep with the central story of Christianity - - there is a God and this God has a definite intentionality for His creation - - then the Lutheran focus on Law and Gospel is properly understood as a pertaining not primarily to the order of things, but mainly to the order of the human heart with respect to things.  (I am not wholly denying here that nature is out of conformity with the law under the conditions of the Fall, but simply not thematizing it here.)   Is the primal ought manifest to human beings as accusation or gift?   Is it finally that which kills or that which makes alive?   It all goes back to the motivation of the human heart, and with respect to the importance of motivation Kant was fully in accord with Luther.  What is different is the nature of motivation.   Luther knew what Paul proclaimed:  To act due to the law was to live according to the flesh.   But to be gifted to act freely merely in accordance with the law is the most blessed life available to all; it is to live in the dynamics of the Spirit.

Why Meaning Matters

A number of years ago when the MacNiel/Lehrer Report still appeared on PBS, there was an economist who answered a particular question using some of the technical language of his discipline.   The response from the other guest was instructive.   Listening to what the economist had offered, he remonstrated, "Why, that's just theological."  

The economist had clearly taken a heavy hit.  Calling his language theological in that context was to suggest a number of things:  1) His language was not clear, 2) His language was ambiguous, 3) His language made only dubious claims to truth, 4) His language was needlessly complex, 5) His language was useless. 

I have from the beginning of my time in theology sought a particular precision.  The reason for this is simply that very early on I learned how captivating theological language could be.   It seemed to me that one could enter another world by using such language.   When I was young it was great fun to read theology, to envision new possibilities, and to address theological problems.   But something happened to me on my way to a Ph. D.   

I began to realize that everything I was thinking when I was thinking theologically was comprised of propositions comprised of terms and predications of identity and attribution.  I began to think that if what I was thinking was to be true, I must get very clear on what it was precisely that I was thinking so I knew what it precisely was that was to be true.   This meant that I must analyze the language of my theological thinking to see what precisely it meant.  

But when I began to explore what it is precisely that theological language meant, I ran up against a host of problems.  Though I could use theological language correctly, - - I could use it in such ways that fit the linguistic situation (one might say, I could satisfy the appropriate stimulus/response conditionals theologically) - - I did not know exactly how my theological language related to other kinds of discourse.   When talking to people who did not know how to employ theological language like I thought I then did, I started to realize that I did not always know how to translate what I was saying theologically into types of language that they grasped, language that related to the world in which both they and I lived.  In this way, I began to worry about what precise claims I was making theologically and whether there was evidence to support those claims I was making.  

Long ago I concluded that the more one likely agonizes over what precisely one means when doing theology, the less theology one is likely to do.  Wonderful, learned and deeply evocative theology can be written without one knowing precisely what one means in the writing.  This is, of course, to a degree true of all disciplines.   Does one know the precise identity conditions of each term one uses in fundamental particle physics?   While the answer to this is perhaps, "no," there is a difference.   One has a public, objective semantic yardstick in fundamental particle physics that one does not possess in theology.   This is why one can look up the precise meaning of a term in the first context but not the second.   In theology, the meaning of terms and phrases depends deeply on who is employing them.  In theology it is fundamentally meaning  that matters.

The Institute of Lutheran Theology believes that it is critically important to grasp the semantic question in theology.   We in the developed countries of the West live at a time in which great numbers of people are abandoing the use of theological language.   The reason, in my opinion, is that far too many now think the language is not clear and unambiguous, that it makes dubious claims, and that is is complex and useless. For many people, in fact, the clearer the language becomes - - I am thinking now of some expressions of Evangelical theology - - the less likely many think it is to be true, and the more likely it is to be true, the less clear they believe it is.   Somehow in theology, meaning and truth, the twin pillars of semantics, have become inversely proportional.  

I have been posting this week about the Institute of Lutheran Theology.   At ILT we are serious about studying theology seriously.   This means, among other things, that not only God and his work in Jesus Christ is at issue for us, but also the meaning of God working in Jesus Christ.  The reason meaning matters is that it is necessary for truth, and when the truth at issue is the Truth, then the meaning that matters is that which really matters.    

The Institute of Lutheran Theology's Masters of Sacred Theology

Readers of this blog soon realize that I have theological interests.  This is why I continued to be engaged in the building of the Institute of Lutheran Theology, a new Lutheran School of Theology centered in Jesus Christ which profoundly engages questions of theological truth as they relate to our contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon. 

Did you know that the Institute of Lutheran Theology offers a Masters of Sacred Theology, the Sacrae Theologiae Magister or STM?  This post-M. Div. degree consists of six graduate courses and a thesis (21 hours), and offers tracks in Reformation Theology, Contemporary Lutheran Theology, and Issues in Science/Religion and the Philosophy of Religion.  The STM allows motivated students the opportunity to pursue higher level coursework, either as a preparatory step for study at the doctorate level or as a means of professional development.  

ILT is offering two courses this fall in the STM program, a seminar in Pannenberg taught by Dr. Paul Hinlicky and the required methodology course taught by me. Course descriptions are as follows:
  

• HST 590:  Contemporary Lutheran Dogmatics: Pannenberg's Systematic Theology:  This seminar examines all three volumes of Wolfhart Pannenberg's systematic theology. 

• EPR 580:  Methodology and Approaches to Graduate Study:  This required course introduces graduate students to the standard critical approaches and issues relevant to doing successful and informed work in historical theology, contemporary theology and the philosophy of religion.   Students will read primary sources from both the continental and analytical traditions.  Historical, phenomenological, existential, hermeneutical, analytical, social-scientific and post-structuralist approaches are examined.

Students are expected to possess mastery of verbal and written English for course participation and written work. There are no other specific language requirements for the STM, but students researching particular areas will be expected to have working knowledge of the languages needed to complete their research.  Depending upon the student’s interests and project, this may include knowledge of Greek, Latin, German, French or another modern foreign language.  Because of the importance of primary text reading in the German sources, ILT occasionally offers theological German as a benefit to its students - - though the course does not count towards fulfilling the 21 hour requirement for graduation.

•   HST 585:  Theological German.  Students wanting to do research in German may take this course which introduces the theological vocabulary and successful techniques of reading theological German.

Students from all religious traditions are invited to study.  All courses are delivered in real time and on-line through our video conferencing platform.  All students see and interact with each other and the professor.  For more information about ILT programming, please visit our website or call 605-692-9337. Students can still apply for fall admission into the STM program.  Our admission requirements are listed below.
 

• Prior completion of an M.Div. degree, an M.A. in theology or closely related field of study, or a related degree demonstrating preparation for advanced theological work
• Completion of application form
• Three recommendations from individuals with knowledge of likely academic performance
• Official graduate and undergraduate transcripts must be sent directly to ILT
• (International applicants only) International applicants are required to submit a score on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The score must be 550 or above, with an essayrating of at least 5.0, and cannot be more than one year old.

  

The Semantics of 'Jesus Christ'

Oftentimes we miss the things that are most obvious.  This is true in all areas of life, and in theology especially.  What is obvious, but not often enough clearly thought through, is the way in which the meaning of 'Jesus Christ' has changed in the past couple of centuries.  There are vast differences in the way Bultmann and Irenaeus understand 'Jesus Christ', differences so vast that Irenaeus and Bultmann could best be said to understand 'Jesus Christ' in radically different ways.  Unfortunately, theology has often failed to realize this and to address the fact and nature of the difference.   In order to see this all more clearly, let us reflect upon an example from baseball. 

A pitcher in a baseball game is someone who throws the ball past the batter.   He would not be a pitcher if he were not to do this.   The implicit rule is something like this, "If x is a baseball pitcher, then ceteris paribus x will occupy a position y feet from home plate, and x will attempt to throw the ball over home plate such that the batter will either not hit the ball on three hitable pitches,  or hit the ball in the air such that it can be caught, or on the ground such that a throw can be made to first base prior to the batter reaching first base after hitting the ball."

Now I don't for a moment think this is a very accurate stating of the rule in question, but it should at least show what it is that I am thinking when I say that within the game of baseball, there are clear rules governing the role of pitcher.   If I am talking about the rules governing actual pitchers and batters and actual games, I could be said to be speaking of the rules in the material mode.   However, if I am talking about the way that the term 'pitcher' relates to other terms like 'hitter', 'catcher', 'innings', I could be said to be speaking of the rules in the formal mode.

One of the great advances of twentieth century philosophy was to see that much language we take to be in the material mode can be more deeply studied, and its nature clarified, if we interpret such language to be in the formal mode.   The shift from talk in the material mode of objects and properties to the formal mode of terms and predicates is sometimes termed "semantic ascent."  (For instance, we might cease talking about whether unicorns exist and began talking about whether the word 'unicorn' has any useful role to play in our theory.)  While undertaking a semantic ascent in baseball may have negligible ontological significance, doing so with respect to pi mesons certainly does. How so?

If we are operating in the material mode and say that a pi meson is a hadron with bayron number of 0, we are declaring (probably) that for all x, x is a pi meson just in case x is a hadron with the bayron number of 0, and there is some such x.  In the formal mode, and after taking proper semantic ascent, we claim merely that in our background meta-language the term 'pi meson' can be substituted salve veritate with the locution 'a hadron with the bayron number of 0' and that the term 'pi meson' has a useful role to play in our assumed fundamental particle theory.

I like to talk about simple semantic matters in the philosophy of science as a way into discussion within theology generally.   Take the classic definition of Chalcedon on the two natures of Christ:

"We also teach that we apprehend this one and only Christ-Son, Lord, only-begotten — in two natures; and we do this without confusing the two natures, without transmuting one nature into the other, without dividing them into two separate categories, without contrasting them according to area or function. The distinctiveness of each nature is not nullified by the union. Instead, the "properties" of each nature are conserved and both natures concur in one "person" and in one reality [hypostasis]. They are not divided or cut into two persons, but are together the one and only and only-begotten Word [Logos], God, the Lord Jesus Christ."

Now one could regard this to be a class of statements in the object language making a batch of ontological statements about the person of Christ.   According to this interpretation, we must hold that there are such things as 'natures' comprised of classes of properties that append to the person (hypostasis) of Christ.   These natures are distinctive classes of properties that are famously neither confused, transmuted or divided, contrasted, but nonetheless somehow "united" in the one person.  It has be notoriously difficult to try to clarify the ontological situation here.

But one could perform a semantic ascent and place such discourse into the formal mode.   Now the Definition gets read as a specification of the rules by which one will use a particular language.  It is permitted that the term 'human' and term 'divine' both be predicated of the name 'Jesus Christ' even though the term 'human nature' has a set of entailments normally not in the set of entailments from 'divine nature'.   (One could perform this semantic ascent in myriad and sundry ways, so please excuse my clumsiness here.)

In the formal mode, the ontological commitments of material mode interpretation are jettisoned, and the issue devolves to one of proper application of rules.   Can a coherent set of rules be specified which permits the correct Christological affirmations and disallows those termed heretical?   If such rules can be specified, then we are in a position - - with much of the tradition actually - - to talk about a specific theological grammar.   The issue has become one of syntax.   How are the words of theological theory used?

Now I want to introduce another topic that will connect with what I have just said.  Notice how differently one investigates the ontological and the soteriological?   While a causal analysis is not entailed in the first, it is in the second.   Take, for instance, a set of abstract (existing) objects and the relationships that hold between them.   The set of all triples does exist and, for all I know, it may be identical with the number '3'.   One can make ontological assertions about these objects and no causal connection between them - - or between them and me - - is presupposed.   But notice how different it is to speak about Jesus Christ.   Here the very logic of discourse about Christ presupposes a causal connection with humanity - - including me.  Christ could not be Christ without there being a saving causal relationship with respect to me.    (Or at least this was true up until quite recently in the theological tradition.  Clearly a Tillichian could hold that the symbol of the Christ existentially empowers without saying that the symbol has in itself causal power.   The symbol in itself could be causally inert, yet a particular subject could respond to it in a particular way.  This would make the symbol an abstract object.  This understanding of 'Christ' is, I would argue, quite different from that of the tradition.)

Now I wish to introduce a final topic.    Philosophers of science routinely distinguish realist from nonrealist interpretations of scientific theory.   A realist with respect to pi mesons would regard the material mode presentation of pi meson theory - - theory in the object language - - to be making ontological claims about the way that the world is apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.   An irrealist interpretation would note the way that the object language of the theory behaves and understands that this behavior could have explanatory and predictive power - - in terms of the ways the rules work - - but would nonetheless not want to claim that in the nature of the case the world has such objects, properties and causal relationships specified by the theories.

Finally we come to the point.   The semantics of 'Jesus Christ' at the time of the Definition assumed a material mode reading which was thoroughly soteriological.   As the tradition developed and, in particular, was transformed by the Enlightenment, this original material mode ontological interpretation was increasingly transformed to a formal mode interpretation.   (This argument can be made, I think, though there are a great  many prima facie objections to this generalization that must be met.)  As we moved away from the nineteenth century and its penchant for various forms of reductionism in theology, we entered into a phase of twentieth century theology that would assume - - whether it said so or not - - a regnant  formal mode interpretation of theological language.   What was important was the regular ways in which theological language was employed and the use to which it was put, not the ontology associated with a classical understanding of that language.  (How else could metaphysics become disassociated from theology?)   Theological irrealism could be made completely consistent with the correct use of theological language.  As Wittgenstein trenchantly remarked, "What is important here is that the language-game is played."

The thing that is closest to Lutheran theology is the meaning of 'Jesus is the Christ'.   It is this meaning, I argue, that has been fundamentally changed over the past centuries.   Though the language-game continues to be played, and the rules can remain in principle specifiable, an unnoticed move to the formal mode has in reality happened.   That this has happened is evidenced by how ontology has become divorced from eschatology.   Eschatological/soteriological interpretations of theological language that are confidently assumed to not be ontological clearly evidence that the previous material mode interpretation of theological language has become in actuality a formal mode interpretation.   No longer even is it deemed theologically central that theological realism hold, a realism that would have seemed necessary to the tradition if one were to have any real soteriology.   

What has happened on our watch is that we have allowed the language of theology to remain formally correct while we have come to deem it relevant that it in fact refers!   But clearly in the theological tradition reference was central to the question of the semantics of  theological language.   Unlike irrealist interpretations of scientific theory, realism in theology becomes necessary to hold the semantics of theological language consistent with the theological tradition.  

  

   

An Interpretive Center

People sometimes remark that I oftentimes seem to write about putative philosophical issues rather then staying directly on task and use the theological language of our great Lutheran tradition.   Why would this be?  Is it that I somehow am not interested deeply in the traditional objects of Lutheran theological reflection?

No, this is not true.   I believe that the center of Lutheran theology is the proclamation of the free grace of Jesus Christ appropriated in faith.   When serving in the parish, I preached this each and every week.   I believe that the external Word interprets itself, striking the human heart both as Law and Gospel, and that through this Word we are justified and made free lords before God and dutiful servants to one another.   I believe that the great ecumenical creeds of the Church make definite truth-claims, and I routinely confess their truth.   I believe that Jesus Christ was true God and true man, and believe in Lutheran fashion in the genus maiestaticum, as well as the genus idiomaticum and genus apotelesmaticum.  So why talk about all of the philosophical issues if this theological core of beliefs is at the center of things?

The reason I am interested in discussing philosophical issues (mostly semantic and ontological) is because while Lutherans can still say all of the right things, they don't necessarily mean by these things what Lutherans once meant.

But why should this be a problem if all the same things are confessed?   Surely there can be different philosophischen Rictungen among confessing Lutherans.   After all, did not Wilhelm Hermann famously argue that metaphysics (and its variations) are irrelevant to solid, Lutheran confessional theology?   Did not the young Luther scholar Wilhelm Link, (who died much too soon in the war) argue that Luther claimed the same thing?  Isn't the greatness of Lutheran theology found in the freedom of interpretation in one's confessions?   Surely, we ought not to confuse the left hand and the right hand of God, the hand of reason, law and philosophy, and the hand of faith, grace and theology!

Luther in his various disputations would occasionally quip that what was finally important in disputing was an agreement not merely in speech, but in the things (in res).  An agreement as to what is held or asserted has been crucially important in the development of doctrine generally and within the Lutheran Confessions specifically.   The question is this:  How does this Lutheran commitment to the truth of propositions from the tradition and the Confessions get appropriated in our time?   My considered opinion is that there is a great deal of confusion here, and my fear is that this confusion could be disastrous for the future of Lutheran theology. 

When one plays baseball, one plays by baseball rules.  There are three outs per side, both teams batting once constitutes an inning, and there are nine innings in a game.  (I am thinking about the major and minor leagues with respect to this last point.)   Proper theological language has rules as well.   One must know how to use the word 'Father' and the word 'Son'.  Specifically, one must be able to say 'The Son is God', 'The Father is God', without saying 'The Father is the Son'.  Rules permitting the right expressions in the right linguistic circumstances and prohibiting the wrong ones in the wrong circumstances are notoriously difficult to formulate, but there is little doubt that there exist some set of rules that undergird the modus loquendi theologicus.   

So far so good.   One could in principle formulate a theological game as well as a game of black hole theory.   Within contemporary cosmological theory, certain terms occur in particular statements and not within others.  Prima facie there does not seem to be much different between the formal structure of a Trinitarian language and that language of any heavily theoretical discipline.   There is a proper and improper way of using terms and phrases.   The question now confronts us:  Are the semantics of the two games the same?

On this there is much difference of opinion, of course.    Many would say that there is extra-linguistic set of referents to which the language of black holes is anchored that is not available for the theoretical language of the Trinity.   But why would this be so?   Why would one think there is some res that black hole theory has the theology does not have?    One would not think this - - unless one had previous opinions about what is possible ontologically for the Trinity over and against black holes.

Since the time of the Enlightenment, there has been an increasing sense in the former Christian West that the language of theology does not make truth claims.   While most within popular culture - - I am not talking here about philosophers of science - - would claim that there are clear truth conditions for black hole theory, they would not, if they reflected some, claim easily that there are similar truth conditions in theology.  The reason, of course, is that for tens of millions of people theological language simply can't be making truth claims because such language is an expression of individual and cultural value.  There simply is no realm of theological facts such that the rules of theological language can govern a linguistic usage that can bring the language into contact with a domain of extra-linguistic referents.  The fact/value distinction is wholly enshrined within contemporary culture, and this descendent from the Enlightenment must be dealt with before theological language is afforded the same opportunity to refer as the language of black holes.

My claim has been and continues to be that the interpretive center has been lost within much of Lutheran theology in the first part of the twenty-first century.   The problem has been that a general cultural/intellectual commitment to the Enlightenment paradigm, especially Kant, has led millions to presuppose different semantic possibilities for that language than that which generally characterized the tradition.   I am not saying that much of this is explicit.  (Increasingly few people even know the name 'Kant'.)  But middle school children learn that science is about facts and religion is about values.   They don't know the torturous intellectual history that brought civilization to this "insight."  They are taught this fact/value distinction as if it fell from the heavens.   It is part of the Enlightenment paradigm, a paradigm that functions as the default ontological posit of our time.   What I am saying is this: To continue to divorce theology and metaphysics and to allow the fact/value distinction to stand inviolate, is to allow theological language not to be about truth, and it is thus to allow theological language to assume a different semantics than it previously had.

The Institute of Lutheran Theology is grounded in Scripture and Confessions.   It holds assiduously to classical confessional Lutheran theology.  Professors at ILT are passionate about their commitment to Scriptural truth and authority as it is known and understood through the hermeneutical lens of the Confessions.   While students are exposed to the great Biblical exegetes and the great theologians of the tradition, they learn the most important thing, I believe, that a school of theology can impart: ILT believes that it is true that God was in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and that because of this truth we have good grounds to preach and teach in His Name.