Some Emphases within Neo-Marxist Critical Theory

Neo-Marist critical theory is a paradigm of research concerned with human emancipation. It seeks liberation from oppressive, totalitizing structures and attempts to create a world satisfying the deepest aspirations of human beings. Whereas traditional social theory endeavored simply to explain the existence and contour of actual societal structures, critical theory both explains and seeks to transform these societal structures thought to exploit human beings. 

Critical theory thus seeks to increase freedom by decreasing the domination of oppressive, exploitative structures conducing to human alienation.  It does this by providing both descriptive and normative bases for social inquiry. Accordingly, critical theory seeks to distinguish its forms, aims and theories of explanation from standard (traditional) views, primarily within the social sciences.  

The term 'critical theory' is most closely associated with the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany.  Founded in 1923 by Carl Gruenberg, the Institute was initially financed by Felix Weil. The general thrust of the Institute was to rethink classical Marxism in the context of the Weimar Republic. Scholars of the movement had noticed that social reality did not conform to the predictions of Marx. Why did the proletariat not overthrow the bourgeoisie as was predicted?  Why did the working class not want to effect revolution? 

Instead of regarding these empirical results as disconfirming Marxism, scholars of the School adjusted Marxist theory to be consistent with the empirical results. The effect of all of this was a brand of neo-Marxism focusing upon the structure of contemporary culture and the concomitant alienation human beings experience within that culture. 

Max Horkheimer offered the initial address of the Institute in 1929 and became its Director in 1930.  Other luminaries of the School include Adorno, Fromm, Pollock, Kirchheimer, Loewenthal, Neumann, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas. The maverick thinker, Walter Benjamin is often regarded as associated with the School as well. Thinkers of the Movement were united in their understanding of social theory which would combine philosophy with the disciplines of the social sciences.  

While thinkers differed in accents and emphases, I attempt below to identify and summarize some of the common themes emerging within the Frankfurt School's paradigm of research.  As with any attempt at generalization, there is some loss of accuracy. The Frankfurt School is not monolithic in its affirmations across all areas of its research. This being said, I believe that the School in general holds to the following:  

• While the economic and materialistic determinism of Marx had predicted an overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, this did not happen. Since Marxism is in some deep sense true, there must be some explanation for this that is consistent with this truth.
  

• The explanation for the working classes not revolting is that they have not sufficiently understood their exploitation within the capitalist system. They have somehow become distracted from their true plight.
  

• The sources of this distraction are found within the structure of capitalism itself. Whereas Marx had claimed that religion is the opiate of the masses -- functioning to distract workers from their actual exploitation -- contemporary capitalism offers many secular kinds of distractions, notably "mass culture" and the entertainment industry in general.
  

• Art in pre-industrialized societies had been an active concern for people as they both made, shared and appreciated that art. This is important because art, in fact, actually offers human beings the chance to see the world in new ways, ways crucial for the process of social transformation and amelioration. However, art in the twentieth century has become a commodity, something that people merely passively consume.
  

• In the twentieth century, technological developments have made possible the distribution of cultural products like art, music and film on a large scale. The result of this has been that art, film and music has become formulaic, designed to be purchased by people in satisfaction of their particular wants. Instead of these cultural products opening one to possible new ways of being, they simply exist to be consumed by workers in their leisure time. These commodities provide pleasant times of distraction between the times of work. Instead of engaging and challenging human beings actively to pursue truth and transformation, they are purchased and passively consumed by the masses in order to anesthetize themselves from the exploitative relationships in which they find themselves, and in so doing, make their intolerable lives more livable.
  

• Mass culture functions through these cultural products ideologically; people's values and their very consciousness are thereby affected by the consumption of these products. Natural human intellectual curiosity is dulled and people become intellectually inactive and politically passive. 
  

• The sameness of the cultural products available to humans in art, film and music is predicated on what will ultimately sell to consumers. Nobody is, in fact, designing a system of capitalism that exploits the working class. Moreover, nobody is intending to feed people mindless artistic commodities in order to keep them distracted and satisfied enough to go to work the next day. It is simply that this is what occurs because of the practice of capitalism as it functions in the modern world. Everything has a price and people consume that which is pleasant to them. On a daily basis, more people want to watch romantic comedies than view Schindler's List. They would rather listen to pop music than reflect upon Schoenberg's twelve-tone compositions. They prefer three chord rock to late 19th century German chromaticism.  (I don't know how that is possible!) They prefer landscape pictures of trees, hills and lakes to cubist paintings. 
  

• In a capitalistic society people are consumers. In order to sell products to consumers, advertisers must create needs in the consumers so that they will buy the product. The creation of these needs actually functions as a type of human alienation because most of the needs advertising endeavors to create are things consumers really don't need. Accordingly, advertising and marketing really are in the business of creating false needs, needs that displace the person further from his or her true self.  Advertising thereby effects alienation.
  

• In order to bring about human liberation and transformation to more humane conditions of existence, capitalism must be replaced. It cannot be fixed or adjusted to work because it begins with the assumption that human beings are consumers, assumptions that ultimately lead to human alienation. Whereas Marxism potentially treats human beings as ends in themselves, capitalism interprets human beings as means to the end of building up capital. Men and women become commodities within capitalism. A person is identified as one who fixes roofs, or pipes, or electrical panels, or drives trucks, or places a certain bolt in a machine built on the conveyor belt.  

• While it is true that Marxism seeks to treat human beings as ends in themselves, this did not happen in the Marist-inspried Bolshevik Revolution. Soviet-style communism unfortunately also produced human alienation and turned human beings into mere means to some other end. 
  

• Most education within capitalistic societies is itself commodified. Instead of education having intrinsic value for the purposes of human flourishing, most education merely teaches skills so that people can become skillful workers within a consumer-dominated, capitalistic society.  Instead of freeing people from the tyranny of assumed limited possibilities, this type of education merely functions to teach people how to fit within an alienating structure. It thereby binds one to a system of exploitation rather than freeing one from such exploitation. 
  

• What is needed to diagnose the current ailments of society is a hermeneutic similar to that of classical depth psychology. In depth psychology, the individual's unconscious is explored at its depths for clues on how to interpret the existence and behavior of surface consciousness. The Frankfurt School sought to bring the hidden alienations and totalizations of society to the surface in order to grasp the existence and functioning of the present social order. Exploration of society and culture at its depth provides the key for interpreting social and cultural behavior. 
  

• Moreover, psychoanalytic theory helps explain how it is that people within fascist societies could feel as if their lives had meaning. Adorno, for instance, believed that Freud's theory of narcissism was helpful in understanding how the "little man" could both submit to, and identify with, authority. 
  

• Whereas classical Marxism understood primary oppositions as based upon economics, e.g., the working class vs. the bourgeoisie, critical theory of the Frankfurt School extended this list of oppositions. A similar domination of one group by another is thereby located in the relation between the sexes, in relations between the races, and in relations between people having different sexual orientations. Whereas traditional Marxism sought to free the working class from their economic exploitation, neo-Marxism attempts to free those marginalized and dominated from all of their numerous oppressions. It believes a better world is possible when traditional structures of oppression are negated. 
  

• A theory of hegemony claims that the dominant class not only creates its own ideology, but that of all of the other classes dominated by that class. Proper social education -- which capitalists might call "propaganda" -- is needed to change the class consciousness of both the dominating and dominated groups, and thus to bring about political change. 
  

• Whereas the reason of the Enlightenment critiqued earlier mythologies in order to help protect men and women from the very real threats of nature, so too must reason today diagnose and expose the mythology of this Enlightenment critique itself to protect mean and women from the dangers to human flourishing inhering within it.  Enlightenment reason has become merely a means-ends instrumental reason which leaves outside of itself any reasonable valuation of the ends to which reason as an evaluation of effective means must relate.  Accordingly, Enlightenment reason bears potential totalizations within itself, totalizations leading to domination and alienation.  Reason, which showed such promise to liberate, carries within itself the very ideologies that bind human beings even more fully. 
  

Examining critical theory more deeply demands, however, that we move past the generalities I have just sketched. However, I think the above list may be helpful in the examinations to follow. My hope is to provide summaries of major critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, summaries where one eye is focused on the potential appropriation of the thinker in the revolutionary rhetoric and action we are witnessing today, and where the other eye is allowed to gaze out towards the entire horizon of theology and religion more generally, discerning how the thinker's views relate to the deepest questions of the human heart. 

Why are Things Seemingly Unreasonable?

How will history come to understand 2020?  How will it ultimately interpret this movement called, "Black Lives Matter?  Is this movement a continuation of the Civil Rights Movement of the early and middle 1960s, or is its true foundation the student protests that happened later in that decade?   Moreover, what is its relationship, if any, to the "Occupy Wall Street" movement?

In looking at these questions, I am not concerned primarily with what people think they are doing when participating in Black Lives Matter protests, nor with what they are intending when looting, rioting, or committing acts of violence.   Most of the people actually engaged in Black Lives Matter protests seemingly believe that systemic racism pervades many large urban police departments, even if 20-30% of these police forces are themselves black. Some in Black Lives Matter have experienced actions that can easily be interpreted as racist, and these experiences then have surely formed the subsequent hermeneutical lens by which entire communities interpret subsequent police activity.

When this happens, statistics about the actual number of unarmed people shot by police matter very little. The narrative has been birthed and the power of the narrative to explain and predict subsequent events is clearly manifest.  But does the belief that racism exists and a distaste for such racism really explain why people are out in the streets in protest all over the world?

I don't think so. I am old enough to remember the Civil Rights marches on television, and I am old enough to recall that there were actually people in the sixties who were intellectually against the Civil Rights movement.  A fortiori, one needed to march in those days in order to raise the awareness of others. Some people believed, after all, that only white people should enjoy the privileges that society could offer.

The strange thing about the protests today is that virtually nobody is now consciously a racist who believes that people of color are somehow inferior and should not enjoy all of the benefits of our society and culture. In other words, if the marches are actually about basic equality between the races and the notion that police departments should not murder black people -- or people of any color -- then there really is nobody to have to convince by marching.  So what is the point?  What are we supposed to learn from those marching and demonstrating?

Clearly, since we are not needing to learn how not to be explicitly or consciously racist, then the marches really are teaching us something else: how not to be unconsciously or nonintentionally racist.  People march so people around the world can reflect upon how it is that there are groups of people, sometimes races, who do, in fact, exploit other people systematically and perhaps nonintentionally.  They do not exploit by being individual agents that have particular beliefs and desires that explain their behavior. Instead they exploit by being part of an entire social order that eventuates in the exclusion and marginalization of people other than those in power.  

If this is true, then white privilege is really nothing one can confess, nor is it something from which one can repent.  It is itself an entire structure of aims, behaviors and interpretations.  One is tempted perhaps to say that is is a form of life, an overarching matrix of meanings and actions.  It is, in fact, a world that one occupies and upon which one projects one's own possibilities of being. Such a world of meaning and action is not something that can be easily adjusted.  When a controlling understanding of race relationships is deeply ingrained in our culture and traditions, one cannot simply excise this understanding while leaving in place the world from which the understanding emerged and upon which their concomitant actions and meanings make sense.

All this is to say that if we are to understand what is happening in our world today, we need to know something of the theoretical grounding that supports movements like Black Lives Matter. An honest examination of this grounding removes us from the drama on the streets and deposits us in seats in the German academic lecture hall. In order to understand what is going on today, we must learn something about critical theory as it developed within, and subsequently morphed outside the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany.

In subsequent posts I will examine some of the crucial insights of the Frankfurt School and also "third generation" critical theory with an eye towards how its basic presuppositions and assumptions inform our contemporary situation with regard to the worldwide protests. I will try not to distort the views of these thinkers through simplification and generalization.

Continental thought in the last 100 years is extremely complicated.  We cannot simply call everything "postmodern," and say that "postmodernity teaches X."  Some continental thinkers in recent decades are postmodern, it is true.  But individual thinkers disagree with one another on all types of issues.  What is important is that we achieve clarity, that we are sober in our judgments and that we don't try to find the bogeyman under every tree. Clearly, in examining facets of continental thinking over the past eight or nine decades, the devil is in the details.

Critical theory challenges the assumption of modern democratic capitalistic societies that people are in general happy or fulfilled in their lives. It unmasks the myriad sufferings of humanity and offers a general remedy for such sufferings.  Critical theorists in general believe that Marxist theory, if properly adjusted and purged of its original materialistic determinism, can provide a superior alternative to capitalism if one is properly to advance human flourishing.  Such theory aims at transformation, an overturning of the old order of things in order to attenuate social marginalization and exclusion.

Critical theory may have profound theological implications. After all, how is sin possible on the assumptions of critical theory?  In what does salvation consist?  What does 'justification' mean?  Will contemporary interpreters of critical theory find room for any theology at all? 

In subsequent posts, I shall try to introduce the basics of critical theory fairly, connecting it to our current situation.  I shall attempt to be fair, knowing that many would claim that my own background, education and experience would make my fairness in regard to it very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.  Since I am a theologian, I will be making theological comments along the way as well.  This may be even more offensive to some readers.  

Responding to Critics of the Institute of Lutheran Theology

It is always interesting to find people talking about the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) online.  I was directed by an ILT faculty member to something called "Degree Info" in which our nascent institution was indeed discussed in a thread beginning with a question on December 18 from "Russell" asking if anyone on the site had experience with us (https://www.degreeinfo.com/index.php?threads/institute-of-lutheran-theology.56612/).  

My goodness what responses that brought out!  "Steve" wrote the following:

. . .when I examine ILT, my bullshit meter goes off the scale. Yes, I realize they are accredited by ABHE, which is generally credible (meaning, with some exceptions). But in reviewing their web site I see some significant red flags. No, I will not be specific. Why? Because that would be time consuming, and I don't want to be bothered. Suffice to say that if you decide to earn a degree from these folks, I will laugh at you. . . .  Bottom line - if you're looking to be credentialed, let alone ordained, by one of the major denominations, this school will be considered a joke. If you don't care about such things, cool - neither do I.

After talking about me and my life as a "rental apartment manager" this individual further asserts:

 By the way, if you'd like an even better low-down on the school's facility, go back the site of the property they picture on their site and check out the interior pictures - https://www.oldsanctuary.com/gallery. And check out their home page at https://www.oldsanctuary.com - this entire building is a banquet hall. Yet ILT portrays this churchy-looking building, which is located down the street from its actual office location, as its headquarters.

Can you spell s-l-e-a-z-y? This is looking more and more like a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland movie - "Hey, kids, let's start a seminary!" 

To be fair, Steve and others on the site do respect our faculty, and most admit that it is likely one can receive a quality education at ILT.  They question, however, if we really have a campus or only "a small office in a one story streetside building," and if we are really academically credible because of our accreditation.  

The gauntlet having been thrown down, I had to join the site and write a response.  Here is that response.  It is possible, after all, that others might have similar questions as Steve and others who wrote in the Degree Info Forum.  
___________

Somebody I know saw the discussion here, and wanted me to check it out. I was happy to see that our young school is being noticed. However, there are several statements in the replies that are factually incorrect. As the President of the Institute of Lutheran Theology, I want to provide you accurate information.

Firstly, the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) owns its own campus in Brookings, SD. It is, in fact, the old Saint Thomas More Catholic Church campus. ILT thus owns the 13,200 sq. ft. church, a 9,800 square foot school annex, and a 4,500 square foot rectory building. The Church houses our library and our information services offices on the garden level -- we are now somewhere over 25,000 catalogued physical volumes plus great on-line resources! The Church itself is still being used as a banquet hall on occasions because of community demand, but we have plans to turn this all into a really stellar library complex. In addition to about 6,000 square foot of space in the church, ILT currently occupies another 2,100 square feet in the other two buildings. Far from being "one office," we are presently occupying over 8,500 square feet. We do currently have a number of tenants in our building because it helps our cash flow. Someday, however, all 17,500 square feet of our campus will be occupied by ILT. We have not grown to that point yet, but my hope is that we shall.

Secondly, ILT is accredited by ABHE for doctoral programs, and ABHE is recognized by CHEA for all of its graduate programming. Currently, the USDE only recognizes ABHE undergraduate programs for Title IV, but ABHE has before the Department of Education the requisite documents to have its graduate programming recognized as well. I believe that this will happen very soon.  Clearly, ILT wanted to make sure that all of its programming would be recognized both by CHEA and the USDE.

Thirdly, I am very pleased to see that most who had written recognize the strength of our faculty. They include Benne, Hillmer, Kilcrease, Lioy, Sorum and me on the faculty senate with Paul Hinlicky, Robert Kolb, Mark Mattes, David Nelson (Academic Book Editor of Baker Books) and more you might recognize also teaching in 2020. Paul Hinlicky has taught with us in the past, and he and Mark Mattes are joining us as Ph.D. Fellows. 

Fourthly, ILT is an independent Lutheran theological initiative that has participants at the Board, Faculty and Staff from the ELCA, LCMS, LCMC, NALC, CALC, and AFLC. In actuality, LCMC (Lutherans Congregations in Mission for Christ) totals over 800 congregations, and it, CALC (Canadian Association of Lutheran Congregations) and the NALC (North American Lutheran Churches) have been the closest constituency to ILT. We are, however, very interested in providing quality graduate programming to interested parties within all the Lutheran church bodies and far beyond.

Fifthly, I will admit that it is somewhat odd to be both a business person and an academic. I confess to being CEO of Den-Wil Inc and related companies (www.den-wil.com) as well as President, CEO and CAO of ILT. Den-Wil does multi-family housing and commercial buildings, it is involved both in the lodging and hospitality industries as well as construction and real estate development. I did not set out to do this in life, but this is what has happened. ILT needed someone with entrepreneurial experience, however, to get it going because it had no funding from an established church body. Fortunately, I had some experience developing projects, and was not frightened by the considerable investments that had to be made to get us going.

Finally, all should realize that ILT is a fully-functioning seminary and graduate school with a self-governing faculty, and all the units needed to function, e.g., information services, enrollment services, donor services, congregational relations, international partnerships, publicity, and alumni connections. We believe that people proclaiming the Gospel today likely need more education rather than less, and thus we are always very interested in understanding the current cultural and intellectual horizon in which theology must now be done. We challenge our students intellectually.

ILT is very young and many of its programs are in the nascent stage. But we are developing. This project is not about me nor will it ever be about me. I am just the guy carrying the baton for this leg of the race. I am available to respond to any questions you all might have. Thank you!

To a further question about accreditation, I wrote this: 

It is nice to have a discussion with you!  From the start we were going to pursue HLC accreditation and began the process. When we began the process of establishing the Institute of Lutheran Theology, ATS was not so comfortable with delivery systems such as ours and would have required residency requirements that we did not want to put into place at the time. (Since then, I understand ATS is more open to synchronous online delivery.)

We started the HLC process, but knew we wanted to expand quite rapidly with new programs, and we realized that we could not easily do this with HLC. They told us that we needed to hold the programs we were in the process of accrediting for five years without continuing to develop new ones. We met the ABHE people, and it simply clicked for us. They are a bit more prescriptive than HLC, and as a new school struggling to put into place all proper assessment tools, handbooks, documentation and institutional algorithms, we were aided by them. After working with them in 2015, we received formal applicant status in 2016, candidacy status in 2017, and initial accreditation in 2018 -- the fastest any of their institutions had ever achieved this, I believe. Approximately 1/3 of their institutions have graduate programs and this list is growing, so they are very motivated to get Title IV from USDE for members' graduate programming.

I have always believed that ABHE is a floor not a ceiling for our accreditation efforts. In my opinion, we need to get the entire institution -- including Ph.D. program -- to the point where we can take this through the HLC accreditation process. I expect the demands of this to be a bit higher than taking ILT through ATS accreditation, especially with respect to a research library. I am confident that we can ultimately meet the financial conditions of HLC with respect to cash reserves, etc., but would like to have a couple more good years of financial operational history.

With respect to the last point, we are a GuideStar Platinum institution, and are completely transparent with our yearly audited financial information. We have raised about $7,000,000 in cash over the years in addition to tuition and other revenue streams -- mostly our rental operations. We need to keep developing financially to have the economic girth to survive into the next century and beyond.

Thanks for the conversation!
 ___________

We are very excited about the upcoming semester at the Institute of Lutheran Theology.  We have record early enrollment, and we expect to shatter all our previous records.  God is good!  ILT has never been about me or any of its early players.  We do it ad maiorem dei gloriam.   Check us out always at https://www.ilt.edu/. 

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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