Institute of Lutheran Theology Happenings

As many of you know, I have had the opportunity these last years to serve as the founding president of the Institute of Lutheran Theology. I have been grateful to have been able to do this. The time came a few months ago, however, for me to reevaluate what it is that I can do and can't do. With the Institute growing so quickly, it just is not possible any longer for me to serve both as President of ILT and Vice President of Academic Affairs. Accordingly, as of the June ILT Board meeting I am no longer president of this organization, but now VP of Academic Affairs only, I am very excited to be back doing mostly academic work, and am thrilled about the new person the ILT Board has selected to represent ILT as president. The announcement of this new person will come later this summer. 

 Many people connected with the Institute of Lutheran Theology have recently been contacted by a former staff person of ILT concerning a new start-up entitled "St. Paul Lutheran Seminary." As it turns out, two former staff members of ILT are advertising that a new seminary will be on-line this fall, and they have apparently gotten one former ILT faculty member to teach for them. Like the ILT Board and the rest of the ILT staff, I am concerned that people understand that "St. Paul Lutheran Seminary" is in no way connected to ILT. Its efforts are neither supported nor sanctioned by ILT. 

 Now the question arises: What motivation might there be to start a new seminary? It seems that when things like this happen within Lutheran circles, there are generally the following motivations: One might start a new seminary because of theological reasons. However, it appears that the new entity has no theological differences with ILT. The Institute has always tried to understand Lutheran theology in the context of its origination and development, and related this theology to the contemporary intellectual horizon. I doubt if the new organization is opposed to this. One might start a new seminary because of ecclesioloigical reasons. However, it appears that the new entity is striving to serve the same market as ILT. The Institute has always tried to serve LCMC and NALC congregations, and support as well those ELCA congregations who sense they are not being fed theologically by the ELCA seminaries. One might start a new seminary because of structural/organizational reasons. However, it appears that the organization of ILT as a "distributed residential community" with non-geographic "Designated Teaching Centers" using the latest in synchronous technology is one with which the new entity might agree. 

 Sometimes it is said that if one puts three Lutherans in the same room, one gets three different theological traditions. Lutherans have traditionally privileged truth over unity. When important doctrinal/theological issues are at stake, Lutherans have historically separated from one another. However, Lutherans need not be opposed to unity. We can work together. Sometimes unity is a very good thing. ILT has always hoped that one seminary might develop to be the voice of theological conscience within present day Lutheran diaspora. I do not think the present context warrants a division or reduplication of efforts in the building of a truly confessional Lutheran seminary. I have been working on trying to build ILT for about six years now. We have now a very fine faculty, scores of students, a great curriculum, dozens of congregations relating closely to us, and the financial stability to accomplish those things we believe that God has put before us. The future is very exciting! Let us work together in trust and love. Soli deo gloria.

On an Infinite Regress of Causes

The general structure of cosmological arguments is well known: Starting from general features about the world (e.g., that there is movement), these arguments proceed by pointing out that these general features must have a cause, and this cause must have a cause, and since if there were no first cause there would not be any subsequent causes, there must indeed be a first cause.

Much has been written over the years about cosmological arguments, and there are, in truth, many different types of such arguments. One must distinguish in esse arguments (arguments in the order of ontological dependency) from in fieri arguments (arguments in the order of temporal becoming). One must distinguish arguments that proceed from the fact of contingency from arguments proceeding from movement or causality. One must distinguish arguments that use the principle of sufficient reason from arguments that do not make explicit use of this principle. To enter into any discussion of the diverse array of such arguments shall not be our concern here. What I want to deal with in this post is an interesting attack by James Sadowsky on the notion that there can be an infinite regress of causes ("Can there be an Endless Regress of Cause," International Philosophical Quarterly, 20-4, 1980).

Sadowky points out that the operative principle in the cosmological argument is that "if each cause of A were itself in need of a cause, then no cause of A could exist and hence A itself could not exist." From this the argument proceeds easily: A (let us say there is motion in the world) exists and thus all of A's causes are not in need of a cause, that is, there is some cause that is itself not in need of a cause. [One thinks here perhaps of Schopenhauer's quote that the law of universal causation is like "a hired cab that one dismisses when one reaches one's destination."]

Critics of cosmological arguments oftentimes point to the obvious fact that in order for A to be, there must be some B which causes A, and in order for B to be there must be some C that causes B, and that this series can run back to infinity. Think for a moment about the infinite series of integers. For every integer I, there is some integer 'I - 1' such that I is generated from 'I - 1' by adding '1'. Any integer can be "caused" by taking the preceding integer and adding one. There is no problem with this series running back to infinity, of course. If it did not, we would have a pretty truncated mathematics.

But proponents of cosmological arguments often make claims about how an actual infinite is not possible - - after all, Aristotle said so - - and that the analogy between an infinite causal series in the world and the infinite series of integers is not great. For the infinite causal series, the operative principle specified previously holds, which does not in the generation of infinite mathematical series: If each cause of A were itself in need of a cause, then no cause of A could exist and hence A itself could not exist.

Sadowsky asks us to compare the statement of the cosmological argument that no causation can take place because each act of causation requires a previous act of causation with the following: no permission can be asked for because each asking of permission requires a prior asking of permission. Consider this statement:

1) No one may do anything (including asking for permission) without asking for permission.

Is (1) true? It seems not, for how could it be that the condition for asking for permission is itself the asking of permission. It seems that permission asking in order to do every X cannot run back to infinity, because X includes the asking of permission. The activity of asking for permission cannot run back to infinity because there would be no first asking of permission and thus no subsequent series of permission asking.

Sadowsky asks us now to consider Ryle's demolition of the so-called "Intellectual Legend": Never do anything (including thinking) without first thinking about it. Consider then (2):

2) No one ought to anything (including thinking) without first thinking about it.

Is (2) true? It seems not, for how could it be that the condition for thinking is itself based upon thinking? It seems that an infinite series of intellectual reflection based upon intellectual reflection is impossible, for how can it be that one's reflection on something (call it X) must result from X?

Although Sadowsky does not explicitly say so, he supposes that (1) and (2) are unsatisfiable, that is, there cannot be a state of affairs of every act of intellectual thinking being dependent upon anterior acts of intellectual thinking. Why? Because if there is real contingency in intellectual thinking - - if it is possible to consider propositions either shrewdly (intellectually) or stupidly - - and the condition for considering propositions shrewdly (intellectually) is a prior condition of having considered propositions shrewdly (intellectually) and not stupidly, then in order for there to be subsequent acts of intellectual consideration there must have been a first act of intellectual consideration. In other words, there is no possible world in which there can be an infinite regress in the order of prior intellectual operations as a prerequisite of subsequent intellectual operations. There must be a first intellectual operation that grounds subsequent intellectual operations, or there would have been no subsequent intellectual operations. Similarly, there must be a first permission that grounds subsequent acts of granting permission. There can be no possible world in which one cannot do anything without first asking permission, if it is true that "doing anything" includes the seeking of permission.

In (2) it is impossible to break into a series of intellectual considerations without there being an intellectual consideration not grounded in anterior intellectual considerations. In (1) there cannot be a breaking into the series of permissions without there being a first permission granting that needs not anterior permission. We have here the claim that there must be intellectual consideration that is not the result of an intellectual consideration, and a permission seeking that is not the result of a permission seeking. Now the question is simply this: is an infinite regress in the order of causes analogous to these two cases? Is it true that (3) is unsatisfiable?

3) For each and every cause, there must be a cause of that cause.

Is the denial of (3) somehow contraditory? Is it contradictory to have an uncaused causer? Or, put differently, if there must be an an unpermitted permitter, and a nonintellectualized, intellectualizer, why not an uncaused causer? Why should causality be regarded differently?

It seems that the answer to this might lie in the different contexts in which intellectual considerations, permission seeking, and causing inhabit. It strikes me that intellectual considerations and permission-seekings are teleological activities. Take, for instance, the notion of an infinite series of purposes. It seems like an infinite order in the series of final causes is indeed unthinkable. If everything that occurs, occurs for the sake of something else, is it not true that there must be finally something for which all things occur. (Heidegger traces this back to Dasein, of course.) No infinite regress in the order of teleological "reasons for" is possible, for it seems, that in order for there to be subsequent "reasons for" there must be a first "that upon which all reasons are ultimately reasons for."

Most of the time, however, we regard the order of causes as a nonteleological context: A causes B which causes C, etc. In a universe without meaning or purpose, why would an infinite series of causes not be allowed? Of course, there is not a first cause on the basis of which subsequent causes are! That is the point of thinking about an order of causes purely extensionally. There is nothing unsatisfiable about (3), though there might be about (3') below:

3') For each and every reason, there must be a reason for that reason.

I think many people would dispute (3') being satisfiable on the basis of there being finally a 'brute reason or purpose' on the basis of which other reasons find their positions. (Heidegger would agree here.) We often trace human reasoning back to a human telos generally. Why did Bob do x? He had such and such reasons for doing x. But why did he have these reasons? Because he ultimately desired that some y come about, and he reasoned in ways that would eventuate in y. But why did he desire that some y come about? Reasons must stop somewhere, and one might just say that his desire for y just is. Is it reasonable? Perhaps, but it is not reasonable based upon other reasons. It is an unreasoned reason.

Sadowsky has forced us to see more clearly into what we often mean by an infinite regress in the order of causes. We mean something that is quite without meaning. It seems in an unthinking universe without value and purpose there could be an infinite series of causes. Whether a thing is or is not is not the same kind of question as whether a proposition is reasonable or not. While the second concerns a teleological context where an infinite regress is impossible, this is not so of the first. Or at least that is what one might reasonably say.

Tremendum et Fascinans

Joel 2:1-18 speaks of the "Day of the Lord." This day is "a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come." The people are waiting for the Day of the Lord perhaps as children wait for Christmas. But this is folly, for this Day will be nothing like they expect.

In the heyday of dialectical theology 90 years ago or so, theologians emphasized the totaliter aliter, of the divine, the "wholly otherness" of God. The times were indeed ripe to talk of God as that nullity which effectively judges being. They proclaimed that one cannot find God by finding Him somewhere in the field of being, no matter the lofty region He might inhabit. If God really is infinitely qualitatively different from His creation, then this difference cannot merely be some adjustment of form or quality within a common potentiality spreading from the heavens to earth. No! Divine being must be totaliter aliter than the potentiality that lies within being itself. In other words, God is wholly other than what the philosophers once called "prime matter." To speak of uncreated divine being and created being under the general category of "being" is deeply problematic, for how could God be the Krisis of the world if he retains a place within it?

No matter how we might try to think the being of divine being, it is a different type of thing we think than the being of created being. God is so radically different from created being that we use the word 'being' a bit improperly to describe Him. God and the universe form ontological antipodes: God is what the universe is not, and the universe is what God is not. This ontological gap between the creator and creature is a necessary condition for the grace-full contingency of creation itself. If the created order where merely an adjustment on the uncreated order, then the gap between the divine and not-divine narrows to the point that what God is, is no longer what the universe is not. On this view Emerson would be right in saying, "Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, Severing rightly his from thine, Which is human, which divine." On this view, God's otherness is lost and God becomes less than God.

Why does God become less than God when God's otherness is lost? How can the asymmetrical relation of 'being other than' somehow make God other than God is? If God has a determinate being, and x regards God as other and y does not, is God more God for x than x? This is but another way of asking the realist question of God: Is God externally or internally related to His creation?

What is necessary is to distinguish God-in-Himself, versus God-in-regard-to us. While divine being has the contour it has apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, what human beings regard to be God is deeply dependent upon how God is for them. While God is God apart from whether or not God appears distant or close to x, x will regard something as God only if God is not wholly proximate to x. What I am saying is very simple: For something to be regarded as God by person p, there must be an experience of extraordinary distance for p in the presence of this putative divinity. God cannot be God for p if p does not fear God as that before which p feels puny, is overwhelmed, and experiences shudder. For p - - and I would generalize to great numbers of people - - that which is not experienced as distant cannot ultimately be God.

The paradox of the Christian proclamation is that the Distant One, however, loves us. The experience of the divine has the character both of divine distance and proximity. While that which is not distant cannot be God, that which is not close cannot save us. The tremendum which is necessary for p to regard something as God is at the same time the fascinans by and through which humans are drawn to God. Our experience under the condition of existence is not a healthy one. What is needed is salvation from that which is not ultimately us. Just as creation is the free act of a being ontologically discontinuous from the divine itself, so is redemption a free action of a being ontologically discontinuous from human existence as such. While a God that is not distant cannot be God, so too a God that is too distant cannot save. The necessary condition for x to regard g as God is that g is distant from x; the necessary condition for x to be saved by g is that g is close to x. For human being, God purchases salvation generally by sacrificing divinity; he purchases his divinity by sacrificing His soteriological intimacy. This is the way of nondialectical assertions within the field of being.

The dialectical theologians were fond at pronouncing paradoxical phrases. None perhaps is more paradoxical than these we must make: Only the Distant One is ultimately Close to us. Only the One whose impassibility precludes the sentiment of love can ever really love us.

Theological Realism and Christology

One of our assumptions at the Institute of Lutheran Theology is theological realism, the notion that God exists and has a definite contour apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. While this would not be a surprising claim for most believers throughout Christian history, it is somewhat of a bold claim today, 230 years after the publication of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. For most of the nineteenth century, attempts were made to talk intelligibly about God while at the same time not affirming that God is a metaphysical substance capable of sustaining causal relations with His universe. This penchant survives and is deeply presupposed in much Protestant theology, especially of the Lutheran persuasion.

Yesterday as I preached on 2 Peter 1:16-21, it struck me that no matter how robust the claim of theological realism is, the claim of Christological realism is be even more bold. Imagine claiming that Christology is objective, that it is an evidence-transcending propositional truth about the universe that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Imagine making such a powerful claim that the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ is factual, that is, that Christ's suffering, death and resurrection exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language! It seems to me, on reading these passages from Peter, that the claim of factuality is emphasized precisely over and against claims that the proclamation of Christ is mythological, that the proclamation somehow is a response to our inchoate religious yearnings.

It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I think Heideggerian thoughts much of the time. I have always been deeply convinced of the rectitude of Heidegger's analysis of human existence and authenticity in the face of the phenomenon of death. For much of my adult days I have assumed with Heidegger that death is basically a phenomenological reality, that only in life is there death, because there can be no death for death - - as Epicurus famously taught.

But while Heidegger's phenomenological analysis is deeply persuasive and penetrating on this point, because it is phenomenological it cannot deal with the relationship between the phenomenological and that which grounds the phenomenological. The reason is easy to see: To reflect and articulate the relationship between the phenomenological and the non-phenomenological is no longer to describe the phenomenological, but to conceive why the phenomenological has the contour it has.

Yet while moving beyond a phenomenological analysis may not a phenomenological analysis make, clearly it is not unreasonable to ask what grounds the phenomenology of death. One does not have to think very profoundly to answer that question: The phenomenology of death is grounded in the factuality of death. We live with one foot in nonbeing because we shall someday fully be nonbeing. A reasonable person not unduly timid about ontology would certainly assert such a thing. (Maybe phenomenological ontology is finally an ontology of the timid . . . )

When reading 2 Peter 1:16-21, it seems clear that the last testament of the writer to the truth of Christ is a testament of the factuality of Christ, that is, the writer wants us to know that the proclamation that liberates us in the face of death is itself grounded in the reality of the one that liberates us from death. Just as death is not a linguistic event but a fact as well as our phenomenon of it, to too is liberation from death not merely a linguistic event, but a fact as well as our phenomenon of it. In other words, just as my death exists apart from my awareness, perception, conception and language, so too does my liberation from death exist apart from those things as well.

Why is theological realism important? Because Christian theological realism just is Christological realism. But why is Christological realism important? Because as the writer of 2 Peter declares, "We do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made know to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty" (16).

Thinking and Thanking

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger was fond of the seventeenth century Pietist phrase, “Denken ist Danken, (to think is to thank).” Heidegger writes, “Pure thanks lies in this, that we simply think that which is solely and properly to-be-thought.”

But what is it that properly ought to be thought? For Heidegger, it is Being-Itself, and thinking of this being is itself a thanking for being. Much of Heidegger's later work is a poetic exploration of the common etymology between thinking and thanking, and I recommend his ruminations to those so inclined. But what has this philosopher to do with the question of God and Lutheran theology generally? And what has thinking and thanking to do with the Institute of Lutheran Theology?

Heidegger distinguishes calculative thinking from meditative thinking, claiming that while the first attempts to grasp being, the second responds to it by “thinking after” it as it discloses itself. While Heidegger never calls Being-itself 'God', the connection is palpable. Just as light-itself lights the world, so does Being-itself radiate beings. Accordingly, Being-itself is the “ground” of all that is, a ground that cannot be investigated in the way of other things. The answer to the first question about God is that just as Being-itself is the ultimate ground from which beings arise, so too is God the creative mystery at the heart of the universe.

Heidegger realized that while being could not be grasped by human thinking - -for such thinking always presupposes being - - human thinking is nonetheless a way of be-ing. Accordingly, while the human subject cannot grasp the object (being), the object can and does call forth the subject's thinking of it. Simply put, while attempts to grasp the divine always end in failure, the divine successfully reveals itself to us. The answer to the second question about Lutheran theology is that what the law cannot do is done by the grace of God. God's revelation in our lives is something we cannot coax, engineer or guarantee. His presence is donated to us from outside ourselves, not by virtue of our own efforts at spiritual transformation.

But what has Heidegger to do with our work in the Institute of Lutheran Theology? After all, is not ILT committed to the Bible and not to German philosophy? Moreover, why do people at the Institute of Lutheran Theology concern themselves with such heavy thinking? Is it not simply enough that ILT gives it future graduates instructions for doing effective ministry? Can't we simply train pastors the way we train computer engineers, librarians and hotel/motel managers?

The Institute of Lutheran theology is deeply committed to reading and understanding the Bible. Collectively, we have a very high view of Scripture, believing its clarity and authority to be matters not of our doing. But while the source of theological reflection must always be the Bible and the tradition of its thinking, this source is always reflected through the medium of the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon.

Reading and understanding the Bible is thus both simple and difficult. It is simple because the Bible speaks immediately to its readers as the Word of God; it is difficult because there is no methodological formula that can forever establish the exact words of that speaking. The Bible speaks as it is questioned by different readers at different times. Ultimately like Heidegger's Being-Itself, the Bible reveals its Word as a matter of grace, for it cannot wholly be grasped through application of methodological law.

I am convinced that one of the main problems facing Lutheran clergy today is that oftentimes their education denies them the freedom to think, at least to think so deeply that their thinking is transformed into thanking. While they acquire a set of skills - - they know now how to give sermons, how to plan worship and how to make hospital calls - - they aren't mentored to think what continually ought-to-be-thought: God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. This Word of grace, which cannot be established by human thinking, is itself revealed to human thinking, and in the thinking of this thought, human life becomes itself a thanking, a life lived in joyful response to the One who has Himself called such thinking into being. Faith is thus active in love.

Indeed we at ILT cannot be happy simply with teaching students what to do, until each is clear on what it is that must be thought. With an eye toward the ought-to-be-thought, students at ILT study Bible, history of church and theology, philosophical underpinnings for theology, Lutheran Confessions, and systematic theology. The objective is to think so deeply the thought that the Holy Spirit has called us to think, that we live out our deeply-thought lives in proclaiming the Good News of Jesus the Christ and in thankfully serving Him. Pastoral skills are only important if pastors believe that about which they speak. Faith is always active in love.

All of this is to say something that Lutherans have always known, but that has gotten a bit obscure in our time: Being precedes doing. Over and against existentialists, pragmatists, modern day Aristotelians, and enthusiasts of the law in all its forms, Lutheran theology has always steadfastly declared what the Bible perspicuously records: While a good tree bears good fruit, good fruit does not a good tree make. More important than future Lutheran clergy learning in their classes how to do the job of being a clergy person is that they have the time (and the space) to think through what it is to called to be one who in his or her thinking has pastoral doing as a mode of thanking. God's work of faith establishes the possibility of love.

So it is that we think about many things at ILT. We consider deeply the human condition, sin, atonement, and salvation. We think about how God relates to His universe in creation, redemption and sanctification. We reflect upon how language of God relates to other kinds of language, to the words of poets and scientists. We are convinced that if our language of God cannot easily be used Monday through Saturday, it is only very oddly and parochially employed on Sundays.

We think as well that considering these things deeply is already to occupy a position of gratitude. Think of the grace involved in such thinking! To think deeply is to realize that there is something rather than nothing, and that this situation has no worldly explanation. To think deeply is to realize that we might not have been, or that we might not now be who we somehow still deeply are in time. Thinking deeply pushes us to consider the radical contingency of human existence, to think the thought that there is nothing necessary about being. But as we consider that things could have been other than they in fact are, we realize that why and how things are themselves involve grace and gift. Thinking through contingency breeds a thankfulness of what is. Denken ist Danken!

As the end of this first decade of the twenty-first century draws to a close, our collective thinking at the Institute of Lutheran Theology is in truth radically oriented to thanking. After all, there is no reason to expect that a seminary starting from nothing on a financial shoestring should be successful. People thought it could not be done. How could ILT overcome financial constraints, accrediting issues, and course delivery problems?

But I am here to proclaim to you the startling, and wholly contingent fact, that it daily is being done. ILT is blessed to have high quality students, a stellar faculty, an increasing list of generous donors, and a very professional course delivery system that allows students interaction with some of the best Lutheran theologians in the English speaking world. Where else can students study with professors Jim Nestingen, Mark Hilmer, Paul Hinlicky, Robert Benne, Hans Hillerbrand, and Uwe Siemon-Netto, to name but a few? Where else can students get the opportunity at home for one-on-one interaction with professor of international reputation who will coax them daily into thinking deeply what it is that ought-to-be-thought?

Next semester ILT will be in the process of launching a second generation video delivery system that will deliver much higher quality video to anyone having a broadband internet connection. Please tune into our fifteen minute chapels every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10:00 a.m. to see clearly Lutheran preachers preaching clearly the Word of God. Soon students will have greater options for accessing higher quality video during select lecture formats. Through the generosity of almost five hundred individual and congregational donors this last year, the Institute of Lutheran Theology is transitioning from a start-up seminary with a vision for tomorrow to an actually existing Lutheran graduate school filling the needs of students world-wide today.

While the universe did not have to be, yet by the grace of God is, so too with ILT: It could have failed, but it did not. Not only did it not fail, but it has the opportunity to lead the transformation of Lutheran theological education world-wide. To think about this radical contingency of ILT is perpetually to thank Him who called it forth into Being.

Through the work of the faculty, staff, students and supporters of ILT, that which ought-to-be-thought is itself humbly and thankfully being thought. To think in a sustained way about what God has done for us in Christ is to live a life of thanksgiving. It is from this ground that ILT has emerged, and it is from this ground that it is watered and will ultimately grow into full fruition. The divinely-worked faith of human thinking is always active in the divinely-worked love of human thanking. May God's faith and grace be indeed with you all this New Year!

Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt

President

Institute of Lutheran Theology

Theory Construction in Theology

For sometime now I have had the reoccurring thought that theology employs theories in much the same way as the natural sciences. Of course, with the natural sciences, theory construction and disconfirmation is patent. We know that if theory T has as a logical consequence P, and if ~P actually turns out true empirically, then there is something wrong with theory T. (Assuming, of course, that one's inferences are in fact deducible theorems of T.) It is all rather straightforward for the scientist - - or at least it seems prima facie so.

A number of years ago I was excited by some of the similarities I found between scientific theory construction and theological construction. It was to me then rather exciting to think that somehow theology uses theories. (I confess to having a bit of the natural theologian in me in those days.) But something has happened. While it is true that I am no longer much excited by the similarities between scientific and theological theory construction, it is not because the seeming similarities have faded for me. No - - it is because it seems to me now patently obvious, and not at all surprising, that theological theory and scientific theory have the same structure. The excitement has faded because there is no longer anything creative in the thought. They just are of the same kind. Let me explain with an example that is not that of natural theology at all.

I am rereading some of the Finnish work on Luther in teaching 'Luther, Justification and Deification' in the Institute of Lutheran Theology Masters of Theology program. Among the many claims made by the Finns is that Luther employs the notion of theosis as a central motif within his theology, that his notion of justification presupposes the unio cum Christo. The way that this is argued is to take a number of themes in Luther, chart the interrelationship between these themes, and then go to the Luther texts to see if perusal experience is consistent with the theory built out of the interrelationship of these themes.

For instance, they argue that the inhabitatio Christi grounds both forensic and effective justification, that the imputational notion of justification is the divine favor or gratia, while the effective notion is the divine donum or gift. While the favor of God addresses the wrath of God, the gift of God pertains to the corruption of our natures. Just as favor of God undergirds the gift of God, so the gift of God grounds the favor of God. For Luther, justification is a unitary process that includes what is often regarded by the Reformation traditions to be sanctification. God gives Himself to His creation in love, and thus all of creation is butressed by the indwelling God. But fallen creation groans in travail for salvation. This salvation is available through the gift of divine love which is the presence of Christ in the believer grasped through faith. Thus, 'x has faith' and 'x has the presence of Christ' are materially equivalent. (I thought about claiming that they were conceptually equivalent, but I can imagine x having faith without x having the presence of Christ. How is this possible? It seems that much of Lutheran Orthodoxy was quite capable of asserting the truth of the former without asserting the truth of the latter.)

Now these general assertions could be clearly stated as propositions of a theory. One would start with some statement such as 'x has the indwelling of Christ if and only if Christ gives himself to x'. One might say then that 'for any divine property P had by D, if x has P, then x has D itself''. After such definitions, one might declare as theoretical postulates that 'for any x, if x has the presence of Christ, then x is justified', and 'for all x, if x is justified, then x is both declared righteous by divine favor, and made righteous by divine gift'. That this would be tedious work, is readily granted; that it would succeed in laying bare the structure of a class of theoretical assertions is only hoped for.

Given that a theory could be structured in which the logical and conceptual relationships between the assertions of the theory were aptly displayed, the question arises as to the applicability. Is this theory applicable to theological reality itself? Is it applicable to a class of texts written within a tradition, or written by a single author? Is it applicable to the Luther texts? Here is seems that what the theory would have to have besides the internal marks of consistency and coherency, are the external characteristics of applicability, adequacy, and fecundity. I shall treat each in turn.

Theory T would be applicable to a class of texts C if and only if it were not disconfirmed by any particular assertions found within C. Theory T would be adequate to a class of texts C if there were not assertions of C that T could not in principle handle. Theory T would be fecund with respect to C if it generated a continuing program of fruitful and creative insights concerning the relationship of T to other theories.

What is different between scientific theory construction and this theological theory construction is what Heidegger called the Befragte, that which is asked questions on the basis of the theory. In natural science theory construction, nature is the Befragte; in theological theory construction it is most often a class of texts that are questioned. To find out what view Luther held, one must be content to advance theoretical models, some of which are contradicted by the texts and some of which are not, some which fit nicely into other overarching theories, and some which do not. Just as we cannot know the Ding an Sich in nature, but must model nature and build a sustainable "take" on nature given our experience with it, so too in theology, we cannot know the mens auctoritatis (mind of the author), but content ourselves with sustainable "reads" on the basis of the Luther texts themselves. Moreover, just as traditional scientific theory must not be easily discarded in favor of newer scientific theory, but generally regarded as authoritative unless directly contradicted by new empirical evidence, so too should newer theological theory not supplant traditional readings unless there is a compelling reason to do so - - a reason arising from a straightforward experience with the Luther texts themselves.

So I find these days in theology that some statements are "more theoretical" and some "less theoretical" on the basis of whether the first are "further removed" from the primary literary experience of reading the text. So too are some theological terms "more concrete" or "less concrete" as to how they cash on the basis of the particular texts. Accordingly, oftentimes the most "theoretical" of terms are those that are presupposed everywhere in our perusal experience without being asserted directly very many times at all! It is of this latter nature, it seems, that the Finnish Lutheran notion of divinization participates.

Normativity and Theology

Some distinctions are so basic and simple that we denizens of North America tend, in general, to forget them. One such distinction is between the normative and the descriptive. While Hume famously taught that one cannot derive an "ought" from and "is," many no longer can grasp that statements about what is the case cannot entail statements about what must be the case. The only way, in fact, to get the "ought" from the "is" is to describe what is in such ways that there is an implied ought. But then one merely derives an "ought" from another "ought."

I taught for many years at a state university. Students came to there first or second class in philosophy assuming that how people behave somehow entails how they ought to behave. Perhaps the problem is the ambiguity in the word 'norm' itself. What is "normal" for human beings is that which falls within a spectrum of human behaviors. While what 85% of people do is "normal," clearly at least 5-10% is not. What is "normal" is what human beings normally do. This becomes a norm for human behavior for many, for they have never thought through the fact that normal behavior does not the normative make. Just because 90% or more of humans do a certain thing does not entail that they should do that thing. One simply cannot get an "ought" from an "is," even if what "is" is normal for human beings.

The loss of the "ought" probably is inevitable in a democratic equalitarian culture where one voice is prized as highly as the next. Clearly, the loss of the "ought" is connected with relativism with respect to truth. If one "ought" not hold one position more so than the next, it is difficult to understand the semantic field for truth. When doing mathematics one solves the equation is properly and truly or improperly and wrongly. Those who do it wrong "ought" to have done it properly. Grading mathematics examinations presupposes that the student "ought" to solve the problem this way and not this way.

Maybe it is because the natural shows "no echo of the normative" (Davidson) that we present-day devotees of naturalism have such a difficult time with truth. And if truth in mathematics is problematic for contemporary naturalism, how much more is truth in theology. How can it be so, for instance, that a notion of justification within theology thought and taught these last 1000 years is the position that one "ought" to hold. Given that Augustine, Thomas and Luther taught differently on justification, which one, or which elements of these thinkers views are right, are what rational agents ought to hold true? Surely serious work in theology must eschew the descriptive in favor of the normative. It is not merely that A taught x and B aught y and C taught z, and we must document this, but rather that A wrongly taught x, while B rightly taught y. Theology is thoroughly normative. To give up on the normative makes the descriptive task of church history merely one of reporting. While the historian in this case might say the C agreed with D, she cannot say that D rightly agreed with C.

Theology must always include the normative. Like philosophy, theology survives as a remnant to a by-gone era before statistical methods and the new "science of man" turned questions to human regularities (norms) of behavior. Theology, in its commitment to "oughts," does indeed suggest that the natural is not all that there is. There must be, besides are world, a world of the "should have been," a world of what would be ideal and beneficent, a world of the very Created Order of God, a world mirroring the ultimate design features of deity prior to its dissolution into what is, before its Fall into existence. That we only catch glimpses of this world seems reasonable to we creatures of this Fall.