Critical Thinking, Cynical Thinking, and Theology

I enjoy blogging, but often do not have the time to do it as often as I should. I’ve had the following essay running around my head for some time, but am only now getting around to putting ink to paper—or keystroke to pixel.

If you ask most people, they would tell you that critical thinking and theology (or religion in general) are mortal enemies. Religious people cannot think critically, it is assumed, especially if they happen to hold to the old creeds. And if one does think critically, it is assumed that no particular religion or dogma will be held dear. But that is because most people have assumed that critical thinking is the same as cynical thinking, which it is not.

There is no lack of cynical thinking nowadays. Name an author from a bygone era, and an educated smart-aleck will tell you that so-and-so held to a particular bigotry or engaged in some delicious vice that was disapproved then but is in favor now. (The sexual indulgences of every literary fop and of every monarch are well known; what they actually did outside of the boudoir, less so.) The point of this knowledge is clear. We learn about their prejudices so that we can congratulate ourselves for being enlightened people who never succumbed to the sort of thinking popular in those dark eras. We learn about the sexual escapades of prominent people in history so that we can herald them for being forerunners of a modern society that has rid itself of all prudery. We take a cynical view on history and life in general largely so that we do not have to think critically about ourselves and our own generation.

Auguste Rodin, Le Penseur

For that reason, most of today’s cynical thinking does not involve critical thinking. Shakespeare is either lauded because he was gay or denounced because he was an anti-Semite. If you ask people why they say those things about Shakespeare, they will roll their eyes. How dense can you be? Didn’t you hear the teacher give that factoid about Shakespeare? But usually the people who toss out such little tidbits of literary gossip cannot defend their statements. Of course, they haven’t read The Merchant of Venice, and even if they had, they wouldn’t know how to evaluate it. It would never occur to them that literature (and especially drama) can be notoriously ambiguous and that the attitudes of its characters—even its principal ones—do not necessarily reflect the author’s beliefs, or else we would have to argue that Shakespeare approved of regicide and parricide because of his Macbeth and Hamlet. Of course, this does not in itself exonerate Shakespeare of the charge of anti-Semitism, but the evidence has to be weighed and evaluated more carefully and in a more nuanced manner than is done by those who merely parrot the charge.

Unthinking cynicism is nothing new, and neither is unthinking cynicism passing itself off as critical thought. By all accounts, Socrates (d. 399 B.C.) was truly concerned to find the meaning of justice, goodness, courage, beauty, and the like. He engaged in critical thinking, asking whether the traditional answers given matched the evidence. He poked and prodded to find out exactly what people meant by what they were saying. But Socrates was not cynical in undertaking this process. He believed that there were answers to these questions, even if those answers were not always clear to him. His student Plato would agree and further develop the notion of Ideas or Forms. He would grant, as he did in his dialogue Parmenides, that there are difficulties with that particular notion, but he would not abandon that thought altogether.

But while Socrates and Plato were engaged in serious critical thought, there were plenty of contemporaries who substituted mere cynicism for critical thought. These were the youth whom Socrates was accused of corrupting, but who in truth loved sophistry and clever argument and were unconcerned about finding the truth. Plato recognized the difference and he alludes to it in many of his dialogues. In The Symposium, for example, he outlines (through the character Socrates) an ascent to beauty that requires a philosopher to look beyond physical beauty and to discern the beauty of ideas, laws, and (ultimately) Beauty Itself. It is absolutely difficult work and requires the discipline of an ascetic. But while Plato commends Socrates’ vision of philosophy, he has the dialogue narrated by unreliable narrators as a word of warning to the reader to take Socrates’ method seriously rather than merely to ape his shoeless style. Apollodorus, the dialogue’s chief narrator, wasn’t present and knows the tale only third-hand. He relies mainly on Aristodemus, who was present but didn’t have the wherewithal to compose his own speech and who had turned Socratic philosophy into mere argumentativeness. With such narrators garbling the story, it is no wonder that Aristophanes dismissed Socrates as a sophist and a crank in his comedy The Clouds. Plato begs to differ, however, and urges us to see the difference between cynicism and real critical thought.

While cynicism has passed itself off as critical thought for a long time, it has become more prevalent recently. The reigning philosophies of the past three centuries have grown rather skeptical about what we can know. Even those that believed in the value of the empirical sciences have tended to dismiss talk about aesthetics, ethics, religion, and ontology as nonsense. With the advent of Postmodernism, the trustworthiness of even empirical science has been questioned. At the same time, modern society has heralded the unshackling of the individual from mediating institutions (such as the family, the community, and the church), even as the individual has actually become quite beholden to corporations and to the nation-state in a way undreamed of in pre-modern societies. It is in the interest of the powers-that-be to have individuals turned into uncritical cynics, who are too cynical to think that anything can be done to right any wrongs and too uncritical to bother to find a way or even to discern that wrongs are being committed.

Not all cynical thinkers are uncritical thinkers, but cynicism can easily take the place of robust critical thinking. And this has often happened as people evaluate Christianity. Christianity is well grounded in history if one cares to look at the evidence. It offers a rigorous intellectual life for those who would follow it. Christian theology does not consist of mere platitudes (although some have tried to reduce it to them), but its dogmas are rich in nuance and require an intellectual regimen to be apprehended correctly. But too often people dismiss Christianity cynically. They “know” that Jesus never lived or that He never said anything ascribed to Him. It isn’t that they have weighed the evidence and found it wanting, but rather they have dismissed it prematurely.

Take, for example, the Jesus Seminar, which has taken the cynicism of the historical-critical method to its absurd but logical conclusion. As Korey Maas points out in a recent article in Logia, the methodology of the Jesus Seminar is anything but grounded in the methods of sound historical investigation. It purports to find the “real Jesus” by ruling out any saying of His that sounded like what a first century Jew or an early Christian might say. As Maas notes, this is not standard operating procedure for evaluating other historical figures, and he illustrates his point by using the example of George Washington. Imagine that historians had to rule out as apocryphal anything ascribed to him that sounded like (1) what someone in the mid-eighteenth century British Empire would have said or (2) what an American in the early years of independence might have said. One would expect that Washington would talk in part like an eighteenth century British subject and in part like a newly independent American. Why, therefore, would we want to rule out the possibility that Jesus, who was raised as a pious Jew, would say things that other first century AD Jews would say, and that, as the founder of Christianity, He would also talk like His Christian followers would?

It isn’t critical thinking that is the enemy of Christianity (including a confessionally robust version of it such as I embrace). It is a cynicism that has deluded itself into thinking that it is critical thought. In my next post I’ll explore how Christians ought to employ critical thinking in theology.

From my article on the Athanasian Creed (which will appear in a companion to the Lutheran Service Book)

Since Trinity Sunday is fast approaching, I thought I would post a portion of an article I had written introducing the Athanasian Creed. There was much that I learned in researching this topic that I had not been taught in the seminary. One thing that I didn't include in my article: this creed is a masterpiece of Latin prose, as can be seen in the way that it consistently follows the rigid metrical rules for ending clauses in Ciceronian era prose while it also still conforms to the dictates of contemporary 5th century prose, whose cadences were based on accentuation rather than syllable quantity. That in itself was a remarkable feat. If you want to read more, you'll have to buy the book.

Once a year, need it or not, cowboys would take a bath—or so the legend goes. And once a year, need it or not, Lutheran congregations are forced to recite the Athanasian Creed. Those who find the annual recitation on Trinity Sunday to be a burdensome chore might well consider that from the days of Charlemagne the Athanasian Creed was to be learned by heart by the clergy and recited at Prime every Sunday. That was not enough for the Cluniac monks, who sang it daily.[1] Only at the dawn of the twentieth century did it get reduced in Roman circles from Prime on every Sunday to Prime on the Sundays after the Epiphany and Pentecost. By the middle of the same century it had been further reduced to Prime on Trinity Sunday only.[2] Anglican usage showed a similar deterioration of use, although it has been waning in those circles for the past two centuries.[3]

Prime, of course, was one of the daily offices sung first by monks and later by all clergy. As one of the more minor offices, it was less likely to be attended by laity than Matins or Compline. Thus, through most of the centuries of its use, the Athanasian Creed has been something pastors confessed repeatedly in their devotional life so that it could shape their preaching, while lay people have not used it as much. History would suggest, therefore, that we should not expect the Athanasian Creed to be an integral part of the average lay person’s thinking or devotional life. A wiser practice would be to encourage pastors (and perhaps elders and commissioned ministers of religion) to recite the Athanasian Creed more frequently than once a year (perhaps weekly) while expecting lay people to make use primarily of the Apostles’ Creed in their daily devotions (as Luther suggests) and the Nicene Creed at the Sunday Divine Service. By praying the Athanasian Creed, pastors would imbibe its rich Trinitarian and Christological language, which would help shape their preaching. This practice would not abolish the annual recitation of the Athanasian Creed on Trinity Sunday, but it might be a better way to steep pastors in the creed’s rich doctrine of the Trinity and enable them to communicate its theology to the laity they shepherd.

Who wrote the Athanasian Creed? Certainly not Athanasius, as it is never referred to by him or his contemporaries or even any later person in the Greek-speaking church, at least not until centuries later. Those who read Latin will recognize instantly that it is too Latinate in its phraseology and structure to be a translation of a Greek original. There are clear verbal parallels between the creed and the writings of Ambrose of Milan (†397), Augustine of Hippo (†430), Fulgentius of Ruspe (†533), and theologians of southern France such as Vincent of Lérins († ca. 450), Faustus of Riez († ca. 490), and Caesarius of Arles (†542).[4] But verbal parallelism is not in and of itself determinative. These theologians may have borrowed language from the creed, or the creed may have borrowed language from the theologians, or the creed may have been written by one of them.

When G. Friedrich Bente wrote his historical introduction to the Athanasian Creed as part of the Concordia Triglotta, he could do no more than suggest its origin in southern France between 450 and 600, which was as far as the scholarly consensus at that time was willing to go.[5] It was recognized by then that the Trinitarian language is drawn from that of Augustine’s treatise on the Trinity, although the creed seems to reflect Augustinianism rather than the hand of Augustine himself.[6] The focus of the creed is largely anti-Arian, but directed at a more moderate form of Arianism than the original Arianism, which would indicate that it was directed more against the Goths, such as had settled in Spain and France. Given the many parallels between the creed and theologians of southern France, that provenance seems more likely.

However, in 1931 the eminent French-Belgian patristic scholar Germain Morin discovered a collection of sermons of Caesarius of Arles that included the Athanasian Creed. This proved that not only had Caesarius been familiar with the creed, but that he had promoted it as well and thus the creed must have been written before his death in 542.[7] It is an intriguing possibility that Caesarius himself may have been the author, but it is unlikely, given some stylistic and minor theological differences between Caesarius and the creed. J.N.D. Kelly argues for the following: “the connexion [sic] of the creed with the monastery at Lérins, its dependence on the theology of Augustine, and, in the Trinitarian section, on his characteristic method of arguing, its much more direct and large-scale indebtedness to Vincent [of Lérins], its acquaintance with and critical attitude towards Nestorianism, and its emergence at some time between 440 and the high noon of Caesarius’ activity.”[8]

Two objections are commonly raised against the Athanasian Creed. The first is its damnatory clauses. Liberal Protestantism, Pietism, and even much of Evangelicalism have objected to the notion that a person could be condemned for failing to uphold certain dogmas.[9] Thus, Samuel Schmucker proposed dropping the Athanasian Creed when he offered his American Platform for amending the Augsburg Confession.[10] Most serious Lutherans, though, will recognize that the Scriptures themselves condemn those who teach contrary to the gospel (Galatians 1:8).[11] The second objection is that it teaches a salvation by works. But this objection does not hold up under scrutiny. The language is biblical (John 5:29) and does not contradict the notion that we are saved by faith in Christ apart from our works. It is only by faith in Christ that anyone can do good works. On the Last Day, Christ will point to our good works to demonstrate that we had true faith, while he will point out the lack of good works to demonstrate that the unbelievers had no faith (Matthew 25:31-46). Moreover, this creed was promoted by Caesarius of Arles, who was a firm opponent not only of Pelagianism (overt works-righteousness) but also semi-Pelagianism and organized the Synod of Orange in 529 to condemn it; nonetheless, he saw no false doctrine in the creed on this topic but rather promoted it instead, as we have seen.

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[1] John Norman Davidson Kelly, The Athanasian Creed (Evanston: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964), 43; Robert L. Wilken, “Introducing the Athanasian Creed,” Currents in Theology and Mission 6:1 (1979), 5-6.

[2] Kelly, 49.

[3] Kelly, 7, 49-51; Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition [hereafter Pelikan, Credo] (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 324.

[4] Kelly, 24-34.

[5] Concordia Triglotta [hereafter Triglotta] (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 14.

[6] Pelikan, Credo, 435-436.

[7] Germain Morin, “L’Origine du symbole d’Athanase: témoignage inédit de s. Césaire d’Arles,” Revue Bénédictine 14 (1932): 207-219; cf. Kelly, 35-37.

[8] Kelly, 123.

[9] Pelikan, Credo, 488-497.

[10] Pelikan, Credo, 324-325.

[11] Pelikan (Credo, 76-78) rightly notes that pharmacists have to follow prescriptions faithfully to a doctor’s intent or else be barred from their profession; the damnatory clauses in the creed serve a similar function for theologians. Wilken, 9, also points out the need for a church still struggling with a pagan environment to delineate sharply between the God Christians worship and the pagan concepts of deity.

Is Philosophy Necessary in Theology?

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine (Jack Kilcrease) posted a blog in which he argued that people need to be familiar with Aristotelian philosophy if they are going to understand the arguments of theologians from the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy (latter half of the sixteenth century through the end of the seventeenth century), especially from the time period of John Gerhard (1582-1637) onwards, since all academic endeavors in that era were influenced by the Aristotelian Renaissance. Kilcrease’s argument makes sense, since one must understand the language in which something is written. This is doubly the case when there are precise, technical definitions given to certain words that might be used in a looser, non-technical sense in common parlance today or even in a technical sense that is somewhat different today.

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates

But there is another question that Kilcrease did not explicitly address, although I do not believe that he will differ with the answer I give below. The question is this: does one need to use philosophy or philosophical terminology in theology at all? Granted, one must understand philosophy in order to understand the theological arguments of such ancient thinkers as Gerhard or Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), but do we have to know philosophy in order to do theology today? Should we not just acknowledge that these old theologians have added an unnecessary layer of difficulty to the theological task and that we should be concerned simply with the (non-philosophical) thoughts of the Bible? As one of my Roman Catholic friends has put it, do I need to know Aristotle in order to know Jesus?

When put that way, the only pious answer—indeed the only correct answer—seems to be “No.” Christian theology must be based on the Scriptures and their teachings. They must be grounded in the person and work of Jesus, who was not a Greek philosopher or worked in their categories, but who thought and taught in a Hebrew way that is at times quite foreign to us as well as to the ancient Greek philosophers. We must be careful that we do not adopt a philosophical framework outside of the Scriptures or that taught by our Lord and then try to pigeonhole our Lord’s words into that framework. In other words, theology cannot be placed upon the Procrustean bed of philosophy, ancient or modern.

But how have Lutherans expressed this truth in the past several centuries, yes, even down to the present day? We have said that the gospel is the material principle of theology and the Scriptures are the formal principle of theology—and that philosophy is neither its material nor its formal principle. But, of course, we are using two philosophical phrases that derive ultimately from the works of Aristotle. Thus, even as we deny that philosophy is a governing principle of theology, we use philosophical terms to do so and we use those terms to distinguish two principles that govern theology. (I will omit in this discussion that God is the efficient principle of theology and that the glory of God, knowledge of divine truth, and mankind’s salvation are its final principles, as Gerhard argues.)

Gottfried Eichler, The Last Supper

But why should we distinguish between the Scriptures and the gospel as two different principles in theology? Why should we adopt this language at all? Consider these questions. Is the Scripture important, in fact indispensable, in doing theology? Is the gospel likewise important, in fact indispensable, in doing theology? Well, which is it? Is the Scripture or the gospel of vital importance, the source of all Christian thinking? A genuine Christian who is very knowledgeable about the faith should say, “Both are important, but each plays a different role. The gospel (and by that I mean especially our justification by grace through faith in Christ) is what Christian theology is about. Everything we teach is either predicated upon this fact or leads us to understand this truth. To deny the gospel or to obscure it would be to ruin Christian theology. At the same time, this gospel is not some nebulous idea. It has taken body in the words of the Scriptures—yes, with all their genealogies, historical narratives, letters to ornery churches, and other quirks. You can’t abstract the idea of the gospel apart from the Scriptures without theology going off the rails.”

In short, we are acknowledging that the gospel and the Scriptures play a foundational role in theology, but in different ways. And here it is useful to have some kind of terminology that distinguishes between the various kinds of foundational roles that something might have. To find those terms we look around to grammarians, wordsmiths, or anyone who thinks deeply about these matters. And these people say that there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. About twenty-four centuries ago, a Greek philosopher named Aristotle started asking, “When we say that something is the cause or foundation or source of something”—he would have used the word arche for all three ideas—“what are the possible meanings of that term and how can we distinguish between the various nuances?” He coined several terms that would be refined over the centuries; this allowed people to distinguish (among other things) between a material cause (or principle as it came to be called via the Latin) and a formal cause. Thus, a table has a certain shape given to it because a particular pattern (formal cause) was imposed upon its material, the wood from a tree (material cause). If asked, one could rightly say that a particular piece of furniture was a table or a wooden object, but one wouldn’t make the error of saying that it had the shape of a wooden object or that it was made out of a table.

Since this terminology has been found useful for a long time, we do not feel any need to invent new terms. You could say that the philosophers have done theology a service by being careful linguists and asking what we mean by “cause” or “principle.” It helps us to be more precise than we otherwise would be. And this precision is necessary. When people make the gospel into the formal cause of theology (whether they use that term or not), theology becomes an abstract idea divorced from the real flesh-and-blood history of Christ, Israel, and the apostles. When people make the Bible into the material principle of theology (again, whether or not they use that particular terminology), theology becomes legalistic or moralizing as people overlook what the Scriptures are really all about. And thus it is helpful to acknowledge both the gospel and the Scriptures as foundational principles for theology, but in different senses.

This terminology, I must point out, is not sacrosanct. If we were convinced that it did not adequately express the truth, we would have to invent new terminology that could. The history of Christian theology is full of people doing just that—either inventing new words or tweaking the meaning of old ones and pressing them into the service of Christian doctrine. For example, Christians took over the older philosophical terms essence (ousia) and substrate (hypostasis) and gave them somewhat different definitions, even as they coined new words such as Trinity (Trinitas)—all to explain the relationship of the three divine Persons in one divine Being. They didn’t necessarily take the philosophical language of the day and make Scripture conform to it, but they looked about to see if there was something they could borrow or adapt for their own purposes to make their point clear. And that remains a major task of theology: to make divine revelation clear and precise so that there will be no confusion or as little as possible.

Fully Justified?

A Review of Jonathan Grothe’s The Justification of the Ungodly: An Interpretation of Romans. Two volumes. Self-published: St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, 2005. US$ 56.99.

In the early 1990’s Concordia Publishing House undertook the massive task of publishing a scholarly commentary series on the entire Scriptures. By my count, twenty-two volumes covering twenty books of the Bible (or portions thereof) have been published, but the volume on Romans never appeared, even though it was to have been one of the flagship commentaries and its writer was the editor of the New Testament portion of the series. There never was any official explanation, but the scuttlebutt was that the editorial board (including the doctrinal review board) of Concordia Publishing House was deeply dissatisfied with portions of the commentary that had been submitted.

The commentary that could have been part of that series now appears as this two-volume self-published work. If this is the work that CPH declined, the reader can understand both why it raised a few eyebrows and why the author might rightly have taken umbrage at some of the criticism leveled against this work. It is fortunate that the author found a way to get this work into circulation, for it certainly deserves a wide reading and thoughtful consideration—and at the same time careful critique.

There are many good things one can say about Grothe’s grammatical analysis and insights into individual passages, but this review will focus on some of the broader points he makes. First, he understands that Paul wrote this letter not as an idle exercise in speculative theology, but as a missionary who needed the support of the Roman church in order for him to continue his Gentile mission work. To do this, he had to write to the Jewish Christians in Rome who had heard of him but may have been skeptical about what he was doing. He had to convince these readers that his gospel was in accordance with the Jewish canon and gave Torah its due respect. Moreover, he had to show that this gospel was indeed powerful to save people, as he was claiming it did. Paul also had to convince them to such a degree that these Jewish Christians would not only not hinder his mission work, but convince their counterparts in Jerusalem to cooperate with him fully. Thus, the Epistle to the Romans is not (pace Melanchthon) the result of some impulse on Paul’s part to write a complete systematic theology, but is an exercise in how to read Scripture and Israel’s history with an eye to the Messianic missions, particularly among the Gentiles.

Given his emphasis on this background to Romans, it is understandable that Grothe understands “law” to mean “Torah” fairly consistently throughout the epistle. While it has been customary for Christians—both before and after the Reformation—to distinguish between the moral, civil, and ceremonial aspects of the law, Grothe will have none of it. Torah is Torah. In Grothe’s estimation Paul does not accept one part of the Mosaic Law (e.g., the moral law), while rejecting other parts of it (e.g., the ceremonial law), but argues that all of Torah has been abolished by the death of Christ. This does not make Torah irrelevant. In fact, the Christian is able to look at Moses as having written a Torah of faith rather a Torah of works (Romans 3:27), as the argument about Abraham’s justification in Romans 4 proves. While many translations and commentators translate the word “law” in this passage as “principle,” Grothe demonstrates that one can understand it more naturally as Torah. One can then understand this passage as outlining a different hermeneutic than that of the traditional Judaism of Paul’s day, an emphasis that is further developed in Romans 4, 9, and 10, to name a few places. Convinced that Paul almost always means “Torah” rather than “moral law” or some other aspect of the law when he says “law,” Grothe develops this insight to be at once one of the greatest strengths of his commentary and one of its greatest weaknesses, as we will see later.

Grothe is concerned that Christians are too quick to salvage the law and put Christians back under it. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way that most commentators view Romans 6-8 as a discourse on sanctification. To the contrary, argues Grothe, these chapters unfold the gospel’s power for salvation, even amid the ongoing battle against sin, and thus these chapters continue to unfold the justification of the ungodly. Thus, they are not so much an appeal for the believer’s sanctification, as C.E.B. Cranfield (among other expositors) suggests, but rather a defense against the slander that Paul’s gospel isn’t strong enough to save a rotten humanity.

Moreover, when Paul does finally get around to sanctification (Romans 12-16), Grothe argue that Paul views it primarily as a liturgical action, that is, as worship expressed in ordinary life. His exposition of chapters 12 and 13 in this light is worth the price of the two volumes alone, for he shows that the sacrificial concept of sanctification most visible in Romans 12:1-2 actually undergirds all a Christian’s actions with others, both inside and outside the house of faith.

Equally illuminating is his exposition of Romans 9. Commentators and dogmaticians alike have tended to assume that Romans 9:10-18 addresses Esau’s and Pharaoh’s eternal fate. But Grothe challenges that assumption. It is likely that the Pharaoh who opposed Moses is not among the number of those who are saved, but why should we assume the same about Esau? Paul is not speaking of eternal, unalterable conditions, but of the way in which God uses or rejects people in this life for the accomplishing of His goals. This interpretation accords well with Paul’s argument, especially in Romans 11, where Paul sees the (partial) Jewish rejection of Christ as something temporary and reversible—as well as something advantageous for God’s mission to the Gentiles.

Grothe’s exposition on these and other passages makes this commentary well worth reading. At the same time, the work is not without its faults. For one thing, there is precious little direct engagement of the scholarship of the New Perspective on Paul, the movement starting in the 1970’s that has challenged the “Lutheran” approach to Paul as a misreading of Paul’s intent. (“Lutheran” here includes more than those who subscribe to the Augsburg Confession; it refers to all influenced by the Protestant Reformation who assume that Paul’s theology was quintessentially concerned with justification by grace through faith in distinction to justification by works.) Grothe acknowledges that this recent scholarship on Paul warrants a new examination of Romans, but Grothe does little to engage it directly. Instead, he seems to assume that setting up a good, coherent Lutheran exposition of this epistle will suffice as a refutation to the New Perspective on Paul. To the extent that Grothe challenges other commentators, it is mainly older commentators (such as Cranfield) that he has in mind. The more recent commentators that he addresses (such as Käsemann) definitely do not come out of the New Perspective on Paul.

More troubling is the way that he handles two doctrinal issues: the third use of the law and church fellowship. In neither case is it absolutely clear that he falls into outright heresy, but he seems to be inviting misunderstanding at the very least. Because Grothe believes that “law” in Paul refers to “Torah” and that Paul does not distinguish between the moral, civil, and ceremonial laws, Grothe is adamant that Christians are not allowed back under the law, not even the moral law. At this point he comes dangerously close to denying a proper application of the third use of the law and thus falling under the damnamus of Article VI of the Formula of Concord. But just when the reader is ready to draw that conclusion, Grothe pulls back a little and explains that he is merely opposed to a Calvinistic misinterpretation of the third use of the law. His footnote 73 on page 759 quotes approvingly Jonathan Lange’s criticism of how the “third use” is often misused, noting that in the Formula of Concord “the law reproves, kills, and condemns the Christian, while in [Calvin’s] Institutes, the law only shakes, urges, and pinches the Christian.”

Grothe is correct to argue that preachers should avoid sermon outlines of (1.) second use of the law, (2.) gospel, and (3.) third use of the law. As Jonathan Lange has correctly explained at length (in the article Grothe cites), a preacher does not choose which way he will use the law. Rather the law has these functions all the time, and one cannot really tell one’s hearers, “Don’t think about the accusing aspect of the law as I preach this final section on sanctification now.” One might as well tell an audience, “As you listen to this song, remember that music has rhythm, melody, and harmony. This time, however, don’t hear the melody at all, but only the rhythm.” One can’t hear music—or the law—that selectively. A sounder approach is to realize that whenever one preaches the law, he is simultaneously damning sinners and outlining true godliness (as well as telling people how to behave in civil society). Thus, there is no need for a separate section where true godliness is outlined for believers. And if this is all that Grothe means, well and good.

But there is a larger question that has not been adequately addressed by those (including Grothe) who have a deep aversion to talking of the third use of the law. If the law is in no sense a moral guide and if the paraenesis of Paul’s epistles consists merely of injunctions flowing from the gospel, how do we prevent the gospel from becoming a new law? There was a strong legalistic streak in precisely those areas of Lutheranism that rejected the third use of the law in the 1960’s onwards. Granted, it was a liberal form of legalism, which may have clouded the ability of advocates and critics alike to see the potency of that legalism, but it was a real legalism, nonetheless. The gospel became less and less about the sinner’s justification before God; instead, a “second use of the gospel” came to predominate—where the gospel is less about God’s action on behalf of a sinner and more and more about God’s action in the justified. Ironically, such theologians talk incessantly about a gospel (rarely in the concrete, however, and certainly not in terms of vicarious atonement and other traditional constructs) and thus think themselves very evangelically-minded, all the while using this rather abstract gospel as the basis for moralizing on political and other issues.

I am not arguing that Grothe has fallen into this particular error. But given that he is less than clear on these matters—or rather does not unambiguously distance himself from such a misunderstanding of law and gospel—I can understand why a doctrinal review board may have found some of his comments troubling, especially when that board came from a denomination that still wakes up having nightmares about having nearly been hijacked by “gospel reductionism.”

The other area where Grothe surely touched a sensitive doctrinal nerve was in his discussion of fellowship. Much of what he says needs to be taken to heart. In fact, I dare say that his entire argument must be heard carefully—albeit often painfully and not uncritically—especially by clergy, who (Grothe argues) are too prone to shore up their own denominational prerogatives rather than seek a broader Christian unity. Grothe does not doubt that there are appropriate divides; Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other non-Trinitarians are clearly outside the pale of the church. But there are no half-brothers in the church, Grothe argues, and we need to start acknowledging that. He spends much of his exposition of chapters 14-16 on this topic, much more than perhaps the text itself would seem to warrant.

The big question, though, is this: what does this mean in practice? Here Grothe is less clear, largely intentionally. Is he advocating that all Trinitarian Christians be allowed to commune in confessional Lutheran churches—perhaps with the proviso that they accept the sacramental presence of Christ? He never says. To the extent that he offers a concrete proposal for action, he suggests that now might be a good time for Lutherans to revisit the status of the heirs of the a-creedal Radical Reformers, who were considered beyond the pale by the Lutheran Reformers. But lest he be accused of doctrinal indifferentism, he also insists that doctrine matters and that it is doctrine that must divide between those who are in and those who are outside the fellowship. After reading dozens of pages on this topic, the reader is left feeling that perhaps he is merely arguing against complacency in inheriting one’s ancestors’ feuds without examining whether or not a closer fellowship is possible with other Christians. Or maybe he is picking up the plea of the Wauwatosa theologians of the early 20th century Wisconsin Synod, who asked that we be charitable in our assumptions about those currently not in fellowship with us, especially when we see the one and only Holy Spirit creating the same Christian faith through the one and only Word in the midst of churches that do not share our confessional history.

If this is what he is aiming at, he has something to say. Every pastor who enters the ministry and every Christian who participates in the worship life of a particular church must not simply take up their ancestors’ feuds without thorough examination. No pastor ought to bind himself to a confession if he believes that its damnamus casts too wide a net. And thus he ought to not only examine the positive teachings of his church, but also consider whether he agrees that the doctrinal distinctions of that confession are not merely true but also necessary for Christian unity. I have argued elsewhere that the Lutheran Confessions get this exactly right, being neither too strict nor too loose in what they demand for Christian unity, but this is something each pastor and each generation of laity must conclude for themselves.

Again, I can see why this attitude touched a delicate nerve in the committee that reviewed this book. Our denomination was veering towards an ecumenical promiscuity in the 1960’s; had the trajectory continued, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (and its sister church, the Lutheran Church—Canada) would have been as been as vacuous in theology and promiscuous in church relations as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada). For a denomination breathing a sigh of relief that it didn’t go off the cliff, this plea of Grothe’s to get nearer the edge sounds a bit dangerous. And yet it is important for us to hear his warning against a mindless triumphalism and to heed his plea for Christian humility and charity, even while we hold true to our confession.

All in all, Grothe’s commentary is worth reading, even where it challenges us most. I understand why Concordia Publish House could not in truth say nihil obstat. However, I am glad to give it an imprimatur, even with a caution or two.

The Myth of Consubstantiation

In 2009 I purchased a copy of Nathan Feldman’s Pocket Dictionary of Church History—overall, an impressive work that had an uncanny ability to cover a broad range of material to define terms concisely and accurately. More recently I purchased Jeffrey Burton Russell’s Exposing Myths about Christianity, which attempts to defend Christianity from its detractors without taking any one particular side in intramural discussions but offering arguments for all sides.

Both works, however, failed miserably in their discussion of the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Feldman writes under the entry entitled “consubstantiation”: “Martin Luther developed the Eucharistic doctrine known as consubstantiation, which in time became closely identified with Lutheranism….Thus, for Luther there is a ‘real physical presence’ of Christ in, under, and around the Communion elements, but the bread and wine do not change in substance as in the Roman Catholic view of transubstantiation.” Russell makes the same error (p. 297): “Luther condemned transubstantiation and substituted the idea of ‘consubstantiation,’ in which the consecrated bread and wine are both bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ. Both interpretations depend on Aristotelian philosophy, so neither is a necessary way of defining how Christ is present.”

There are three major errors involved. The first is that “consubstantiation” is the term used to define the Lutheran doctrine. I have been a Lutheran for nearly half a century and that of the more confessionally attuned variety. (I’m a Missouri Synod Lutheran.) The term was never used in my confirmation instruction nor was it to be found in the Synodical Catechism, either of 1943 or 1986. In all my seminary education I may have heard the term once or twice, and then it was the sainted Dr. Robert Preus uttering the term with contempt and saying, “How can non-Lutherans say that we believe in consubstantiation? Don’t they read anything?”

Perhaps this was just an oddity of my experience. But if you look at the great Lutheran treatises on the Lord’s Supper written in the twentieth century, you would again and again notice the absence of the term. John Stephenson’s book on the Lord’s Supper in the Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics series fails to mention it. So too does Hermann Sasse’s work, This is My Body, a serious examination of Luther’s thoughts on the sacrament. You will not find the term in Werner Elert’s The Structure of Lutheranism or Edmund Schlink’s Theology of the Lutheran Confessions, and other such surveys of Lutheran doctrine. Nor will you find it mentioned in Lutheran dogmatics (such as Francis Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics) or, if it does merit mention in passing, it is stated with disapproval. If consubstantiation is Lutheran doctrine, Lutherans have been keeping it a good secret.

Is the problem that modern Lutherans don’t know their history? Could it be that the term was used by earlier Lutheran dogmaticians and has since died in obscurity? An examination of Philip Melanchthon’s Loci or Martin Chemnitz’s Loci—two early Lutheran dogmatics—will prove that idea wrong. Nor will you find John Gerhard, the greatest Lutheran dogmatician of the age of orthodoxy, giving his imprimatur to the term. In fact, he heartily disapproves of it in his Harmony of the Gospels (chapter 171, leaf 784):

Quando veram, realem et substantialem corporis (et sanguinis) Christi praesentiam nos credere profitemur, nequaquam vel impanationem, vel incorporationem, vel consubstantiationem, vel physicam inclusionem, vel localem praesentiam, vel delitescentiam corpusculi sub pane, vel essentialem panis in corpus conversionem, vel durabilem corporis ad panem extra usum coenae affixionem, vel personalem panis et corporis unionem statuimus. (Emphasis in original)

When we confess that we believe in the true, real, and substantial presence of the body (and blood) of Christ, in no way do we imagine either an impanation or consubstantiation or a physical confinement or a local presence or the hiding of a particle underneath the bread or the conversion of the essence of the bread into the body or the permanent joining of the body to the bread outside the use of the supper or a personal union of the bread and the body. (My translation)

If any of the Lutheran dogmaticians of the seventeenth century were to use such quasi-Aristotelian terminology as consubstantiation, it would have been John Gerhard. But he explicitly rejects that term.

Well, then, neither modern Lutheranism nor the golden age of Lutheran orthodoxy used that term for their position. But surely this must be the doctrine taught by the Lutheran confessions (the Book of Concord), right? Again, you will not even find the term mentioned, although the Formula of Concord does reject some of the same things Gerhard does (such as impanation and local presence) that are frequently equated with consubstantiation. If we can find no other source, must we conclude that Luther is the author of consubstantiation? Again you can look at all of Luther’s works—and his substantial sacramental writings have all been translated into English—and you will find that there are only two mentions of consubstantiation in the American Edition of Luther’s Works, once in a footnote (footnote 152 on volume 40, page 196) and once in an introduction (for volume 37), and in each instance merely to disabuse the reader of the notion that Luther believed in consubstantiation.

Serious non-Lutheran scholars also concur that Lutherans do not believe in consubstantiation. Richard A. Muller, himself a Reformed theologian and therefore without a Lutheran ax to grind, nevertheless writes these words about consubstantiation in his Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms (pp. 80-81):

According to the theory of consubstantiation, the body and blood of Christ become substantially present together with the substance of the bread and wine, when the elements are consecrated. This theory is frequently confused with the Lutheran doctrine of real presence. Consubstantio indicates the presence of Christ’s body according to a unique sacramental mode of presence that is proper to Christ’s body as such, and is therefore a local presence (praesentia localis, q.v.); the Lutheran view, however, argues a real, but illocal presence of Christ’s body and blood that is grounded in the omnipresence of Christ’s person, and therefore a supernatural and sacramental, rather than a local, union with the invisible elements of the sacrament….Consubstantio implies only a presence and not a union of Christ and the sacramental elements; it was taught as a possibility by Duns Scotus, John of Jandun, and William of Occam.

Muller not only points out that the nomen (name) of consubstantiation does not apply to Lutherans (the real term for the Lutheran doctrine is “the real presence”), but neither does the res (substance). And here we come to the second misunderstanding. Feldman states that the Lutheran view is that “there is a ‘real physical presence’ of Christ in, under, and around the Communion elements.” Such a definition would fit the view held by Scotus and company, but it ill fits the view of Lutherans, who do not believe in a local or “physical” presence. Moreover, while a person may believe in either consubstantiation or transubstantiation without believing in the sacramental union, the sacramental union is at the heart of the Lutheran view of the matter.

The third error (one made by Russell) is that Luther was beholden to Aristotelian philosophy in this matter. Nothing could be further from the truth. Already at the time of the Heidelberg Disputations (1518), Luther had rejected the use of philosophy in defining theology and stated that he was especially distrustful of Aristotelian metaphysics.

Well, if consubstantiation is not a Lutheran term and does not express the Lutheran doctrine, why do so many non-Lutheran books say that it is the Lutheran view? It began with John Calvin’s 1553 broadside against Lutheranism in which he accused the Lutherans of believing in consubstantiation. It was meant to be a polemical term, and in the years that followed it would often be accompanied by others such as “impanation,” “Capernaitic eating,” “artolatry,” and the like. But calling consubstantiation “the Lutheran view of the Lord’s supper” is as accurate as defining Pelagianism as “the Arminian view of salvation” or fatalism as “the Calvinist worldview.” While polemicists may speak in that manner, it is improper for those claiming to be impartial observers to describe a movement by using its enemy’s slurs and distortions.

The real doctrine that Lutherans teach about the Lord’s Supper can be described under three terms: sacramental union, oral eating, and eating of the ungodly. We speak of a sacramental union; the bread and wine are united with the body and blood of Christ, as Paul clearly teaches in 1 Cor. 10:16 and as our Lord’s words in instituting the sacrament state (“This is my body…This is the new testament in my blood”). The exact mode in which Christ can effect this sacramental union is never stated in Lutheran theology. We know that He is omnipotent and can be anywhere and everywhere He wants to be. He has more modes of presence than we can name or understand. (See Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration 102-103.) We also teach that one receives Christ’s body and blood through the eating of the bread and wine, not through ascending to heaven in a mystical experience. Because the body and blood of Christ come through the bread and wine, all who commune receive the body and blood of Christ, not just those who do so in faith. Thus, it is quite possible for the ungodly to eat and drink damnation upon themselves by receiving Christ’s body and blood without discernment, as Paul clearly warns in 1 Corinthians 11:27-30.

This is the Lutheran view in a nutshell. Don’t expect American evangelicals to grasp it—let alone explain it accurately—anytime soon.

Mind the Gap

We have all heard people complain about the biggest gap in Christianity, the gap that is allegedly responsible for all the evils among Christians, viz., the twelve inch gap between the head and the heart. In this analysis, the problem is that too many people have a “head knowledge” of the truths of Christianity, but they don’t have the “heart knowledge” that is necessary for a Christian to thrive. What is the implied solution? The church ought to focus more on the heart and less on the head—in other words, more on the emotions and less on the intellect.

Behind this explanation is the current western way of looking at people. A human being has an intellectual center (commonly called the “head”) and an emotional center (commonly called the “heart”). Granted, nobody actually thinks that the cardiac organ is the seat or origin of emotions, but it is a convenient metonymy to differentiate between two aspects of the human mind that in our estimation have little or nothing to do with each other. We speak similarly of courage as “guts,” even though nobody thinks that our courage resides in our intestines.

The real problem comes about when we think that this modern way of dividing the components of a human being is actually the biblical way of viewing humanity. Compounding the problem is the fact that the Scriptures urge people to have a change of heart, and we tend to read “heart” with our culture’s eyes rather than with biblical eyes. And thus we see the Bible’s call to a new heart as an invitation to rework our emotions and to stop our intellectual growth as unnecessary at best and counterproductive at worst.

But the Bible doesn’t distinguish between head knowledge and heart knowledge. In fact, it doesn’t use the word “head” to refer to the intellectual aspect of mankind. Instead, it uses the word “heart” to do so. It is the heart that thinks and verbalizes ideas (Genesis 6:5; Deuteronomy 9:4). It is the heart that remembers (Deuteronomy 4:9). It is the heart that meditates and contemplates (Psalm 16:7; 19:14). Most importantly, it is the heart that possesses the will (Exodus 4:21) and makes ethical decisions (Deuteronomy 9:5; Psalm 7:10). To be sure, the emotions are also found in the heart (Exodus 4:14; Deuteronomy 28:65). But the Scriptures do not separate what we in the West do. It knows that the will, the intellect, and the emotions cannot be isolated from one another, but work together to form a common mind. Thus, when we read such phrases as Deuteronomy 4:29, that command us to seek after God with our whole heart, we cannot see this as an exercise purely of the emotions, but also of the intellect, the memory, and especially the will. When Deuteronomy 10:16 tells us to circumcise our hearts, it clarifies exactly what it means: we are not to be stubborn. In other words, it is a command to exercise the will (not just the emotions) more appropriately.

But are we denying that hypocrisy can be a problem with Christians? No, we are just reframing the question. The current received wisdom is that Christians become hypocrites when they aren’t emotionally in tune enough or when they try to acquire intellectual knowledge instead of practical knowledge. And yet the Scriptures have a different analysis of the problem. As the prophet Isaiah says (29:13): “This people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me.” Our Lord confirms the same sentiment in Matthew 15:8. The problem isn’t that they have a high spiritual IQ and a low spiritual EQ. The problem is that they have neither, even though they mouth the words. In other words, they say the right words, but don’t understand what they are saying, let alone assent to them.

It is for that reason that the psalmist prays (19:14), “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.” The process of spiritual growth begins with the mouth and the lips, but it cannot end there. He wants his words to be orthodox and the meditation—there’s that thinking again!—of the heart that follows to be proper and in full accord with what his lips are uttering. The psalmist knows that God placed His Word very near us so that it could be on our mouth and in our hearts (Deuteronomy 30:14). We learn God’s Word by speaking it often, but it cannot be something that stays only on our lips but must be apprehended by our entire mind—will, intellect, and emotions.

As the passages mentioned above indicate, the Scriptures know that learning starts with the mouth, but must settle into the heart if it is to succeed. Thus, the Scriptures have a more nuanced attitude toward rote learning than we in the contemporary West do, which universally rejects it. As we have already noted, the Bible recognizes that people can recite certain truths without understanding, let alone believing them. It knows that mouthing the words is not the same as knowing or believing them. But at the same time the Scriptures do not eschew rote learning and memorization. They know full well that the first step in learning something is to say what one does not fully understand. Consequently, the Scriptures are full of admonitions to repeat God’s words as a way to get that Word into the heart of each generation. Deuteronomy 6:6-9 outlines such a procedure: God’s Word is meant to be stored in the heart; consequently, children are to be taught these words at fixed times during the day and these words are to be as visible as one’s head and hands and doorposts. Of course, this is only the first step, with the next step being for children to understand what they have been saying. The problem arises because children (and, for that matter, learners of all ages) can resist these words and only embrace them with their lips. But the problem isn’t with the repetition of the words of the Scriptures, but with the stubborn heart that refuses to learn.

Thus, there is still a gap that faithful Christians have to address. It’s just not the emotional-intellectual gap most Christians in America assume it is.

All Bible quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).

Damnatio Memoriae

Quick, tell me the name of one of the shooters at the Columbine massacre. Now tell me the name of one of their victims. Is it more difficult to do the latter than the former? If so, you are a typical American who did not grow up in or live near Littleton, Colorado a decade ago. In part, it is because it is easier to remember two people (the murderers) rather than their twelve victims. Furthermore, one does not want to intrude into the grief of the mourning families more than it is necessary, and thus the media have tended to shy away from naming the victims endlessly. But the media have also shown an intense interest in understanding the psychology of the killers, and not altogether for a bad reason: if only we knew what made these murderers tick—what made these disgruntled teens go off the deep end—we might be able to prevent further tragedies. Had these killers not taken their own lives, the media would have also had to cover the ensuing trial, at which time it would have been difficult not to name them repeatedly. One can expect that this will be the case with the most recent mass shooting in Colorado.

It is at times like these that I wish we had the Roman custom of damnatio memoriae, the practice of obliterating from record a bad emperor or an offending person of high standing. In the accompanying picture you see the emperor Septimus Severus and his wife Julia Domna, as well as their two sons, Geta on the left and Caracalla on the right. If the image of Geta looks a little blurry, that is on purpose. After Severus died, Geta and Caracalla shared the imperial power for a couple of years until Caracalla ordered his assassination and took the full imperial power for himself. As a consequence, Caracalla ordered Geta’s image removed and he obliterated any reference to Geta in inscriptions. Of course, if anyone knows their history of late Roman antiquity, Caracalla himself was not all that great and probably deserved damnatio memoriae more than his brother did.

It would be nice if we could treat publicity-seeking heinous criminals in the same way. We already have the nearly universal custom of shielding rape victims and underage victims of crime by not naming them, and that is as it should be. Perhaps, though, the media could do society a favor and ensure that heinous criminals will not get the notoriety they seek. A little damnatio memoriae now and then is a good thing.