Luther and Heidegger: Modeling the Destruction of Metaphysics

The International Luther Congress beckons this summer and I am thinking about doing something on Luther and Heidegger in the seminar on Luther and Philosophy. I am old enough now to remember Luther Congresses 35 years ago and more where this topic was not of deep interest. Having written a dissertation on Luther's theological semantics, I was from my first Luther Congress interested in these matters, and remember being introduced to the Finnish work in this area in Oslo in 1988. 

The following is the abstract for my paper on Luther and Heidegger this Sumer.  The seminar headed by Jennifer Hockenbery asks participants to relate Luther to the philosophical tradition through consideration of the notion of freedom. 

________

Much has been written about Heidegger’s indebtedness to Luther (along with Paul and Augustine) in the development of central themes of Being and Time e.g., death, fallenness, guilt, sin, freedom, etc. Heidegger breaks here with Husserl and western philosophy’s dream to frame a consistent and coherent theory adequate and applicable to all the facts, both physical and metaphysical. In the early 1920s Heidegger was interested in the phenomenology of Christian life, what it was to-be-unto-the-Parousia. He discerned in Luther a friend in uncovering the meaning of factical Christian existence, that primordial self-understanding from, and through which, any talk of theological “facts” can emerge.  

But the parallels between Luther’s critique of late medieval Scholasticism and Heidegger’s critique of Catholic theology in his time -- both are interested in the destructionof the abstract metaphysical in favor of the phenomenology of concrete lived existence – can occlude what profoundly differentiates the two approaches: Luther’s “Christian being” cannot be conceived apart from an encounter with the Other, an encounter that cannot be interpreted either as Zuhandensein or Vorhandensein. One must not confuse the experientia of Luther’s theologian with the experience of the peasant or particle physicist. The phenomenological ontological approach “laying bare” the being-in-the-world of both occludes the “stand on being” assumed in the approach itself, an approach that itself finally must stand before God. 

In this paper, I review the research into Luther and Heidegger with an eye toward towards an appropriation of the start differences between them, particularly with respect to the question of freedom. What is constructive here is my employment of model theory to show the truth-conditions of the sentences used in the analysis. Clarity on the semantics of sets of sentences about Luther’s experientia, Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology of Christian life, and the enterprise of their comparison provides greater precision and accuracy in evaluating the differences in their respective projects. 

_________

I have for some time thought that theologians should know the basics of model theory so that they might gain greater clarity into their own theological and ontological assertions. I will endeavor to provide a brief introduction to model theory in this summer's paper, and use it to clarify the difference between Luther and the early Heidegger's project of disclosing the primordial factic life of the Christian prior to the making and evaluation of abstract theological assertions.  

Curb, Mirror and Light

I

Lutheran theology has always been interested in the usus legis ("uses of the law"), and has argued passionately as to whether there are two usus legis or three.  

Luther oftentimes limits the law to two uses, its civil use in curbing sin, and its theological use in showing one's sinfulness and driving one to Christ.  In later Lutheran theology a third use was highlighted, a use consonant with some of what Luther sometimes said about the law.  In the second edition (1535) of his Loci, Melanchthon explicitly suggests a third use, one that functions as norming the contour of the believer's sanctified life.  

But while what I have thus far said sums up what many say about Luther and Melanchthon on the uses, neither theologian actually standardly employs the terminology of usus, preferring instead to use other phrases, e.g., Luther's use of officium legis in the 1537 Smalcald Articles connoting "office" or "function."  As a matter of fact, it was only in the wake of the Formula of Concord that usus legis became standard language in Lutheran theology.  Generations of theology students, both Reformed and Lutheran, have since learned the usus legis in this tripartite way: The one law functions in three ways: (1) to curb sin within civil society, (2) to mirror to us our sinfulness before God, and (3) to light our way in living out the sanctified life. 

Controversy about the putative "third use of the law" within Lutheran theology has centered on the issue of whether the law whose essence it is to accuse can remain law while yet being being properly employed as a guide. If the law as God's left hand always accuses, then how can it function in the grace of God's right hand to guide Christian living. One can freely adopt rules of thumb for Christian living consonant with Gospel proclamation, but these rules are not the law qua law.  

While the controversy between two or three uses of the law in Lutheran theology seemingly continues unabated, it is not my desire here to engage the historical issue further. I am rather interested in appropriating  the metaphors of curb, mirror and light spawned in the usus legis discussion for use in the context of establishing and justifying ethical standards and positions.  

II

Imagine a scenario in which Doctor Jack must make the decision as to whether to disconnect his patient Bob from life support.  Jack knows that Bob's recovery is unlikely, and realizes that as a rule of thumb, the hospital could likely not afford to keep patients like Bob on life support when the chances of recovery are so dismal.  Still Jack is reluctant to unhook Bob.  Why? 

When Fred later asked Jack why he did not unhook Bob, Jack grew pensive a moment and said the he was guided by the Hippocratic Oath and its admonition to do no harm to the patient. Since unhooking Bob seemed to Jack as an effecting of harm on Bob, Jack allowed Bob to remain connected.  He was surprised two days later to learn that, against all odds, Bob's condition had improved and he would likely survive. Dr. Jack was happy that he had not unhooked Bob, glad that he took the Hippocratic oath seriously, and relieved that Bob's condition did not simply worsen as anyone familiar with the relevant medical literature would have predicted.  Indeed, Jack felt like he had dodged a bullet, and the he himself was no less fortunate than Bob. 

III

The example illustrates the position that we often find ourselves within when reflecting about morality and ethics. In the concrete ethical situation we often find that we do start with some moral or ethical principles seemingly incumbent upon us even when we don't reflect upon them. These unthought principles do often strike us as something true to which we must conform. One might say that they strike us immediately as a curb upon are possible action.  

Jack unthinkingly affirmed keeping Bob hooked to life support, and only later in conversation with Fred tried to clarify why.  That which ought to be done simply confronted Jack, and Jack's actions were clearly curbed by that which stood over and against him.  While Doctor Jack is no philosopher, he experienced the principle of "do not harm the other" as something real, as something given to him and not constructed by him.  The principle not to harm came upon him in its otherness as law. Accordingly, one can imagine a code of such laws defining what is permissible, prohibited or obliged for a set of people in similar concrete ethical situations.  Moral and ethical codes do often successfully curb behavior. Social contexts in which they are present often appear better ordered and more efficient than when they are absent. 

But the immediacy of the encounter with this ethical other does not sustain itself over time. The curbing function of the code pushes in upon the self, exposing to the self that it has chosen the curb that curbs.  When this happens the curb becomes a mirror, a reflector of the self.    

In standing over and against the curb, the one curbed comes to know herself as part and parcel of establishing and sustaining the curb.  The curb for others becomes a mirror to the self; one recognizes one's own hand in the establishment of the curb and its perpetuation. After all, how could a curb be a curb if it is not permitted to be so? 

Clearly, one must afford recognition to the curb as Other in order for one to be curbed by it.  But in reflecting upon the putative alterity of the curb, one notices that the curb qua curb wears a human face.  Just as there are no self-identifying objects, properties, relations, events or states of affairs apart from human consciousness, neither are there self-identifying ethical norms governing our behavior without our cooperation and tacit agreement.  On closer reflection, the heternomony of the curb reveals itself as a posit of our own autonomy!  It is we after all who project curbs into nature. In staring at the face of this putative external curb, we come to recognize our face in the curb. Unfortunately, when we recognize the curb to be a projection of our own subjectivity, the power of the curb to curb is undercut. That which appeared to be objective has now become subjective, and with this we touch our own freedom. It is we who create the ethical world in which we live; it is we who are the rule makers.  The law in its externality has now become an expression of our own subjective desire, and the problem presses down upon us: How could that which we create come to judge the one who creates it?  

All of us implicitly realize that the efficiencies produced in codes that curb can last only as long as people grant the possibility that the curbing code is not merely an arbitrary and capricious projection of some arbitrary and capricious subject or subjects. 

IV

When the immediacy of the curb has been broken by the mediacy of the mirror, one is left with the question regnant in our time: How is it possible to use terms like 'good', 'evil', 'right', and 'wrong' without admitting that these appellations are deployed on the basis of my own desires, my own pleasure, and my own happiness?  How can saying 'John is bad' mean something more that I disapprove of John? 

It is here that the metaphor of light is necessary. Once one realizes that ethical properties are not baked into the universe in the same way that chemical interactions, one has a choice: Either admit that the subject devours any putative objectivity of ethics, or look for those deeper conditions that give rise to ethical predicates in the first place.  The metaphor of light points to the back-and-forth movement of reflection that is ultimately responsible both for the curbs and the mirroring that exposes such curbs as subjective.  The light of ethical reflection drives more deeply into the ultimate grounds for the law that binds.  It recognizes that the recognition of this law as driven by the subject is itself short-lived and ultimately irrational.  How indeed could it be that that ethical reality that seems so close to me, that reality that governs my behavior with respect to others, simply is a projection of me? 

After the heteronomy of the code is seen to rest in the autonomy of the subject, the subject realizes finally that there is no longer otherness, that the ought has been vanquished, and accordingly, that the deepest experience of human beings being confronted by what they ought to do -- and their not living up that ought -- is wholly counterfeit. What an irrational world the projecting self inhabits! The very experience of ought that seemingly separates human beings from the higher beasts is itself grounded upon nothing.  It tokens nothing deeper.  It is simply an unfortunate result of not taking mirroring seriously enough.  \While men and women can reason from what they want to how to get it, reason does not operate at all in establishing what they ought to want.

But here again the light shines forth. It is a light that takes up the immediate code and its negation into a higher synthesis.  It is a light that allows reason to operate not as a cipher of the self's desires, but as the logos speaking a divine order.  The light draws us more deeply into conversation.  It makes us ask how parts of the code fit together and for whom parts of the code are privileged. It asks us questions of moral theory and ethics. It distinguishes types of consequentialism and compares these types with deontological perspectives. The light seeks a comprehensive theory to stand behind the curb, a theory which points to the incapacity of the self to account ultimately for the experience of the curb. 

In the reflection of the light, we are drawn into the deeper questions of morality and ethics, questions that drive us to admit that we are not who we ought to be, and that we are not ultimately who we now are -- questions that cannot be entertained without entering deeply into the tragedy of our current situation of not being able to affirm deeply that Ground and Abyss that we cannot finally deny.  '

Human beings find themselves in fields of meaning, purpose and value that point to the Divine deeply hidden within the fissures of broken experience itself.  The light which lightens the curb and its mirror is a light whose reason is ultimately ontological, it pertains to the Being of the hidden God whose absence is present in a forgotten Cross on a lonely hill, a Cross in which time itself briefly nested.  And so it is that Curb and Mirror unite in that light that shows itself as Word.  The heteronomous and autonomous have both been cancelled yet preserved in a uneasy theonomy.  Ultimately, the Curb and Mirror must be understood from the standpoint of the Light, a light forever constituting itself as the divine in, under, around and beyond human life itself.

Transcendental Self-Reference, Spirit and God

I remember distinctly my first reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I had learned about the semantic distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, and the epistemological distinction between a priori and a posteriori judgments. Kant famously asked in the Critique about the legitimacy of synthetic a priori judgments, that is, judgments that are not dependent upon empirical experience in which, nevertheless, the meaning of the predicate is not included in the meaning of the subject. Traditional metaphysics consists in such synthetic a priori judgments, and for a host of reasons, Kant concludes that traditional metaphysics built on synthetic a priori judgments is wholly dubious. No amount of thinking things through conceptually can add to knowledge. For knowledge to occur, intuitions (that which is given through sensibility) are necessary. Kant does argue, however, that geometry and arithmetic has recourse to the pure forms of intuition, i.e., space and time, and that both are justified as synthetic a priori endeavors. 

Kant thus admitted that there are analytic a priori judgments, propositions that are analytically true, and he allowed for synthetic a posteriori judgments, empirical propositions known on the basis of experience alone.   He denied that analytic a priori judgments exist, and was thus left with the question of the synthetic a priori. The results of the Critique are that the traditional synthetic a priori judgments of metaphysics are  unwarranted, but that the synthetic a priori judgments appearing in geometry and arithmetic are permissible. 

I remember being troubled the first time I read The Crique of Pure Reason by the transcendental analysis he undertakes. He is writing a book, after all, that is making claims about the transcendental structure of things, a book seemingly claiming a transcends structure that might be known. Clearly, this knowledge is neither empirical knowledge constituted by synthetic a posteriori judgments, nor is this knowledge merely dealing with the  conceptual, that is, the results of analytic a priori judgments. So what is this knowledge? Prima facie, Kant believes these transcendental structures hold, that he (and we) are justified in holding they exist -- he speaks often of the warrant for his claims about the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience as such -- and that we should believe they obtain.  

Knowledge of the existence and structure of the transcendental unity of apperception must be a matter of synthetic a priori propositions, I thought, but this seems incorrect, because Kant had just proved that synthetic a priori judgments are legitimate only in the fields of arithmetic and geometry, and the structure of the transcendental unity of apperception is neither a matter of arithmetic or geometry. So what is it?  Clearly, it is not traditional metaphysics either. Kant spends much ink in showing that traditional metaphysics dealing with the transcendent is bankrupt because it employs synthetic a priori judgments beyond the realm of possible experience. It is clear that the transcendental structure Kant explores is  prior to the transcendent, for it is through his exploration of the transcendental that we are warranted in drawing the limits of the synthetic a priori. 

German philosophy after Kant clearly understood the great philosopher's critique of metaphysics, but also grasped the transcendental conditions for the possibility of this critique. Kant knew that there was no warrant to claim that the "I" was a substance as Descartes had supposed. But his transcendental investigation had indeed uncovered the presence of a transcendental unity of apperception, a unity of experience that was not an experience of unity as Descartes had thought. So what is the ontological nature of this transcendental unity that is not a unity within the transcendent? How can we know it? What language can speak about it? 

Questions of epistemology, ontology and semantics arise immediately with regard to putative transcendental structures. The German Idealists strove mightily to bring into focus the dynamism of the transcendental. Hegel's critique of Shelling was based not upon which philosophical system was more felicitous, but rather on which was true. It is clear to anybody reading Hegel that he is making truth claims, claims that are presupposed in his treatment of absolute knowledge. Obviously, these claims cannot be divorced from questions of being and meaning. 

The problem of knowing transcendental structures involves self-reference because it is an act within the transcendental unity of apperception to know that transcendental unity. The phenomenologists were also acutely aware of the problem of intending structures of consciousness that are utilized in intentionality itself. Although the 20th century positivist tradition attempted to leave behind these problems of self-reference by limiting knowledge to the positive sciences, their attempt to limit such knowledge to these sciences clearly was not something that could be known factually through these sciences. In divers and sundry ways, the intellectual tradition, since the days of Descartes, has had to do with paradox. We might say that the paradox of self-reference has been at the center of all the paradoci generated by the Enlightenment: After all, how is it possible to know X, when knowing X seems ultimately to rest upon what X is? Simply put, what is the epistemic and ontological status of the form of thinking, when that form seems to deal with the very matter of thinking.  

The German tradition understood that the Geisteswissenschaften differ from the Naturwissenschaften.  While in the latter, we can safely assume that the thinking form independently grasps (and structures) the matter of the thing thought, in the former the grasping is of that which itself grasps; it is a grasping through forms that it itself is! It is nature of spirit to relate itself to itself in these ways. When grasping what is the nature of human being, human be-ing is involved in the grasping. Martin Heidegger famously spoke of Dasein -- which includes human be-ing -- as that being, who in its be-ing, has be-ing at issue for it. There is no view from the outside when it comes to examining the basic structure of human be-ing, for asking the question belongs to the basic structure of human be-ing. Any asking of the ontological question is immanent to the ontology of the questioner.

So it is that we talk about the spirit that constitutes human be-ing. It is the nature of this spirit to question and seek to know about itself. To know who we are means to know the one who seeks to know who we are. To know ourselves is to know ourselves in the process of knowing ourselves, and knowing our knowing of ourselves. This knowing of ourselves as the knowers of ourselves constitutes the spirit that is us. Aristotle conceived God as thought thinking itself. Human beings are beings who are be-ing in their relationship to their own be-ing. It is the nature of spirit to be itself subjectively when relating to itself objectively. Spirit in-itself is being ultimately in-itself when spirit is being for-itself, that is, spirit is that relation between subject and object that can neither be described either as subject or object. Spirit in-itself takes up the subjective spirit in-itself and the objective spirit for-itself.  Hegel was clearly not wrong on any of this, if we have the perseverance and patience to think what he thought. 

So if the paradox of self-reference pushes towards human beings being spirit, trinunely constituted as beings forever what they are in relationship to what they are in-itself and for-itself, then why would we think God to  be otherwise?  It is the nature of the Triune God to relate Himself to what God is in Himself and how God expresses Himself as other than that self. We use the word "Spirit" to talk about the life of God, a life forever relating God to God. Divine knowledge involves the same dialectics of self-reference that confronts human beings. God is God in relating God to God. We are who we are in relation to ourselves. We know ourselves dynamically as we find ourselves in that which is other than ourselves.  God too finds His full divine life in relating to that which is other than God. 

There is much here about which to be careful in its saying because I do not want to fall victim to the historical heresies in thinking or speaking God.  However, it is clear that the life of both human beings and the divine is a spiritual life, and that these parallel lives have something to do with the problem of self-reference: Where can one find a position outside of the life of God or human beings from which to describe the life of God or human beings? Any attempt to find that position outside of the life from which to describe the life is an illusion, a fallacy of aseity. Such a fallacy ignores the paradox of self-reference. Gods and human beings have a similar spiritual structure. To grasp them as objects means not to so grasp them. Both are objects, whose being it is to be subjects forever related to themselves objectively. 

Given that human beings are spiritual beings, and the God they seek has spiritual divine life, how might it be that God and human being might relate to each other? Clearly, the answer is that the relationship is a spiritual one. While human beings in their be-ing can have their own be-ing at issue for them, they cannot in their own being have divine be-ing at issue for them. The life of God cannot be reflected in human spiritual life without human spiritual life being gifted with a new subjective standpoint, a subjectivity that is provided different capabilities, a subjectivity that can now grasp (however obliquely) the objectivity of God -- not a human projection or chimera -- a subjectivity that is a divine subjectivity gifted to human beings. Human access to God demands the elevation of standpoint that is best characterized as a human participation in the life of God.  

The deepest paradox of human life is that the standpoint we must employ in the grasping of our lives is always underdetermined by the life we grasp.  In this position, there could never be hope that human beings might relate to God. But as the theological tradition has always taught, it is God's Spirit that constitutes the conditions for human beings to relate to God. Clearly, as Luther said, "it is not by our own reason or strength that we might believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and come to him . . . "

The Scandal of the Theology of the Cross

I

The cross has been a scandal in every age.  It subverts our dreams and overturns our idealisms.  Human nobility and spirituality die upon this cross.[1]  It stands in opposition to the values of the world, the values summed up in the expression “theology of glory.”  Because, as Luther says, “Crux sola est nostra theologia” (“the cross alone is our theology”), it follows that the cross is opposed to all theologies of glory.[2]  But what is a theology of glory, and how must it be understood over and against a theology of the cross?

As soon as we reflect upon this, other questions naturally arise.  What is the best in man?   What is it that makes human beings noble?  What gives men and women dignity?  In answering this, we might start with the following catalog of human virtues, those characteristics seemingly separating us from the other primates.  Human beings:

·        have an eternal soul.

·        are bearers of reason.

·        possess free will and inhabit a moral order.

·        can actualize their potentiality.

·        have a taste for the Infinite.

·        can know the truth, do the good, and appreciate beauty.

·        understand justice and law as their highest good.

·        know God to be the foundation of truth, goodness and beauty. 

Theologies of glory understand that human and divine being stand on a continuum with human being either participating in divine being, or instantiating properties normally associated with the divine.  Theologies of glory can be stronger or weaker to the degree to which they instantiate divine being or divine attributes.  My favorite expression of a theology of glory comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson whose poem “Worship” has these memorable lines:

This is [He], who, deaf to prayers,

Floods with blessings unawares.

Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line,

Severing rightly his from thine,

Which is human, which divine.

The line between the two is difficult to draw because human beings are the embodiment of the highest aim of God, and God is the projection of the highest sentiments of humanity.  Thus, it is a challenge to know where the one leaves off and the other begins.  

Human beings are created in imago dei and, although this divine image is now tarnished by the waywardness of sin, it still shines forth weakly within human hearts.  Accordingly, human beings, through greater or lesser degrees of effort and divine succor, must work to polish up that which is now tarnished.     

An historically important theology of glory was bequeathed to us by a famous philosopher living over 400 years before Christ. The Greek philosopher Plato claimed that while the human soul bears the marks of the divine world from which it fell, e.g., indestructibility, simplicity and eternity, and while its essence is to be without a body, it has unfortunately been joined to matter in the veil of tears of this life.  At death, however, the sickness of the soul’s involvement with the body is healed as it sheds the corporeal forever and lives in eternity beyond the temporal.   Throughout the ancient world, the Greek idea of the immortal soul formed the intellectual backdrop on which Christ’s death and resurrection were understood. 

While time does not permit me to sketch out representative theologies of glory in the western tradition, one must at least point to a dominant early one: Neo-Platonism.  This philosophy held that all things are ultimately ONE and that this ONE in the course of history flows out of itself into Nous, then into the World-Soul, and finally into the alienated world of matter. Salvation demands that material men and women become more spiritual as they are freed from the corruption of the flesh and returned to the ONE from which they have been separated but to which they essentially belong.  Christian variations emphasized that God sends grace which is infused in believers so that they might become more spiritual and return to God.   

By the sixteenth century, Neo-Platonism had waned, but the impulse of the theologian of glory remained. The idea was that God gives human beings particular laws and that humans must act in accordance with those laws in order to be close to God.  To act in accordance is to be just; to not act in accordance is to be unjust.  In Luther’s time it was widely thought that as a person is just when he acts in accordance with divine law, so is God just when he rewards likes for likes.  God’s justice demands He punish sin and save the sinless. 

However, because humanity is not sinless, God had to give grace that either makes the believer sinless enough for God not to punish, or which “covers” sinners such that if somebody makes some small effort towards God, an effort within the power of the person (‘fac quod in se ipsum’), God does not deny His grace (‘facienti quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam’).  God justly acts to reward the sinner who has worked merit congruent with his or her ability (meritum de congruo) as if he or she had actually worked a merit worthy of salvation itself (meritum de condigno).  Because of Christ, the wretched faltering steps towards God the believer makes in this life are regarded by God to be as if they were worthy of salvation.    

It is not important that we follow all the specifics here. The theological tradition is rich in reflection on the nature of justification.  Suffice it to say that, for Lutherans, a person’s justification and salvation are coninstantiated.  Conceptually, it is impossible for one to be justified and not saved, or for one to be saved and not justified.  Accordingly, it is a necessary truth that ‘x is justified just in case x is saved’.  A theology of glory understands that proximity to God is a function of the worldly instantiation of properties that perfectly and properly apply to God.  

II

What then is a theology of the cross?  While a theology of glory understands the presence of God as a worldly manifestation of properties like those of God, a theology of the cross finds the divine presented sub specie contrario, that is, underneath its contrary.  Thus, a theology of the cross finds God where one least expects to find God: in weakness, in suffering, in death, in finitude.  Whereas the theologian of glory locates God in the divine apathei of detachment, peace and impassibility, the theologian of the cross finds God in despair, suffering, and emotional turmoil.  

In 1518, 35 year-old Martin Luther gave a presentation at the Augustinian monastery in Heidelberg in which he provided a classic distinction between a theologian of glory and a theologian of the cross.    

(19) Non ille digne theologus dicitur, qui invisibilia Dei per ea, quae facta sunt, intellecta conspicit.  (20) Sed qui visibilia et posteriori Dei per passiones et crucem conspecta intelligit.   [(19) That person is not worthy to be called a theologian who perceives the invisible things of God as understood through things that have occurred.  (20) But who understands the visible and “back side” of God through the perception of his passion and cross.]³ 

The theologian of glory in thesis 19 is one who looks at how the world is in order to get a clue about how God is. Since God is like the world in that both are measured by goodness, the better the world is, the better or closer the divine source and goal of existence itself is. This theologian expects to find God where there is maximum goodness.  Luther says that this theologian of glory is not worthy to be called a theologian. 

Rather, the one worthy to be called a theologian is he or she who understands that what can be known of God is available only by looking at the cross.  The theologian of the cross finds God precisely where one would not expect Him to be found: in His ignoble suffering and death on the cross.    

The ancient notion of the anologia entis claims that there is an analogy between the being of God and the being of the world.  When the world is a particular way, then God must be a particular way.  But the one who searches for God in this way always misses Him, says Luther.  Instead of moving from how the world is to how God is, the theologian of the cross finds God in how the world is not.  She finds God in how Christ is!  God is not discerned by looking lovingly at the world, but by looking at the One who, by his crucifixion and death, looked lovingly at us.  God is found in Jesus Christ and only there, and this is precisely not where we would expect to find him. Luther says it clearly in thesis 21:

 (21) Theologus gloriae dicit malum bonum et bonum malum, Theologus crucis dicit id quod res est.  [The theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil; the theologian of the cross calls a thing what it is.]⁴   

While the theologian of glory sees through creation and finds God at the ground or source of it, the theologian of the cross finds God revealed in the desolation of the cross.  While the theologian of glory uses analogy in order to reason to what God is like, the theologian of the cross admits that God remains hidden in his worldly actions, and that He reveals Himself only when and where he wills it: on the cross and in the proclamation of that cross. The theologian of the cross proclaims God’s presence in the midst of His apparent absence.  

Instead of the soul being liberated by divine grace to fly closer to God, the theologian of the cross declares the death of the soul and the dissolution of the self.  While the theologian of glory assumes some continuity between the divine and human, the theologian of the cross exploits their discontinuity.  The old being dies and the new rises and takes its place.  It is not that the eternal essence of a man needs readjustment, it is rather that the old Adam in us is put to death and the New man in Christ is constituted in his stead.  There is no perdurance of individual substance across the domains of the old and new.  

III

So we have now sketched the salient difference between the theology of the cross and the theology of glory.  What is the problem?   Clearly, the cross is unpopular and does not fit well into the intellectual and cultural horizon of our time. Could we not say, in fact, that there is a “crisis of the cross” in our time?  Few any longer understand this distinction.  Theologians who should know better tacitly yet assume a profound relation between moral goodness and the divine.  It is as if one climbs up one’s own ladder high enough one can jump over to heaven itself!  Why is it that we find theologies of glory plausible?  Is it that we no longer understand the distinction between the theology of the cross and that of glory?

I don’t believe that the crisis is found in our not seeming to understand this crucial distinction. Lutherans from many different theological trajectories seem to grasp it. The problem, I shall argue, is that certain moves within Lutheran theology have made it difficult to state meaningfully the truth-conditions upon which the distinction between the theology of the cross and the theology of glory must ultimately be grounded.  How is it that this is possible? 

Theology is a discourse, and like other kinds of discourses, it is concerned with meaning and truth, the realm of semantics.  Classically, the semantics of theological propositions was assumed to be more or less realist. Terms like ‘God’ were thought to refer to a determinate being, while relational terms like ‘creates’ referred to a relational property of that divine determinate being by which that being brought that complex state of affairs referred to by ‘world’ into being.   Prima facie, to say that a person does not deserve to be called a theologian who “looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were perceptible in those things that have actually happened," is to deny the statement claiming that there is some divine being such that humans perceive something of the existence and properties of that being by perceiving some set of events within the universe.  

At this point it is necessary to make things very precise.  The theologian of the glory palpably holds that there is a divine being, and there is a universe that is not divine but created by that divine being, and there are sentient human beings such that these beings can perceive some set of events in the universe, and their perception of this class of events within the universe rationally justifies these human beings to hold that a particular set of properties is instantiated by that divine being.  I shall term this the epistemic formulation of the theology of glory because it refers both to events and the perception or the knowing of those events.   Let us make this even more perspicuous: 

(1)  There is some x such that x is divine, and some y such that y is the universe, and x is not y, and there are some z such that z perceive events E in y, and z are rationally justified to hold that x has property set S on the basis of z’s perception of E in y.   

Those holding to (1) are theologians of glory, while those denying (1) are not.  This much is clear.  Luther would hold that theologians of glory and theologians of the Cross constitute an exclusive disjunction.  Accordingly, not to be theologian of glory is to be a theologian of the cross, and vice versa.  This epistemological formulation concerns states of knowing and is a weaker formulation of the theology of glory than the following: 

(1’) There is a divine being and a universe distinct from that being, such that a particular class of events within the universe is manifest if and only if a particular cluster of properties is present within the divine being. 

This ontological formulation of the theology of glory can be clarified as follows:  

(2)  There is an x such that x is divine and a y such that y is the universe, and x is not y, such that property set P obtains in y if and only if property set S obtains in x.  

It is this stronger ontological formulation of which I am most interested.  It is crucial now to notice that the theologian of the cross can deny (2) in either of two ways I will call (3) and (3’). 

(3)  It is not the case that there is an x such that x is divine and a y such that y is the universe, and x is not y, such that property set P obtains in y if and only if property set S obtains in x.  

(3') There is an x such that x is divine and a y such that y is the universe and x is not y, such that it is not the case that property set P obtains in y if and only if property set S obtains in x.  

Clearly, (3’) does not simply deny the entire ontological formulation, but rather a part of it.  Accordingly, one affirming (3’) would claim:

(4) There is a divine being and a universe distinct from that being, such that it is false that a particular class of events within the universe is manifest if and only if a particular cluster of properties is instantiated by that divine being. 

The theologian of the cross affirms the existence of God and a universe distinct from God, but nonetheless denies the analogy of being, that is, that the presence of a set of events in the universe is tied to the instantiation of divine properties.  Any covariance in property distributions across the temporal and eternal is denied.  A world of perfect moral order does not a better God make, nor does a perfect God make a better world.  The cross forever undercuts the natural human proclivity to identify God as the mathematical limit of the maximization of the Good, the True and the Beautiful. 

At this point a dizzying variety of senses of the epistemological and ontological formulations might be investigated as to their meaning in order to make possible precise senses undergirding Luther’s thesis 19.  However, this is not the issue about which I am concerned.  What I am concerned with is that my semantic formulation here presupposes a particular ontological contour, a contour that much of Lutheran theology no longer assumes. 

IV

Since the time of Kant academic theology on Lutheran soil has denied both the epistemological formulations and ontological formulations of theology of the cross.  Why is this?  I believe it is because it has assumed that God is not a substance that in principle can possess properties or be engaged in important kinds of relations – particularly the relation of causality.  But if God is not a being having properties, then what is God? 

Schleiermacher famously claimed that God is the whence of the feeling of absolute dependence.  Fichte talked of God as the infinite striving of the ego in positing the non-ego, and ultimately the world as the backdrop of moral striving.  Hegel understood God to be the Absolute Spirit coming to consciousness of Godself in time through human consciousness: God is God in Spirit coming to consciousness of itself through relating to what is seemingly other to it.  Ritschl and his school downplayed metaphysical assertions about God and spoke only of the effect of that which is other than the world.  Barth was strongly opposed to the liberal theology of Ritschl, Harnack and company, and spoke of God as the totaliter aliter, the “wholly other” of human experience.   God is thus “wholly other” than being, just as He is “wholly other” than non-being.  Other theologians have spoken of God in such ways as the infinite fore-grasp of the illimitability of Being in every act of thinking particular being (Rahner), or as a type of being of God such that God is not being God (Scharleman), or as a primal matrix (Reuther).  

The problem here is that even if one could clarify what it is that one is meaning by “God being God only when God is not being God” or God as Henry Nelson Wieman’s “primal event,” it is not clear why such diverse referents should be called by the same name, nor is it clear what exactly could be meant by Luther’s thesis 19 when the referent of ‘God’ changes so radically under different interpretations. 

The problem here is that theologians have not paid sufficient attention to the “depth grammar” of their statements.   ‘Jack fishes from a bank’ means quite different things when ‘bank’ means ‘an institution allowing the deposit of money’ on the one hand, and ‘that which abuts a creek’ on the other hand.   While the surface grammar of ‘God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself’ can be held constant in various languages in which the locution is used, the depth grammar, the propositions actually expressed or the states of affairs actually named vary greatly across theological schools. 

What I am talking about is the need to specify clearly semantic models for theological statements.  Such models would include the domain of those entities about which we are speaking, and predicates which clearly delineate to which entities they properly apply. What theological model is specifiable either for the ontological interpretation of the theology of glory or its theology of the cross denial if God is not a substance – that is, a being that perdures through time – and God cannot be causally related to any entities within the universe? 

V

Imagine a Bultmannian view of things where there is no being having divine properties or attributes and no being that is the second person of the Trinity that actually has the properties of divinity and humanity.  Further imagine a Bultmannian view of things in which the proclamation of certain locutions is itself a performative use of language in which existential empowerment can occur in the listener.  On this view of things, the semantics of the statement ‘Christ is raised from the dead’ does not refer to a state of affairs in which there is a particular being such that this being had the property of death then afterward life.  The semantics instead has meaning on the basis of transformed existential horizons in its hearing.  

While Bultmann could speak of a theology of the Cross, and could even accept Luther’s thesis 19, he would not be meaning by that either the epistemic or ontological formulations given above.  He would be meaning by it something quite complicated pertaining to horizons of expectation and empowerment in a succession of historical beings having particular existential constitutions.  Perhaps we might rework (3’) into (3’’) as follows:

(3'’) Although there is no x such that x is divine and a y such that y is the universe and x is not y, one can use locutions like ‘God’s power is found in weakness’ in order to effect a particular existential empowerment, or ground a use of proclamation language to effect existential empowerment, in some sentient hearer S, such that S is empowered in the face of fundamental anxieties to still discern some future open for S, that is that S’s facticity is not wholly determinative of S’s being. 

The attempt to specify the distinction between the theologian of glory and the theologian of the cross is not easy at all for the Bultmannian who has abandoned traditional semantic theological models. 

We have no time here to work any of this out, but the point should be clear enough. In the absence of a traditional, realist semantics of theological language, it is very difficult to state clearly the distinction between the theologian of the cross and the theologian of glory.  However, the last 200 years of academic theology has tended not to work with a realist semantics for theological language.  It has indeed tacitly rejected semantic realism, the assertion that theological statements have truth values even when we are in no position evidentially to ascertain their truth.  On the rejection of a semantics that talks about states of affairs and property instantiation, then how might one characterize what a theology of the cross is?  Is it merely an expression of existential orientations or psychological attitudes?  Does it not then merely reduce to human expressions of engineering our futures or allowing our future to bestow itself graciously upon us?

Much more needs to be said to establish this clearly, but maybe this can get the ball rolling.  My contention is that the distinction between the theology of the cross and the theology of glory cannot be sustained if a realist semantics is not presupposed.  However, for almost 200 years a realist semantics has not been presupposed.  Therefore, the distinction is no longer clear to us.  This is the scandal of the theology of the cross.  It is a formal, not a material scandal.  The necessary condition for the latter scandal is for the former scandal to be assuaged.  Since I believe in the theological importance of the material scandal, my hope is ultimately to undercut the ground on which the formal scandal appears to rest. 

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[1] ‘Cross’ here means the entire narrative of the crucified and risen Jesus.   See Gerhard Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1997), 1.  

[2] WA 5, 176:32 (Operationes).  

[3] WA 1, 350:17-20. 

[4] WA 1, 350: 21-22. 

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Philosophical Issues Undergirding Contemporary Proclamation

Theology was once a lofty discipline whose practitioners were among the brightest and best of their age.  In Luther's day candidates for the Doctor of Theology had first to receive a Masters of Arts in philosophy.  They knew the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), and they had exposure to the quadrivium (arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music).  They understood Latin deeply and some learned Greek and Hebrew as well.   Luther knew his Aristotle well enough to realize that the Aristotle he encountered in the text was not the Aristotle that many theologians embraced in the High and Late Middle Ages.  Like in every age, Luther's era was a time in which philosophy and theology were deeply related.

Our age also is a time in which theological and philosophical matters are deeply connected.  The relationship between the two is so profound that many thinkers (often very deep theological thinkers) often overlook or miss it entirely.  But theologians today ignore philosophical issues at their own peril.  Deeply-educated in the Biblical text, its historical and social context, its history of reception, and effective homiletical techniques to proclaim it, theological thinkers often fail to examine and appreciate deeply enough the contemporary cultural and intellectual horizon into which the text is preached.  In failing to grasp the differing philosophical assumptions between textual origination and reception, they overlook the presuppositional issues making it difficult for the text to be properly understood be contemporary readers and hearers. These issues, I believe, our explicitly philosophical.  They involve such traditional and meaty philosophical concerns as ontology (the study of being), epistemology (the study of knowing), and semantics (the study of meaning).

In the following series of posts I will spell out what I believe to be some of the philosophical impediments to Biblical proclamation in our time.  The first series of questions revolve around ontology.

• Is God a real being, or a projection of human being?  If a real being, then in what sense is God real? Postmodern men and women are likely to have a non-thematized understanding of God's reality that differs markedly from that of the Biblical writers and the early horizon of the Bible's textual reception.  
• Is God the kind of being that is causally related to other kinds of being?  If God is causally related, then what is the possible mechanism of this relatedness?  Postmodern mean and women are likely non-thematically to assume that God is not a causally relevant entity. 
• Is God is a real being, then what is His constitution?  Are His properties separable from His being, or is He simple?  Postmodern men and women are likely to assume non-thematically that God is personal, that He "cares" even though He seldom (if ever) concretely causally effects the distribution of worldly properties.  

The next batch of questions concern epistemology.

• Is there knowledge of God, and how is such knowledge possible?  Postmodern men and women seem tacitly to assume that their own experience is relevant to their knowing God.  
• Does knowledge of God involve facts or merely values?  Postmodern men and women unreflectively suppose that God is somehow real for those who believe it so, and not real for others -- as if our valuing God affects the factuality of God.  
• Are there norms that sort proper evidence for God from improper appeals?  Postmodern men and women assume a perspectivalism making problematic any epistemic normatively.  

The final group questions -- the most important, I believe -- concern semantics, the meaning of our assertions about God. 

• How is the meaningfulness of theological and religious language established?  Does such language state possible real states of affairs, or is it merely expressive of the self?  Postmodern men and women rather unreflectively assume the latter.  
• Does theological and religious language have determinate truth conditions, that is, are there definite claims made by the language, and is there a definite way the world is, such that these propositions are true or false, and not merely comforting, useful or salutary?  Postmodern men and women non-thematically assume that the purpose of religious and theological language is to do something other than state what is the case with respect to the divine. 
• Since the meaning of language changes over time, can it be said that a theological claim made by a particular proposition in the fourth century means the same thing as the claim made by the same proposition today?  Postmodern men and women assume that language is unstable and that reference to some non-linguistic state of affairs is problematic.  

The overall semantic question can be summed up as follows: What does (or can) the Gospel mean in an age where the horizon of understanding of the reader or listener is pluralistic, therapeutic, and anti-realistic?  What can God-talk mean to those today (particularly the young) who neither know the intellectual tradition nor are normatively determined by it?      

In the next number of posts I will be exploring some of these issues.  I invite you to think through them with me.  Comments are welcome!           

Philosophical Impediments to Proclamation

Theology was once a lofty discipline whose practitioners were among the brightest and best of their age.  In Luther's day candidates for the Doctor of Theology had first to receive a Masters of Arts in philosophy.  They knew the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), and they had exposure to the quadrivium (arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music).  They understood Latin deeply and some learned Greek and Hebrew as well.   Luther knew his Aristotle well enough to realize that the Aristotle he encountered in the text was not the Aristotle that many theologians embraced in the High and Late Middle Ages.  Like in every age, Luther's era was a time in which philosophy and theology were deeply related.

Our age also is a time in which theological and philosophical matters are deeply connected.   The relationship between the two is so profound that many thinkers (often very deep theological thinkers) often overlook or miss it entirely.  But theologians today ignore philosophical issues at their own peril.  Deeply-educated in the Biblical text, its historical and social context, its history of reception, and effective homiletical techniques to proclaim it, theological thinkers often fail to examine and appreciate deeply enough the contemporary cultural and intellectual horizon into which the text is preached.  In failing to grasp the differing philosophical assumptions between textual origination and reception, they overlook the presuppositional issues making it difficult for the text to be properly understood be contemporary readers and hearers.  These issues, I believe, our explicitly philosophical.  They involve such traditional and meaty philosophical concerns as ontology (the study of being), epistemology (the study of knowing), and semantics (the study of meaning).

In the following series of posts I will spell out what I believe to be some of the philosophical impediments to Biblical proclamation in our time.  I will deal with such issues as the fact/value distinction, the loss of normativity, the problem of truth-conditions for religious and theological language, the problem of the external world as it relates to the divine, the question of agent motivation, the problem of reductionism, and, of course, the question of freedom.  (Of course, the discussion will be necessarily brief and undeveloped.)  Throughout, the questions of dualism, physicalism and idealism will be engaged.   The overarching issue is semantic.  What does (or can) the Gospel mean in an age where the horizon of understanding of the reader or listener is pluralistic, therapeutic, and anti-realistic?  What can God-talk mean to those today (particularly the young) who neither know the intellectual tradition, nor are normatively determined by it?               

 

The Christ School of Theology

As many of you know, I have been heading an effort these last six years to build an independent, autonomous, and fully-accredited graduate school of theology and seminary.   The name we have used since the very early days is 'The Institute of Lutheran Theology' (ILT).   Some of you know as well that over the last five years we have referred to the Institute of Lutheran Theology's graduate school specifically as the 'Christ School of Theology'.  

The Christ School of Theology (CST) has been growing nicely and I am happy to report that we easily shattered this semester our old enrollment records.  Many of you realize we have stellar names teaching at CST, e.g., Paul Hinlicky, Bob Benne, Jonathan Sorum, David Yeago, etc.   Since the beginning we have had on our Board Professor Hans Hillerbrand, one of the top names in Reformation scholarship and the former President of the American Academy of Religion.  Our Masters of Sacred Theology (STM) program is growing nicely and we look forward to announcing soon our course offerings for this fall. Stay tuned!      

Students and faculty of CST know that we deliver our courses in a fully interactive video platform that allows each student to see and interact with each other student as well as the professor.   This has worked very well these last five years, but we realize that we need to be able to deliver content in parts of the world where bandwidth does not exist for fully interactive video yet.  We also know that some students actually prefer asynchronous delivery of course content to the interactive approach we routinely employ.  Such asynchronous delivery works nicely for independent study options.  Because of these demands, ILT is beginning work to produce  usable video products that can be delivered by DVD or directly through satellite download.   While most of this content will be password-protected, we shall be broadcasting some on-demand content in the clear.

While we are in the first stages of this, some content is already available.  I am the guinea pig for this ILT "beta project."   If you are interested in lecture content from my "Faith, Knowledge and Reason" course about how philosophy connects to (and has connected with) philosophy, visit either our ILT Christ School of Theology Ustream or YouTube channels.   You can find the latest lecture on Ustream here or on YouTube here.   Four to five lectures are going up each week on these CST channels, as well as Word at Work content for congregations here, or our daily chapel archive here. We are also working to make available some of the last lectures from my "Doktor Vater," George Forell.   I will update you on this project as it progresses.  

What would it have been like to watch the lectures of Walther, Chemnitz, Luther, Thomas or Aristotle?   While we shall never know this, folks at the Christ School of Theology do hope someday to capture and archive quality content from significant Lutheran theological voices.  In doing this, ILT will be doing what it has always done: seek humbly to perpetuate the Lutheran tradition by connecting  the most able and curious of students with the most knowledgeable and experienced of professors.  

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.