Ecumenical and Confessional Writings: Volume 2: Ecumenical Dogmatics [1 ed.] 9783666560750, 9783525560754

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Edmund Schlink

Ecumenical and ­Confessional Writings Ecumenical Dogmatics edited by Matthew L. Becker Edmund Schlink Works 

Volume 2

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Edmund Schlink Works Edited by Matthew L. Becker Volume 2/1

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

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Edmund Schlink Ecumenical and Confessional Writings Volume 2 Part 1 Ecumenical Dogmatics: Basic Features Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Matthew L. Becker Translated by Matthew L. Becker, Robin Lutjohann, Hans G. Spalteholz, Mark A. Seifrid, Eleanor Wegener, and Ken Jones Forewords by Heinrich Fries, Nikos A. Nissiotis, and Wolfhart Pannenberg Afterword by Michael Plathow

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

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Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.de. Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright  1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved. Other Scripture quotations, as noted, are from the Holy Bible, The New International Version, copyright  1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers. Other Scripture quotations, as noted, are from the Holy Bible, The Revised Standard Version, 2d ed., Copyright  1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved. Originally published as Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis. Band 2, edited by Michael Plathow  2005, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A.  2023 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Theaterstraße 13, 37073 Göttingen, Germany, an imprint of the Brill-Group (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands; Brill USA Inc., Boston MA, USA; Brill Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore; Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn, Germany, Brill Österreich GmbH, Vienna, Austria) Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Typesetting: le-tex publishing services, Leipzig Cover design: SchwabScantechnik, Göttingen Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISBN 978-3-666-56075-0

Contents

Foreword to the Third German Edition .................................................... 15 Preface to the First German Edition ....................................................... 18 Forewords to the First German Edition ................................................... 22 Preface to the American Edition............................................................. 30 Edmund Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics .............................................. 37 Abbreviations and Symbols ................................................................... 61

INTRODUCTORY PART The Gospel as the Presupposition of Church Doctrine Chapter I: The Knowledge of God........................................................... 1. Beginning with the Gospel of Jesus Christ ...................................... 2. The Hiddenness of God in the Gospel ........................................... 3. The Revelation of the Divine Mystery ............................................ 4. The Knowledge of God by Faith .................................................... 5. The Knowledge of God as Being Known by the Triune God .............

69 69 73 74 77 79

Chapter II: The Knowledge of the World.................................................. 1. The Self-Knowledge of the Human Being ....................................... 2. The Knowledge of Other Human Beings......................................... 3. The Knowledge of the History of Humanity ................................... 4. The Knowledge of the Universe .................................................... 5. Believing and Knowing ................................................................

83 83 88 90 94 96

Chapter III: The Knowledge of God and the Doctrine of God..................... 1. The Basic Forms of the Theological Statement ................................. 2. Structural Issues Regarding the Dogmatic Statement........................ Excursus: The Relationship between the Theological and Philosophical Analysis of Language ...................................................... 3. The Task of an Ecumenical Dogmatics ........................................... 4. The Doctrine of the Acts of God ...................................................

115 115 126 134 139 150

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Contents

5. Theology as Doxology ................................................................. 155 6. Anthropology as Repentance ....................................................... 157 7. The Organization of Dogmatics ..................................................... 160

FIRST PART The Doctrine of Creation Chapter IV: The Creation of the World .................................................... Introduction: The Starting Point for the Doctrine of Creation ................ 1. The Freedom of God the Creator .................................................. 2. The Act of Creation in the Beginning ............................................ 3. The Universe............................................................................... 4. The Purpose of Creation .............................................................. 5. The Originally Good Creation....................................................... 6. The Order of Creation ................................................................. 7. God’s Continuous Creative Action .................................................

173 173 178 181 188 192 194 196 199

Chapter V: The Purpose of the Human Being .......................................... Introduction to Chapters V–VII The Starting Point for the Doctrine about Human Beings ........................................................... 1. The Response That Is the Image of God ......................................... 2. The Community That Is the Image of God ..................................... 3. The Dominion That Is the Image of God ........................................ 4. The Life That Is the Image of God ................................................. 5. Origin and Purpose ....................................................................

213

Chapter VI: The Failure of the Human Being ........................................... 1. Turning Away from God .............................................................. 2. Imprisonment in Guilt ................................................................ 3. The Urge to Sin .......................................................................... 4. The Dominion of Sin ................................................................... 5. The Judgment into which Human Beings Have Fallen: Death ........... 6. Origin and Failure ......................................................................

243 243 245 248 250 259 264

Chapter VII: The Preservation of the Human Being .................................. 1. The Preservation of the Sinner in the Midst of Having Fallen into Judgment ............................................................................ 2. The Witness of God through the Works of Creation ........................ 3. The Commandment of the Preserver ............................................. 4. The Establishing of Just Authority.................................................. 5. The Conservation of the Distorted Image of God ............................

275

213 225 226 227 229 233

275 276 284 293 305

Contents

Chapter VIII: The Preservation of the World............................................. 1. The Corruption within the Creation............................................... 2. The Service of the Angels ............................................................. 3. The Dominion of the Powers of Corruption ................................... 4. The Judgment into which the World Has Fallen: The End ................. 5. The Time of Divine Patience ........................................................

315 315 317 322 326 330

Chapter IX: The Governance of the World ............................................... 1. God’s Dominion over World History ............................................. 2. The Hiddenness of God in World History ...................................... 3. The Mystery of World History: Jesus Christ and the New Creation .................................................................................... 4. The Revealed Action of God through the Gospel ............................ 5. The Humiliation of God in His Governance of the World ................. 6. Theodicy .................................................................................... 7. Providence .................................................................................

335 335 338 341 342 345 347 348

Chapter X: The Confession of God the Creator ........................................ 355 1. God the Father, the Creator .......................................................... 355 2. God the Eternal Father ................................................................ 358

SECOND PART The Doctrine of Redemption Chapter XI: The Old Testament Law........................................................ Introduction: The Old Covenant ........................................................ A. The Promise................................................................................ 1. God’s Leadership..................................................................... 2. God’s Action through the King ................................................. 3. God’s Action in the Cultus........................................................ 4. God’s Speaking through the Prophets......................................... 5. The Broken Covenant and the New Promise ............................... 6. The Promise of the Coming Ruler.............................................. 7. The Promise of the New Covenant............................................. 8. The Promise of Yahweh’s Adoration by the Nations ...................... B. The Law ..................................................................................... 1. The Prohibition against Worshiping Other Gods ......................... 2. The Prohibition against Harming the Neighbor ........................... 3. God’s Commanding and God’s Law ........................................... 4. The Announcement of Blessing and Curse.................................. 5. Israel’s Disobedience to the Law ................................................

363 363 371 371 373 375 379 382 385 388 388 390 390 392 395 398 400

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6. God’s Judgment of Israel .......................................................... 401 7. The Detachment of the Law ...................................................... 404 8. The People of Expectation ........................................................ 406 Introduction to Chapters XII and XIII: The Exaltation of Jesus as the Presupposition for the Doctrine of the Humiliation of the Son of God ........................................................................................... 1. The Honorific Titles of Jesus ......................................................... 2. The History of Jesus as the Basis for His Honorific Titles .................. 3. The Reversed Sequence of the History and the Recognition of Jesus Christ ................................................................................ 4. Historical Investigation into the Earthly Jesus ................................. 5. The Apostolic Message as the Basis of Faith .................................... 6. The History of Jesus and Christological Dogma .............................. 7. The Organization of Christology ...................................................

413 413 417 421 423 431 435 441

Chapter XII: The Humiliation of the Son of God ....................................... A. The Incarnation........................................................................... 1. The Sending of the Son ........................................................... 2. Becoming Flesh ...................................................................... 3. Subjection to the Law .............................................................. 4. Free from the Law of Sin ......................................................... 5. The Mystery of Becoming Human ............................................ B. The Message ............................................................................... 1. The Public Appearance of Jesus ................................................ 2. The Coming of the Kingdom of God ......................................... 3. The Coming Son of Man ......................................................... 4. The Call to Repentance ........................................................... 5. The Servant Ministry of the Son ............................................... C. The Death on the Cross ................................................................ 1. The Condemnation by the People ............................................. 2. The Self-Sacrifice of the Son ..................................................... 3. The Sacrificial Offering by God ................................................ 4. The Death for the World .......................................................... 5. The Victory of the Cross over the World.....................................

449 449 449 452 454 455 458 464 464 469 481 490 501 511 511 520 524 527 537

Chapter XIII: The Exaltation of Jesus....................................................... A. The Resurrection ......................................................................... 1. The Appearances of the Risen One ............................................ 2. The Revelation of the Son of God .............................................. 3. The Revelation of the New Human Being ..................................

547 547 547 561 567

Contents

4. The Unveiling of the Old Testament Scriptures ........................... 5. The Beginning of the New Creation .......................................... B. The Reign of Christ...................................................................... 1. The Present Lord .................................................................... 2. His Reign as a Call .................................................................. 3. His Reign as a Community ...................................................... 4. His Reign as a Governing of the World ...................................... 5. The Time of Grace .................................................................. C. The Return ................................................................................. 1. The Coming of Jesus in Glory .................................................. 2. The End of World History and the Problem of Language in Statements about the Acts of the Coming One ............................ 3. The Judgment of the Living and the Dead .................................. 4. Redemption ........................................................................... 5. The Establishment of God’s Reign .............................................

569 581 583 583 586 588 590 599 603 603 605 609 611 614

Summary of Chapters XII and XIII: The Doctrine of the Threefold Office of Jesus Christ ............................................................................ 621

In Volume II:

Chapter XIV: The New Testament Gospel................................................ Introduction: The New Covenant ....................................................... A. The Gospel ................................................................................. 1. The Message of Jesus Christ ..................................................... 2. The Assurance of the Act of Salvation through the Gospel ........... 3. God’s Salvific Action through the Gospel ................................... 4. Salvation ............................................................................... 5. Justification ........................................................................... 6. Vivification ............................................................................ 7. Sanctification ......................................................................... 8. The Transformation into God’s Image ....................................... 9. The Call to Faith ..................................................................... B. Exhortation ................................................................................ 1. The New Commandment ........................................................ 2. The Comforting Exhortation .................................................... 3. The Commandment to Love .................................................... 4. Prayer ................................................................................... 5. Witness..................................................................................

639 639 645 645 646 649 652 654 660 662 664 668 672 672 674 677 681 683

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6. The Commandment of the Redeemer and the Commandment of the Preserver: The Obedience That Is the Image of God .................................................................... 7. The Law of the Spirit ............................................................... 8. The Boundary of Death ........................................................... 9. The Call to Repentance ...........................................................

686 691 692 695

Summary of Parts A and B: God’s Action of Grace and Human Action ...... 709 Chapter XV: Baptism ............................................................................. 1. The Foundation of Baptism........................................................... 2. Baptism into Christ ..................................................................... 3. Baptism through the Holy Spirit .................................................... 4. Reception into the Church............................................................ 5. The Presuppositions for Infant Baptism ..........................................

721 721 726 728 729 730

Chapter XVI: The Lord’s Supper ............................................................. 1. The Foundation of the Lord’s Supper .............................................. 2. The Gift of Jesus’ Body and the Blood of the Covenant ..................... 3. The Promise of the Meal in the Kingdom of God ............................ 4. The Eucharistic-Anamnetic Recognition of the Present Christ .......... 5. The Edification of the Church .......................................................

737 737 742 746 748 762

Conclusion to Chapters XIV–XVI: The Richness of God’s Action of Grace and the Number of Sacraments ................................................... 771 Summary of Chapters XI–XVI: The Distinction between Law and Gospel ... 1. The Issue of Distinguishing between Law and Gospel ...................... 2. The Gospel in the Old Testament Law ........................................... 3. The Law in the New Testament Gospel ........................................... 4. The Unity of Law and Gospel ....................................................... 5. The Distinction between Law and Gospel ...................................... 6. The Gospel as God’s Proper Word.................................................. 7. Being Tested in Anfechtung ..........................................................

779 780 781 781 782 783 784 785

Chapter XVII: The Confession of God the Redeemer ................................ 1. Jesus the Redeemer ...................................................................... 2. The Eternal Son .......................................................................... 3. “Truly God and Truly a Human Being” ..........................................

789 789 792 798

Contents

THIRD PART The Doctrine of the New Creation Chapter XVIII: The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit ...................................... 1. The Event of Pentecost ................................................................ 2. The New Creation through the Holy Spirit ..................................... 3. The Holy Spirit as Power .............................................................. 4. The Holy Spirit as Lord ................................................................ 5. The Recognition of the Spirit’s Action ............................................

809 809 814 818 821 825

Chapter XIX: The Church........................................................................ Introduction to Chapters XIX–XXII: The Starting Point for the Doctrine of the Church ..................................................................... 1. The Origin of the Church ............................................................. 2. The People of God Called Out from the World ............................... 3. The Prophetic, Priestly, and Royal People of God Sent into the World ........................................................................................ 4. The Worship Assembly ................................................................ 5. The Ekklesia of God, the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit: the Growing New Creation ......................................... 6. The Unity, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity of the Church ....... 7. The Communion of Saints ............................................................

831

Chapter XX: Spiritual Gift and Ministerial Office ...................................... 1. The Apostles .............................................................................. 2. The Community of the Charismata ............................................... 3. The Sending into Servant Ministry ................................................ 4. The Church’s Ministerial Office ..................................................... 5. The Pastoral Office and the Church ............................................... 6. Apostolic Succession ................................................................... 7. The Secular Office and the Church’s Ministerial Office .....................

881 881 889 892 897 907 911 921

Chapter XXI: The Preservation of the Church........................................... Introduction: The Indestructibility of the Church ................................. A. Holy Scripture............................................................................. 1. Holy Scripture as a Collection of Church Writings ...................... 2. The Authority of Holy Scripture ................................................ 3. Basic Principles of Biblical Hermeneutics .................................. B. Confession ................................................................................. 1. Confession as a Response of the Church .................................... 2. The Basis for the Authority of Dogma ....................................... 3. Basic Principles of Dogmatic Hermeneutics................................

929 929 935 935 939 943 954 954 962 964

831 840 846 849 853 862 870 875

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C. Church Order ............................................................................. 1. Church Law as the Regulation of the Church ............................. 2. The Authority of Church Law ................................................... 3. Concerning the Hermeneutics of Church Law ............................

971 971 977 982

Chapter XXII: The Unity of the Church and the Disunity of Christendom ........................................................................................ 991 1. The Dangers of Ecclesial Self-Preservation ..................................... 991 2. The Scandal of a Disunited Christendom ....................................... 997 3. The Question Concerning the One Church in a Disunited Christendom ..............................................................................1003 4. Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Traditions of Christendom ...................1005 5. Apostolic Tradition and the Traditions of Christendom ...................1008 6. Recognizing the One Church in a Disunited Christendom ...............1017 7. Representing the One Church in the Unification of the Separated Churches ....................................................................1025 Chapter XXIII: The Consummation of the New Creation............................1039 1. The End Time of World History ...................................................1039 2. The First Creation and the New Creation .......................................1042 3. The Resurrection to Eternal Life ...................................................1044 4. The Creation of the New Heaven and the New Earth ........................1049 5. God Is All in All ..........................................................................1050 Chapter XXIV: The Confession of God the New Creator ............................1053 1. The Holy Spirit, the New Creator ...................................................1053 2. The Eternal Spirit of God ..............................................................1056

FOURTH PART The Doctrine of God Chapter XXV: The Adoration of God ........................................................1061 1. Thanksgiving for God’s Acts .........................................................1061 2. Doxology ...................................................................................1061 3. The Adoration of God as a Sacrifice of Praise ..................................1064 4. Adoration of the Divine Name .....................................................1067 5. Adoration from the Depths ..........................................................1070 Excursus: On the Issue of Theological Analogy .......................................1071 6. Dogma and the Doctrine of God ..................................................1073 7. The Starting Point and Organization of the Doctrine of God ............1079

Contents

Chapter XXVI: The Triune God ................................................................1087 1. God the Father, the Eternal Origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit .........................................................................................1087 2. The Unity of God in the Distinctiveness of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit .......................................................1090 3. The Distinctiveness of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in the Unity of God .....................................................1090 4. The Trinitarian Dogma ................................................................1093 5. The Mystery of the Divine Fullness of Life ......................................1098 6. The Trinitarian Dogma as the First and Last Statement ....................1101 7. The Ecumenical Significance of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed ................................................1103 Introduction to Chapters XXVII–XXIX The Holy God and the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes ............................................................1115 Chapter XXVII: The Lord .........................................................................1119 1. God’s Omnipotence ....................................................................1119 2. God’s Omnipresence ...................................................................1121 3. God’s Eternity ............................................................................1125 4. God’s Glory ...............................................................................1127 Chapter XXVIII: The All-Consuming God...................................................1131 1. The Inescapable God....................................................................1131 2. The Wrathful God .......................................................................1132 Chapter XXIX: The Self-Giving God..........................................................1135 1. The Love of God..........................................................................1135 2. The Righteousness of God ............................................................1138 3. The Wisdom of God ....................................................................1142 4. The Steadfastness of God .............................................................1146 Summary of Chapters XXVII–XXIX...........................................................1151 1. The All-Consuming and Self-Giving God .......................................1151 2. The Adoration of the Triune God in the Glory of His Love ...............1154

CONCLUDING PART Chapter XXX: God’s Decree of Love ........................................................1159 1. Solely by Grace............................................................................1159

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2. The Eternal Decree of the Triune God ...........................................1159 3. The Issue of Double Predestination ...............................................1161 4. Election .....................................................................................1162 5. Rejection ...................................................................................1164 6. The Incommensurability between God’s Electing and Rejecting ........1165 Excursus: On the Issue of the Theological Syllogism .................................1169 7. The Warning to the Church and the Invitation to the World .............1170 Afterword: The Gospel—The Basis of an Ecumenical Dogmatics. Remarks on the Influence of Edmund Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics: Basic Features....................................................................1175 Bibliography .........................................................................................1191 Index of Scripture References ...............................................................1227 Index of Persons ...................................................................................1253 Index of Subjects ..................................................................................1265 Editor and Translators...........................................................................1277

Foreword to the Third German Edition

Edmund Schlink was the leading trailblazer of ecumenical thought in Germany after the Second World War. His objective was a reconciled community of Christian churches. Already with his calling to Heidelberg in 1946, he linked his lectureship in dogmatics to the corollary of “ecumenical theology,” and he initiated the founding of an ecumenical institute, the first of its kind at a German university. He served as a delegate of the Protestant Church in Germany to the constituting assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Amsterdam (1948) and was later a member of its Central Committee and the Commission on Faith and Order. In particular, he spoke up for the contribution of the Eastern Orthodox churches to the WCC and, not least, for the membership of the Russian Orthodox Church. Immediately after the war, he co-founded the Ecumenical Working Group of Catholic and Protestant Theologians in Germany. During the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), Schlink, as the official observer for the Protestant Church in Germany, was in Rome again and again, and he reported about it in his retrospective book, Nach dem Konzil.[i] All these activities, and not least the ecumenical seminars he regularly led in Heidelberg, imprinted their legacy in this presentation of dogmatics as an “ecumenical dogmatics.”[ii] Such a dogmatics, in Schlink’s mind, is not simply characterized by the fact that along with “the doctrine of one’s own Church” (141) its counterparts in the other Christian doctrinal traditions are also considered. Rather, the “multiplicity” of Christian doctrinal formulations and the “contradictions” among the doctrinal traditions play a decisive role in the ecumenical task of dogmatics. This multiplicity, which has been present since earliest Christianity and is already observed throughout the New Testament itself, must not lead to the “scandal of a disunited Christendom” (997ff.). Divisions are “ultimately only justified if they concern a matter of apostasy from Christ” (1001). For this reason, in view of the multiplicity of church traditions regarding doctrine and church order, it is necessary “to inquire again… about the original act of confessing, about its basic christological content, and about the unique concentration of theological statements within it” (144). Accordingly, Schlink’s presentation of dogmatics begins with the gospel as the “presupposition of church doctrine.” The central subject in his presentation is humankind, their creation in relation to the creation of the world (173–359), and their redemption (363–806), which is accomplished through Jesus Christ and is mediated through the gospel, together with baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Closely connected to this is the “new creation of the human being” through the Holy Spirit (809–1058). In this context, Schlink also sets forth the doctrine of the church. Only then does he address the “doctrine of God” (1061–1156), a topic that is usually

16

Foreword to the Third German Edition

placed at the beginning of dogmatics because of the fundamental importance that its theme has for the whole of Christian doctrine. According to Schlink, the doctrine of God has its starting point in doxology, that is, in “giving thanks for God’s acts that takes place in the adoration of God” (1061), and in this respect it already presupposes the presentation of the acts of God in creation, redemption, and the new creation of the human. Schlink hoped that this way of presenting the material offered better chances for understanding among the churches regarding the multiplicity of theological statements about God (1155). For each individual topic in dogmatics Schlink proceeds from the findings of biblical exegesis and from the multiplicity within the biblical statements themselves, which has become especially clear through historical research on Scripture. In this way, much of the multiplicity and of the conflicting developments in the later formation of church doctrine becomes understandable. So with respect to the understanding of salvation, he shows that only in the Christian West is it defined especially by the Pauline doctrine of justification, while in the Eastern churches that doctrine recedes behind the motif of participation in the eternal life of God, to which all of the New Testament Scriptures attest and which is the subject of the doctrine of “theosis.” In the doctrine of the church, Schlink establishes that the Pauline concept of the church as the “body of Christ” (1 Cor. 10.16) refers both to the worshiping community of Christians in each individual place and to the “universal church on earth” (865). “Christ has one body, which manifests itself in the many churches” (865). The concept of the universal church is thus determined on the basis of the unity of the body of Christ that is present in each celebration of the Lord’s Supper and prior to every organizational form of church community, which is, however, a necessary consequence of that unity. In examining the ministerial offices in the church, Schlink has again emphasized the multiplicity of early Christian starting points. Thus the principle of commissioning as the basis for the office of congregational leadership became universalized only after the time of First Clement (900). Regarding apostolic succession, Schlink avers that it refers both to the church as a whole and to the ministerial office that is properly ordained to keep congregations faithful to the teaching of the apostles, in which case, apostolic succession becomes evident in the sequence [Abfolge] of office transferals without thereby being reduced to it (911ff.). Decisive is succession [Nachfolge] in the teaching of the apostles. Such clarifications are undiminished in their relevance for ecumenical discussion today. Edmund Schlink has worked tirelessly toward a better understanding of the legitimate multiplicity within the life and theology of Christendom. He emphasized that some divisions in the history of the church “were not about the antithesis between confessing Jesus Christ or denying him,” matters which alone can justify a division, “but rather about different unfoldings of the one confession of Christ” in various historical situations and oppositional fronts (1024). In other cases, notes

Foreword to the Third German Edition

Schlink, there arose, to be sure, “one-sided emphases, stagnation, and shortcomings” among which, however, not infrequently there existed “a complementary relationship” (1024f.). By jointly affirming the trinitarian and christological confession of the church, avers Schlink, the overcoming of such divisions is possible. Especially today “the following thesis is defensible, namely, that among the Orthodox churches, the Roman Catholic Church, the churches of the Reformation, including the Anglican and Methodist churches, as well as the Old Catholic Church, no such dogmatic disagreements exist that would have to be maintained for the sake of faith in Jesus Christ and for the sake of faithfulness to the apostolic tradition in the New Testament and that could justify the continuation of these church divisions” (1034). By combining such ecumenical breadth with the powerful emphasis on the abiding relevance of the apostolic confession of Christ, the theological works of Edmund Schlink, and especially his Ecumenical Dogmatics, are still exemplary and trailblazing, even today. One can thus only wish that this book may still serve to orient many readers. Wolfhart Pannenberg[iii]

Gräfeling, April 2005 Editor’s Notes [i]

[ii]

[iii]

Edmund Schlink, Nach dem Konzil (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966; reprint, with a foreword by Klaus Engelhardt and an introduction by Jochen Eber, bk. 2 of vol. 1 of Edmund Schlink: Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis, ed. Klaus Engelhardt [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004]). English translation: After the Council, bk. 2 of vol. 1 of Edmund Schlink Works, ed. Matthew L. Becker, trans. Matthew L. Becker and Hans Spalteholz (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017). Hereafter, this work is abbreviated NK, SÖB, 1/2.3–253 (ESW, 1.339–536). Edmund Schlink, Ökumenische Dogmatik: Grundzüge (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983; 2d ed., 1985; reprint with a foreword by Wolfhart Pannenberg and an afterword by Michael Plathow, vol. 2 of Edmund Schlink: Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis, ed. Michael Plathow [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005]). Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928–2014), who wrote his doctoral dissertations at Heidelberg under Schlink’s supervision, was himself one of the most influential Lutheran theologians of the past century. In the early 1950s, he was Schlink’s assistant. See Gunther Wenz, Introduction to Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology, trans. Philip Stewart (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 13. After teaching at the universities of Wuppertal and Mainz, Pannenberg taught systematic theology at the University of Munich between 1968 and his retirement in 1993.

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Preface to the First German Edition

The author wishes this dogmatics to serve as the expression of gratitude for much that he has received over many years from intensive ecumenical dialogues with members of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, as well as members of the churches of the Reformation, including the Anglican communion, and the other churches in the World Council of Churches. Along with the theological dialogues there was, as a rule, participation in the worship services of these churches, even if for the present only some of them sanctioned participation in the Lord’s Supper to those beyond the borders of their own Church. At the same time, the relationship between ecumenical dialogue and what goes on in the worship service has become more and more clear to me. The ecumenical dialogues of the past decades, insofar as they have been about dogma, have been concerned above all to clarify and resolve the disagreements that led in the past to divisions among the churches. In this way, much of the debris from traditional misunderstandings and polemical misrepresentations has been cleared away, and through bilateral and multilateral dialogues some far-reaching convergences and even some statements of consensus have been achieved. Sometimes it seemed as if the unification of the churches was nearly here. Now, however, despite the fact that there have been unifications among some of the smaller churches and among those that are related to one another, the ancient magisterial churches are still separated from each other, just as before. The impression could arise that the efforts toward unifying the churches have reached their limits and that the ecumenical movement has come to a standstill. One of the reasons for this crisis might well be found in the fact that ecumenical dialogue has too self-evidently assumed that what the historic schism of the magisterial churches had not called into question was still held in common, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity and of Christ’s resurrection and return. To be sure, these fundamental statements of the Christian faith have been maintained in the formulas of dogma and liturgy, but how these formulas have changed in meaning over the centuries since the schism has been taken seriously far too little in the ecumenical dialogues, and for many Christians they are simply traditional formulas that no longer express their living faith. On the basis of these considerations, there emerged the guiding strategy of my task to proceed not from the periphery, namely, from the dogmatic disagreements that demarcate the borders which divide the churches from one another, but rather to proceed from the center, namely, from the dogma that remains held in common by the churches, to review it, to ground it anew, and to explicate it for the intellectual

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and spiritual situation of our time. The task is thus not to seek a consensus on the basis of the traditional confessional disagreements, but rather, conversely, on the basis of a consensus that needs to be made clear and recognizable anew, to strive for a new understanding of those disagreements and of their importance within the whole of the Christian faith. Moreover, it is crucial that this consensus be found not in a minimalistic cross-section of present-day doctrinal opinions within Christendom but in a new elaboration of the entirety of the statements in the Christian confession of faith that have been acknowledged through the centuries. From this perspective, within the framework of these “basic features” [“Grundzüge”] of the faith, we naturally cannot discuss all church-dividing doctrinal disagreements that have arisen anywhere and anytime in the history of Christianity but only the most consequential ones that still exist today. At the very least, however, we should examine those points in the multiplicity of the common statements of faith at which the historic separations took place. From this starting point in the common creed, it follows that what is held in common extends to a greater degree into the often very knotty areas of dogmatic disagreement than is evident if one proceeds from the disagreements. In embarking on this task, an observation was important for me that I had already made earlier, and that confirmed itself for me again and again in later ecumenical dialogues with the Orthodox churches, during my extended participation at the Second Vatican Council, and in encounters with many other churches, namely, that in many cases it is possible to make joint statements on the same topic in the structure of prayer or of proclamation that are impossible to make in the structure of dogmatic teaching. I considered the variety of structures of faith statements (for example, confession, prayer, doxology, proclamation, and doctrine), and I noted that the same contents of faith cannot be expressed in each of these structures. Rather, in some cases, transposing the statements of faith from one structure into another proved to be necessary in order to recognize the identity of, or the actual difference between, disputed statements. I laid out these insights for the first time in my essay, “The Structure of the Dogmatic Statement as an Ecumenical Issue,” and have repeatedly re-examined it.1 In doing so, I have reached the conclusion that it is justifiable and might be beneficial to set forth the whole of Christian dogmatics in light of this methodological perspective. For that reason, the basic ideas of that essay are here reproduced in abbreviated form in the introductory part (chap. 3.1–2). By examining the basic structures of faith statements, more far-reaching agreements will result than by the otherwise customary direct comparison of the wording

1 Edmund Schlink, “Die Struktur der dogmatischen Aussage als ökumenisches Problem,” Kerygma und Dogma 3, no. 4 (1957): 251–306. [SÖB, 1/1.24–79 (“The Structure of the Dogmatic Statement as an Ecumenical Issue,” ESW, 1.67–125). —Ed.]

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in dogmatic formulas. If the mode of expression in this dogmatics sometimes approximates the structure of proclamation, prayer, or confession, this is to be understood not as an escape into edification but as a considered consequence of the analysis of the theological language within which dogmatic teaching is intended to serve the statements of confession, prayer, and proclamation. Of course there will be those, both in my Church as well as in other church bodies, who will deem this attempt to write an ecumenical dogmatics premature or even presumptuous. Therefore a few clarifications about my intentions should be added. By its very nature, a dogmatics cannot claim the validity that is accorded to dogma. Rather, it serves dogma in interpreting it and so grounding and furthering it. A dogmatics is thus unable to bring about the unity of the church. That can only happen by the separated churches themselves. Dogmatics can only contribute to the knowledge of that which is held in common and provide impulses for the unification of the separated churches. ¶What is characteristic for this ecumenical dogmatics is the methodological reflection on the structure of theological statements. One can also conceive of an ecumenical dogmatics that proceeds from other methodological perspectives, for example, from those of the basic anthropological forms of the awareness of existence that are becoming more and more different with the expansion of Christendom, from those of the basic forms of the self-object awareness, and so on.[i] Cognizant of these and other limitations, I place my book into the hands of the public. I hope that those Christians for whom the walls that divide the separated churches have become transparent, for whom the worldwide working of Christ among others has become certain, and who feel obligated to press toward the unity of the separated churches, will read and welcome this book as a scholarly theological aid for the clarification of their longing. I also hope that many others, who until now have kept distant from the ecumenical task, will recognize its urgency and open their hearts to the God-willed unity of all those who believe in Jesus Christ. The day is coming, and for some congregations it has already dawned, in which one will wonder more about the fact that the churches are still separated than about the fact that in the midst of these separations there are important commonalities. I know that I share this confidence with no small number of other Protestant Christians who have accompanied and encouraged me along the way as I was working on this manuscript. A reinforcement of this confidence and a special joy for me are also the two forewords that accompany my book at the behest of the publisher, one by a Catholic theologian and the other by an Orthodox one, namely, by my esteemed colleagues, Heinrich Fries and Nikos A. Nissiotis. For the publisher’s initiatory proposal and for many stimulating suggestions, I wish to thank Dr. Arndt Ruprecht. That the book could be published at a reasonable price was due especially to Bishop D. Dr. Hermann Kunst, who has so many times stepped in as a promoter for ecumenical institutes and research projects and who

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has made the publication of this dogmatics possible through the procurement of a generous subsidy. He also encouraged the leadership of my Hessen-Nassau and my Westphalian home Church to provide additional help with the printing expenses. To Bishop Kunst, Church President Dr. Hild, and President Dr. Reiss I owe my heartfelt thanks for these signs of longtime friendship. For assistance with the proofreading I must thank Dr. Ursula Schnell, librarian Helga Scheuffler, and theology student Reinhard Laser, but especially retired church Superintendent Paul Reinhard. Heidelberg, 20 September 1983

Edmund Schlink Editor’s Notes

[i] For more on these basic forms, see Schlink, “Die Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.47–64 (ESW, 1.91–107).

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There are, to be sure, several accounts of dogmatics within both Catholic and Protestant theology that have an ecumenical intention and include ecumenical issues, but here Edmund Schlink sets forth a dogmatics that for the first time is programmatically ecumenical. One may look upon it as his theological legacy and the culmination of his life’s work. Not only does it incorporate conclusions from contemporary theological research, especially from the field of exegesis, but it also displays the richness of the author’s ecumenical insights and experiences as well as his untiring ecumenical commitment. Wherein lies the uniqueness of this ecumenical dogmatics? In Schlink’s own words, a sea-change is needed: [It] can be described as a Copernican revolution. We are no longer to regard the other Christian communities as if they move around our Church as the center…. Instead, we must recognize that together with the other communities, we circle around Christ, like planets circling around the sun, and receive light from him…. We are not to compare the others against ourselves, but rather to compare ourselves, together with them, against the apostolic witness to Christ, and only in this way, on the basis of Christ, recognize our own reality as well as that of the unfamiliar.1

From this Copernican revolution emerges the aim of an ecumenical dogmatics. Its aim is not to seek a possible consensus on the basis of the traditional denominational [konfessionellen] disagreements, but rather, on the basis of a consensus that needs to be made clear and recognizable anew, to strive for a new understanding of those disagreements and of their importance within the whole of the Christian faith. Thus in an ecumenical dogmatics, the churches and their traditions, as well as the living theologies within them, are not confrontational opponents but conversation partners who are able to incorporate their own particular contributions into the whole of the faith. This has become possible as a result of the fact of ecumenism, its history, and its movement in the most varied dimensions in the life of churches themselves and in theological work. Through intensive hermeneutical, biblical, historical, and systematic work there has been greater and greater success in taking the sting out of the differences that have caused church divisions, and in comprehending these differences as legitimate representations of the faith and life of the church

1 [Schlink, ÖD, SÖB, 2.696 (ESW, 2.1020f.). In 1966 Schlink offered a similar perspective in his published reflections on the Second Vatican Council. See Schlink, NK, SÖB, 1/2.240 (ESW, 1.526). –Ed.]

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of Jesus Christ. The ecumenical documents—most recently the Lima document on baptism, eucharist, and ministry—and the growing convergence that has been recognized in them, are an unmistakable signal of this new situation, from which an ecumenical dogmatics could arise.[i] It in turn seeks to strengthen the growing convergences and to ground them theologically. Such a dogmatics also provides real scholarly help toward clarifying the longing for the unity of Christians. This ecumenical dogmatics can be read by all Christians from the various churches. They will find nothing here which they must seriously contradict. This includes matters of accent and emphasis. An ecumenical dogmatics is accordingly based not on the minimum but on the maximum of the faith that is to be considered in Christian theology. This ecumenical dogmatics by Edmund Schlink in no way denies its origin in Reformation theology, more specifically, in Evangelical-Lutheran theology. Such a dogmatics does not seek, as does, for instance, Roman Catholic theology, to provide a foundation through fundamental theology and to inquire about the conditions for the possibility of a revelation of God. Rather, it proceeds directly and decisively from the historical acts of God, which have their culmination and at the same time their center in the coming of Jesus Christ, in his life, way, and destiny, and which find their fulfillment in the revelation of the triune God. On the basis of this center, dogmatics gives an account of each of its individual parts; it draws the line of development from this center, not only into the realm of the church and the world opened up by Jesus Christ but also into the space and time before and beyond Christ, for instance, in the doctrine of the creation and preservation of the world. With Schlink, christology has its starting point in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Only on that basis can the christological issues, such as the question about the earthly Jesus, be put into their proper light. In all this, what is at stake for the author is not a fashionable new interpretation of the faith but rather a development of the original. Likewise, Schlink refuses to allow theology to cross over into anthropology or be determined by an existential orientation. And one more thing needs to be noted: an ecumenical dogmatics calls to mind contents of the faith that today are often avoided or passed over in silence, such as the doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ, the doctrine of the angels, the virgin birth, and the eschatological statements about judgment and possible damnation. The theological proposal in this ecumenical dogmatics is not in contradiction with the dogmatic ideas of Roman Catholic theology; rather, it is an example of the plurality of theologies that is recognizable today and has been recognized anew as we encounter it already in the New Testament and also in the high Middle Ages. Only a theology viewed and acknowledged in this way can be ecumenically relevant and helpful, for in it a spiritual treasure opens up its wealth, hidden by the divisions of Christendom, that has—on the basis of the apostolic foundation—unfolded in

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the course of the history of Christianity. We are in the process of discovering “the catholicity of the one church, which is not fully represented today in any of the particular churches.”2 All of this does not preclude that there are also divisions in the ecumenical movement that are necessary. Crucial in this case is the confession that Jesus is the Christ (cf. 1 Jn.). This ecumenical dogmatics is not a Summa contra gentiles but a Summa theologiae.[ii] This means, in addition, that it is a theology that wants to serve worship and proclamation. It speaks for them, not against them. The book was thus written primarily for theologians and Christian readers. That task is quite enough; no one can do everything. A Catholic theologian can confirm about this ecumenical dogmatics that it presents specifically Catholic positions—both the Orthodox as well as the Roman Catholic—with great objectivity, alert empathy, and deep understanding. This is especially true with respect to its characterization of the teaching of the Council of Trent and of the Second Vatican Council, but also with respect to its account of Mariology, the doctrine of church office and spiritual gift, of the sacraments, and the ordering of the local church. Also, a Catholic theologian will confirm that with respect to the church and its ministry much is still possible that until now has not yet been realized. This Catholic theologian is especially thankful for the recognition of the significance of doxology for theology and ecumenism. Catholic theology has somewhat different emphases, for instance with respect to natural theology. In that respect, there also arises a somewhat different valuation of the non-Christian religions as well as (in view of Mt. 25) of “anonymous Christians.”[iii] Catholic theology will say even more about the papacy as the ministry of Peter than is said here, and it will point above all to the fact that a successor to the basic function of Peter is not unbiblical. These differences, however, are no longer church-dividing. This ecumenical dogmatics is a convincing example of the fact that ecumenism is not standing still nor even in retreat. At the same time, it is a courageous plea for further ecumenical endeavor. Ecumenism and resignation are mutually exclusive. This ecumenical dogmatics is also a convincing example of the fact that theologians, who are often blamed for the church divisions, have contributed and still are contributing in very significant ways to overcoming the divisions and building bridges to community—not by remaining silent about differences or disguising problems but by honest and open engagement with these problems, which precisely in this way has opened up new and hopeful perspectives toward unity. For this reason, too, one can no longer say that the unification of the churches and of Christendom is impossible because seemingly insurmountable theological diffi-

2 [Schlink, ÖD, SÖB, 2.700 (ESW, 2.1025). –Ed.]

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culties and obstacles stand in its way. Certainly the theologians cannot produce this unity, nor can an ecumenical dogmatics. There is still a plethora of non-theological factors involved. But theology and theologians create the presuppositions and provide the arguments that the unity, when viewed theologically, can be justified as a real possibility in the churches. A lot depends on those theological results being received in the entire realm of the churches and thereby gaining vitality, actuality, and urgency. The unity and unification of the churches do not need to be justified, but the divisions do. Ecumenism is the great opportunity and task of this present moment. It should not be wasted. Such a failure would be harmful to the whole of Christendom and to the credibility of the Christian message. Beyond that, it would be harmful to humanity, which is brought closer to its own goal through the unification and unity of Christendom, namely, the goal of the unity of humanity in justice, reconciliation, and peace. This ecumenical dogmatics is an encouraging sign that ecumenical hope, as a hope of Christians and of the churches, will not be brought to shame. The Catholic theologian can only wish that this ecumenical dogmatics will find the valuation and reception it deserves also in the Catholic Church. Such a dogmatics assists that church in recognizing a greater catholicity. Heinrich Fries[iv] Professor in the Catholic Faculty of the University of Munich

Contemporary dogmaticians can no longer construct their dogmatics exclusively on their own confessional tradition. An authentic dogmatics today has to be presented within an ecumenical perspective and must dynamically serve the further progress of efforts toward unifying the one church for the sake of renewing the one world. In this Ecumenical Dogmatics readers will discover their own position in a wider context than their own confessional milieu. My impression is that this applies especially to the Eastern Orthodox tradition. In order to clarify this, I would like to point out several principal elements that are important to Orthodox theology: (a) This work was written in light of the hidden undivided tradition of the one church, for its author views the unity of the church on the foundation of the apostolic kerygma, the Bible, and the reality of the church, as that unity has been manifested in the history of the church—despite all sorts of schisms—and as it can be comprehended in an authentic ecumenical dogmatics. (b) In the midst of the various structures of theological thinking, the author of this dogmatics knows that without the recovery of the ancient basic forms of doxology no common doctrine of God in Christendom is possible. The doctrine of God and worship, truth and the transfigured life, interpretation of Scripture,

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kerygma, and dogma—all these mutually complement and fulfill one another. In this way, doxology belongs to the essence of the faith, whose form of expression is liturgical worship as well as the ancient confessions. For that reason, the structure of authentic dogmatic thinking also becomes doxological in that it interprets these confessions systematically. (c) In this perspective, dogmatizing receives its dynamic function within the communal life of the church. In that the truth of God is expressed doxologically, a truly ecumenical dogmatics becomes possible, one that opposes the absolutizing of dogma, on the one hand, and the fleeing from dogmatic precision, on the other. The dogmatic statements of the Eastern Church remain determined above all by the structure of doxology, in distinction from later developments in the West. Because of the mystery of God and his actions in history, according to Edmund Schlink, “not all of the contents of the knowledge of faith [can] be adequately expressed in one and the same structure.”3 (d) Against a one-sided anthropology as well as against all autonomous, humanistic anthropologists, Edmund Schlink teaches—in agreement with the patristic theologians of the East—that the image of God is the response of the human to God through the complete participation in the life of Christ through the Holy Spirit for the transfiguration of the human life. This imago is not a static element in the person but indeed a call from God to a new life through a true conversion in the Spirit. “Theological anthropology has to serve the confession of sins and the cry for divine grace.”4 Grace is the dominant, effective element and therefore the chief theme of a Christian anthropology. In other words, the new human grows in Christ by participating in the divine life through repentance and by the working of the Holy Spirit. One can thus recognize in this ecumenical dogmatics the Eastern teaching of theosis, which has been interpreted in a masterful way in an evangelical-Protestant context and by using Western terminology. (e) It is self-evident that such a dogmatics presupposes the complete and central significance of the resurrection. This kind of doxology and its connection to all the chief dogmas, especially to anthropology, is only possible on the basis of the risen Lord. The knowledge of the entire divine economy rests on faith in the resurrection. (f) The Eastern Orthodox reader notes here too that pneumatology is the decisive element of true ecumenicity. Edmund Schlink here develops, in accordance with his doctrine of the Trinity, all aspects of the Spirit’s working in creation, redemption, and the renewal of the whole of humanity and the world. (g) In such a pneumatology, it is not surprising that this dogmatics, viewed as ecumenical, presents a complete ecclesiology. Almost all of the principal elements

3 [Schlink, ÖD, SÖB, 2.67 (ESW, 2.159). –Ed.] 4 [Schlink, ÖD, SÖB, 2.67 (ESW, 2.159). –Ed.]

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of this most controversial topic in ecumenism are developed here in a strictly consequent and systematic way and in a comprehensive ecumenical perspective. The notae ecclesiae [the marks of the church] are presented with rare clarity and deep theological reflection—without confessional one-sidedness—in steadfast connection with the doctrine of the Trinity and Christian theological anthropology. Especially surprising for Eastern Orthodox Christians is the acknowledgment of the great importance of the Lord’s Supper for the edification of the church, for the participation of humans in the life of Christ, for the life of the Christian community, for the dynamic presence of the early apostolic message in the world, and especially for the cosmic-universal glorification of every creature. (h) The understanding of the church here has nothing to do with either an exclusively speculative, ontological ecclesiology or a functionalistic sociological doctrine of the church. It is the church of Christ, called into life by the Spirit, nourished by word and sacrament, directed outwardly to the world, lacking any division between the triumphal ecclesia [church] and the earthly congregation. The center of its life remains the worshiping assembly. Into it a person is called out from the world by the gospel and then sent back into the world. I have here drawn attention in particular to those theses which can especially be approved from the perspective of the Eastern Orthodox. It is clear to me that, given its ecumenical perspective, this dogmatics can be taught and studied in the Eastern Orthodox realm, alongside the patristic theologians. Edmund Schlink’s concern for the unity of the church, for the restoration of the one universal church, and his respect for the church’s history and tradition, do not conceal the contemporary problematic for him. On the contrary, his ecumenical perspective on the past opens for him a new horizon toward the future, where the actual dimension of a dynamic faith lies. He does not avoid tackling the burning and thorny issues of contemporary theology and of the current life of the church. In all these controversial matters, however, he demonstrates with exemplary calm common sense the ecumenical way of open debate toward a possible and creative consensus through mutual convergences. Without ignoring or minimizing the issues that still exist, he suggests the theological method and the ecumenical posture that make it possible to overcome sterile isolation and the monism of confessionalism. Readers only first come really to appreciate this dogmatics as “ecumenical” if and when they immerse themselves spiritually in the experience of the community of the churches of the last decades. But then they can rejoice in it as an exercise in the future consensus of the one faith, of the one Spirit, and of the one church. Nikos A. Nissiotis[v] Professor in the Orthodox Theological Faculty of the University of Athens

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Editor’s Notes [i] Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, World Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order, paper 111 (Geneva: WCC, 1982). This document was adopted at the commission’s meeting in Lima, Peru (1982). It is reprinted in Growth in Agreement: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, ed. Harding Meyer and Lukas Vischer (Geneva: WCC; New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 466–503; and in The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices, ed. Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope (Geneva: WCC: Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 176–200. [ii] Thomas Aquinas (1224/25–1274) wrote his Summa contra gentiles [Summary against the Gentiles] between 1259 and 1266. Thomas used the word “Gentile” here to refer to non-Christians, namely, ancient pagan thinkers as well as contemporary Jews and Muslims. The proper title of this work is The Truth of the Catholic Faith against the Errors of Unbelievers. This summary of the Catholic faith may have been used to prepare foreign missionaries so that they could defend the faith against Jews and Muslims who contradicted it. Thomas wrote his Summa theologiae [Summary of Theology] between 1266 and 1273. The purpose of this work was to provide a systematic summary of the Catholic faith for students of Catholic theology. [iii] The phrase “anonymous Christian” is associated with Fries’ friend and fellow GermanCatholic theologian Karl Rahner (1904–1984). For Rahner’s theory of the “anonymous Christian,” see especially his essays, “Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions” (April 1961), in Theological Investigations, vol. 5, trans. Karl-H. Kruger (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), 115–134; and “Anonymous Christians,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 6, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1969), 390–98. “Therefore no matter what a man states in his conceptual, theoretical and religious reflection, anyone who does not say in his heart, ‘there is no God’ (like the ‘fool’ in the psalm) but testifies to him by the radical acceptance of his being, is a believer. But if in this way he believes in deed and in truth in the holy mystery of God, if he does not suppress this truth but leaves it free play, then the grace of this truth by which he allows himself to be led is always already the grace of the Father in his Son. And anyone who has let himself be taken hold of by this grace can be called with every right an ‘anonymous Christian’” (Rahner, “Anonymous Christians,” 395). [iv] Heinrich Fries (1911–1998) was a Roman Catholic theologian who taught fundamental and ecumenical theology at the University of Munich between 1958 and his retirement in 1979. In 1964 he founded the Institute for Ecumenical Theology at Munich, which was patterned after the one Schlink had founded at Heidelberg. A prolific author, Fries participated in numerous ecumenical dialogues, including several with Schlink and Pannenberg. Alongside Rahner, Hans Küng (1928–2021), and Walter Kasper (b. 1933), Fries was a leading ecumenical theologian in the Roman Catholic Church in Germany during the second half of the twentieth century.

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[v] Nikos A. Nissiotis (1924–1986) was a Greek Orthodox theologian and philosopher of religion who taught at the University of Athens between 1965 and his death in 1986. Like Schlink, he not only studied with Karl Barth but was also an official observer for the World Council of Churches at the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). He had been a principal speaker at the WCC’s assembly in New Delhi in 1961. He and Schlink deepened their friendship during their many months together in Rome, but also afterwards when Nissiotis served as the director of the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland (1966–1974). He had taught there since 1955. Later, he became the associate general secretary of the WCC (1968–1972). He then served as moderator of its Faith and Order Commission (1977–1983), during which time he chaired the Commission’s meeting at Lima, Peru (1982), where the famous Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry document was adopted. Along with Georges Florovsky (1893–1979) and John Zizioulas (b. 1931), Nissiotis was the leading Eastern Orthodox theologian in the ecumenical movement in the middle decades of the twentieth century. (Beyond his ecumenical work, he is famous for having introduced basketball to Greece in the 1930s and 1940s and for having served as the Vice-President of the Greek National Olympic Committee.)

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In 2004 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht marked the centennial anniversary of the birth of Edmund Schlink and the twentieth anniversary of his death by publishing the first of five volumes that contain his principal theological writings, Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis. The final volume appeared in 2010. In January 2012 I was invited to begin an American edition of these volumes. I am grateful to the editors at Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht and to the Schlink family for entrusting me with this important project. I am also grateful to the editors of the German edition for their contributions to those volumes: Klaus Engelhardt, Günther Gassmann, Rolf Herrfahrdt, Michael Plathow, Ursula Schnell, and Peter Zimmerling. The American edition, Edmund Schlink Works, provides the English-speaking world with a completely new and unabridged translation of the central writings by one of the most impressive Christian theologians of the twentieth century. By any account, Schlink’s contributions to the development of ecumenical theology in the second half of the twentieth century were considerable. This authoritative American edition of the Ecumenical Dogmatics strives to be faithful to the language, style, and ideas of Schlink. In general, my co-translators and I have tried to be “as literal as possible” and “as free as necessary” in our translation. Where literal accuracy and clarity conflicted, we preferred to side with clarity. Thus, on occasion, paraphrase seemed more faithful than literal fidelity. Key terms that occur in all the volumes are translated consistently. Technical theological terms and concepts received special attention so that their English equivalents are as accurate as possible. On occasion, we have not hesitated to borrow felicitous phrases and apt expressions from earlier translations of Schlink’s writings and those of other German authors. We have employed gender-inclusive language to the extent that such use was possible without misrepresenting what Schlink communicated or forcing his language to fit later church developments. We believe that were Professor Schlink alive today he would use such inclusive language, given his strong emphasis on the inclusivity of the whole church within the one body of Christ. The exception is Schlink’s traditional use of masculine pronouns for God, which we have maintained. This use of masculine pronouns should not be understood to imply gender but to avoid theological formulations that suggest division in God, or that appear to compromise God’s unity. (Cf. Schlink’s reflections on this issue in chap. 10.) When Schlink used a participial noun or a nominalized adjective to describe one or more of the three Persons of the Trinity, or if he described them in a relative pronoun clause, we have kept the term(s) in lowercase letters (e. g., the one who

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exists eternally, the coming one, the crucified one, the living one, the one who creates anew, etc.). However, we have capitalized similar constructions when they are used as terms of praise or as proper titles (e. g., God the Preserver, the Holy One of God, the Ancient of Days, the Highest, the Son of Man, the Savior, the New Creator, etc.). A few remarks on certain specifics of the translation: We have translated Amt as “ministerial office” or sometimes simply as “office.” Anfechtung (plural: Anfechtungen) is an important term in the Lutheran theological tradition. Luther occasionally used it to translate the Latin term tentatio, that is, “spiritual crisis,” “turmoil,” or “trial.” He understood it also in the sense of “being attacked” or “being assailed” by forces opposed to Christ, the gospel, and the church. Anfechtung thus involves fear, one’s conscience, sin, the awareness of guilt and shame, and the testing of one’s faith. In short, it refers to a kind of spiritual anguish. In such a situation, one is being tempted to reject faith in Christ and to despair of God and oneself. The term can thus also be translated as “temptation,” although that lacks the aspect of “attack” and “assault” (on body, mind, and soul). The term is occasionally left untranslated, or it is rendered in one of these other ways, depending on the context. The antidote to such “trials and tribulations,” according to both Luther and Schlink, is solely the gospel promise and the comfort it brings to the one who trusts it by faith. Normally church with a lowercase c refers to “the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” or “the church of Jesus Christ,” which cannot be strictly identified with any one church body or denomination. (The Latin designation for this, the una sancta confessed in the Latin form of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, will likewise be rendered in lowercase letters.) The term churches with a lowercase c refers to “all churches,” church bodies in general, or to groupings of church bodies, e. g., the churches of the Reformation. When Church appears with an uppercase C, this term refers to a specific church body (for example, the Roman Catholic Church), a church tradition (for example, the Eastern Orthodox Church), or to an official federation of churches (for example, The Protestant Church in Germany). The German term Gemeinde is normally translated as “congregation” or “community,” depending on context, but in some settings it is rendered as “church.” While it would be nice to preserve Luther’s use and understanding of the term evangelisch (that is, oriented toward the evangel or good news of Jesus Christ), this word has come to mean something quite different in the contemporary United States from what it originally meant to sixteenth-century “evangelicals.” Therefore, to avoid misunderstanding, this German adjective is normally translated as “Protestant” or “Evangelical-Lutheran.” In Schlink’s context, the term Konfessionskirche implied more than merely a “denomination” (in the American sense of this term). Rather, it points to the confessional or doctrinal identity and nature of a particular church body or tradition, even of those church bodies and traditions that do not have explicit confessional state-

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ments or creeds. This term is normally translated as “church body” or “confessional group” (i. e., one comprising multiple church bodies from the same confessional tradition). Schlink used the term Reformationskirchen (“churches of the Reformation”) to refer to the two main branches of German Protestantism, namely, the churches that subscribe to the Augsburg Confession (i. e., the Evangelical-Lutheran Church) and the Reformed Church. It is important to note that Schlink frequently used language relating to war and military conflict. For example, he used the German and English term Front—which in both languages can mean either the frontline in a battle or the line of a weather front—to refer to historic conflicts wherein the mainstream orthodox and catholic church struggled to define its teaching over against false teachings that had to be rejected. When the reader encounters the term front, that word should be understood to refer to such theological conflicts in the church’s history. In most contexts Gemeinschaft has been translated as “community” or “partnership” (e. g., “church community,” “community with God,” “community with the ancestors in the faith”), although “communion” seemed more fitting in some settings, especially, e. g., in relation to the Lord’s Supper, the communion of saints, communion with the triune God. When it was difficult to know which shade of meaning to favor in a context, “community” was the default choice. (If I were translating the book in the 1950s, I would have surely translated this German word frequently as “fellowship,” but that English word has now become problematic in many church circles since it seems to refer to a group that only includes “fellows,” and so I have avoided its use.) For Schlink, the term Gottesdienst (“the service of God”) referred first and foremost to the Dienst Gottes, God’s service to us in and through Christ and his sacrifice on the cross. This same risen and exalted Christ is now present and active through the word and sacraments in the Christian congregation. Faithful response to this divine service is the Dienst der Gemeinde, the service of the congregation, in hearing, repenting, praying, singing, confessing, bearing witness, doing works of mercy, etc. Gottesdienst thus encompasses both God’s service to the congregation and the congregation’s service to God. While the term Gottesdienst will normally be translated as “worship service,” and its adjectival form as “worship,” Schlink’s theological presuppositions about it should be kept in mind. The German word Mensch is normally rendered as “human being,” “human,” “person,” or “humankind.” Often the German singular is translated by English plurals to avoid introducing masculine-specific pronouns. The more abstract Menschheit is almost always translated as “humanity,” but in a few places it is rendered as “the human race.” When used in reference to the worship service, Ordnung is translated as “order,” since it typically refers to the order of service in the liturgy. When used to refer

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to the organization and administration of those who serve in a given ministry of the church, this word is translated as “order” or “ordering,” since it typically refers here to the ordering or arranging of ministerial offices (as, for example, in the context of discussions about “faith and order”). When modified by the adjective kirchenrechtlich, the word Ordnung can refer to “canon law” (as in both the Eastern and Western Christian traditions), “church law” (as in the organization and administration of a given Protestant territorial church), or even “church regulations” (as in a church constitution, its ordinances, and bylaws, as well as its formal agreements and legal obligations). In reference to creation, however, Ordnungen is normally translated as “orders of creation” or “orderly structures” within creation. The English near-equivalent of Wissenschaft is “science,” but that word tends to connote merely the natural and social sciences. Schlink, however, often used the word more broadly to refer to all the scholarly disciplines that are found in a German university, including the humanities, philosophy, and theology. The word suggests thorough, comprehensive, and systematic knowledge of something. That knowledge is the result of careful, rigorous use of those scholarly methods that are appropriate to the subject matter under investigation. Hence, Wissenschaft is usually translated as “scholarly discipline” or “scholarship,” except when Schlink is clearly referring more narrowly to the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) or the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible (NRSV), copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved. If another English version, e. g., the Revised Standard Version (RSV) or the New International Version (NIV), fits Luther’s or Schlink’s translation better, I have quoted from it and used the appropriate abbreviation. (For permission rights to use these versions, please see the bibliography.) In those few places where Luther’s translation, or one of the other German translations that Schlink used, is best rendered literally, I have done so and then noted it with the appropriate abbreviation (e. g., “L” or “E”). In many places, Schlink provided his own translation or a paraphrase of the biblical text. These renderings are marked with the abbreviation “S.” In those places where Luther’s or Schlink’s versification of the Bible differs from the NRSV, I have followed the NRSV’s numbering. Also, we maintain the tradition of printing the Old Testament Divine Name in capital letters as “Lord” (only as it appears in NRSV quotations, or when it appears in all uppercase letters as HERR in the German text), but we translate “Herr” as “Lord” in all other settings, e. g., for God as the Lord of creation, for Jesus as Lord (= Greek Kyrios). Schlink did not include any footnotes in his dogmatics text. Instead, he placed (often limited) bibliographical information in parentheses within the body of his manuscript. On occasion, he quoted (or paraphrased) an author but did not provide

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any information for the source of the quotation. In these situations, I have placed the appropriate bibliographic information in a footnote so that it does not detract from the flow of his presentation and so that the reader may track down the original source more easily than by having to look for this information in an endnote. The sources for all direct quotations are thus cited in normal footnotes in the text (numbered consecutively—beginning anew in each chapter—and identified by plain superscripted Arabic numerals). Incorrect bibliographic information (which is infrequent) has been silently rectified, and that which is missing or incomplete in Schlink’s citations I have added in brackets. Whenever possible, references to existing English translations of works cited by Schlink are included within the brackets, even if those works were published after his death. To help the reader identify this bracketed information that has been added by me to Schlink’s text, I have inserted the notation “—Ed.” Unless otherwise noted, all other brackets in the text are also by me, not by Schlink. Parenthetical remarks that Schlink himself inserted into the text, e. g., in chap. 17, are free of editorial notation. While I have not tried to identify all the places where Schlink was quoting or alluding to his own earlier work (e. g., his sermons), I have tried to cite the most important sources from his own publications that he re-used to compose sections of the dogmatics. (To have included references to the sermons would have added to the bulk of an already hefty text. Thus, references to sermonic material in the dogmatics will be identified in the fifth volume of ESW.) For references to the church fathers and other classic theologians, I have cited the primary source (as found in a critical edition) and, if possible, provided a reference to its most recent English translation. If a German work has not been published in English, a translation of its title is placed in brackets immediately after the German title. All translations of quoted German works are mine, unless otherwise noted. If a work of Schlink’s has been translated into English, I have provided the English title in parentheses after the German title (in the intial citation only). The page number(s) for the translation appear(s) in parentheses (or brackets in some necessary instances) after the German page number(s). It is hoped that this book will be used as a resource by students of theology and the history of Christian thought. For the sake of those who are less familiar with the history of philosophy and theology, I have added explanatory notes. Such notes, which are unique to this American edition, appear at the end of each chapter and are identified in the text by bolded superscripted lowercase roman numerals in brackets. As initially a student of psychology and then as a Lutheran theologian, Schlink expected his readers to follow the technical terms and the nuances that these special fields employ. While he usually cited his sources, he often made theological, philosophical, historical, and other cultural allusions that I will sometimes, but not always, indicate in a note at the end of the chapter. At the end of the book, I have provided indices of Scripture references, names, and subjects. I have also included

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a bibliography of all sources referred to by Schlink (including his own works that he cited or made use of), as well as sources cited by the German editor and me. The layout of the American edition retains Schlink’s manner of dividing chapters into sections and subsections, and generally keeps his original paragraphing, although on occasion longer ones are broken into shorter ones. I note these instances with the symbol ¶. I have also followed Schlink’s practice of formatting his brief excursi in a smaller font size. With only a few notable exceptions, all Greek and Latin terms have been kept in the text, and an English translation of the less familiar ones appears in brackets. I have not retained Schlink’s German custom of referring to the classic creeds and confessions of the church by their Latin titles, e. g., Nicaenum, Constantinopolitanum, Apostolicum, Chalcedonense, Augustana, etc., Instead, I have used their traditional English titles, e.g, the Nicene Creed, the Constantinopolitan Creed, the Apostles’ Creed, the Chalcedonian Definition, the Augsburg Confession, etc. It is important to note that “the Nicene Creed” refers solely to the original creed adopted at the Council of Nicaea in 325, whereas “the Constantinopolitan Creed” (or “the NicenoConstantinopolitan Creed”) refers to the Nicene Creed as amplified and adopted at the First Council of Constantinople in 381. I have also not retained Schlink’s custom of using the Latin term credo to refer to one or more of the specific creeds and confessions in Christianity, e. g., the Apostles’ and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creeds. I have thus translated credo as “creed,” allowing the context to determine its meaning. Whereas Schlink only provided a transliteration of all Hebrew words, I have added the original lettering. For the sake of readability, Greek and Hebrew words are not italicized. The transliteration (italicized) and an English definition, when necessary, follow in brackets or in an editor’s note. On occasion, Schlink’s original German term or phrase is placed in brackets immediately after the English translation, usually because the word or phrase is a technical expression or a neologism, or its etymological roots are significant. I have maintained most instances where Schlink placed quotation marks around certain German words and phrases (in which case, then, the original word or phrase is usually, but not always, placed in brackets after the translation). Where Schlink referred initially to a word as a word, it is put in italics. Minor typographical errors in Schlink’s German text, which are also very infrequent, have been silently corrected as well. As I mentioned at the end of my preface to the first volume of Edmund Schlink Works, given the confused and weakened state of Christian ecumenism today, one might hope that a re-examination of the key theological writings by one of the great ecumenists of the twentieth century might assist efforts at renewing the ecumenical movement, especially regarding issues of “faith and order,” which have been marginalized in recent decades. Since many of the theological issues with which Schlink wrestled are still pressing upon us today, our own thinking about

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them might be benefited by his. His incisive, analytical summary of basic Christian teachings seems as relevant today as when it first appeared in 1983. I am grateful to Valparaiso University for granting me a sabbatical in the first half of 2019, which allowed me to make substantial progress on the project. The work I did during my sabbatical was supported by a generous grant from the Wheat Ridge Ministries. James Albers, John Hannah, Richard Hill, Eric Moeller, and William Shimkus read earlier drafts of the manuscript and helped me greatly through their questions, comments, and suggestions for improvement. I am grateful to Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert for confirming several matters relating to Luther’s theology. Michael Cover helped to verify that Augustine did not write or utter a few phrases that have been attributed to him. I owe a debt of gratitude to Sara Shoppa of the Christopher Center Library for procuring difficult-to-find books, articles, and other scholarly materials. I would like to express special appreciation to my research assistant, Ellie Wegener, who carefully proofread the manuscript against the German original, improved the translation in many places, and helped to prepare the indices. I am indebted to my other co-translators for the invaluable assistance they provided me. Hans Spalteholz and I translated the first six chapters. He provided crucial feedback on several others. Robin Lutjohann translated chapters seven through eleven and fourteen through sixteen. Ken Jones and I translated chapter twelve, while Mark Seifrid and I completed chapters eighteen, nineteen, and twenty-one. The remaining chapters were done by the undersigned, who is responsible for such outward uniformity across the book as may have been achieved. I take full responsibility for the finished product. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my wife, Detra, and our son, Jacob, for their loving support and patience during the time I worked on this volume. Valparaiso University Valparaiso, Indiana The Feast of Pentecost 2022

Matthew L. Becker

Edmund Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics1 Matthew L. Becker

The Ecumenical Dogmatics of Edmund Schlink (1903–1984) represents the culmination of five decades of scholarly work by one of the most important Christian theologians of the twentieth century.2 The ecumenical significance of this book is evident from its accompanying prefaces that were written by two non-Lutheran theologians, one a Roman Catholic and the other an Eastern Orthodox, who each affirmed that the tome’s essential contents are consistent with the faith taught by their respective church bodies. An additional preface by Wolfhart Pannenberg and an afterword by Michael Plathow, both of which were written for the third edition, underscore the book’s abiding relevance for the ongoing task of seeking the visible unity of the church. Of the more than thirty critical reviews of it, the overwhelming majority were positive, some even laudatory.3 Despite the importance of this large work (in very small print), it has not been translated into English until now. The following remarks seek to provide some context for understanding Schlink’s opus magnum, his Summa theologiae.4 What were the principal factors that contributed to its development? How did he define the nature and purpose of an “ecumenical dogmatics”? How did he structure the work? What was the methodology that he used? What is the book’s “center”? These are the main questions examined below.

1 The following introduction includes material from my essay, “Edmund Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics,” Lutheran Quarterly 36 (Spring 2022): 1–26; and from my book chapter, “Edmund Schlink: Ecumenical Theology,” in Generous Orthodoxies: Essays on the History and Future of Ecumenical Theology, ed. Paul Silas Peterson (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2020), 23–41. 2 Schlink, ÖD, SÖB, 2. 3 For a list of these reviews, see Jochen Eber, Einheit der Kirche als dogmatisches Problem bei Edmund Schlink [The Unity of the Church as a Dogmatic Issue in the Works of Edmund Schlink], Forschungen zur systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie 67, ed. Wolfhart Pannenberg and Reinhard Slenczka (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), 295–296. 4 For a more detailed summary of Schlink’s life and work, see Matthew L. Becker, “Edmund Schlink (1903–1984),” in Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians, ed. Mark Mattes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 195–222; and idem, “Edmund Schlink (1903–1984): An Ecumenical Life,” in ESW 1.15–41. See also my essay, “Christ in the University: Edmund Schlink’s Vision,” The Cresset 80 (Easter 2017): 12–21.

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I.

The Historical Background to Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics

The origin of Schlink’s Lebenswerk may be traced to his matriculation at the University of Münster in the winter semester of 1927–28. In a letter to his parents that October, he explained his rationale for studying theology in that predominantly Roman Catholic setting.5 First and foremost, he wanted to hear Karl Barth (1886–1968), the most well-known theologian of the time, who had joined its small Protestant faculty two years earlier and who had just published his christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf.6 What is more, Schlink wanted to get away from Bethel Seminary, where he had briefly studied theology after completing his initial doctorate, in clinical psychology.7 Bethel had few offerings in biblical exegesis and, as he told his parents, “a university theological faculty would be of much greater value for my education.”8 Finally, Münster was attractive because it had “a good practical theologian (Stählin)” and an “outstanding Roman Catholic faculty.”9 Already here 5 Schlink, letter to his parents (27 October 1927, sent from Bethel), in the Archiv des Evangelischen Bundes, Bensheim, Germany. For a partial translation of this letter, see Eugene Skibbe, A Quiet Reformer: An Introduction to Edmund Schlink’s Life and Ecumenical Theology (Minneapolis: Kirk House, 1999), 20. 6 Karl Barth, Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf: Die Lehre vom Worte Gottes—Prolegomena zur christlichen Dogmatik [Christian Dogmatics in Outline: The Doctrine of the Word of God—Prolegomena to Christian Dogmatics], vol. 1 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1927; reprint, vol. 14 of Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, ed. Gerhard Sauter [Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1982]). 7 See Edmund Schlink, “Persönlichkeitsänderung in Bekehrungen und Depressionen: Eine empirischreligionspsychologische Untersuchung nebst kasuistischen Beiträgen zur Psychologie des Gotteserlebens als Anhang” [Personality Change in Conversions and Depression: An Empirical Study in the Psychology of Religion with an Appendix Containing Casuistic Contributions toward the Psychology of the Experience of God] (Ph.D. diss., University of Marburg, 1927). Erich Rudolf Jaensch (1883–1940), professor of psychology at Marburg, had served as Schlink’s doctoral adviser. Translations of Schlink’s three doctoral dissertations will be included in ESW 5. The Bethel kirchliche Hochschule (now called the Wuppertal/Bethel Hochschule für Kirche und Diakonie), was established in 1905 by Friedrich Bodelschwingh Sr. (1831–1910), one of the most important German pastoral educators and caregivers of the nineteenth century. Located near Bielefeld in Westphalia and known for its adjoining hospital, this theological school has a rich heritage as an institution for rigorous, church-focused theological education and diaconal ministry. As noted below, Schlink would later teach here. For the history of Bethel during the time he studied and taught there, see Frank-Michael Kuhlemann, Die kirchliche Hochschule Bethel: Grundzüge ihrer Entwicklung 1905–2005, Schriften des Instituts für Diakonie- und Sozialgeschichte an der kirchlichen Hochschule Bethel, vol. 13, ed. Matthias Benad (Bielefeld: Bethel-Verlag, 2005), 53–55, 59–60, 74–81; and Gottfried Michaelis and Andreas Lindemann, Lehren und Studieren in Bethel 1934 bis 1946 (Bielefeld: Bethel-Verlag, 1999). 8 Schlink, letter to his parents (27 October 1927). 9 Schlink, letter to his parents (27 October 1927). Wilhelm Stählin (1883–1975) was one of the leading German-Lutheran theologians of his day and a principal figure in a movement of liturgical renewal within the Protestant Church in Germany. He also was instrumental in forming the “working group” of Lutheran and Catholic theologians in Germany that has been meeting regularly since 1946. Schlink’s

The Historical Background to Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics

the young student displayed an ecumenical openness that would remain central to him for the rest of his life. Barth himself seems to have left Lutheran Göttingen for Catholic Münster because he was convinced that dialogue with theologians in the Roman Church would be far more fruitful for addressing substantive dogmatic issues than continuing his debate with liberal Protestantism, which, in Barth’s view, had surrendered itself to the study of history and the philosophy of religion.10 For Barth, who remained in Münster until 1930, the substance of the Christian faith had been preserved, if also distorted, in contemporary Catholicism, whereas modern Protestantism had almost completely betrayed it.11 In these years (1927–1930), Schlink witnessed Barth’s own critical engagement with Roman Catholic figures and ideas, e. g., in his lectures on “Dogmatics II” (i. e., christology, soteriology, and ecclesiology), “Ethics I,” and “Ethics II,” as well as in his seminar on the first part of Aquinas’ Summa theologiae.12 During this period, Schlink would have also learned about or even attended Barth’s public lectures on aspects of Catholic teaching, such as the doctrine of the church.13 Equally important, Schlink heard and conversed with Catholic

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own devotion to ecumenical-liturgical renewal may be traced to the influence of Stählin. In the first chapter of Schlink’s book on the Second Vatican Council, he took note of the fact that this movement played a significant role in the spiritual awakening of European Christendom in the decades prior to that council: “So there arose a liturgical movement in many churches that was not primarily determined by historical and aesthetic interests, but rather was rooted in the basic hunger for the living word of God and for sacramental participation in Christ’s death and resurrection, and in the desire of people to offer themselves as a sacrifice of praise to God in the community of believers” (Schlink, NK, SÖB, 1/2.14 [ESW, 1.344]). See Bruce McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critical Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 376. See, e. g., Karl Barth, “Der römische Katholizismus als Frage an die protestantische Kirche” (lecture delivered in Bremen, 9 March 1928), in Die Theologie und die Kirche, Gesammelte Vorträge 2 (Zollikon-Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1928), 329–363; ET: “Roman Catholicism: A Question to the Protestant Church,” in Barth, Theology and the Church: Shorter Writings 1920–1928, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 307–333. See also McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 381. I am grateful to Dr. McCormack for personal communication that assisted me with this paragraph. For the content of these lectures, see Karl Barth, Ethik I: Vorlesung Münster Sommersemester 1928, vol. 5 of Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, ed. D. Braun (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1973); Barth, Ethik II: Vorlesung Münster Wintersemester 1928/1929, vol. 6 of Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, ed. D. Braun (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1978). See, e. g., Karl Barth, “Der Begriff der Kirche” (lecture delivered in Münster, 11 July 1927), in Die Theologie und die Kirche, 285–301; ET: “The Concept of the Church,” in Theology and the Church, 286–306. For analysis of Barth’s engagement with Roman Catholic theologians in this period, see McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 376–391; Wilhelm Neuser, Karl Barth in Münster, 1925–1930 (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1985); and T. F. Torrance, Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology, 1910–1931 (London: SCM, 1962), 93–118.

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theologians, not only those on the Münster faculty but also important guests to the campus, including Erich Przywara (1889–1972), who participated in the Aquinas seminar.14 Schlink had to be pleased when Barth agreed to serve as his dissertation adviser, a work that Barth helped to publish after his move to Bonn.15 Shortly thereafter the two theologians became even more closely aligned when Schlink helped to defend the Barmen Theological Declaration, which had been written mostly by Barth and which condemned the heresy of the racist and pro-Nazi “Deutsche Christen.”16 Schlink developed his defense of the Declaration in two essays that later formed

14 In these years, Przywara, who was a German-Polish Jesuit priest, was particularly interested in engaging Barth’s critique of the analogy of being. See Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis: Metaphysics Original Structure and Universal Rhythm, trans. John Betz (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014). For a helpful introduction to his life and ideas, see Thomas F. O’Meara, Erich J. Przywara, S.J.: His Theology and His World (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). 15 Edmund Schlink, Emotionale Gotteserlebnisse: Ein empirisch-psychologischer Beitrag zum Problem der natürlichen Religion [Emotional Experiences of God: An Empirical-Psychological Contribution to the Issue of Natural Religion], Abhandlungen und Monographien zur Philosophie des Wirklichen 5 (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1931). The bulk of Schlink’s initial theological dissertation strictly follows the psychological-genetic, descriptive-analytical, and family-history methods of such psychologists as Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich (1880–1949), William James (1842–1910), and others, including his psychology Doktorvater Jaensch. Only in the final twenty-two pages did Schlink turn to theological anthropology by analyzing the relationship of general and special revelation to the origin and religious interpretation of such psychological experiences as a sense of peace with God, the presence of God, guilt before God, the absence of God, etc. Although Schlink made use of Barth’s critique of “natural theology,” his position here is in tension with that of his Swiss professor. While Barth held that whoever experiences the law under the hiddenness of God is at the same time being confronted with the revelation of God’s grace—and apart from Christ there is no divine revelation—Schlink maintained Lutheran presuppositions regarding the revelation of God’s law in creation and its difference from the gospel. For Schlink, unlike Barth, the revelation of the sins of humans and of the wrath of God against sin is an experience of the law of God, also within all the emotional experiences of God, both positive and negative, and not somehow a function of God’s grace. For further analysis of this key difference between Schlink and Barth, see my essay, “Edmund Schlink on Theological Anthropology, the Law and the Gospel,” Lutheran Quarterly 24 (Summer 2010): 151–182. 16 The official text of the Barmen Declaration is contained in Die Barmer Theologische Erklärung: Einführung und Dokumentation, 7th ed., ed. Martin Heimbucher and Rudolf Weth, foreword by Wolfgang Huber (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2009). For a translation of it, go to http:// matthewlbecker.blogspot.com/2012/10/pericope-of-week-theological.html (accessed 10/7/2021). For more on the Deutsche Christen, see Doris Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich, 2d ed. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996). For analysis of the Christians who signed the Barmen Declaration (later often called “The Confessing Church”), see Victoria Barnett, For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); and Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, 2 vols., trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988).

The Historical Background to Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics

key chapters in his classic study of the Lutheran Confessions.17 Through these essays, he sought to strengthen those Lutheran congregations that had adopted the Barmen Declaration as their own contemporary confessional statement. Defending it was not an easy task, given the fact that many confessional Lutheran pastors and theologians in Germany, especially in Bavaria, had been critical of its first two theses, which they thought had confused law and gospel and were thus too “Barthian.”18 Nevertheless, Schlink offered his own public rationale for how the doctrinal content of the Lutheran Confessions—to which he had unconditionally subscribed at his ordination on 20 December 1931—is fully consistent with the six articles of the Declaration. Schlink thus set forth a confessional Lutheran interpretation of the Barmen Declaration in support of ecumenical solidarity between Lutheran and Reformed Christians in the Confessing Church. For the next four years (1935–1939), Schlink deepened his understanding of Christian dogmatics by offering seminars on Christian doctrine, ethics, and the Lutheran Confessions at Bethel Seminary, the theological school he had left for the university. In March 1939, however, the Gestapo closed this school, due to concerns about the allegedly subversive preaching there. In the fall of that year, just weeks after Germany’s invasion of Poland, the 36-year-old Schlink became an official “visitor” to several Lutheran congregations in Hesse-Nassau and Westphalia that belonged to the Confessing Church. He carried out this ministry—illegally—through the end of the war. His pastoral experiences during the Nazi period would thereafter shape his theological concerns and the ecumenical vision toward which he worked until his death.

17 See Edmund Schlink, “Die Verborgenheit Gottes des Schöpfers nach lutherischer Lehre: Ein Beitrag zum lutherischen Verständnis der ersten Barmer These” [The Hiddenness of God the Creator according to Lutheran Doctrine: A Contribution toward a Lutheran Understanding of the First Barmen Thesis], in Theologische Aufsätze Karl Barth zum 50. Geburtstag, ed. Ernst Wolf (Munich: Kaiser, 1936), 202–221. This essay, which was published as a separate pamphlet by Kaiser in the same year, was later used to form the second chapter in Schlink’s study of the Lutheran Confessions. For the second essay that defended the Barmen Declaration, see Edmund Schlink, Gesetz und Evangelium: Ein Beitrag zum lutherischen Verständnis der 2. Barmer These [Law and Gospel: A Contribution toward a Lutheran Understanding of the Second Barmen Thesis], Theologische Existenz Heute 53, ed. Eduard Thurneysen (Munich: Kaiser, 1937). Schlink later modified this essay to form the central third and fourth chapters on law and gospel in that major study of the Confessions. For the bibliographic details of this work, see note 19 below. 18 For example, both Werner Elert (1885–1954) and Paul Althaus Jr. (1888–1966) criticized the Barmen Declaration and refused to sign it. For their theological criticism, see my essay, “Werner Elert in Retrospect,” Lutheran Quarterly 20 (2006): 249–302, esp. 265–271. Elert and Althaus did have an influence on the final form of the Declaration in that a large contingent of Bavarian Lutheran pastors who had studied at Erlangen insisted on adding the fifth thesis (on church and state), which was not a part of Barth’s original draft.

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Schlink’s intense study of the Lutheran Confessions, undertaken during this time of the “church struggle” (Kirchenkampf ) in the 1930s, served as the formal starting point for his later work in ecumenical dogmatics.19 In his view, these confessions are not “Lutheran,” sectarian writings but are instead a normative witness to the orthodox faith of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. “They therefore make their claim not only with respect to the time in which they arose but for all time to come, even until Christ’s return.”20 Schlink’s analysis stresses the importance of actively confessing the evangelical-catholic faith amid spiritual crises and trials (Anfechtungen), when the church itself is undergoing persecution. His assertions were tested not only during the Kirchenkampf, when the orthodoxy of the Protestant Church in Germany was at stake, but also within the context of Schlink’s own personal life, in the aftermath of his first wife’s death, including the challenges of caring for their two young daughters.21 These historical and biographical contexts provide further bridges from credal confession to an ecumenical dogmatics. Schlink discovered in the Augsburg Confession itself a theological imperative and rationale for seeking unity with Christians beyond the borders of his own church body. The seventh article of that confession maintains that the sufficient basis for unity among churches is agreement in the preaching of the gospel and in administering the sacraments according to the gospel (BC 42–43). This consensus is the sine qua non for unity among those who bear the name of Christ.22 The unity of the church, however, is not merely a “vertical” unity that results from the working of Christ and the Spirit through the gospel and the sacraments. This unity also includes a “horizontal” dimension that extends to the whole of Christendom on earth. The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church (the una sancta) does not consist only of isolated individuals or congregations but of the consensus of all who hear and proclaim the gospel and administer and

19 See Edmund Schlink, Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften (Munich: Kaiser, 1940; 2d ed. 1946; 3d ed. 1948; 4th ed. 1954). The fourth edition was republished as the fourth volume in Edmund Schlink: Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis, ed. Günther Gaßmann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008). This work will be abbreviated as TLB, SÖB, 4. An English translation of the third edition appeared as Theology of the Lutheran Confessions, trans. Paul F. Koehneke and Herbert J. A. Bouman (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1961; reprint, St. Louis: Concordia, 2003). A translation of the fourth volume of SÖB will be published as the fourth volume of ESW. 20 Schlink, TLB, SÖB, 4.6. 21 In October 1938 Schlink married Irmgard Ostwald (1914–2006), a former student of his who had also previously studied with Barth in her native Basel. They had two sons, Wilhelm Schlink (d. 2018), who was an art historian, and Bernhard Schlink, who is a lawyer and novelist. Schlink’s daughter, Dorothea (d. 2019), was the wife of the former bishop of the Protestant Church in Baden, Klaus Engelhardt, who was also a former chairman of the council of the Protestant Church in Germany. 22 Schlink, TLB, SÖB, 4.172. I am here expanding on material I first published in my book chapter, “Edmund Schlink: Ecumenical Theology,” 26ff.

The Historical Background to Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics

receive the sacraments, and this consensus, according to the Augsburg Confession, is always twofold, namely, “a consensus with contemporary, living brothers and sisters in Christ and a consensus with the ancestors in the faith who went before us.”23 Thereby the constitutive factor for church unity is not rites, ceremonies, or a particular form of church order, but solely the consensus de doctrina evangelii. For Schlink, this concept of church unity gives rise to the strongest ecumenical impulses, for the una sancta is confessed to be a reality on earth, one that is not only to be confessed but also celebrated and manifested through participation in the Lord’s Supper. “Separations between believers are distortions of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, a dishonoring of Christ, and a grave sin,” which should let no Christian or congregation rest in peace.24 Instead of merely accepting the shame and disgrace of the present divided state of Christendom, the churches should work toward visible unity, seeking to overcome the barriers that hinder communion in the Lord’s Supper and that frustrate the joint service of love that proceeds from it. Such ecumenical seeking can also be described as a “hastening to meet the coming Christ, who will gather his own into one flock and will hold us all to account.”25 It is important to underscore that Schlink understood the theology of the Lutheran Confessions as “prolegomena” to his later work in ecumenical dogmatics.26 While he noted that one could study these confessional writings any number of ways, e. g., as purely historical texts, he sought to investigate them as normative statements about the church’s interpretation of Scripture in service to the proclamation of the gospel. In the introduction to his study of the Lutheran Confessions (TLB), Schlink thus defended two theses: (1) the claim of the confessional writings to be the church’s normative exposition of Scripture needs to be considered; and (2) a position needs to be taken with respect to the claim of the confessional writings to be the church’s normative exposition of Scripture.27 Both theses were aimed directly against the heresy of the Deutsche Christen, who

23 Edmund Schlink, “Die Weite der Kirche nach dem lutherischen Bekenntnis” (“The Expanse of the Church according to the Lutheran Confession”), SÖB, 1/1.110 (ESW, 1.159). 24 Schlink, “Die Weite der Kirche,” SÖB, 1/1.111 (ESW, 1.160). 25 Schlink, “Aufgabe und Gefahr des Ökumenischen Rates der Kirchen” (“The Task and Danger of the World Council of Churches”), SÖB, 1/1.14 (ESW, 1.55). 26 See Schlink, “Theologie der Bekenntnisschriften als Prolegomena zur Dogmatik,” in TLB, SÖB, 4.5–15. 27 Schlink, TLB, SÖB, 4.6–8. At first glance, these two theses seem to make a nearly identical claim, but they are distinct. The first thesis states that the claim of these confessions to be the normative exposition of the Scriptures needs to be acknowledged and considered. Non-Lutheran Christians should be able to acknowledge this claim, even if they do not agree with it. The second thesis thus states that those who consider this claim of the confessions, namely, to be the normative exposition of the Scriptures, then need to take the next step of making a decision about that claim. Do they

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downplayed the doctrinal content of the historic confessions and relativized the church’s confessional claim in favor of their own commitment to a contemporary, nationalist, racist political ideology. Understanding Schlink’s struggle for the truth of the gospel over against the false teaching of the Deutsche Christen in the 1930s and 40s is crucial for grasping the motivations for his later ecumenical work. Pastoral experiences and theological conferences from this same period, which brought him into close contact with Christians from traditions beyond his own, also shaped his understanding of ecumenical theology. In addition to those experiences mentioned above, there were the Eastern Orthodox forced laborers whom he had communed at St. Mary’s and the local Roman Catholic priest with whom he had co-officiated at funerals after mass bombings in World War Two.28 In trying circumstances he learned first-hand the comfort and strength that the “mutual consolation” of brothers and sisters in Christ can provide. These ecumenical encounters deeply affected his understanding of ecclesiology. “What shines as the truth in extreme situations in the church cannot become false in normal situations, even if it cannot be repeated in the same way.”29 “Greater than the differences was the power of the name of Jesus Christ we witnessed to together…. [I]t became increasingly clear that none of us could speak and act from one’s own confessional position without carefully thinking through and really listening to the voices of the brothers and sisters from the other confession.”30 We might thus describe Schlink’s approach as one of “ecumenical empathy,” where one engages the other, seeks common theological understanding, and strives to make the unity of the una sancta visible through communion in the Lord’s Supper. After the war, Schlink was appointed professor of dogmatic and ecumenical theology at Heidelberg University, where he served between January 1946 and his retirement in 1971. The title of his professorship is also significant for understanding the nature of his life’s project. As former students recall, his graduate seminars were always oriented toward the “ecumene,” that is, toward the whole expanse of the Christian church, in both its temporal and spatial dimensions.31

28 29

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31

agree with the claim? Do they disagree with the claim? If they disagree, why do they disagree? What would be their reasons? Edmund Schlink, “Persönlicher Beitrag,” in Männer der Ev. Kirche in Deutschland: Festschrift für Kurt Scharf zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Heinrich Vogel (Berlin/Stuttgart: Lettner, 1962), 206. Schlink, “Persönlicher Beitrag,” 206–7. See also Eber, “Edmund Schlink – 1903–1984: Ein Leben für die Einheit der Kirche” [“Edmund Schlink – 1903–1984: A Life for the Unity of the Church”], SÖB, 1/1.xiii–xiv. My translation here differs slightly from that by Skibbe, A Quiet Reformer, 49. Edmund Schlink, Der Ertrag des Kirchenkampfes [The Outcome of the Church Struggle], 2d ed. (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1947), 19–20, 39. This booklet was republished in SÖB, 5.69–121, here 79, 92. Reinhard Slenczka, letter to the author, 22 January, 2009. Dr. Slenczka, who taught at Erlangen, was Schlink’s teaching and seminar assistant in the 1960s.

The Historical Background to Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics

Over several years, his seminars and lectures covered the principal, traditional loci within Christian dogmatics. Such topics were also addressed in the context of the Ecumenical Institute that he had founded shortly after his arrival in Heidelberg. The first of its kind in Germany, this institute has provided international students from multiple church traditions the opportunity to explore “the consonance and differences among Christian churches and the numerous efforts toward Christian unity in our time.”32 But Schlink’s ecumenical activities were not confined to this academic setting. In the immediate post-war years, he participated in discussions that led to the formation of the Protestant Church in Germany, a federation of Lutheran and Reformed churches. In the same year that the Ecumenical Institute was founded, he helped to start the first formal ecumenical dialogue between Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians in Germany. To date, it is the longest running such dialogue in the world.33 Within this community of theologians, Schlink presented numerous papers on a variety of contested issues, and he offered frank yet friendly replies to his key Catholic interlocutors, including especially Karl Rahner, Karl Lehmann, Heinrich Fries, Walter Kasper, and Joseph Ratzinger.34 Several of these essays, as well as many that Schlink delivered in various settings of the World Council of Churches, were later published in two important ecumenical journals

32 Edmund Schlink, “Der Neubau des Ökumenischen Instituts und Studentenwohnheims der Universität Heidelberg” [The New Building of the Ecumenical Institute and Student Dormitory at the University of Heidelberg], Ruperto-Carola 10, no. 23 (1958): 198. 33 For Schlink’s involvement in this “working group” of theologians, see Barbara Schwahn, Der Ökumenische Arbeitskreis evangelischer und katholischer Theologen von 1946 bis 1975 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996). This group was co-founded by Wilhelm Stählin, who had been one of Schlink’s influential professors at Münster. See note 9 above. 34 For details about the papers given by these individuals at conferences of this ecumenical working group, see Stefan Henrich, “Der Ökumenische Arbeitskreis evangelischer und katholischer Theologen: Dokumentation,” Kerygma und Dogma 35 (1989): 258–287. Between 1946 and 1982, Schlink read a scholarly paper before this group on ten occasions, more times than any other theologian in that period. The next highest number of papers in this period was given by Karl Rahner, who taught at Innsbruck, Munich, and Münster. He delivered papers on eight occasions. Karl Lehmann (1936–2018), who taught at Mainz and Freiburg (and later was a cardinal and the long-serving president of the German Conference of Bishops), delivered five papers. Joseph Ratzinger (1927–), who taught at Münster, Tübingen, and Regensburg in these years (and who later would become Pope Benedict XVI), delivered four papers. Heinrich Fries delivered three papers. Walter Kasper, who taught at Tübingen and Münster in these years (and who would later become a cardinal and the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity), delivered two papers. While Hans Küng, who taught at Tübingen, did not deliver any papers to this group in these years, he did occasionally participate in Schlink’s dogmatics seminars (Slenczka, letter to the author, 22 January 2009). Schlink’s friendship with all these German Catholic theologians deepened during the Second Vatican Council.

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that he helped to inaugurate, Ökumenische Rundschau and Kerygma und Dogma. Not only did Schlink make significant contributions to the WCC’s Commission on Faith and Order, on whose executive committee he served, but he also was a key participant in several official dialogues between theologians of the Protestant Church in Germany and those from the Eastern Orthodox churches. In this context, he helped to encourage the Russian Orthodox Church to join the WCC in 1961.35 Active for twenty-five years in the WCC’s Commission on Faith and Order, he articulated new approaches to such issues as communion in the Lord’s Supper, the eschatological dimension of Christian unity, ecumenical methodology, and conciliarity. Similarly, Schlink’s role as an official observer at the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which was the highpoint of his ecumenical work, afforded him further opportunities to engage the dogmas and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church from the perspective of his own confessional commitment and understanding.36 By the end of Vatican II, Schlink was convinced that all Christian church bodies needed to repent of their self-centeredness. They needed a new ecumenical vision in relation to Christ and to one another, a “Copernican Revolution” in understanding themselves and other churches. Schlink argued that each church body or confessional group must see itself and all other churches as revolving around Christ, their true and common center. Christ, and not one’s own church body, must be the central criterion for recognizing and evaluating the other church bodies: Every Church is in danger of understanding itself as the center around which the other churches orbit as planets. This lies so close at hand because all Christians are certain that the Church whose message brought them to faith—in which Church they were incorporated into Christ through baptism, and through word and sacrament they are again and again nourished anew—is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. But the

35 See Heinz Joachim Held, “Der Zusammenklang von kirchlichem Besuch und theologischem Gespräch im Dialog zwischen der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland und der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche,” Kerygma und Dogma 29 (Apr–Jun 1983): 115–126. In celebration of Schlink’s 80th birthday, this entire issue of Kerygma und Dogma was devoted to his ecumenical work or to doctrinal areas in which he had made significant contributions. In recognition of his contributions to dialogue with representatives of the Orthodox churches, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1962 by the Institut de Théologie Orthodoxe (St. Sergius), Paris. This tribute complemented similar degrees he had received earlier from the University of Mainz (1947) and the University of Edinburgh (1953). 36 For a very detailed and informative analysis of Schlink’s actions at the Council, see Margarethe Hopf, Ein Osservatore Romano für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland: Der Konzilsbeobachter Edmund Schlink im Spannungsfeld der Interessen [A Roman Observer for the Protestant Church in Germany: The Council Observer Edmund Schlink amid Competing Interests] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021). On the cover of the book is a picture of Schlink in front of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. He is holding a copy of the L‘Osservatore Romano, the daily newspaper of the Vatican State.

The Nature and Purpose of Schlink’s Dogmatics

working of Christ is not restricted to this one Church. He works in freedom without being bound by the borders of our churches. We cannot be content to measure other church bodies in respect to ourselves, but we have to take our starting point with Christ, by whom we are measured along with all churches. He is the sun around whom we, together with other churches, orbit as planets and from whom we receive light. A kind of Copernican revolution is necessary in ecclesiological thinking.37

At the very end of his published reflections on Vatican II, which appeared in 1966, Schlink stressed that “none of the churches can remain exactly as it is; in every case a renewal and an unfolding of catholicity, that is, a return to God and a turning toward the other churches, is needed.”38 Disfigurations and errors in doctrine must be corrected, weak formulations strengthened, anathemas canceled. The unification of the churches will not be possible without sacrifices on the part of all. No one Church can absorb the others, since no church body, including the Roman Church, “can make space for everything that God has done” and is doing “in the others.”39 But where their sacrifices are offered to God, “there is no loss but only the self-sacrifice unto a treasure which is greater than one previously possessed.”40 Already in 1965, in the afterglow of Vatican II, Schlink defined the task of producing an “ecumenical dogmatics” in an essay that would later serve as the basis for the third section of the third chapter of the book. He took nearly two decades to finish the entire work. After his retirement from Heidelberg, he published shorter pieces on several complex issues, including apostolic succession and the papacy, but he devoted most of his scholarly time toward the completion of his dogmatics. This 804-page monument to his life’s work appeared just one year before his death on Cantata Sunday, 20 May 1984 (from an embolism following surgery).

II. The Nature and Purpose of Schlink’s Dogmatics For Schlink, the task of producing an ecumenical dogmatics is similar to the task of summarizing the theology of the Lutheran Confessions: to systematize the normative doctrinal content of the Scriptures for the sake of the proclamation of the gospel. Not surprising, the contents of his book on the Lutheran Confessions (TLB), especially its central chapters on law and gospel, provided the basic orientation toward the more expansive contents of his Ecumenical Dogmatics. In the earlier

37 38 39 40

Schlink, NK, SÖB, 1/2.240 (ESW, 1.526). Schlink, NK, SÖB, 1/2.252 (ESW, 1.535). Schlink, NK, SÖB, 1/2.253 (ESW, 1.535). Schlink, NK, SÖB, 1/2.253 (ESW, 1.535).

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work (TLB), Schlink unfolded the doctrinal content of the Lutheran Confessions rather conventionally, moving from the revelation of God the Creator through the large chapters on law and gospel, and then to loci about the sacraments, the church, civil and church governance, and finally eschatology. This basic outline, while not identical with that of the Ecumenical Dogmatics, certainly appears to have helped shape the latter’s structure, for it also moves from the doctrine of creation through the doctrines of redemption and the new creation, and then to the pinnacle of the book, the doctrine of the triune God. The book thus identifies the essential content and contours of church teaching (dogma), which grows from the gospel and the church’s confession of the triune God. Throughout the work, frequent refrains signal such essential content: “All churches teach that…”; “All churches acknowledge…”; “Common to all churches….” By summarizing key teachings in this way, Schlink hoped that he could help the separated churches to rediscover their own basic dogmatic foundations that they held in common, which he thought were sufficient to reunite the churches. While he noted that “dogmatics is…unable to bring about the unity of the church,” since “that can only happen by the separated churches themselves,” dogmatics should “contribute to the knowledge of that which is held in common and provide impulses for the unification of the separated churches.”41 According to Schlink, “the root of dogma is confession,” and thus the church cannot avoid giving voice to dogmatic statements alongside the other statements of faith, for example, prayer, doxology, witness, doctrinal teaching, and the confession of faith.42 “…[W]here the unity of the church is, there this unity, by its very nature, will also necessarily be voiced in the unity of confession.”43 If the church were only to state its faith in prayer and witness, its response would be incomplete. Downplaying dogmatic statements in ecumenical work is thus basically impossible. Not only do supposedly “undogmatic” church bodies operate according to quasi-dogmatic

41 Schlink, ÖD, SÖB, 2.xiv (ESW, 2.20). Subsequent references to Schlink’s dogmatics are given parenthetically in the text. The page number(s) in the German edition are given first. The corresponding page number(s) in the American edition are placed in brackets. 42 Schlink, “Die Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.75 (ESW, 1.120). Schlink began this essay by noting how “members of the separated churches are able to pray and bear witness together to a far greater extent than they can agree on common dogmatic statements.” They are able, to a much greater extent, “to make the prayers of another Church their own heartfelt prayer, and to hear the proclamation of the others as pertinent, powerful, and strengthening proclamation for themselves, than they are able to accept the dogmatic statements of others as binding statements” (Schlink, “Die Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.24 [ESW, 1.67]). His point, of course, is not to avoid articulating dogmatic statements or to ignore the challenges that the differing dogmatic statements create for the separated churches but to interpret these statements anew in light of the whole range of faith-statements in the churches and of the transformations that have occurred when the theological content of one form of faith statement (e. g., prayer) is transmitted into another form (e. g., teaching). 43 Schlink, “Die Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.75 (ESW, 1.120).

The Nature and Purpose of Schlink’s Dogmatics

principles—which have a direct impact on the disunity of the church—but it is also the case that churches which are committed to specific dogmas are likewise in doctrinal disagreement with one another and in need of resolving those differences. “Instead of downplaying dogmatic differences we must take these differences seriously and strive for unity in dogmatic statements, which is essential for the unity of the church, and to do so through new ways of framing issues and new methods for addressing them.”44 The essay from which this last point is taken, an essay which is perhaps his most important shorter writing, is a creative attempt to analyze each of the basic statements of faith and to point to their abiding relationships to one another.45 All such statements are a human response to God’s address to us in the gospel. This response assumes various forms, including prayer and doxology, proclamation and teaching, and confession of the faith. Schlink’s unique contribution to ecumenical discussion was his analysis of the structural changes that take place when Christian utterances move from one basic form to another. To a large degree, Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics entails extended hermeneutical reflections on these structural shifts within each of the dogmatic loci. Schlink emphasized that within the early church the unity of the faith was not premised upon uniformity in dogmatic statements or the use of identical creedal statements or formulas. “Unity in dogmatic statements need not consist in the common acceptance of one and the same formula, but can also consist in the partnership that gives mutual acknowledgment to different dogmatic formulas.”46 This approach to church unity—which is evident in the New Testament canon that encompasses different witnesses to Jesus Christ and in the variety of differing local creeds that were welcomed and used within the early church—highlights the complex problem of ascertaining and expressing dogmatic unity within the diversity of dogmatic statements and expressions. The key question is: In which of the various dogmatic statements can unity in dogma be recognized and acknowledged? Answering this question guided Schlink as he developed the various loci in the book. He focused his greatest attention on philological and historical analyses of central dogmatic terms and concepts, the anthropological presuppositions that have shaped doctrinal understandings throughout the centuries (particularly in the areas of christology, the sacraments, and trinitarian theology), the place that the various statements of faith have within the total range of forms of theological statement,

44 Schlink, “Die Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.76 (ESW, 1.120). 45 That Schlink recognized the importance of this essay for framing his dogmatics as a whole and for guiding his methodology is clear from the fact that he reprinted portions of it in the first two sections of the third chapter of Ecumenical Dogmatics. 46 Schlink, “Die Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.76 (ESW, 1.121).

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and, crucially, “the actual validity which the differing dogmatic statements have had and currently have” among the divided churches.47 The goal of the Ecumenical Dogmatics is thus twofold: on the one hand, dogmatics should be concerned with the unity of faith, with the community of believers, that is, the unity of the church through the entirety of church history. On the other hand, an ecumenical dogmatics is also marked by an orientation to the abiding, normative truths of the Christian faith. It seeks to bear witness to “the mighty deeds of God in history.” (Schlink had once considered calling his dogmatics “the mighty deeds of God”—a phrase that frequently appears in the book—given that the church’s doxology is focused precisely on these divine acts.) Consequently, the task of such a dogmatics proceeds, not from the periphery (i. e., from the dogmatic disagreements that divide the churches from one another) but from the center (i. e., from the dogma that remains held in common by the churches). The ecumenical theologian must review that dogmatic center, ground it anew, and “explicate it for the intellectual and spiritual situation of our time. The task is thus not to seek a consensus on the basis of the traditional confessional disagreements, but rather, conversely, on the basis of a consensus that needs to be made clear and recognizable anew, to strive for a new understanding of those disagreements and of their importance within the whole of the Christian faith” (xiii [18–19]). Since the words dogma and dogmatics have taken on negative connotations in the modern era, we should examine them a little more closely. Many people today understand “a dogma” to be an arrogant declaration of an opinion. Those who defend such opinions are often labeled “dogmatic.” Such individuals assert or impose their views in “an authoritative, imperious, or arrogant manner.”48 Accordingly, to be “dogmatic” is to be intolerantly authoritative, truculent, intransigent. “To dogmatize” is “to make positive unsupported assertions.”49 In this modern context, the term dogmatics suggests an uncritical, unscholarly, authoritarian transmission of the historic teachings of a religious tradition. Such understandings are far removed from Schlink’s notion of an ecumenical dogmatics. In fact, he expressly criticized all arrogance on the part of theologians and churches that would lead them to view themselves as “the center” of the Christian ecumene. While one of the meanings of the Greek word dogma [δόγμα] is indeed “opinion,” in the ancient world the term referred to “a formal statement concerning rules or regulations that are to be observed,” e. g., to an ordinance or decision or command.50 Within the early church, the term also referred to “something that is taught as an 47 Schlink, “Die Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.78 (ESW, 1.122). 48 “Dogmatic,” The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., ed. E. S. C. Weiner and J. A. Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 464. 49 “Dogmatic,” The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 464. 50 BDAG, 254.

The Structure of Schlink’s Dogmatics

established tenet or statement of belief,” e. g., a doctrine or a teaching.51 Thus dogma is a term “ordinarily used to designate the official teaching of a Christian church.”52 In other words, dogma refers to “authorized beliefs” that have been articulated in the history of the Christian traditions and in the thinking of church theologians who have shaped them.53 This is the basic sense of the words dogma and dogmatics that Schlink held. For him, authentic, living church dogma can only be grounded on the historic apostolic witness to the gospel about Jesus Christ. All church teaching is to be tested against that apostolic norm.

III. The Structure of Schlink’s Dogmatics Divided into five unequal parts, Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics seeks to overcome basic dogmatic misunderstandings among the churches and to identify essential convergences to pave the way toward the visible reunion of broken Christendom. Despite the book’s large size, it is not intended to be an exhaustive account of Christian doctrine. Schlink repeatedly reminds the reader that he is simply setting forth the “basic features” (Grundzüge) of a Christian dogmatics. In the later chapters of the book, he preferred to use a different but related word: Grundlinien, i. e., “principal features” or “basic characteristics.” Either way, the book could easily be subtitled “mere dogmatics.” After a crucial introductory part on the gospel as “the presupposition of church doctrine,” the work sets forth the following key doctrines in the four substantive parts: the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of redemption, the doctrine of the new creation, and the doctrine of God. A very brief concluding part explicates the doctrine of grace, the triune God’s eternal “decree of love,” the issue of double predestination, the incommensurability between divine election and damnation, a warning to the church (not to be complacent), and an invitation to the world (to trust in the God of love and mercy). As with Scripture, so with this dogmatics text: the center is Christ, his person and work. Central, too, is the distinction 51 BDAG, 254. 52 Jaroslav Pelikan, “Dogma,” The Melody of Theology: A Philosophical Dictionary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 57. Pelikan’s further observation about “dogma” is also relevant to Schlink’s central concern in his dogmatics: “Because the second half of the twentieth century has seen a deepening of the consciousness of the catholicity of the church in the Protestant churches, the possibility exists that dogma will begin to be accorded more status among them than it once had. But their central doctrinal concerns—similar to the atonement and justification by faith—are not part of dogma as it is usually interpreted. It would therefore seem that only through reinterpretation of their own traditions and their connection with the Christian tradition as such will these churches be able to repossess the dogmas of the Christian past” (Pelikan, The Melody of Theology, 59). 53 Brian Gerrish, Christian Faith: Dogmatics in Outline (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2015), x.

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between law and gospel for the sake of the gospel, a theme that informs each of the dogmatic loci. The gospel alone makes the church one; it grounds and norms all the church’s expressions of faith in the merciful triune God. Also important, though, is how Schlink concluded each of the three central dogmatic parts: the reader’s attention is directed to the actual confession and adoration of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. Thus the first main part, on the doctrine of creation, concludes with a chapter on “the confession of God the Creator.” The second main part, on redemption, concludes with a chapter on “the confession of God the Redeemer,” while the final main part, on the new creation, ends with a chapter on “the confession of God the New Creator.” Despite the book’s rather traditional structure, which marches to the beat of the old method of dogmatic loci, it does not begin with some of the usual issues in prolegomena (e. g., the authority of Scripture, hermeneutical principles), nor does it contain a separate section on eschatology. Instead, these matters are treated under various other headings in subsequent parts. As in Barth’s kirchliche Dogmatik, Schlink’s text also contains passages in smaller print that function in most instances as extended footnotes, which explore the ideas of others that are pertinent to the issue under discussion or, in fewer cases, as longer excursi on more complicated peripheral problems. (While there are no footnotes in the German edition—which is a weakness of the book, especially if one wants to pursue the scholarly sources for some of Schlink’s assertions—the American edition cites all sources and offers extended editorial annotations in most of the chapters.) Not surprising, Schlink’s primary source was Holy Scripture, which he quoted or (very often) paraphrased more than 2000 times.

IV. Schlink’s Methodology In a programmatic essay on “the task of an ecumenical dogmatics,” which he published almost twenty years before the publication of his dogmatics and which he reprinted as part of the book’s third chapter, Schlink described his methodology.54

54 Edmund Schlink, “Die Aufgaben einer oekumenischen Dogmatik,” in Zur Auferbauung des Leibes Christi: Festgabe für Professor D. Peter Brunner zum 65 Geburtstag am 25. April 1965, ed. Edmund Schlink and Albrecht Peters (Kassel: Johannes Stauda, 1965), 84–93. Schlink used portions of this essay in the third section of the third chapter of his dogmatics. It needs to be noted that Schlink, like his favorite composer, J. S. Bach, frequently made use of earlier material he had created that he re-purposed for another setting. If he thought he had formulated an issue rightly, he felt no need to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. For example, as noted above, he reused portions of his essay on the nature of the dogmatic statement to form part of that same third chapter of his dogmatics. Several other sections of the book that include material he had previously published include those on the

Schlink’s Methodology

First, he explained how an ecumenical dogmatics should not proceed. He then set forth the steps that should be followed. The four ways in which an ecumenical dogmatics should not proceed are as follows: (1) An ecumenical dogmatics cannot restrict itself to looking for dogmatic statements in other churches that are identical with statements in one’s own Church. Otherwise, we would likely fail to understand the other churches, and we would only be judging them from the centrality of our own Church. (2) Nor can an ecumenical dogmatics restrict itself to going back to what was dogmatically agreed upon in the ancient church. Not only are those decisions remote for the younger churches, but they reflect an intellectual and cultural situation that is different from our own. (3) Nor can an ecumenical dogmatics restrict itself to comparing current statements across the separated churches. While this had been the approach taken at the first ecumenical conferences of the twentieth century, it is insufficient since it leads to “a minimalism, which necessarily lacks the spiritual authority and intellectual power to elucidate the traditions of the separated churches for one another” (53 [142]). Finally, (4) an ecumenical dogmatics cannot flee from dogma to “spiritual feeling” or “pious practices.” Where “unity is seen solely in a doctrinally irreproducible experience of Christian community, such unity will almost inevitably morph imperceptibly into a plaything of social, political, and ideological trends, and thus become an exponent of the principalities and powers of this world, and in turn disintegrate. Under no circumstances can we sidestep the task of endeavoring to achieve dogmatic consensus” (53 [142–143]). But what then are the ecumenical steps to be followed in the endeavor to reach unity in doctrine? Here Schlink set forth in seven theses the basic steps he followed for each locus: (1) An ecumenical dogmatics must take note of the multiplicity (and even contradictory character) of the biblical statements that relate to the development of dogma. (2) An ecumenical dogmatics must take note of the multiplicity (and even contradictory character) of the dogmatic statements that carry weight in the individual church bodies, and it must consider how these statements emerged in specific historical situations in which the churches were seeking to confess the historic faith. In other words, one must seek consensus within and across the varied confessional statements within the churches. (3) An ecumenical dogmatics must evaluate the actual validity of the dogmas within the churches themselves. (4) An ecumenical dogmatics must single out from the multiplicity of dogmatic concepts those that can serve as basic dogmatic concepts and do so in relation to which other biblical concepts are subordinated. (5) An ecumenical dogmatics must reckon with the possibility of the development of further dogmatic statements, e. g., as new

distinction between law and gospel, the doctrine of baptism, the doctrine of the church, spiritual gift and ministerial office, as well as the unity of the church.

53

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problems arise. Such a dogmatics keeps open the possibility that existing dogmas could be revised and even corrected in view of new insights. (6) An ecumenical dogmatics must seek to determine agreements and differences among the various dogmatic statements, but it must then weigh the relative weight of each of those differences. In other words, many doctrinal differences may in fact not be churchdividing differences. Finally, (7) an ecumenical dogmatics must always return to the basic structures of the faith, namely, those that take place in the context of worship, and consider that these basic structures of doxology and confession take priority over the other structures. Such a dogmatics seeks novel perspectives on overcoming dogmatic disagreements, for instance, by examining how the structure of a theological statement undergoes change when it is translated into the other structures of faith-statement that also may serve as faithful responses to the gospel.

V. The Center of the Work The heart and center of Schlink’s dogmatics is the second part, on the doctrine of redemption. It is the largest in the book—amounting to more than 325 pages and containing chapters on the Old Testament law, the humiliation of the Son of God, the exaltation of Jesus, the New Testament gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Following these chapters but before this part’s concluding chapter on the confession and adoration of the Son of God, Schlink summarized the doctrine of redemption under the heading, “The Distinction between Law and Gospel” (518–524 [779–786]). Here he echoed statements he had made already in his 1936 defense of the first thesis of the Barmen Declaration, where he stressed that the “decisive theme” in all Christian theology is “sin and grace, law and gospel, judgment and forgiveness, divine wrath and divine mercy.”55 Nearly fifty years after he had made that assertion, he once again noted that the second element in each of these pairings must take priority over the first. This understanding of the relationship between law and gospel must be of central importance for all churches, and for this reason Schlink placed his discussion of this issue at the center of his Ecumenical Dogmatics. Grace, gospel, forgiveness, and mercy have the last word, not sin, law, judgment, and wrath. To distinguish the law from the gospel is to allow the gospel to silence the law for faith. Ultimately, the gospel alone is God’s “proper word,” for it announces that the sinner is saved by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone (522–523 [784]). While Schlink affirmed that Christians are also accountable to the divine law insofar as they remain sinners unto death, nevertheless he rightly stressed that

55 Schlink, “Die Verborgenheit Gottes des Schöpfers,” 214–15. Cf. Schlink, TLB, SÖB, 4.57.

The Doctrine of God

the gospel alone, over and above the law, is sufficient to meet the basic demand that God makes upon sinful creatures through the law. It is the law and not the gospel that reveals sin. On the other hand, faith springs solely from the gospel, not from the law, and it consists in the conviction that Christ’s righteousness is one’s own full and complete righteousness before God. Consequently, Schlink ultimately disagreed with Barth’s re-ordering of the relationship in terms of “gospel and law.”56 While Schlink stressed the Pauline teaching that Christ is “the end of the law” for the person who has faith in Christ—and that the new life in Christ cannot properly be described as a life “under the law”—he also underscored the unity between the gospel and the New Testament apostolic exhortation “to walk in newness of life” and “to be alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6.4ff.). Such apostolic “exhortation” (paraklesis) is not a function of the law but an effect and outgrowth of the Spirit’s power through the gospel. God does not require from the believer anything that God has not already given to the believer through the gospel; the apostles merely exhorted believers to live as the people they had been made through the gospel. So the gospel is more than merely the forgiveness of sins, since it entails also the gift of a new life in which the believer is called to fulfill “the law of Christ” (Gal. 6.2). Of course, Schlink held that such apostolic “exhortation” is neither neutral nor totally governed by the gospel, since it is received by sinners who are incapable of living up to what is exhorted. They are daily overtaken by the power of sin still operating in their lives, and they are frequently attacked by Anfechtungen of one kind or another. Schlink thus emphasized that the Christian life is marked by “the daily return” to one’s baptism in repentance and faith, a return that is made possible only by the Spirit’s ever-new working through law, gospel, and apostolic paraklesis.

VI. The Doctrine of God Since some may wonder why Schlink addressed the doctrine of God in the fourth, penultimate part of the book, we should briefly examine this issue too. Contrary to the traditional order of the dogmatic loci, wherein the locus on God is placed near the beginning, Schlink treated the doctrine of God near the end of the book, and he did so in a mere eighty-eight pages (in the German text). This placement, which seems to follow the procedure of Schleiermacher in his Glaubenslehre, is open to

56 See Karl Barth, Evangelium und Gesetz, Theologische Existenz Heute 32 (Munich: Kaiser, 1935; reprinted in Gesetz und Evangelium, ed. Ernst Kinder and Klaus Haendler [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968], 1–29; ET: “Gospel and Law,” in Karl Barth, Community, State, and Church: Three Essays, ed. David Haddorff [Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2004], 71–100). Barth’s position on “gospel and law” would be further developed in his Kirchliche Dogmatik. See Barth, KD, esp. II/2 (§36–39) and II/4 (cf. CD II/2 and II/4).

55

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Edmund Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics

misunderstanding.57 Schlink was not relegating the doctrine of God to an appendix, nor was he ending his dogmatics with a few final, peripheral thoughts about God. Rather, the fourth part of Schlink’s dogmatics underscores and concentrates those doctrinal elements about God’s being and actions that Schlink had raised in the earlier chapters but had not fully synthesized. While an ecumenical dogmatics cannot say everything about God, since it is only “one voice” in a many-voiced “choir” that gives glory to God and teaches about him, such a dogmatics must set forth the basic contours and features of the Christian doctrine of God (71 [164]). In Schlink’s view, this synthesis of the doctrine of God can only be done as the conclusion to the dogmatic process as a whole. For him, dogmatics must ultimately be not only about what God has done in and through the crucified and risen Christ and through the ongoing mission of the Holy Spirit, but also about who God is as the object of the church’s adoring praise. Indeed, the adoration of God is the basic leitmotif of ecumenical theology and the goal of Christian faith. Dogmatics cannot thus avoid engaging the ontology reflected in the authoritative creeds of the ancient church.58 The basis for the church’s doxology of God is the gospel of Jesus Christ and its unfolding in the world through the work of the Spirit, as voiced in the multiplicity of the ancient church’s creedal statements, particularly the NicenoConstantinopolitan Creed and the Chalcedonian Definition, all of which were meant to keep the gospel “good news.” The ultimate aim of the elemental structures in which faith comes to expression is adoration of the triune God, for “the basic, foundational structure of speaking theologically about human beings as sinners is not the doctrine of sin but the confession of sins; and the basic, foundational structure of speaking about God is not the doctrine of God but the worship of God” (57–58 [147]). The above comments serve to contextualize the two chapters that begin the fourth part of the dogmatics, on the doctrine of God. This part begins with a chapter on the adoration of God and then a chapter on the triune God. This latter chapter analyzes the unity of God within the distinctions among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and it explicates the distinctions among the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in the unity of God. Both approaches toward understanding the immanent Trinity are juxtaposed in two vertical columns on two pages. The left column presents the first way (unity within the distinctions), while the right column presents the second (the distinctions within the unity), and thus each way is correlated visually to the other. Schlink then proceeded to highlight the key elements in trinitarian

57 See Schleiermacher, CG, §§170–172 (2.1019–1037). 58 This concern for recovering and serving the doxological homologia in dogmatics is also an aim of Schlink’s earlier reflections on the Chalcedonian Definition. See Schlink, “Die Christologie von Chalcedon im ökumenischen Gespräch” (“The Christology of Chalcedon in Ecumenical Dialogue”), SÖB, 1/1.80–87 (ESW, 1.127–134).

Conclusion

dogma as a whole. Here he emphasized that there is a basic dogmatic consensus between the East and West, even if each has held different premises for its respective understanding of the Trinity. These premises, Schlink maintained, were themselves not revealed but arose in the history of dogma as legitimate attempts to interpret the historical revelation. They were therefore “already inferences that are drawn from existing traditions” (758 [1108]). The controversy over the filioque clause, which he admitted is a difficult ecumenical issue, is nevertheless in his view a disagreement over “inferences drawn from inferences, whereby the different inferences on which the premises are based cannot be logically, convincingly derived from the biblical witnesses” (758–759 [1108]). These inferences are therefore an insufficient basis for “the definition of a dogma that determines the boundary between faith and heresy” (759 [1108]). Given that the differences between the Cappadocians and Augustine regarding their respective understandings of the Trinity did not originally have any church-dividing significance—which was also the case with respect to their efforts to relate the authoritative revelation to the eternal God—one cannot hold that these inferences from these differences have any church-dividing significance today. “If we are open to the multitude of ways in which the churches praise the triune God in his perfection, then the walls between them will become transparent and finally fall down” (791 [1155]).

VII. Conclusion One hopes that the new American edition of Schlink’s writings will help to make his work more well-known among English-speaking theologians, pastors, and students. While some people might be inclined to dismiss his theology as too conservative or too “confessionally Lutheran,” others may find in his work a helpful resource for articulating what is essential and abiding in the Christian faith. As confidence in Western bourgeois culture undergoes further decline, and more and more people become truly fearful for the future of the planet, Schlink’s sober realism about the nature of sin and evil, about God’s coming kingdom and eschatological judgment, about the radical promise of divine reconciliation in Jesus Christ, and about the new creation in Christ, may have something refreshingly fundamental to offer the churches. Surely Schlink’s criticisms of the churches as all-too-human institutions—despite his ultimately hopeful, expansive vision about the future of the una sancta—and his summons for the churches to be penitently self-critical, are also apropos, especially in view of the ongoing challenges of contemporary ecumenism. Does one say too much by suggesting that his dogmatics may help to address the ongoing need for an ecumenical theology, a challenge that was highlighted at the 2016 joint prayer service in Lund that was co-hosted by Pope

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Francis, Bishop Munib Younan (president of the Lutheran World Federation), and Dr. Martin Junge (general secretary of the LWF)? To be sure, Schlink’s cantus firmus is distinctly Lutheran in character. His concern is to take the doctrine of the gospel and Christian dogma seriously, as if they truly matter for the unity of the church. While formally open toward brothers and sisters beyond his own confession, his humble and conciliatory method of ecumenism was undertaken consciously and intentionally from within the perspective of his own confessional tradition and church body. Some may see this as a weakness, especially if they are convinced that they can understand and respond more appropriately to contemporary issues on some other theological or confessional basis. Others may fault Schlink for being insufficiently critical toward doctrinal positions that are flawed or even contrary to the gospel. And still others may criticize him for the limited attention he gave to moral and ethical issues that are just as divisive among the churches as are doctrinal matters. Still, his own confessional commitment, which was coupled to an irenic, conciliatory spirit, did not necessarily contradict his call for a “Copernican Revolution” in ecclesial thinking and attitude. Rather, his work demonstrates that one can be both confessional and ecumenical.59 In particular, his careful, respectful engagement with the Eastern Orthodox churches must be acknowledged as truly trailblazing. His Ecumenical Dogmatics reflects the kind of thoughtful, reverent attention to the Scriptures, the ecumene, and the history of church traditions that is necessary for properly understanding church doctrine in such a way as to foster devotion to Christ and his church. While Schlink’s work certainly emphasizes key and distinctive elements in Lutheran theology—for example, the normative character of Scripture, the centrality of the gospel in distinction from the law, the radical nature of sin, the basis for faith in the risen, glorified Christ, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the adiaphoral character of church order—the tenor of Schlink’s theology is one of reconciliation.60 Some critics have rightly noted that Schlink’s dogmatics reflects a Europeancentered approach to Christian ecumenism. Indeed, he did not give a lot of attention to Christian traditions beyond the three broad ones that were his primary focus, namely, the Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox, and the magisterial Reformation (Lutheran and Reformed) traditions. While Schlink was certainly familiar with theological teachings within fragmented, denominational American Protestantism, he tended to focus on the established, historic churches rather than newer ones (such as Baptist, Pentecostal, and Holiness traditions). Consequently, his work reflects on earlier period of Western church history, when doctrinal positions seem

59 See D. J. Smit, “Confessional and Ecumenical? Revisiting Edmund Schlink on the Hermeneutics of Doctrine,” Verbum et Ecclesia 29 (2008): 446–474. 60 Skibbe, A Quiet Reformer, 107.

Conclusion

to have been more clearly defined among the mainstream Protestant church bodies than they are at present. Still, he did occasionally allow theological insights from the younger, non-Western churches to inform his analyses, which he in turn surely had discussed with the plethora of international students who participated in Heidelberg’s Ecumenical Institute and his own seminars. Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics is also properly pastoral in its basic orientation, even edifying in the biblical sense of that term (cf. Eph. 4.12). Throughout the work, one detects the voice of a person who worked and suffered as a shepherd in Christ’s field. Not merely in Schlink’s sermons and devotional texts but also in this book, his greatest scholarly achievement, there is the central emphasis on the living presence of Jesus Christ in the world. Schlink’s witness to the crucified and risen Lord clearly took place from a life that was lived “between the sacraments,” that is, between the daily return to “the once-for-all baptism” and the going “forward daily to the Lord’s table, which is prepared for us again and again.”61 In other words, there is in the ecumenical dogmatics of Schlink a consistent witness to the living, triune God, who calls sinners to repentance and faith, who acts mightily to save them, and who sends them back into the world to share God’s gospel and love in word and deed.

61 Schlink, TLB, SÖB, 4.154.

59

Abbreviations and Symbols

[] ¶ AB

Designates material added by the American editor. Indicates a paragraph break added by the American editor. Edmund Schlink. Ausgewählte Beiträge. Kirchenkampf—Theologische Grundfragen—Ökumene. Vol. 5 of Edmund Schlink: Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis. Edited by Ursula Schnell. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010. AC The Augsburg Confession ACW Ancient Christian Writers. 70 vols. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978—. ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Rev. ed. 10 vols. Edited by A. Cleveland Coxe. 1885. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950–1957. Apol. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession BC The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert. Translated by Charles Arand et al. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000. References are to the page number(s). BDAG A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3d ed., based on Walter Bauer’s Greichischdeutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur, 6th ed. Edited by Frederick William Danker. Translated by Frederick W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. BDB A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, based on the Lexicon of William Gesenius. Edited by Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. Translated by Edward Robinson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959. BSELK Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche. Vollständige neuedition. Edited by Irene Dingel. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. CCSL Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina. 228 vols. Turnhout: Brepols, 1953—. CG Friedrich Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube. 7th ed. 2 vols. Edited by Martin Redeker. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter & Co., 1960. References are to the section (§) number(s) or page number(s), followed (in parentheses or brackets) by the corresponding pages in the standard English translation: Christian Faith. 2 vols. Edited by Catherine L. Kelsey and Terrence N. Tice. Translated by Terrence N. Tice, Catherine L. Kelsey, and Edwina Lawler. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2016. CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1866—. Denzinger Henrich Denzinger. Enchiridion symbolorum: definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum/Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on

62

Abbreviations and Symbols

E EKD ELW ESW

ET FC Ep FC SD FOTC Holmes ICR

KC

KD

Matters of Faith and Morals. 43d ed. Edited by Peter Hünermann, Robert Fastiggi, and Anne Englund Nash. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012. References are to the paragraph numbers that appear in the outer margins of this bilingual (Greek/Latin/English) edition. Die Bibel: Einheitsübersetzung. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1980. The Protestant Church in Germany Evangelical Lutheran Worship. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2006. Edmund Schlink Works. 5 vols. Edited by Matthew L. Becker. Translated by Matthew L. Becker et al. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017—. –Vol. 1 (2 bks in 1 vol.): The Coming Christ and Church Traditions and After the Council (2017) –Vol. 2: Ecumenical Dogmatics –Vol. 3: The Doctrine of Baptism –Vol. 4: Theology of the Lutheran Confessions –Vol. 5: Lectures, Addresses, Essays, and Selected Sermons English translation The Formula of Concord (Epitome) The Formula of Concord (Solid Declaration) The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. 118 vols. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1947—. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. 3d ed. Edited by Michael W. Holmes. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007. John Calvin, Institutio Christianae religionis. References are to the 1559 edition by book, chapter, and (where needed) section(s), followed (in brackets or parentheses) by the corresponding volume and page(s) in the standard English translation: Institutes of the Christian Religion. 2 vols. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Library of Christian Classics 20–21. London: SCM; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960. Edmund Schlink, Der kommende Christus und die kirchlichen Traditionen: Beiträge zum Gespräch zwischen den getrennten Kirchen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961. Reprint, with a foreword by Klaus Engelhardt and an introduction by Jochen Eber, bk. 1 of vol. 1 of Edmund Schlink: Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis. Edited by Klaus Engelhardt. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004. Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik. 4 vols. in 13. Zürich: Zollikon, 1932–1968. References will be to principal volume (I–IV), their parts, and either section (§) number(s) or page number(s), followed (in brackets or parentheses) by the corresponding volume, part, and page number(s) in the standard English translation: Church Dogmatics (abbreviated as CD when cited separately). 4 vols. in 13, plus index volume. Edited by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance. Translated by G. W. Bromiley et al. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1936–1977.

Abbreviations and Symbols

L LC LS

LvT

LW 1

LW 2 LWF NEB NIV NK

NPNF 1 NPNF 2 ÖD

ODCC PG PL RGG3

Die Bibel Martin Luthers mit Apokryphen. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1912. The Large Catechism of Martin Luther A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed. Edited by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott. Revised by Sir Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Edmund Schlink, Die Lehre von der Taufe. Kassel: Johannes Stauda, 1969. Reprint, with an introduction by Peter Zimmerling. Vol. 3 of Edmund Schlink: Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis. Edited by Peter Zimmerling. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007. Luther’s Works. American Edition, original series. 55 vols. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann. St. Louis: Concordia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955–1986. Luther’s Works. American Edition, new series. 28 vols. Edited by Christopher Boyd Brown. (Vol. numbers begin with vol. 56.) St. Louis: Concordia, 2009—. Lutheran World Federation The New English Bible with Apocrypha. Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press 1961, 1970. All rights reserved. The Holy Bible. New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by Permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers. Edmund Schlink, Nach dem Konzil. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966. Reprint, with a foreword by Klaus Engelhardt and an introduction by Jochen Eber, bk. 2 of vol. 1 of Edmund Schlink: Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis. Edited by Klaus Engelhardt. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. First Series. 14 vols. Edited by Philip Schaff. 1886–1889. Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Second Series. 14 vols. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. 1890. Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994. Edmund Schlink, Ökumenische Dogmatik: Grundzüge. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983; 2d ed., 1985. Reprint, with a foreword by Wolfhart Pannenberg and an afterword by Michael Plathow. Vol. 2 of Edmund Schlink: Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis. Edited by Michael Plathow. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 3d rev. ed. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Patrologiae cursus completus. Series graeca. 161 vols. Edited by J.-P. Migne. Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1857–1866. Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina. 221 vols. Edited by J.-P. Migne. Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1844–1903. Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 3d ed. 7 vols. Edited by Kurt Galling. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1957–1965.

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Abbreviations and Symbols

RGG4 RSV

S SA SC SCH Schmid

SÖB

ST

Tanner

TLB

TWNT

Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 4th ed. 9 vols. Edited by Hans Dieter Betz et al. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998–2007. The Holy Bible. The Revised Standard Version. Second Edition. Copyright © 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. A translation or paraphrase of a biblical text by Schlink. Smalcald Articles The Small Catechism of Martin Luther Die Bibel. Schlachter Version. Copyright © 1951 by Genfer Bibelgesellschaft. All rights reserved. Heinrich Schmid, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche: Dargestellt und aus den Quellen belegt. 12th ed. Edited by Horst Georg Pöhlmann. Gütersloh: Gütersloher, 1998. Reference(s) to the pages in this edition will be followed (in brackets or parentheses) by the corresponding page(s) in the standard English translation of the 3d German edition (1875): The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Translated by Charles Hay and Henry Jacobs. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1899. Edmund Schlink: Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis. 5 vols. Edited by Klaus Engelhardt et al. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004–2010. –Vol. 1 (2 bks. in 1 vol.): Der kommende Christus und die kirchlichen Traditionen and Nach dem Konzil, ed. Klaus Engelhardt (2004). –Vol. 2: Ökumenische Dogmatik: Grundzüge, 3d ed., ed. Michael Plathow (2005). –Vol. 3: Die Lehre von der Taufe, 2d ed., ed. Peter Zimmerling (2007). –Vol. 4: Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften, 4th ed., ed. Günther Gaßmann (2008). –Vol. 5: Ausgewählte Beiträge: Kirchenkampf, Theologische Grundfragen, Ökumene, ed. Ursula Schnell (2010). Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologiae. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947. References are to the part, the question, article, and (where needed) objection (obj.) or reply (ad.). Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. Edited by Norman P. Tanner. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 1990. References are to the volume and page number(s). Edmund Schlink, Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften. 4th ed. Munich: Kaiser, 1954. Reprint, with an introduction by Günther Gassmann. Vol. 4 of Edmund Schlink: Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis. Edited by Günther Gassmann. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008. Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neue Testament. 10 vols. Edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1933–73. References are to the volume and page number(s), followed by volume and page number(s) in the English edition: Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (abbreviated

Abbreviations and Symbols

V

WA WCC WSA

as TDNT when cited separately). 10 vols. Edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–1976. Georg W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. 3 vols. Edited by Philipp Marheineke. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1832. New edition, ed. Walter Jaeschke. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983. References are to the volume and page number(s) in the new edition, followed by volume and page number(s) in the American edition: Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (abbreviated as LPR when cited separately). Edited by Peter C. Hodgson. Translated by R. F. Brown et al. 3 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984–1987. D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe [Weimar Ausgabe]. 65 vols. in 127. Weimar: Hermann Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1883–1993. World Council of Churches The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. 41 vols. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1990—.

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INTRODUCTORY PART The Gospel as the Presupposition of Church Doctrine

Chapter I: The Knowledge of God

1. Beginning with the Gospel of Jesus Christ An ecumenical dogmatics focuses on the whole of Christendom on earth with the question of the unity of its faith and confessions of faith. An ecumenical dogmatics is at the same time concerned about the community of believers and thus about the unity of the church. Responding to this question appears much easier in some respects today than was the case even a few centuries ago. What was known, for instance, about the Thomas Christians in India or about the church in Ethiopia or about the rest of the once great Nestorian Church in Mesopotamia and Persia?[i] How distant even the Orthodox churches in Greece and the Near East had become since the conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Turks! Today, however, we have extensive knowledge about almost all the scattered parts of Christendom on earth—about their formation, their history, their liturgy, their confessions, and the orderings of their church offices, as well as about their cultural context and political situation. But in other respects, the question about the unity of the faith has become much more difficult. If the Mediterranean region and the surrounding areas were considered the whole of the ecumene [Ökumene] in the first centuries of the church,[ii] and if the church’s confession developed in discussion and debate [Auseinandersetzung] with Near-Eastern Gnosticism and especially with Hellenistic philosophy, today there is no common philosophical presupposition that confronts Christendom scattered throughout the whole earth.[iii] If at the beginning of the twentieth century the worldwide Christian mission—despite the denominational [konfessionellen] differences—was still by and large bound together by the relatively common values of European and North-American civilization, now in contemporary Christendom these notions no longer have any common obligatory power. Along with them, European and North-American theology have also become questionable among many. In this way, through reflection on one’s own cultural and religious heritage, new forms of Christian faith-statement and of church life are being sought in some regions. The differences between the various parts of Christendom have thereby become greater, and Christian community has become more difficult. To be sure, some think that these difficulties have been offset by the awareness of the unity of humanity that has greatly increased since the Second World War, and that this unity, as a cohesive force, would counteract trends toward disunity within Christendom. As a matter of fact, the nations of the world have moved closer to each other, have entered into closer exchange with one another, and have become

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more aware than ever before of their mutual dependence. The nations, to be sure, do not have a common religion or philosophy, but they do have in common the natural sciences and historical studies, which are already in part reigning and in part still developing, with their great possibilities to make work easier through technology and to improve mutual understanding among the nations. Meanwhile, contrary to original expectations, the elimination of the existing disconnectedness between many nations and the awareness of the mutual interdependence of all human beings have not lessened the conflicts but increased them. Thus the rich and the poor nations stand opposed to one another, as do the industrial countries and those countries that supply raw materials, as well as the nations that are leading in scientific research and those that are learning from them. Technology has been used not only to make work and life easier but to develop the most destructive weapons in the history of the world. Historical studies have not led to a better understanding of other nations and of their situation, but to the deepest ambivalence through a progressive relativizing of traditional values, on the one hand, and through ideological, overly confident evaluation of their own past, on the other. Clearly, the empirical sciences have been unable to establish any mandatory norms for human coexistence or to put them into place with any authority. The slogans about freedom, justice, and peace are used today in diametrically opposing ways. In this world situation, God expects the church to be the sign of his love and the example of human coexistence. According to the words from Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, it is Christ’s will that believers should come to the fullness of unity so that the world would know that God sent him and has given his love to human beings even as he has given it to him, the Son (cf. Jn. 17.23). But the struggle for true freedom, true peace, and true justice runs also straight through many parts of Christendom. Likewise, the name of Jesus, his Sermon on the Mount, and his announcement of the kingdom of God have often been misused in Christendom for political and economic ends. Then, compounding the historic confessional divisions have been further conflicts regarding questions about political and social responsibility. The relationship between earthly wellbeing and divine salvation, between peace in the world and the peace of God, has thus become one of the central topics in ecumenical dialogue, and it will play an important role in this dogmatics. In view of the relativizing of traditional religious beliefs throughout the world and in view of the atomic threat, the questions about the truth of the biblical statements about creation and the traditions about Jesus have emerged anew. In this connection, the conflicts have been further exacerbated by misuse of the natural sciences and historical research in atheistic propaganda. Therefore, this ecumenical dogmatics will also have to attend to the problems of methodology within historical-critical research of the Bible and to the fundamental relationship between faith and the empirical sciences.

Beginning with the Gospel of Jesus Christ

Considering this Christendom, divided in many respects, the question arises: Where should an ecumenical dogmatics begin? That formal beginning can only be with that which is a given for all parts of Christendom and which is foundational for the church of every time and in every place, namely, with the gospel of Jesus Christ. In it God comes face-to-face with all of Christendom. As the message of Jesus the Jew, which was first proclaimed by Jews, the gospel is no more distant to the Africans and the people of the Mediterranean region and Far-East Asia than it once was to our Roman, German, or Celtic ancestors. Since the doctrine of the gospel can only be unfolded in detail after the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ (chap. 14), by beginning with the gospel in this introduction to the dogmatics, a more thesis-like formal structure ensues. So let us begin here with one of the earliest summaries of the message about Christ, namely, “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve…” (1 Cor. 15.3ff. [S]). This summary was probably already formulated before the conversion of the apostle Paul and handed down to him by the church after his conversion. Paul then completed this formula by attaching additional eyewitnesses of the appearances of the risen Christ. The gospel is then the message about an historical person and his fate. It proclaims the historical person Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ promised in the Old Testament Scriptures, and it proclaims his historical death and his resurrection as God’s decisive act of salvation for humankind, promised in the Old Testament Scriptures. The gospel proclaims to all people that God gave Jesus up to death on the cross for you and raised him from death for you! Jesus died for the sake of your sins, and through his resurrection opened life for you! For all that, the gospel not only proclaims God’s act that once happened to Jesus and through Jesus. In fact, it is at the same time God’s acting upon those who hear this message. The gospel is also not only the report about the history [Geschichte] of Jesus but is at the same time the word through which Jesus Christ acts today as the living one. It is not merely the message about the salvation through him, but rather the saving takes place by means of the gospel. When we were baptized, that took place not merely in looking back at Jesus’ history, but rather we were transferred to him as our present Lord. By remembering his death in the Lord’s Supper, he lets us—as the present Lord—take part in his body and in the new covenant in his blood. In that way, the gospel is God’s active word. Through the gospel, God reaches for us, breaks through the despair, the arrogance, and the indifference in which we have secluded ourselves, and opens for us access to him. Through the gospel, he grants forgiveness to sinners, confidence to the fearful, freedom to prisoners, life to those enslaved by death. The gospel is God’s justifying and life-giving power,

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which brings about what it says: “by this gospel you are being saved” (1 Cor. 15.2 [S]). God thus makes himself known by means of the gospel. Beginning our dogmatic reflection with the gospel of Jesus Christ in no way denies that “long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets” (Heb. 1.1). Before the coming of Jesus, God had already entered into his covenant with Israel, had by his word given to this people his promise and demand, and had led them through the centuries through his acts of lovingkindness and his judgments. These words that God had spoken before the coming of Jesus are not, however, unrelated to his address through Jesus Christ, but rather, in promising, demanding, and chastising, they prepared the people of Israel for the one to come. In this sense, these words of God already had the coming Christ for their content. But Israel did not obey the prophetic word of God; it rejected the promised Christ as he appeared in Jesus, and it handed him over to the Romans for crucifixion. Beginning with the gospel also does not deny that God has always made known his “invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity” (Rom. 1.20f. [RSV]). Already before his word had gone forth to Israel, God had attested himself to all people through the works of his creation, and he continues to do so. In that way, God awakens people again and again to wonder about the source of their life and to what or to whom they are accountable. But people have avoided these questions again and again and have been accountable only to themselves. They have refused to give God the glory, the gratitude, and the obedience which are due to him. So they “became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Rom. 1.21–22). By contrast, the gospel proclaims Jesus Christ as God’s final address, as the one who not only speaks God’s word but is God’s Word. In him God has attested himself not only as he did by means of creation, as the invisible Wholly Other, but rather, in him God has come to us. God is also encountered in him, not only as he is in the Old Testament word, as the one who promises and demands, but rather, in Jesus God has fulfilled the Old Testament promise and demand. He is God’s address that cannot be superseded by any other. So the gospel proclaims Jesus Christ as the definitive revelation of God, as the one who said of himself, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn. 14.9), as the one in whom God’s glory has appeared and will appear. To be sure, the return of Jesus Christ in glory is still to come, but he will appear in no other glory than in the one into which he has already been transferred by God through his resurrection from the dead, and no other glory of God will then be revealed than that which is God’s forever and ever. The gospel of Jesus Christ was first proclaimed by eyewitnesses to whom Jesus appeared after his death. Without these appearances of the risen one, the death of Jesus on the cross would not be recognized as God’s act of salvation. For that reason, the witness of the apostles, as the called witnesses, and the witness of the early Christian communities, as those who had been taught directly by the apostles,

The Hiddenness of God in the Gospel

is foundational for the proclamation of all subsequent generations. Proclaimed first by the apostles, the gospel burst into this world, and since then it hastens from country to country, from people to people, and presses urgently into all domains of human life. All members of God’s church on earth live from the gospel, wherever they may have come to faith and to whichever of the separated churches they belong by faith in Jesus Christ.

2. The Hiddenness of God in the Gospel The revelation of God that took place in Jesus Christ took place in deepest hiddenness before the eyes of the world. The same also holds true for God’s present act of revelation through the gospel. Indeed, God’s revelation seems to be hidden precisely under its opposite. This hiddenness is twofold: (a) God’s revelation took place in Jesus, a lowly, insignificant person with no worldly power, who was made subject to the lords of this world. God did his mighty deeds in the ambiguity of the words and healing actions of this person. Jesus appeared as a sinner, and not only in the mistaken view of those who misjudged him, since God “made him to be sin” (2 Cor. 5.21) and let him die the death decreed for a criminal. The living God has come to humankind in the form of a dying person, whose final words, as they have been handed down, was the cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk. 15.34 par. Mt. 27.46). Jesus is thus the epitome of human lowliness, helplessness, and shame. To be sure, God vindicated him after his death, through the resurrection, as the innocent one, the righteous one, as the one belonging to God. But although the risen one appeared to the women and the disciples after his death, yet he appeared only to them and not to the world. Likewise, he did not remain visibly present to his own, but after his appearing he vanished at once from their eyes. Thus the hiddenness of God in Jesus did not come to an end even after his exaltation [Erhöhung]. God is hidden also in the news of his death and resurrection, hidden in the unlikelihood and dubiousness of human words, in water as well as in bread and wine that are subject to human handling. Beyond this, God is hidden under the contradictions and differences of those who today call upon Christ and proclaim him. Not only as the word of the cross but also as the word of the resurrection, the gospel is a scandalous word that provokes skepticism and ridicule. Without worldly power and visible splendor, the exalted Christ acts upon the world through the gospel. (b) God’s revelation takes place in a twofold address. Jesus did both things. He blessed the poor, the hungry, the reviled, the weeping, and he promised them the kingdom of God.[iv] But his “Woe!” was leveled against the rich, the satiated, the popular, and the laughing. With the sinners he ate as a friend, but the righteous

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he just passed by. Jesus not only taught God’s boundless mercy and forgiveness but also God’s demand (in an unprecedented radicalizing of the Old Testament law), and he announced God’s judgment to the transgressors. He not only declared sinners as righteous but also unmasked the righteous as sinners. Jesus is salvation and at the same time judgment. The following statements in the Gospel of John are juxtaposed in sharpest tension with one another: “I judge no one” (8.15) and “As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just” (5.30; cf. 3.17 and 19). In Jesus God thus encountered people with an opposing address. God is acting through him as the Lord, who not only bestows but also requires, who not only justifies but also judges. Similarly, the gospel is proclaimed to people in a twofold address. Next to the assurance of grace and the comforting exhortation in the apostolic proclamation stand the warning, the threat, yes, even the anathema. Justification is announced to the sinner only for the sake of Christ, but judgment according to works is also announced to him, which the Christ who is coming again will execute on all people, also on Christians. The proclaimer of the gospel is for the one person “a fragrance from life to life,” for the others “a fragrance from death to death” (2 Cor. 2.16). Thus God’s revelation is also hidden in the twofold address of God, namely, in the contradiction between God’s love and God’s wrath, between God’s grace and God’s judgment, and between his rejection and his acceptance.

3. The Revelation of the Divine Mystery Despite this hiddenness, the New Testament witnesses proclaim: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, …these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2.9f. [S]). “We have seen his glory, a glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1.14 [S]). “This life appeared, and we have seen it and attest to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and has appeared to us” (1 Jn. 1.2 [S]). Sounding forth from these and many similar New Testament witnesses, the church’s shout for joy resounds through the centuries: God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ! In Jesus the glory of divine love has appeared! We have come to know God! This cry of the church sounds forth, not despite the hiddenness of God, but rather it praises precisely this hiddenness as God’s revelation. The church praises the revelation of the divine glory precisely in the powerlessness of the crucified one, and it praises the assurance of his grace precisely in his twofold address. How is it that it is precisely in hiddenness that God is revealed? In answering this question, we again follow the sequencing of statements in the previous section: (a) God has drawn near to us in the lowly, insignificant, and common person Jesus. Indeed, in the incarnation of his Son, God has become one of us. The humanity of the Son of God is our access to God the Father. In the lowliness, powerlessness,

The Revelation of the Divine Mystery

and shame of Jesus, God has taken our lowliness upon himself. In that he treated Jesus as a sinner, he cast our sins upon him. In that God delivered him over to the death of God-forsakenness, he let him suffer our God-forsakenness and our death, and precisely in this way he brought to an end our remoteness from God and our fall into judgment. God has revealed his power in Jesus in such a way that all human notions of greatness and power have been refuted and surpassed. God demonstrated his greatness precisely in that he stooped down to the lowly, and he showed his glory in that he served sinners in Jesus. In this hiddenness, he revealed himself as infinitely more glorious than human beings can imagine, namely, in the glory of his love. In the very same stooping down, God draws near to human beings through the gospel, by his speaking and acting through the ordinariness of human words and the everydayness of water, bread, and wine. Here, too, God demonstrates his glory in worldly powerlessness. Precisely in that through the gospel God does not overwhelm people with his power or coerce them to acknowledge him, he comes as the merciful one, as the one who sets free, who does not so much demand as entreat through his ambassadors, “Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5.20). (b) God has also not stayed hidden in the duality of his address, but rather precisely in this way has he sought after us. Certainly, the same Jesus has both required obedience to God’s commandments with unprecedented radicalness and forgiven the sins of those who break the law. He proclaimed both God’s “No!” to sin and God’s love to sinners. But this “No!” and this “Yes!,” namely, Jesus’ cries of “Woe!” and his blessings, were not voiced in a dialectic in which both sides had equal weight and formed an equilibrium; for the demand and the threat of judgment, the “No!” and the cry of “Woe!,” were aimed toward the “Yes!” of blessing and the grace of acquittal. “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (Jn. 3.17 [NIV]). To be sure, Jesus proclaimed judgment and salvation, but he did so as the one who himself went to meet the judgment and suffered it for others. Thus also in the gospel about Jesus Christ, God’s revelation does not remain hidden behind the contradiction between God’s assurance [Zuspruch] and claim [Anspruch], between God’s grace and judgment, between God’s salvation and rejection.[v] Rather, the New Testament exhortation requires nothing of a person that the person would not have received through God’s grace, and the New Testament promise announces the same Christ as the Coming Judge over the living and the dead, who died on the cross for the sins of the world. So, too, the issue of the hiddenness of God in his twofold address is the revelation of the glory of his love. (c) In Jesus Christ God’s revelation and God’s hiddenness only seem to be mutually exclusive. Rather, revelation takes place precisely in the hiddenness of God. Moreover, the divine hiddenness in Jesus’ lowliness and the divine hiddenness in

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the twofold address are not two different types of hiddenness but one and the same, for both have to do with God’s coming to us. In Jesus God has taken our remoteness from God upon himself and through his demand and the assurance of his grace has drawn us to himself. Precisely in this way is the mystery of God revealed to us. This term (mysterion) is found in the New Testament in only a few though significant places, and thus it has received manifold expanded meanings in the history of theology. While this term was often used later in the plural (especially in reference to the sacraments), in the New Testament it mostly occurs in the singular and in closest connection with the witness to Christ. God’s mystery is the crucified Christ, who is “God’s wisdom, secret and hidden” (1 Cor. 2.7), hidden from the wisdom of the world, hidden under the semblance of divine foolishness. Jesus’ death is God’s mystery, though not only in its bare facticity but in its being proclaimed, in the advance of the word of the cross into the world. So the mystery of Christ is the calling of the heathen through the gospel—that they are to participate in Christ in the promises that God had given to the Old Testament covenant people (Eph. 3.4ff.)—and is at the same time the present rejection and the ultimate salvation of Israel (Rom. 11.32). God’s mystery is not Christ in and for himself but Christ and the church and thus Christ together with the people of God’s children that were purchased and gathered by him. The revelation of the divine mystery is taking place therefore through the dynamic force of the saving and gathering action of the one who died on the cross and who lives as the exalted one—a force that is permeating and overcoming the world. The mystery that is revealed through the word of the cross encompasses also the historical action of God upon Israel and the nations that preceded the death of Jesus on the cross. It encompasses also God’s act of creation in the beginning. It is the epitome of all the acts that God has done from the creation of the world and that he will do up to the consummation of the new creation. Indeed, it was decreed by God already before the creation of the world (1 Cor. 2.7; Eph. 3.9). God’s mystery is thus the salvific plan of his love, which flinches at no sacrifice and encompasses the beginning and end of this world—the creation, redemption, and new creation. This decree of God’s love is being proclaimed through the word of the cross, and through this proclamation the realization of the eternal decree takes place in time. “The mystery of his will” is the gathering up of all things into Christ (Eph. 1.9f.). With its revelation the mystery of God does not stop being a mystery. It is not comprehensible or fathomable through the revelation, but precisely on the basis of the revelation it is praised as the mystery of divine wisdom. It was hidden before its revelation, and it still remains hidden afterwards to those for whom the word of the cross is foolishness. The same is true, however, also wherever people think they have comprehended God’s mystery on the basis of its revelation and think they are able to explain it. Such presumption happened not only in the ancient church’s gnōsis and in some lines of thought in German idealist philosophy but also

The Knowledge of God by Faith

in some intrusions of dogmatic speculation.[vi] Regarding God’s action, however, the following holds true: “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11.33). And yet the mystery of God in Jesus Christ is no longer sealed but revealed, and no longer withdrawn from the sphere of human words but proclaim-able. It is not the irrational and inexpressible, to which silence can be the only response, for through the word of the cross Christ shows himself to be “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1.24). For this reason, the mystery of God revealed in the word of the cross can and should be proclaimed (cf. 1 Cor. 2.1f.), and thus an early Christian hymn extolls: “Manifestly great is the blessed mystery: God is revealed in the flesh…” (1 Tim. 3.16 [L]: “Kündlich gross ist das gottselige Geheimnis: Gott ist geoffenbart im Fleisch”).[vii] The mystery is expressible because the historical person Jesus Christ is the revelation of the mystery.

4. The Knowledge of God by Faith God’s revelation in Jesus Christ is known in the acceptance of the gospel and thus in the “Yes!” to God, whom the gospel proclaims and who acts through the gospel. This means conjointly that the knowledge of God takes place in the sacrifice of the self to Jesus Christ, whose death and resurrection are proclaimed by the gospel and who grants participation in his death and life through word and sacrament. Knowing God thus takes place in the personal decision of faith, and at the same time the knower is taken into the community of all believers. What happens in the act of faith? Since we will speak about faith and about the relationship between believing and knowing more fully in later contexts (cf., esp., chap. 2.5, as well as chap. 12.B.4 and chap. 14.A.9), we will here indicate only those answers that arise in connection with the preceding sections of this chapter: (a) Faith does not take offense at the hiddenness of God in the lowliness, powerlessness, and shame of Jesus Christ. It also does not take offense at the ordinariness of the human words of the gospel and the everydayness of the earthly elements in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It does not hasten away from this visible lowliness in order to espy God’s glory in the highest, beyond this lowliness. Rather, it clings to the ordinary human words that bear witness to the death and resurrection of Jesus, and it thus clings to Christ himself, who was crucified and resurrected for humankind. Precisely in the visible lowliness of Jesus it recognizes the invisible glory of divine love, and in the weakness of the human witness it recognizes “God’s Spirit and power” (1 Cor. 2.4 [S]). (b) Faith also does not take offense at the hiddenness of God in the twofold address, namely, in the opposition between God’s demanding and bestowing, God’s judgment and grace. It also does not seek a platform beyond this opposition, from

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which it could resolve it theoretically or relativize it. Rather, believers confess themselves guilty in view of the judging “No” that God speaks to sinners. The believer does not dispute God’s right to condemn the sinner but expressly agrees with God. In the knowledge of guilt, however, faith flees from God, who judges the sinner, to God, who in the judged Christ acquits us. Knowledge of God and repentance belong inseparably together. Thus, precisely in the very opposition within the twofold divine address, faith recognizes the steadfastness of God’s love that follows after people and seeks them. (c) In addition, faith is not ashamed of the contradiction between the mystery of the divine decree of love and the incomprehensible injustices, atrocities, and sufferings in world history. It does not dispute or play down these sufferings. It also does not attempt to overcome them through arbitrary interpretations of history. Rather, it looks on Jesus Christ’s way through suffering to glory and thereby recognizes the divine love which embraces the whole creation, its history and future, with the goal of its consummation. Already these three brief answers make clear that the knowledge of God takes place in a movement that hastens forward, namely, in the movement from the visibility that hides God to the divine revelation that reaches for us in this hiddenness. Again and again this movement is to be carried out anew in believing the good news. It is, however, directed not simply toward hearing the gospel anew again and again and receiving the Lord’s Supper anew again and again but rather toward the future revelation of the divine glory in the appearance of the Christ who is coming again. Then believing will be replaced by seeing. “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13.12). “Not that I have already obtained all this or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me” (Phil. 3.12 [NIV]). Yes, our knowledge of God is still on the way from faith to sight, and yet it is true knowledge, for it does not come into being through people’s hastening, pressing onward, through their efforts at making it their own, or by their clinging to it; on the contrary, it comes into being by God taking hold of a person and taking that person into God’s hastening and acting toward the future consummation. The knowledge of God is not our work. Not only what we receive by faith but the receiving itself is God’s gift. Not only the address of God in the gospel but also the perceiving of the address is itself given by God. The ear that perceives God’s word in the human words of the gospel is no less God’s action than this, his word. The knowledge of God by faith is effected by God’s Spirit. “No one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2.11). God’s Spirit creates hearing ears and seeing eyes. The Spirit releases us from our being curved in on ourselves, in which we barricade ourselves against God’s revelation, and sets us free for the “Yes” to his address. Comprehensive is the promise: “The Spirit of truth… will guide you into

The Knowledge of God as Being Known by the Triune God

all the truth” (Jn. 16.13). The knowledge of God does not raise itself up from the human sphere toward God, but rather it has come down to us creatures in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, we could not be certain of God.

5. The Knowledge of God as Being Known by the Triune God The knowledge of God comes about through God’s gracious action in this way, namely, through the sending of his Son and through the sending of his Spirit, through the message about Jesus Christ and through the gift of the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Both acts are one grasping, by means of which God in his mercy pulls us sinners out of our blindness and our remoteness from God. In the same act he addresses us through his word from without and opens us for his word from within through the Holy Spirit. In the knowledge of God, therefore, it is not our grasping but our being grasped—not the person’s knowing God but the person being known by God—that is the first thing, that which is foundational. As those known by God, we know God (Gal. 4.9). Even if our knowing God is still “only in part” [“Stückwerk”], yet the knowledge by which God has known us is complete and already at its end (1 Cor. 13.12). This divine knowledge is not only God’s knowing about us and his seeing right through us but God’s decision on our behalf. Through his knowing, he chooses and calls the person so that that person knows him (cf. Exod. 33.12f.; Hos. 13.5; Amos 3.2; Jer. 1.5). Just as the election to the community of love, indeed, the fulfillment of the community of love, was conveyed with the Old Testament concept of knowing (e. g., Gen. 4.1 [“and Adam knew Eve his wife…” (RSV)]), so God, as the one who knows us, reaches for us through the gospel in the free decision of his love. If God’s knowing the person is his loving action of purposing, grasping, and bestowing, then human knowing of God is experiencing this divine purpose and gift. Just as the divine knowing refers not only to “the self ” or “the soul” of the person but comprehends the whole person, so the knowing of God by humans means that people—in their spiritual-bodily totality, along with their present, past, and future—put their trust in God and may surely know that they are sheltered in God’s saving love. The promise of Christ is comprehensive: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, …and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand” (Jn. 10.27f.). This is “the firm foundation” [“der feste Grund”] of certainty, namely, “The Lord knows those who are his” (2 Tim. 2.19 [S]). Because our knowledge of God is grounded in the act of God that he has done and is doing through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, it necessarily comes to voice in the confession of God the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This confession cannot be restricted to the acts that God the Father has done,

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is doing, and will do to and for human beings through his Son in the power of the Holy Spirit, but rather, on the basis of these acts, it praises God himself, as the one who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For by faith in the gospel we know not only God’s historical action but God himself, who from everlasting to everlasting is one and the same in the glory of his love. In this way, the church responds to God with the adoration of the triune God. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 1 [i] The so-called Nestorian Church is named for Nestorius (b. after 351; d. after 451), an Antiochene monk who was the patriarch of Constantinople between his appointment in 428 and his deposition in 431. His understanding of christology led to the heresy of “Nestorianism,” which held that there are two separate persons in the incarnate Christ, the one divine and the other human. Nestorius supported those who rejected the use of the term Theotokos (“bearer of God”) in reference to Mary, the mother of Jesus. At a council of Rome in 430 Nestorius’ teaching was condemned by Pope Celestine (d. 432). At the Council of Ephesus in 431 Nestorius’ teaching was condemned and he was deposed from his office. He returned to his monastery at Antioch but later was banished to Egypt, where he later died. See ODCC, 1138–1139. In the polemics of the theological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries, the term Nestorian was applied to all those who upheld a rigorous Antiochene christology. As a result, the “Church of the East” (or the “Assyrian Church of the East”) has come to be popularly but misleadingly called the Nestorian Church. Its christology, which is strictly Antiochene, developed largely from that of Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 350–428) rather than from Nestorius. See ODCC, 351. [ii] Schlink used the Greek word οἰκουμένη (oikumenē; Ger.: Ökumene) to refer broadly to the whole inhabited church on earth: the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church (cf. BDAG, 699). In the two places where this term occurs in his dogmatics (here and chap. 26.7), it is translated literally as the “ecumene,” i. e., the whole household of the church. In the two forewords and the afterword to the book, this term is used more narrowly to refer to the modern ecumenical movement.

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[iii]

[iv] [v]

[vi]

[vii]

Gnosticism took many diverse forms in early heterodox Christianity, but all of them stressed the importance of a supposed special gnōsis (γνῶσις; “knowledge”) of God and the world, which was thought to have been secretly revealed by Jesus to his closest disciples. Characteristic of most forms of Gnosticism is a disparagement of the material world, which was held to be evil and something from which to escape. Proto-Gnostic ideas were already criticized in the letter to the Colossians (e. g., the diminishment of Christ; the rejection of the creation of all things through him; the denial of his incarnation and “the fullness” of his deity; insisting on ascetic practices) and the Pastoral Letters (“myths,” hostility to marriage). The most important antiGnostic theologians were Irenaeus (ca. 130–ca. 200), Tertullian (ca. 160–ca. 225), and Hippolytus (d. ca. 236). A more neutral, orthodox understanding of the concept of gnōsis (as divine wisdom that is revealed by God) was maintained by some early Eastern theologians, e. g., Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–ca. 215). Cf. Schlink, NK, SÖB, 1/2.221ff. (ESW, 1.551ff.). Schlink here echoed language that appears in the second thesis of the Theological Declaration of Barmen: “Just as Jesus Christ is God’s assurance [Zuspruch] of the forgiveness of all our sins, so also, and with the same earnestness, he is God’s powerful claim [kräftiger Anspruch] upon our entire life. Through him a joyous liberation from the godless conditions of this world occurs for us, a liberation for spontaneous, grateful service to his creatures” (Die Barmer Theologische Erklärung, 38). The pairing of “Zuspruch” and “Anspruch” appears repeatedly throughout Schlink’s dogmatics. In this context the term gnōsis refers to the true “divine wisdom” that was revealed by God and explicated by early Eastern theologians, especially in Alexandria, e. g., by Clement of Alexandria and Origen (ca. 185–ca. 254). Luther’s verse has been set to music, perhaps most famously by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) but also by Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) and Liebhold (d. 1730).

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1. The Self-Knowledge of the Human Being In coming to know God by faith we come to know ourselves at the same time, for when Jesus Christ reveals God, he also reveals the human being: in the crucifixion of Jesus, the forsakenness of the human being comes to light, while in the resurrection of Jesus, the new human has stepped forth, the beginning of a new humanity. Knowledge of God and knowledge of self belong inseparably together.[i] No one knows oneself without knowing God, and no one knows God without being known by God. Knowledge of God is thus the basis for self-knowledge, but self-knowledge is not the basis for the knowledge of God. This does not deny that one can come to know much about oneself and other human beings, even apart from God’s word. Empirical scientific knowledge of the processes of mental and physical health and of how they are intrinsically linked is constantly increasing, even apart from faith. Moreover, intellectual history is full of manifold attempts by persons to understand and explain themselves, to reassure themselves in statements about their nature, their dignity, and destiny, and to secure their existence amid the external and internal threats of this world. But every pre-understanding that one has of oneself is called into question by the gospel.[ii] While accurate empirical scientific knowledge and conclusions are not being disputed, they are drawn from previous attempts at comprehensive interpretation and—as encompassing as they even seem to be—they will be recognized as only partial observations, for the knowledge about human beings that was previously maintained will be exposed as more or less dubious proposals of human longing, angst, and self-assertion. Our experiencing of self-esteem—namely, our self-understanding in light of our achievements and of the aims that we set for ourselves and that we again and again mistake for our reality—is being taken from us. By God’s word, we are being torn out of the defiant freedom of our individualistic risk-taking, as well as out of the framework of what “people are saying.”[iii] No prior understanding that one has of oneself can assert itself in God’s presence, much less be made the criterion for which biblical statements are to be acknowledged as valid. By God’s address we are brought out from all our ways of hiding and presented naked before him. God’s word sounds forth the startling and exposing call, “Adam, where are you?” (Gen. 3.9 [S]). In God’s word, however, we come to hear not only this question but also the answer that Jesus Christ gives: “I am here for you.” Apart from God’s address, we ultimately know about ourselves only that we are but not who we are. Not even the ultimate and fundamental difference between humans and

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animals becomes clear apart from God’s address. By means of the gospel, however, we are being revealed: (a) Our transgressions against God are being revealed, both those we commit today as well as those we have committed long ago.[iv] All our excuses are being slapped out of our hands. By God’s address, we are being saddled with the identity of our person and being held accountable for everything we have ever done. So not only the deeds but the doers, not only our sins but we ourselves, are being laid bare. God’s address takes from us the possibility of distancing ourselves from our deeds. We are being laid bare as those who not only committed sins but are sinners. The contradiction of the whole person that was previously hidden under angst and presumption is being revealed, for the gospel—as the message of the judgment on sin that God executed on the cross—places human beings before the face of him who purely and simply is the Lord and to whom human beings owe their entire existence; for the God who by the gospel calls into question and uncovers, is the very Creator of the human being. As sinful creatures, we cower in dismay when the God made manifest encounters us. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips…” (Isa. 6.5); “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Lk. 5.8). That is always the self-knowledge of the human being to whom God reveals himself. Paul “fell to the ground” and was blinded when the glory of the risen Lord encountered him (Acts 9.4, 8). This radical human experience of being at the end of one’s being is the effect of the divine address, for through it we are revealed before the holiness of God as those who are separated from the Lord, who alone is able to give life, and apart from whom there is no life. To know ourselves as sinners is the self-knowledge of creatures who have forfeited their life through separation from the Creator. Our self-evident vitality, in which we suppose we can live entirely on our own, and the ideologies and customs by which we minimize death and mean to render it harmless, are being shattered. Addressed by God, we know ourselves to be sinners, despite all our positive accomplishments, and to be under the power of death, despite all our vitality. (b) Precisely to these sinners who are under the power of death, God says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; you are mine” [Jer. 31.3b (L)]. The gospel proclaims that God gave up Jesus Christ in order to accept us, that God treated him, the righteous one, as a sinner so that we sinners “might become in him the righteousness that is valid before God” (2 Cor. 5.21 [L]). Because believers know Christ as the one whom God has made to be righteousness for us (1 Cor. 1.30), they know themselves as justified—as sinners to whom God by grace has promised Christ’s righteousness, as those for whom God through Christ has covered sin and paid the debt. By faith in the gospel, we know ourselves as those that we, in respect to our works, precisely are not. That is, in Jesus Christ we know ourselves as sinners who are righteous, as enemies of God who are God’s friends, as strangers who are

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God’s children. Nothing can mitigate these statements. We are not only considered righteous, beloved, and God’s children, but we are that, for God’s word is an active word; it creates what it promises. Consequently, by faith in the gospel, we come to know God as the Living One, who raised Jesus from the dead and made him alive. At the same time, we know ourselves as those who have been transferred into life. The gospel promises us the life of the risen Christ and grants it to us. Through baptism we have been given into Christ’s death in order also to participate in his life. God, who has raised Jesus from the dead, “has made you alive together with him, you who were dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh” (Col. 2.13 [L]). Through the Lord’s Supper we receive “the bread of life”: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” (Jn. 6.54 [NIV]). By faith in Jesus Christ we are those who are born again, created anew through God’s Spirit. (c) When we come to know ourselves as God’s beloved, we see our past in a new light; for by faith in the gospel, we realize that God did not begin loving us only when we came to faith. His love preceded our believing and knowing. He had already loved us before we would have come to know him and to love him in return. Even before we came to be loving persons through the gospel, we were already his beloved, whom he sought, upon whom he worked, for whom he wrestled, and whom he prepared through kindnesses and sorrows and through the insatiable restlessness that he has stirred up in our hearts. By faith in the gospel, we come to know ourselves as creatures, who not only were created by and as coming from God but who are created for communion with God; as creatures who have been not only preserved [erhalten] by God but who have been guarded and led toward their encounter with the gospel and their acceptance as God’s children; as creatures to whom God had already borne witness to himself beforehand, even if we have withdrawn from him through our autonomous notions and goals. This act of God the Creator and Preserver [der Erhalter] that aims toward redemption, this act of the one who guides the history of every individual person, this seeking action of the divine love that persists through sin and judgments—all this becomes quite overwhelming for faith. Nowhere is it so impressively attested to as in Augustine’s Confessions.1 By faith in the gospel, we come to know God as the Father who has loved us with an everlasting love, indeed, who has loved us before we were born. Out of fatherly love he has given to each of us a quite specific, unique, and noninterchangeable life, which he has preserved and guided over against manifold dangers from within and without to the hour of repentance and faith.

1 Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones libri XIII. [CCSL, 27; The Confessions of Saint Augustine, WSA, I/1. –Ed.]

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This threefold self-knowledge that is opened through the gospel is, to be sure, put out of the reach of introspection and empirical observation. Indeed, it is questionable whether one can speak here at all of self-knowledge in the proper sense of the word. In this self-knowledge, is not the knowing about the self being prevented in a peculiar way? What we perceive about ourselves is largely the opposite of what we know by faith to be our reality. This is not to deny that the gospel is able to bring about striking transformations in the life and actions of the believer. But with critically sober self-examination these transformations remain within the domain of this world’s ambiguity and can never provide a firm basis for the certainty of our being justified and of our new life. “I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Cor. 4.4). In this world the victory of faith is hidden under spiritual attacks and trials; the glory of the new life, under suffering and death; joy in the Spirit, under affliction; the new, under the old. In this hiddenness that persists for self-examination, believers wend their way through life’s journey, “as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed…” (2 Cor. 6.9). Our righteousness we find not in ourselves but in Jesus Christ, whose righteousness is assured to us through the gospel. He is our righteousness. That we are a new creature we also do not know in and of ourselves but in Christ who grants himself to us. He is the new human being [der neue Mensch]; as the risen Lord he is the inbreaking of the new creation. We are to seek and find our life in him alone, not in ourselves, even though the new life is indeed our life. “[You] have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3.3 [S]). So we have life, and yet this life is not under our control. Our life is the exalted Christ, who is here for us and lives in us and works through us. The new life is ours in that our own life is constantly being surrendered. “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2.19f.). In recognizing the act of salvation that God did for them in Christ, believers know themselves to be justified and alive. The same holds true about knowing oneself as God’s creature. That the human being is a person created, preserved, led, and loved by God in all of this—that also remains absolutely hidden from introspection and empirical observation. Ascertainable is my human ancestry but not my origin in God’s creative act. Demonstrable is the fluctuation between joy and sorrow, between successes and failures, between times of good health and illnesses, etc., but God’s preserving, leading, and loving cannot be demonstrated as such from these observations. The fluctuating history of human life can also be explained quite differently. Indeed, that history seems often enough to rail against the providence of divine love. In addition, as the ever-beloved creatures of God, we know ourselves not in ourselves, even when we know ourselves as those formed, guarded, and guided by the Creator. In Jesus Christ, however, God has inclined himself toward us as the one who is love. Throughout all the riddles of their life journey, believers come

The Self-Knowledge of the Human Being

to realize that already their old life, despite its rebellion against God, was not a possession of their own but an act of divine preserving, and not a consequence of good or bad luck but an act of divine leading. Thus self-knowledge as creatures is recognition of the acts that God the Creator has done for people and is doing through his preserving and governing them. The self-knowledge of the human being that is unlocked by the gospel is thus crucially the knowledge of God who acts upon us as the Creator and Redeemer, as the Preserver and the New Creator [der Neuschöpfer].[v] We come to know ourselves as we come to know God’s action upon us, indeed, as we know ourselves to be God’s work. By faith in God, we humans find our unity and freedom as persons in the midst of our own inner contradictions and turmoil, in the midst of the opposition between willing and doing, between spirit and flesh. Of course, that does not say everything, for human beings, after all, have tried to understand themselves by themselves, to find their origin in themselves, and to establish their existence according to their own design. Consequently, the selfknowledge of believers as sinners is fundamentally of a different type than their self-knowledge as God’s creatures and as righteous persons, for sin is exclusively their doing, not God’s doing. In this respect, one might say, self-knowledge in the strict and exclusive sense is the recognition that the human’s desire for selfassertion is self-knowledge as sinner. Moreover—and that at the same time means primarily—the human’s self-knowledge is the knowledge of the acts that the Creator, Redeemer, and the New Creator has done, is doing, and will do for the human being. By faith in this divine activity, human beings find their real life. If in that way self-knowledge comes to pass in the act of repentance and faith, then it cannot become a body of knowledge as is otherwise the case with the results of empirical and rational knowing. Rather, it must be continually made one’s own anew. So, to know oneself means to hear the gospel anew again and again, to remember anew again and again one’s baptism, and to receive the Lord’s Supper again and again. Self-knowledge takes place in new self-surrendering again and again to the acts that God has done, is doing, and will do for us. Self-knowledge is knowing about a person’s total dependence on God and thus the continually new hastening away from sin to Christ as our righteousness, out of death to Christ as our life, away from the ambiguity of earthly existence to the coming clarity of the consummation. In self-knowledge we are thus brought into the way of the divine hastening toward the future revelation. “We are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3.2; cf. Col. 3.4).

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2. The Knowledge of Other Human Beings Through the gospel, our understanding of other human beings is no less called into question, ruptured, and relativized than our self-understanding. Indeed, we would not know ourselves in truth if we did not at the same time see other human beings with new eyes. Isolated self-knowledge would not be self-knowledge. Through the word of forgiveness, God shatters for us the relationship of friend and foe, of creditor and debtor, as well as the various other conflicting relationships in which we live. If God has relinquished his right to judge us, then the dubious right that we thought we had vis-à-vis other human beings also falls to the wayside, and it becomes clear that the legal systems of this world cannot be the ultimate norm for our conduct toward our neighbor. While they indeed restrain injustice between people, they cannot remove it. If in Jesus God has come to us as one who serves, the self-righteous conceit by which we size up, patronize, and use other human beings as a tool is refuted. If God has lovingly cared for his enemies and given up his Son for them, the eros which focuses on those who are worthy of love and who enrich us, the eros by which we strive to increase our self, is dethroned. Through the gospel, other human beings are taken out of our hands as a means and tool. Likewise, the gospel takes away the fear of other human beings that distorts our image of them, and places us into the service of love. Where the gospel is being heard, there the differences between humans become small. In addition, the antagonism of the races, nations, and political systems loses its ultimate significance, for it is God, the Wholly Other, the Lord of all people, who is addressing us. In view of the contrast between God and us, who all are guilty before him, and in view of his unimaginable mercy, we will be revealed as those who belong together, despite all our opposition to one another. We thus recognize other human beings as follows: (a) By faith in the gospel, we recognize all human beings as those for whom Jesus Christ died and has arisen. He died not only for the believers but for all. He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1.29 [S]). This one who died for all has been exalted by God to be the Lord over all human beings. All—every single individual and all nations—are subject to him, whether they know it or not, whether they acknowledge his lordship or deny it.[vi] Each person stands under God’s will of salvation. This is true for all human beings, even if they think they are in no need of salvation. (b) At the same time, we recognize all human beings as God’s creatures. Even if they suppose that they can live entirely on their own, grasp their existence according to their own design, and preserve their own life in the struggle with nature and each other, they live because God preserves them. God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt. 5.45). The regulations of secular law that protect life also have their power not from the human authority that administers them but from God, who attests about himself

The Knowledge of Other Human Beings

to all human beings as the Preserver of life and who makes everyone responsible for the lives of others. No matter how much people may abuse their freedom, boast about their victories, and despair in their defeats—in all this they are still those who are carried by God’s patience and sought by God’s acts of lovingkindness and judgment. (c) We would not have come to faith apart from the gospel having been proclaimed to us by others. By faith in the gospel, we thus recognize, in the midst of the many, the brothers and sisters who are not only subject to Christ but who confess him as Lord. Amidst the opposition between individuals and groups, between races, between peoples, and between nations, we recognize in this way the one people of God, which, through the gospel, God has called out and gathered from all peoples. Jesus Christ, to be sure, died for all people, but that salvation is received by faith [Glaube]. The people of God comprise the community of believers [Glaubenden]. Here sins are confessed, and forgiveness is granted. Here the body of Jesus Christ is received, and his death is proclaimed. Here human beings live not only de facto from the action of God the Creator, but here the Creator is praised. By faith in the gospel, we thus recognize the church. Only then, when all human beings are recognized as guilty before God, and when their differences and oppositions are recognized as superficial and ultimately null and void, does the other human Thou [Du] come into view for us.[vii] Previously this was concealed by the friend-foe relation and by the differences between the races, the nations, the social strata, etc. Only when we see the other human being in light of God’s promises that are applicable to all, do we recognize that person’s actual need, actual hunger, and actual emptiness. Only then do we also recognize the actual struggle in which other human beings are engaged, the struggle for life and death, from which they can step forth as victors only by faith in Christ. In this way we recognize the neighbor—even if the person has not yet recognized this relationship—and that person’s actual need. Like self-knowledge, the knowledge of other human beings also characteristically eludes empirical verification. The solidarity of all human beings to be for one another—a solidarity into which they are united by God’s act of creation, by God’s judgment and grace—remains hidden from purely empirical consideration. Just as surely as our knowledge of the neighbor concerns those human beings with whom we co-exist, whose voices we hear, whose form we see, and whose conduct we experience, so faith’s knowledge does not stop at what we have observed and learned about other human beings. Nor does it stop at the self-understanding that these other people have of themselves and on the basis of which they speak and act. If we know ourselves to be addressed by God as those who are not what we are precisely in our self-observation, then we also need to look at other human beings in a way that is not restricted to what we are able to perceive about them or to what they are able to perceive about themselves. As surely as our common

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life together as human beings is the subject of psychological, sociological, and other empirical investigations—and hereby the accuracy and scope of scientific knowledge constantly increase—these findings nevertheless remain incomplete and one-dimensional. They do not reach the hidden Thou [Du] loved by God and the new community effected by Christ. Likewise, knowledge about other human beings is crucially recognizing the actions that God is doing on them. If self-knowledge fulfills itself by ever-new grasping of the act of salvation that God is doing for us through word and sacrament, the knowledge of other human beings fulfills itself in ever-new acts of service for them. Just as self-knowledge cannot stop at ourselves but entails constantly hastening away from ourselves to God who is reaching out to us, so the knowledge of other human beings cannot stop with a perception of them but must become a hastening in which we are servants in the work that God has begun for them and wants to fulfill. If we know God as the Creator and Preserver of all human beings, then the knowledge of other human beings cannot continue without the commitment to preserve their earthly life in the midst of the world’s deep needs. If we know God as the Redeemer, then the knowledge of other human beings cannot continue without bearing witness to Jesus Christ so that everyone receives salvation by faith. Likewise, the knowledge of other human beings is not theoretical knowledge but a decision that takes place anew again and again. It is not abstract knowledge that could generally occur in statements about other human beings but the helping “Yes” in the concrete encounter with the neighbor. Like self-knowledge, the knowledge of other human beings also is directed to the future, to the action by means of which God wants to deal with them as the Redeemer and the New Creator.

3. The Knowledge of the History of Humanity By faith in the gospel, I come to know myself as taken into an historical movement that has its origin in the action and fate [Geschick] of Jesus. The message about Christ has been handed down through the centuries before it has reached me. This tradition, however, is not only the remembrance and transmission of what has once taken place but is the history [Geschichte] of the mighty deeds of Jesus who, as the exalted Lord, has by means of the gospel called, saved, and kept sending forth ever more people throughout the centuries. At the same time, the covenant that God has made with Israel is recognized as the presupposition of this historical movement, for the gospel proclaims Jesus as the Christ promised in the old covenant. God has called Israel forth from the nations in order to prepare it for the act of salvation that he then has done in Jesus Christ for all peoples. For that reason, the discovery of the church never means only the discovery of the brothers and sisters living contemporaneously with us. The community of believers is at the same time, by

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its very nature, community with all those who have gone before us in the faith, community with the ancestors. Believers thus come to know themselves as members of God’s people who have been sojourning through the ages, namely, as having been taken into the history of the saving action of God. Thereby, the history of humanity as a whole also steps into a new light. Of course, a person is able to investigate history even apart from faith. The methods of historical research have become more and more sophisticated, and the results of such historical investigation are constantly increasing. The scope of historical knowledge has long since exceeded the possibilities of any individual’s awareness. Today we look back into eons of the history of humanity, about which the writers of the biblical texts had no idea. We survey a history of the unfolding of the human mind and spirit and of a cultural and technical development that shows greater disparities in their succession and juxtaposition than still was assumed a few centuries ago. Beyond the knowledge of historical persons, facts, and processes, the history of humanity is full of manifold attempts at religious and philosophical interpretations of this history. But the more the historical way of knowing pushed beyond the limits of its own cultural domain into foreign ones, and the more it freed itself from traditional values to grasp foreign ones, the interpretations became all the more questionable and violent, and the impression of the meaninglessness of historical becoming and passing away became all the more threatening. The historical way of knowing has not led to the discovery of the meaning of the history of humanity but, one might dare say, to the recognition of the relativity of interpretations, to ideological assaults on that history, and to despair about its meaning.[viii] Through the gospel, the interpretations of that history are being ruptured, just as is the experience of meaninglessness. Through the hope of God’s new creation, the ancient conception of the eternal cycle of historical becoming and passing away is being ruptured, as well as the expectation of constant progress in the history of humanity and also the expectation of the decline of humanity.[ix] Also being refuted are the crippling resignation of the experience of meaninglessness and the recourse of historical thinking to the individual’s existential decision, for the gospel allows us to recognize the history of humanity as the history of God’s struggle for human beings. Of course, the precise results of historical research are not thereby being refuted, but they are removed from previous contexts of interpretation and made evident for what they really are: (a) By faith in the gospel, the history of humanity can be understood not only as a history of the behavior of humans vis-à-vis one another and their environment. In all of this, the crucial issue is behavior vis-à-vis God, from whom human beings receive their life and before whom they are responsible. In his invisible power God attests himself to all people. For that reason, the history of humanity, in its ebb and flow, in its progress and failures, is crucially the history of a struggle with God—the history of the longing for him and of our own attempt to allay this longing, the

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history of reverence before God and of the attempts to adapt ideas about God to our own wants, or to deny God altogether. Into every human heart God has placed the distinction between good and evil. For this reason, human history is a history of the actions of justice and of arbitrariness with which people encounter one another. Our eye cannot remain fascinated by large historical personalities and their effects, nor by the rise of great cultures and empires. For in the eye of faith the many abused, disenfranchised, impoverished, and deceased become important, who have become the victims of violence. The history of the world is filled with the cry for justice, which is violently suppressed by the usurpation of the law. In the calling of Israel God has refuted the arrogance of the historical powers. Here he has smashed the delusion of arbitrary ideas about God and the misuse of the distinction between good and evil. Ultimately, however, the history of humanity has been exposed as the history of rebellion by the crucifixion in which God has come to human beings. Jesus was brought to the cross by Jews and Gentiles. Despite how Jews and Gentiles disagreed about the distinction between right and wrong actions, Paul rendered this judgment, namely, that “all are under the dominion of sin, as it is written: There is no one who is righteous, not even one” (Rom. 3.9f. [S]). As a history of the rebellion against God and of ever-new attempts to justify injustice, the history of humanity stands under the dominion of transience and of God’s judgment. (b) This relationship between rebellion, transience, and death is ruptured by Jesus’ death and resurrection. In the midst of what seem to be new beginnings in the history of humanity, here something completely new has truly begun. He is the one who did not cast blame upon others but in his death entered into the judgment that has befallen humanity, and in his resurrection he was vindicated as the righteous human, the one whom death could not hold fast. In his appearances, the risen Lord encounters human beings as the living one, who is taken from the world-historical context and is no longer bound to the spatial-temporal structure of this world yet does not cease to be there for human beings. As the one who is forgiving, he has led his own out of the experience of meaninglessness and guilt and has sent them to proclaim the good news of the gospel and to call people to faith. In turn, throughout the centuries he sends out all those who have come to faith through the transmission of this message. In this way, by means of the gospel, the exalted Lord gathers the new people of God. Remaining with Christ and advancing into the world is the tool by which God accomplishes the salvation of humanity. The course of the gospel through the world—the growth of the church, the growing of the new humanity that is called forth from the conflicts among the nations, the states, and the races, and placed under the lordship of Christ, and which lives in the expectation of his appearing—this is the mystery of the history of the world. As profound as historical transformations can be, the truly new thing is happening through the gospel. As far-reaching as human decisions can impact history, and as

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impressive as the progress of humanity seems to be, all of that remains just treading water within the domain of death—unless this ban is revoked by faith. (c) But faith knows that God is not only at work bringing about the new creation through the gospel; he is the Lord over the entire history of humanity. Although it is a history of rebellion, God preserves humanity in his patience and gives time and space not only for good works but also for rebellion against him. He does not stop giving people opportunities for using their reason and will, for making inventions and ordering society, even if people arrogantly misuse these opportunities. He respects the freedom of his creatures, even if they turn against him. This divine action in history is full of mystery. Where does one see the successes of good works and the failures of evil ones? Is not the reverse often enough the case? Which events are God’s acts of lovingkindness, and which are his judgments? Even more mysterious than his judgments are his acts of lovingkindness: God preserves and directs humanity, even though it has no claim before him to the continuation of its history in rebellion against him. The apparent weakness in which God lets the rebellion continue is really his patience, in which he grants time for the decision of faith. God’s action in history is aimed at salvation through Christ, at the community of believers, at the church. It is not the preservation of humanity in sin and death but the creation and growth of the new humanity in Jesus Christ—that is the meaning of the history of the world. Thus the knowledge of the history of humanity is crucially the knowledge of the acts that God is doing, despite the misdeeds of people. This knowledge is largely beyond the scope of empirical observation. To be sure, one can investigate the way of the gospel throughout the course of history, but the fact that the living Christ is at work renewing humanity through the gospel seems to be only one conviction among others. Hidden completely is the new humanity. To be sure, the church can be known by everyone as one world religion among others—its beginning and its development, its struggle, its sufferings, its successes, and the given state of its expansion are all knowable—but it is hidden not only under the analogy with other religions but also under its own transgressions and divisions. Precisely the believer can never overlook what is questionable and contradictory about Christianity, both past and present, for whatever the world’s criticism of the church, it is harmless in comparison with the judgment that Jesus Christ levels against the salt that has lost its saltiness, the light that does not shine, and those who merely cry, “Lord, Lord….”2 But at the same time, Christ overcomes the barriers that Christians erect against one another, and he lets the one people of God grow, even though the churches keep on living separated next to one another. He does not leave them at ease in

2 [Cf. Mt. 5.13–16; and 7.21. –Ed.]

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their divisions but opens their eyes to his actions that tower above and beyond the borders of each church body. While faith does not know how much time humanity still has left, it does know that the history of humanity is ultimately and inextricably enclosed by the victory of Jesus Christ, the one who has come and is coming. In the excesses of human history faith already sees the futility with which the world seeks to assert itself over against this Lord. In addition, the knowledge of the history of humanity is not a theoretical knowledge but comes about through historical decision. Through the gospel, we ourselves are taken into that historical movement in which the people of God are growing, namely, hearing and witnessing, receiving and giving, and thus hastening to meet the coming Lord. At the same time, we are taken into that action of patience in which God preserves and governs the world, despite its fallen condition. Not only do we have to proclaim Christ but we must work for justice and peace in human society, whether the gospel is accepted or rejected.

4. The Knowledge of the Universe The history of humanity is at the same time the history of the ever-increasing knowledge of nature and of the control of nature through science and technology. As a result, the natural sciences have gone far beyond what the authors of the biblical writings knew about the natural pre-conditions of their lives. Indeed, it seems as though human beings know more about the non-human natural world than they do about themselves, for what occurs in nature can be rationalized in such a way that it can be grasped in formulas, calculated in advance, and thus also technically mastered, which is impossible to do with human history. The history of research in the natural sciences is also the history of attempts to interpret nature and reconcile its meaning with human self-understanding, be it through mythical worldviews [Weltbilder], philosophical cosmologies, or ideological worldviews [Weltanschauungen] in the modern sense, in which partial scientific findings are used in generalizations in order to grasp the whole of nature. But the unsettling effects of current worldviews—which, in the history of thought, are proceeding from new scientific findings—make clear how closely related such interpretations of the meaning of it all are to the experience of surrendering to meaninglessness. Despite all scientific rationalizing, a basic experience of the unpredictable and the discontinuous remains, and despite all comprehensive hypotheses, humankind is exposed to uncanny powers in the elemental experience of the world.[x] Through the gospel, cosmological myths and systems are no less overcome than is the experience of meaninglessness. The precise findings in the natural sciences are not affected by the gospel, even if they go beyond the statements of the biblical writings or contradict them, but they are set free from interpretive paradigms, and

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within their limits and open-endedness are clear and distinct. Just as the gospel opens up a new understanding of human beings and their history and sheds new light on the results of the empirical sciences (anthropology, sociology, and historical research), so the gospel sheds new light on the results of the natural sciences and opens up the study of human beings as a part of nature. For by faith we come to know the world to be embraced by God, with all its mysteries, its continuities and discontinuities as well as with its finite and infinite aspects of space and time. We come to know everything that we perceive around us, whose causes and effects we explore, as God’s creation. Everything that is, has its origin in God’s action and its continuing existence in God’s activity. No causal process, no evolution, no spontaneity in what transpires in the world would be possible if God had not given this possibility and would not give it again and again. While God does not need the universe in order to be God, the universe remains constantly dependent on God. He has given it its origin and purpose, and he governs it toward this destiny. We come to recognize that human beings are not a random result of genetic mutations and natural selections in the struggle of living things for existence, but rather that God’s creative work is directed toward the genesis of personal spiritual creatures. The peculiar unprotectedness in which human beings are exposed to the world around them through their lack of instinctual ties we recognize as the advantage of their freedom, which normally distinguishes them from inorganic and organic occurrences. Though human beings belong to these occurrences, they are nevertheless elevated above them. Cognitive, spiritual creatures are the purpose and center of the universe—not their existence, however, but their decision for God. Because of the divine address through the gospel, we can be sure that God created us to be his partners, who, in the midst of the mute creation, want to answer him and upon whose call he in turn wants to answer. In addition, the knowledge of the universe is crucially out of reach of empirical verification, even though it concerns knowledge of the same world that we perceive and explore and in which we are constantly faced anew with a questioning about the basis and purpose of this world. By faith in the gospel, however, we recognize the universe to be God’s work. The past, present, and future of nature and history are encompassed by God’s continuous action, indeed by the action of the same God who has accepted our nature and history in Jesus Christ. Thus it is not possible to limit the concept of history to the history of humanity and to separate it from the development of nature, which is incapable of any free personal decision, for all occurrences in the universe, indeed the universe itself, have their basis in the free decision of God. In that respect, one is justified in speaking also about a history of nature. As surely as the universe is distinguished from God as his creation, so God’s action [Wirken] and God’s work [Werk] and in turn the creation’s self-functioning [Eigenwirken] and God’s action are still not to be separated for one moment.

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5. Believing and Knowing[xi] The first chapter dealt with the knowledge of God that comes by faith in the gospel, while the second chapter dealt with the knowledge of the world that comes by this same faith. Indeed, by faith we know the world—ourselves, other human beings, the history of humanity, the universe—to be the act and work of the same God who has revealed himself in Jesus. What is meant here by knowing [Erkennen]? What is the relationship between believing [Glauben] and knowing [Erkennen]? We must distinguish three different ways in which they are related: (a) Believing as Knowing Faith comes from hearing the gospel. Believers trust the gospel, obey it, and in this trusting and obeying receive what the gospel promises; and thus the act of salvation that the gospel proclaims takes place for them. This trusting is not an emotional or voluntary occurrence detached from knowing but is always at the same time a knowing. If faith were reduced to an irrational reverence, to feelings of security or freedom, or to volitional acts of commitment, or to a wager, that would not be Christian faith.[xii] Faith in the gospel is at the same time knowledge, namely, knowledge of God’s historical act of salvation in Jesus Christ, which the gospel proclaims and which happens to the believer through the gospel. Faith is of course a peculiar type of knowing. The gospel is a human word, and yet at the same time it claims to be God’s word. It proclaims the history [Geschichte] of the man Jesus of Nazareth, and at the same time it claims that this history is purely and simply God’s decisive act of salvation. The gospel is the word of the cross, and at the same time it proclaims the scandal of this powerlessness as a demonstration of divine power. Everybody knows that the first statement in each of the above sentences conceals the second statement or seems even to exclude it. In this way, faith is a leap beyond the visible, and the knowing that takes place in faith is paradoxical in the truest sense, for it contradicts what everyone thinks and what appears to be consistent and meaningful for thinking. But that is not all. Indeed, we have not even mentioned what is crucial, for faith does not leap over the earthly, the visible and the audible, in order to leave it behind. But rather, in hearing the human word, it perceives God’s address, and in receiving the earthly elements of water, bread, and wine, it receives salvation. Faith clings to the word proclaimed by human beings as to the word of God, and to the man Jesus as to the God who came to us. Faith notices not only the contradiction between the powerlessness of the visible human form of Jesus and the power of the invisible God, but in this way it recognizes precisely that powerlessness as the revelation of divine power, and the judgment on the cross as the revelation of divine love. Faith thus also comes to recognize in what is questionable about the Easter message the incomparable glory of the risen Lord who proves himself victorious through this very message. Of course, nowhere in the Scriptures are the two sides of the paradox

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equally stressed. Rather, the entire focus is on the revelation that has broken into what is hidden. Although faith alone comes to the knowledge of God via paradox, this knowledge does not consist in meaningless antitheses, nor is it in any way absurd. The message of Christ remains absurd only for the one who denies the faith. Faith, however, recognizes in the contradiction the bending down of divine love and, in the foolishness, the act of divine wisdom. This knowledge is not limited to God’s salvific act in Christ. By faith in the gospel, God is recognized as the same one who has previously acted upon Israel and who then has fulfilled the Old Testament promise in the mission of Jesus. God is at the same time recognized as the one who in the beginning created the universe [das All] in the freedom of his love and who has preserved and guided humankind, despite its opposition to him. As the one who creates anew, he will also fulfill what he has begun in Jesus. As long as we live on earth, we will of course be confronted anew again and again with the offense of the cross, namely, the paradox of divine action. Again and again we have to apprehend salvation anew in this offense and grasp in this paradox the clarity and simplicity of the divine action. “Jesus Christ, …was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes’” (2 Cor. 1.19). Still, we know only by believing, not by seeing. Our ideas are always being ruptured by the unpredictable novelty of divine action. Again and again our understanding of the divine promise is crossed out and surpassed by God’s fulfillment. Knowledge of the divine plan of salvation does not mean that God ceases to encounter us ever anew in his freedom. “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11.33). (b) Believing as the Disruption of Knowing A person does not first become a knower by reason of coming to faith. All people perceive and ponder the surrounding world in which they find themselves. More or less consciously, they also experience and ponder themselves, and are also able to make the rules of their thinking the object of their knowing. Beyond the knowledge of themselves and of their surrounding world, however, their thinking is called into question, in that to all people God bears witness to himself as the invisible Lord. In this way, human knowing takes place in a state of unrest that cannot stop with the individual thing that is known but continues to inquire about the all-encompassing, the whence and the whither, the meaning of humankind and of the world. Moreover, knowing does not stop with the questioning into which it is thrown again and again,[xiii] namely, the questioning about the one who has made human beings as the ones who keep on questioning, and who is to be honored by them as the Lord. But rather, human beings seek again and again to evade this claim by God in order to shield themselves against this being-called-into-question. They do this in that they grant their knowledge about human beings, about nature, and about history an all-encompassing finality. In this way, not only is the question about God answered one way or another—even if God is thereby denied—but

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people will also wager, beyond what is empirically detectable, about the nature, meaning, and purpose of human beings, of history, and of the universe. The history of human knowing is at the same time the history of such frameworks for thinking [Denkgehäuse], in whose meanings humans seek to secure their lives over against the uncertainty of the world that is breaking in upon them and over against the claim of God. Such frameworks [Gehäuse] function to implement not only myths and philosophical and ideological systems but also basic positions, such as skepticism and agnosticism. Faith takes place in the disruption of the kind of knowing in which humans suppose they have answered the question about God and have understood themselves, other human beings, the history of humankind, and the universe. In the horizon of such frameworks for thinking, Jesus appears as a man possessed, his disciples appear as drunken fanatics, the word of the cross as a scandal and foolishness, and the message of the resurrection as a wishful vision or a deception. The gospel, on the one side, and mythical and philosophical notions about God and salvation, on the other, thus stand in opposition to each other. The same holds true for modern ideological worldviews [Weltanschauungen], in which individual results and aspects of empirical knowledge are generalized and made into a totalizing principle of explanation and used in a totalitarian way to rule over human society. Faith knows by not only disassociating itself from such “wisdom” but by “destroying” it (1 Cor. 1.19). This struggle is an unremitting one. A breach must always be made anew. In this sense, faith and reason stand opposed to each other. So it was for the Corinthian congregation in the midst of Hellenistic wisdom and religiosity that “not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise…” (1 Cor. 1.26f.). In this way, reason is pushed back to within its limits by the gospel. The latter does not overturn knowledge that is grounded in the precise observation of nature and history and is made certain through thorough and exacting study of these observations. The believer does not underestimate their significance but recognizes their limitations and provisional character. Neither the question about the purpose of the human being, nor the one about the meaning of history, nor the one about the meaning of scholarly research into nature and history, can be answered empirically or scientifically. Faith, too, does not conflict with the questions that reason asks about God, but only with the errors of the answers that human beings give in order to evade being called into question by God. (c) Believing as Liberation for Knowing When faith disrupts knowing, it makes knowing possible. This is true not only to the extent that faith itself always entails at the same time a kind of knowing, namely, knowledge of God’s salvific action. The liberating function of believing for knowing does not remain restricted to the knowledge of faith itself. On the contrary, faith

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also liberates us for the empirical, rational knowing of the reality in which human beings find themselves, and of their own reality as well. Precisely in this way, the assault of the gospel against hubristic reason leads to the liberation of reason. By faith in the gospel, human beings know themselves to be secure in the midst of the menace and mysterious nature of this world, for God has accepted them in Jesus Christ. By faith in the gospel, human beings who are in the world are liberated from the world. What is now important is that “all things are yours…, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God” (1 Cor. 3.21, 23). Believers need to fear nothing else, apart from God alone, who loves them. So believers no longer need to create myths or ideologies in order to shield and secure themselves. They are now free to face the reality of this world, with its orderings and discontinuities, with its ever-new disruptions and shifting of problems, with all of its unpredictability and incomprehensibility, and to continue questioning and researching. The gospel thus liberates thinking for the knowledge of the world, since believers are free to persist in questioning and researching about the world, free to be ready at any time to let all knowledge be opened up again, and have it corrected by reality, so that the correction itself will likewise be opened up again to further research. ¶The factors that have worked together in the development of the empirical sciences are manifold. In no way, however, can one overlook the fact that they have come to unfold in that realm of humanity in which intellectual history was determined by the Christian faith. The modern empirical sciences have as their presupposition the gospel’s liberation of thinking from myths and other conceptual frameworks. The gospel refutes hubristic reason and points to its limits. But in doing so, it liberates reason to be open and consistent in the questioning and knowing that are appropriate to it. By faith in the gospel, facts have been discovered in this world that were not previously known, matters that were discovered by the presupposition of faith, matters that then, even without faith, have remained valid and unforgettable knowledge. Just as the development of the modern natural sciences is inconceivable without the liberation from the myths and philosophies that obscured the understanding of nature, so also the understanding of history is inconceivable without a similar liberation; for through God’s act of salvation one’s gaze is opened to the unique, the unrepeatable, and the contingent, and openness to what is completely different in the future has been unlocked. Matters and issues that had remained hidden not only to mythical thought but also to ancient philosophy have now become visible so that reason can no longer avoid them. Thus, e. g., from the perspective of the Christian faith, a breakthrough took place regarding the ancient conception of the circular movement of time, which obscured the understanding of history. That was also true for the understanding of anthropology. Given that the optimism regarding the ability of human beings to do good, which was characteristic of Greek philosophy, is refuted by Holy Scripture, and that the fallibility of human

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beings and their bondage to guilt is known in faith, psychological processes and relationships have become visible, which were previously hidden and without which today’s analytic psychology would be unthinkable. The same also applies to other anthropological matters. In the claim of God upon the whole person through his address and in the promise of bodily resurrection, the body-soul wholeness of the person has been recognized in a way that was not possible when Platonic teaching about the soul was dominant. Certain psychosomatic relationships have become visible, the understanding of which is likewise a permanent given today. Beyond all the particular details, however, what counts fundamentally is that by faith in God’s act of salvation, which is grounded not in the world but in God’s free decision, the difference between God and the world is acknowledged and the creatureliness of the world is recognized. The systems that understood God and the cosmos in some way as one entity, or as belonging inseparably together, are shattered. With the knowledge of divine transcendence and contingency, in the sense of an absolute personal freedom (knowledge that was foreign to ancient thought), knowing is opened up to the surprising, to what in nature and history is not derivable from past knowledge, and thus opened to unveiled reality. Thus by believing, not only does a breakthrough take place through knowing but there is also a liberation for knowing itself, indeed for the kind of knowing that not only consists in the knowledge of faith itself but that also occurs through liberated reason when it processes human experience of the self and of its environment. Issues arise, methods are developed, and matters are grasped that were previously unexplored but that are now accessible to research, use, and verification by means of reason and the experience of every individual, whether they believe in Christ or not. Liberation, however, means at the same time that the human beings who make use of such findings remain bound to the gospel and therefore to the commandment of love. Thus, e. g., not everything that people have recognized as feasible through their research in the natural sciences should be realized technologically or put into action if it goes against life that is preserved by God. This effect of the faith on scientific knowing means that the knowledge of faith not only holds its own against philosophical knowing but it also liberates such knowing. The Augustinian-Anselmian tenet “credo ut intelligam” [I believe in order to understand],3 when it is carried out, is not restricted to the knowledge of the creed itself, but has also influenced the knowledge of humankind, the world, and God, as that knowledge is given to the thinking of every person on the basis of reason and experience.[xiv] In the High Middle Ages, the program of a universal

3 Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, I. [PL, 158.223f.; Proslogium, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, 2d ed., trans. S. N. Deane (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1962), 53. –Ed.]

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knowledge of reason made possible by faith was especially and impressively championed by Bonaventure.4 “Because it is these three that impede the apprehension of the truth, namely, the presumption of the senses, the conflict of opinions, and the desperation to find the truth, that is why Christ calls out to all of this: ‘Only one is your master, Christ.’”5 After Bonaventure enumerated and traversed all of the scholarly disciplines and treated the lumen cognitionis sensitivae [the light of knowledge from the senses] and the lumen cognitionis philosophiae [the light of knowledge from philosophy], which make the individual scholarly disciplines possible, he ultimately led all of that light to the one lumen superius scripturae [the light of the higher Scripture] and thus to the voice of Christ, to the Word of God that has become flesh.[xv] Only by faith in Christ is the knowledge of truth in all of the scholarly disciplines possible. These diverse disciplines cannot be brought into a unity on their own. Bonaventure most urgently appeals to researchers in all disciplines: “Unless you believe, you will not understand.”6 There is now no longer only a philosophizing in which people, through their self-chosen answers, evade God who is calling them into question through a vast set of problems. There is also another philosophizing that remains open to God and forgoes anticipating in their self-chosen teaching what God in his freedom reveals. Such philosophizing with liberated reason is possible in two different ways. While they have in fact often overlapped in intellectual history, they are fundamentally different. The one way has been taken, above all, through the critical reception of Stoic thought and of Platonism, while the other has gone the route of Aristotelianism. The one way begins with the Logos that is interpreted christologically and

4 It is found in condensed form in his sermon on Matthew 23.10, “Unus est magister, Christus” [“Only One Is Our Teacher, Christ”], in the anthology of Bonaventure’s writings, De cognitionis humanae ratione annecdota quaedam seraphici doctoris Sancti Bonaventurae et nonnullorum ipsius discipulorum [On the Knowing of Human Reason, Certain Annecdotes of the Seraphic Doctor, St. Bonaventure, and Some of His Students], ed. Brothers of the College of St. Bonaventure (Quaracchi, Italy: College of St. Bonaventure, 1883), 73ff.; and further described in his Commentary on the Sentences and the smaller work, De reductione artium ad theologiam [On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology], in Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonavenurae opera omnia, 10 vols., ed. Brothers of the College of St. Bonaventure (Quaracchi, Italy: College of St. Bonaventure, 1882–1902), 5.319ff. [The commentary by Bonaventure (ca. 1217–1274) on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (ca. 1100–1160) is found in the first four volumes of this edition. For an English translation of the sermon on Matt. 23, see “Christ, the One Teacher of All,” in What Manner of Man? Sermons on Christ by St. Bonaventure, trans. and ed. Zachary Hayes (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1974), 21–46. –Ed.] 5 Bonaventure, “Unus est magister, Christus,” De cognitionis, 84. [“Quoniam ergo haec tria sunt, quae impediunt ad perceptionem veritatis, videlicet praesumtio sensuum, et dissensio sententiarum, et desperatio inveniendi verum, ideo his obvians Christus dicet: unus est magister”; “Christ, the One Teacher of All,” 46 (trans. modified). –Ed.] 6 Bonaventure, “Unus est magister, Christus,” De cognitionis, 79. [“Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis”; cf. “Christ, the One Teacher of All,” 35. –Ed.]

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with ideas that are interpreted theologically, while the other begins with experience. The first way is the older one, since it began in the philosophizing of the ancient church, whereby statements of faith were asserted as explicit arguments for philosophical thinking. The second way was significantly and fundamentally taken first by Thomas Aquinas. In contrast to Bonaventure, Thomas held that the knowledge of philosophical truth and true philosophical knowledge of God are possible by means of reason as such, without faith.[xvi] In modern intellectual history there developed in general an understanding of philosophy whereby thinkers confined philosophical argumentation exclusively to reason and experience. Consequently, one has to ask initially how such philosophizing takes place on the basis of the presupposition of faith. Such philosophizing has to question everything that is empirically given and normatively valid, to expose problems in their entirety and make them known, to analyze the methods of knowing with respect to their presuppositions and limits, to review critically those philosophical answers that have already been given, and to inquire vigilantly about the motives and contents of philosophies and ideologies, etc. While every philosophy is faced with this task, it can be done more consistently, more comprehensively, and more radically in the freedom of faith because here philosophical thinking does not depend on arbitrarily settled answers. That kind of philosophizing will thus break through solidified structures of thinking toward an openness to the vastness of the questions by which human beings are called into question in the midst of the world, especially toward an openness to the God who is calling all human beings into question. Proceeding from the presuppositions of the human mind and its experience of its environment and of itself, it will persevere in radical inquiry without arbitrary answers, recognizing how human beings are called into question, and thus honor God, who wants to be honored by human reason as the invisible one, as the one who is seeking. In addition, however, again and again there has been such philosophizing—even in modern intellectual history—which uses not only reason and experience but also statements of the Christian faith in its arguments. This is the case to a greater extent in Eastern Christian philosophy than in Western. Here we need to draw particular attention to modern Russian philosophers of religion, such as Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky, and Viktor Nesmelov.7 But even in the history of

7 Cf. how already in his early writings (1878–81) Solovyov addressed philosophical principles, ethics, and social teaching under the title, Vorlesungen über das Gottmenschentum, in the German complete edition, 8 vols., ed. Wladimir Szylkarski, Wilhelm Lettenbauer, and Ludolf Müller (Freiberg i. Br.: Wewel, 1953–1979), vol. 1, pt. 2 [ET: Lectures on Divine Humanity, ed. Boris Jakim, trans. Peter Zouboff (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1995) –Ed.]; cf. Florensky’s conception of a universal “philosophy of discontinuity,” which was developed in connection with his 1914 work, Der Pfeiler und die Grundfeste der Wahrheit, in Östliches Christentum: Dokumente, vol. 2, ed. Nikolai von Bubnoff

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modern Western philosophy, thinkers have again and again come to the fore who do not restrict themselves merely to putting forth arguments that derive from the presuppositions of reason and common human experience, but who have also put forth arguments on the basis of statements of faith. Here faith not only remains a presupposition for rational inquiry but in addition it is brought to bear with respect to its content, be it as a whole or in individual assertions. In this way, Johann Georg Hamann developed a philosophy of language that explicitly acknowledged the revealed divine word; Søren Kierkegaard carried out a philosophical-existential analysis of anxiety that explicitly refers to the doctrine of original sin; and Ferdinand Ebner outlined a philosophy of personal encounter that proceeds from the divine address.8 In principle, it is also possible to develop a philosophical anthropology from the biblical doctrine of the image of God, or a philosophy of law and social

and Hans Ehrenberg (Munich: Beck, 1925), 28ff. [ET: The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters, trans. Boris Jakim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997) –Ed.]; and in Nesmelov’s 1905–06 work, Die Wissenschaft vom Menschen [The Science of the Human Being], in Vom Sinn des Lebens [On the Meaning of Life], Russische Religionsphilosophen 2, ed. Nicolai Bubnoff (Köln: Hegner, 1968), 11ff. [Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900) was a Russian-Orthodox philosopher, theologian, and literary critic. As a child, he was deeply religious. During his teenage years, he moved into a period of passionate, negative atheism. His return to faith began with his serious engagement with the ideas of Spinoza. Solovyov later played a key role in the development of Russian philosophy in the final decades of the nineteenth century. His public lectures on divine humanity, delivered in St. Petersburg between 1878 and 1881, were attended by many of the leading Russian intellectuals of the time, including Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (1882–1937) was a Russian-Orthodox priest, theologian, aesthetician, mathematician, and physicist. Raised in a non-religious home, he experienced a mystical dream of existential darkness and nihilism through which he sensed the name of God. He was attracted to both mystical intuition and scientific understanding. He taught theology (developing important themes from Solovyov) and, after the revolution, art history. In 1933 he was sentenced to ten years in a labor camp. He was executed in 1937. Viktor Nesmelov (1863–1937) was a Russian-Orthodox theologian. –Ed.] 8 See Søren Kierkegaard, Der Begriff der Angst, eine simple psychologisch-wegweisende Untersuchung in der Richtung auf das dogmatische Problem der Erbsünde von Vigilius Haufniensis (Copenhagen, 1844), in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 11 and 12, ed. Emanuel Hirsch and Hayo Gerdes, trans. Emanuel Hirsch (Düsseldorf: Diederichs, 1952) [ET from the Danish original: The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin (June 17, 1844) by Vigilius Haufniensis, ed. and trans. Reidar Thomte, in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). –Ed.]; and Ferdinand Ebner, Das Wort und die geistigen Realitäten: Pneumatologische Fragmente [The Word and Spiritual Realities: Spiritual Fragments] (Innsbruck: Brenner, 1921; Wien: Herder, 1952; Baden-Baden: Suhrkamp, 1980). [ET: The Word and the Spiritual Realities: A Translation of and Critical Introduction to Ferdinand Ebner´s “Das Wort und die geistigen Realitäten” and a Comparison with Martin Buber´s “Ich und Du,” trans. Harold Johnson Green (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1980). Schlink did not provide a citation for Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88), but in general see Johann Georg Hamann, Briefwechsel (Correspondence), 7 vols., ed. Arthur Henkel (Wiesbaden: Insel, 1955–75) and Karl Hermann Gildemeister, ed., Johann Georg Hamann’s Briefwechsel mit Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (J. G. Hamann’s Correspondence with

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philosophy from the revealed law of God. One cannot dispute that such projects involve philosophical work, even if for the unbeliever the assertions of faith that are employed in them might thereby have only a hypothetical character. Believers, however, are thus certain that they can arrive at a more realistic understanding of the world and of themselves than if they restrict themselves merely to reason and experience—even if the results of such philosophizing retain the character of a sketch, of an answer that is dependent on the current state of empirical scientific research, and therefore only tentative, something that can never be advocated with the same certainty as the creed of the church itself. One cannot deny that such philosophies have given rise to discoveries that other philosophers who have rejected the presupposition of faith could not evade (cf., e. g., the influence of Kierkegaard on twentieth-century existentialist philosophy). (d) Theological Research The relationship between believing and knowing should not be reduced to any of the three definitions discussed above. None of them can be isolated from the others. Believing is knowing in that it disrupts knowing and liberates one for knowing. In reality, the history of Christian thought has taken place in the context of the interconnection of these three definitions of the relationship between believing and knowing. Indeed, there has been no lack of one-sidedness in that history, whether it be an emphasis merely on how faith functions to disrupt knowledge or merely on how it liberates knowing. Thus, in the ancient church, the sharp rejection of philosophy by Tertullian stood opposed to the designation of theology as true philosophy by the Apologists and Clement of Alexandria.[xvii] So also later, on the one hand, every philosophy was rejected as the enemy of the faith and, on the other hand, the knowledge of faith has been repeatedly identified with philosophy. The very different definitions of the relationship between reason and faith that have been advanced throughout Christian intellectual history, as well as of that between philosophy and theology, are a testimony to the unstoppable movement of thought that is inspired by the gospel. At the same time, philosophical concepts and systems that have been disrupted, reshaped, and put into service by the gospel, can in turn, in a changed intellectual situation, prove to be a prison that must be disrupted and liberated anew. This is true not only of the use of Aristotelianism in the High Middle Ages but also of idealist philosophy in the nineteenth century. However, where the knowledge of faith grows weary in the action of disrupting and liberating the knowledge of reason, it either enters the ghetto of biblical and dogmatic fundamentalism or the imprisonment of a philosophical system. In both cases, it continues to owe the world the living word of God.

F. H. Jacobi) (Gotha: Perthes, 1868). For the critical edition of Hamann’s works, see Johann Georg Hamann, Sämmtliche Werke, 6 vols., ed. Josef Nadler (Vienna: Herder, 1949–57). –Ed.]

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In this twofold action of disrupting and liberating, theological research likewise takes place. By its very nature, faith in the gospel insists on the cognitive unfolding of the faith. Because God encounters human beings in the gospel, knowledge of the faith is not restricted to God’s salvific act in Jesus’ death and resurrection but extends to statements about the comprehensive totality of divine acts in world history and about God himself. At the same time, this unfolding includes the task of examining the knowledge of faith itself. Consequently, arising from these considerations are four lines of theological inquiry: (1) Faith inquires about its historical basis. Because the gospel is the message about a unique event, faith necessarily follows a line of inquiry from the message that is heard back to the original witnesses of this history, and then from their testimonies further back to the history itself to which they bear witness. Since these witnesses proclaimed Jesus as the promised Christ, faith entails at the same time a line of inquiry back to the Scriptures of the Old Testament. (2) Believers also inquire about the historical way in which the original testimony came to them. They inquire about the forms in which the message about Christ has been further proclaimed, about the historical fronts to which those forms have advanced, and about the demarcations by which they have been maintained or perhaps weakened. Faith thus inquires about the history of the church. (3) Faith inquires about the unity of the various witnesses to Christ, which already in the era of early Christianity and throughout the history of the church was expressed through a great multiplicity of voices. At the same time, faith thereby inquires about what this joint witness means in the midst of the fronts of its own time, in the midst of the present issues of thought and action. (4) Faith inquires about the word with which we today have to respond to God for his act of salvation and with which we have to bear witness to that act vis-à-vis other human beings. Faith inquires about “the how” of the service that we owe God and about how we should help others in their concrete situation, in their moments of pride and despair. These are the basic issues that the believer has to face at all times, each of which involves a multitude of other issues. That these four lines of theological inquiry are essential and necessary is independent of whether they are pursued as an undivided unity or through separate theological disciplines. Early on, the exegesis of biblical books was carried out in tandem with the systematizing of doctrine, which first took place in catechetical instruction and later in comprehensive accounts of Christian doctrine, but up to the eighteenth century, biblical theology, the history of dogma, dogmatics, and ethics were amalgamated in these accounts. Only afterwards did biblical theology and the history of dogma begin to become independent, and the five basic theological disciplines of today were created: Old Testament, New Testament, church history (including the history of dogma), systematic theology, and practical theology, along with their sub- and ancillary disciplines. As necessary

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and fruitful as the differentiation and critical juxtaposition of these disciplines are, their being made independent of each other has nevertheless brought with it the danger that the unity of theology is lost. The separation of Old Testament theology and New Testament theology has proved particularly problematic. Wherever the four basic issues are followed, the existing knowledge of faith is subjected to an examination that both confirms and corrects that knowledge. This is readily apparent when the message that is heard is measured against the historical, original biblical message. But this is also the case when possible interpretations of the biblical witnesses that had been forgotten become evident in the study of church history and the history of dogma, and lead to a better understanding of the message. It is also a matter of confirming and correcting the knowledge of faith when inquiring about the unity of the witness and its significance in the midst of the challenges of the present, for it becomes clear in these considerations to what extent the confession of faith has truly taken up the whole scope of the witness or only individual elements in it, truly the center or only peripheral statements of early Christian witnesses and later ones. It must become clear whether the message of Christ has been heard only in an individualistic way or in response to the issues posed to the thinking and actions of the human community. Finally, we notice the limits of our knowledge of the faith when we inquire about how we have to direct the message of Christ to other human beings in their concrete social and political situation. The above-mentioned four issues are so vital for clarifying the knowledge of the faith and for serving believers in the world that all cognitive faculties are to be used that could be helpful in addressing them. In this way, when theological research inquires about the biblical witnesses and the history to which they bear witness, it makes use of the methods, aids, and results of philological and historical scholarship. The same is true when inquiring about the course of the message of Christ through the centuries. Likewise, when inquiring about the unity of the witness and its significance for the present, one cannot ignore the efforts of scholars in their philosophical thinking to make people aware of the issues in their context and to address them. Moreover, when inquiring about the concrete word that is to be proclaimed and, beyond that, inquiring about the service that the church owes the world, theology must be important to everything that contributes to the knowledge of the inner and external situation of other human beings. In carrying out this task of examining and clarifying the knowledge of the faith, theology has diligently used the best and most sophisticated methods, and it has availed itself of the current state of knowledge in the other scholarly disciplines. Those undertaking this task have always been most clearly aware of the languages in which the biblical writings were written, and thus aware of the task of translating and interpreting them. In addition, however, basically no scholarly discipline, including also the natural sciences, is unimportant for clarifying the knowledge of the faith. After all,

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is not theological knowledge at the same time nothing less than the whole matter of understanding humankind and the world? For the knowledge of the faith is simply about God as the Lord, and thus about his reign, and about this very same world that is the object of the empirical sciences. The same humankind, the same history, the same nature, which are the objects studied by the non-theological scholarly disciplines are also the objects studied by theology. When such examining and clarifying of the knowledge of the faith takes place with methodical rigor, by linking thinking to the gospel and thus to Holy Scripture, and by using all the available ways of knowing, we call this endeavor at knowing theological scholarship [theologische Wissenschaft]. The use of non-theological scholarship by theology would not be in earnest if it only proceeded apologetically, that is, if theology would expect only a confirmation of its own positions from those non-theological disciplines. Rather, theological research has to subject its own positions to the criticism that arises from the exact methods and results of the other scholarly disciplines. An understanding of biblical passages that proves to be philologically untenable has to be put aside, even if it is well-known and if important doctrinal statements have been based on it. A conception of Jesus’ life that turns out to be historically untenable—through inquiry that moves from the Gospels back to the oldest traditions and, again, from the Gospels to their underlying history—must be corrected, even if such an image of Jesus is widespread in piety. Traditions that call themselves apostolic must be examined to see if they really are apostolic, etc. Theological statements must also be subjected to philosophical criticism so that it becomes clear to what extent they preserve only past intellectual conflicts or bear witness to the present Lord who today calls people into question and is the answer. Ministry to other human beings must, in turn, be ready to let itself be informed by psychology and sociology regarding the concrete conditions in which it finds people whom the church has to serve. One could say more here, but even so it is already clear that the non-theological scholarly disciplines are of considerable importance to theology. In no way can it avoid them, for then it would not only be an unclarified faith but also one that is presumptuous. The danger of self-confident systems that make us blind to God’s claim today exists not only in philosophy but also in theology. When the other scholarly disciplines shake the self-confidence of theology, they force theology to do what it is obligated to do, for again and again believers have to surrender their knowledge of God to God in order to let it be purified, clarified, and unfolded by him. If believers were to stop growing in this process, they would no longer be expecting the coming day of revelation. At the same time, of course, theology has to distinguish carefully between what it encounters as accurate results from the other disciplines and what is only a hypothesis or even an unjustified assertion. It will have to remember especially that the discipline of history (including its methods), which is so important to theology, depends on presuppositions that theology cannot prove in a scholarly way. There is no scholarly discipline that is free of presuppositions. The subjects who are researching, together with their pre-understanding,

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are always implicit in the results. This is especially true regarding judgments about the reliability of traditions and thus about the facticity of the events handed down in them, for these judgments presuppose a pre-understanding of what can be considered historically possible and impossible. If researchers are not aware of the hypothetical-heuristic significance of their presuppositions, that unawareness can blind them to grasping the reality of the divine action in history and thus also to recognizing it. Here theology has, for its part, a critical function vis-à-vis the other scholarly disciplines, not only for the sake of safeguarding the faith but also for the sake of the other disciplines. It must make people aware of prejudices and ideologies as such, for what they are, and thus help the other disciplines to continue in the openness of radical questioning. In all the domains of knowledge, theology has to keep open the space for questioning.

In theological scholarship, this is the way the twofold movement that is characteristic of the relationship between believing and knowing continues, namely, believing is knowing, in that it both disrupts knowledge and at the same time liberates one for knowing. This movement does not restrict itself to the relationship between the knowledge of faith and the knowledge of reason but is also to be carried out in clarifying the knowledge of faith itself through theological research, for again and again believers have to let their knowledge of God and of the world be purified and clarified anew by God. In this way, theology and the other scholarly disciplines belong together. But their relationship is not adequately grasped by the medieval designation of philosophy as the handmaid of theology since it is rather a matter of mutual service to one another. In view of this close connection, it seems almost natural that again and again theological scholarship and the other scholarly disciplines let themselves be absorbed into one another. At times in the ancient church and in medieval scholasticism it could seem as if philosophy, which then included the natural and human sciences [Geisteswissenschaften], was not only subordinate to theology but absorbed into it, and then in modern times the reverse danger arose, namely, of an absorption of theology into the non-theological disciplines. In this way, the notion could arise that viewed biblical scholarship as if it were a special field of philosophy and the study of Oriental and Hellenistic religion; church history as if it were a special branch of general intellectual and religious history; dogmatics as if it were a part of the philosophy of religion; and practical theology as if it were a specialty of psychagogy, of the study of communications, etc.[xviii] Obviously, what theology studies is at the same time also studied by the above-mentioned scholarly disciplines, and its research must also be carried out using the methods developed by these other disciplines. And yet theological scholarship is fundamentally distinguished from them. Whereas historical research and philosophical thinking can be undertaken with the most varied kinds of pre-understandings, theological research takes place with the pre-understanding of faith in the gospel as an axiomatically valid truth and in the confidence that the sovereign God, even

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today, is acting through this gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit. The theme of theology is ultimately again and again only one, namely, God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ and the mystery of God’s entire action in world history disclosed in that salvific act. Theology’s themes are not humankind, history, or nature in and of itself but the actions through which God has enacted all this and through which he continues to act, despite opposition from his creatures. And thus the theme of theology is the God who is worshiped as the triune God on the basis of his salvific action. If, however, theological scholarship understands itself to be a branch of general religious studies or of philosophy or of the other scholarly disciplines, then it still not only owes believers the service of examining and clarifying their knowledge of the faith, but it also fails to serve the other scholarly disciplines, a service that faith must provide for human knowing. The necessity of the distinction also holds true for the philosophizing that takes place in the faith. It seems most difficult with regard to the above-mentioned second path, in which the philosophizing bases its argumentation not only on reason and experience but also on the knowledge of faith. The question arises whether this second way of philosophizing is already to be designated as theology. As a matter of fact, philosophy and theology have again and again overlapped here; and to a great extent, especially in Western intellectual history, this kind of philosophizing has not taken place alongside of theology but within it, especially within fundamental theology and dogmatics. But the fact cannot be overlooked that dogmatics has thus often been overburdened by this philosophizing so that its proper theme has often been obscured. For often enough, time-bound concepts for understanding the world and human beings have been put forth with the same authoritative claim as the doctrine of God and his acts. This has happened in very different ways, for example, when the Holy Scriptures have been used to answer questions that really are assigned to empirical and scientific research so that the Bible has been wrongly treated as a lexicon of all possible knowledge in the natural and historical sciences, whereas it is after all the collection of the authoritative witnesses to God’s acting in nature and history. Or it has happened when dogmatics has absorbed the current state of scientific knowledge and philosophical concepts and made that the content of the doctrine of God and his acts. There is no doubt that in this way dogmatics has often entered into liaisons that have had—with the emergence of new insights from the empirical sciences and of new philosophical questions—a negative impact on the proclamation of the gospel as well as on the unfolding of the non-theological scholarly disciplines. Many cosmological, historical, and anthropological statements that have been made into dogmatic statements would have been more appropriately designated philosophical statements, and some contradictions between dogmatic statements, when viewed more precisely, are differences between philosophical systems. Often enough dogmatics has erected a spurious offense by being tied to past philosophies, and thus it has failed to address the questions that its contemporaries are raising. Obviously, there is no “theologia perennis” [“lasting theology”]. Even if God’s salvific act in Jesus Christ is final, and Christ is proclaimed as “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13.8), dogmatics is to be carried out by adopting again and again the methods and insights of a given time, as

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well as by advancing again and again into the thinking of its given world. And yet dogmatic statements, if they are really relevant, do not have the character of a proposal in the same way that philosophical statements have, for the emphasis is of another order. Dogmatics is focused on the confession of Christ and thereby on the confession of the triune God. This means that conjointly its theme is the unity of believers who confess God, as well as the clarification and removal of that which prevents them from reaching consensus in that confession.

So, theology and the other scholarly disciplines are not to be separated from each other but distinguished from one another. While theology can, to be sure, assist the other disciplines by liberating them for research, it cannot replace them. They in turn can, to be sure, help theology by examining and clarifying its knowledge, but they cannot demonstrate the truth of the faith. The certainty of faith is grounded solely in God’s revelation. Thus the close interrelationship between theology and the other scholarly disciplines encompasses in a specific irreversibility manifold reciprocal, critical, and supportive functions, which cannot be grasped by only one definition of the relationship between reason and faith. Because theological scholarship has faith in the gospel as its presupposition, and because the scholarly examination, clarification, and unfolding of the knowledge of faith never makes faith unnecessary, here in this volume—in agreement with widespread linguistic usage—not only is scholarly theological knowledge to be designated as theological knowledge but so also is the basic knowledge of the faith. And, in this broader sense, such basic statements of faith, e. g., prayer and worship, are also to be designated as theological statements.

Editor’s Notes to Chapter 2 [i] [ii] [iii] [iv] [v]

Cf. Calvin (1509–1564), ICR, I.1–2 (1.35–43). Cf. Schlink, “Die Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.58 (ESW, 1.102). Cf. Schlink, “Die Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.57 (ESW, 1.101). Cf. Schlink, “Die Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.58 (ESW, 1.102). Schlink’s neologism, Neuschöpfer, will normally be translated literally as “the New Creator,” especially in a trinitarian context, to maintain the triune echo. In a few other other contexts, however, this term will be translated as “the one who creates anew.” Schlink’s theology of the Spirit resonates with themes in the great Latin hymn, “Veni creator spiritus” (“Creator Spirit, Heavenly Dove” [ELW 577, ELW 578]), possibly composed by Rhabanus Maurus (776–856). In the Erfurt Enchiridia (1524), Martin Luther included a translation, “Komm, Gott Schöpfer, heiliger Geist” (“Come, God Creator, Holy Spirit”).

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[vi] Cf. Schlink, “Christus—die Hoffnung für die Welt” (“Christ—the Hope for the World”), SÖB, 1/1.214 (ESW, 1.269). [vii] Schlink’s use of the informal second person pronoun (Du [sing.] and Ihr [pl.]) will normally be translated throughout this essay as “Thou,” since he used the term in a way that explicitly links to Martin Buber’s understanding of the I-Thou relationship. Cf. footnote 6 in chap. 26. As a term of address to God in prayer, however, Du will be translated as “you.” [viii] Schlink knew about this despair from first-hand experience. [ix] Here Schlink was likely alluding to Oswald Spengler’s book, The Decline of the West, published between 1918 and 1922. For the bibliographic details, see editor’s note 3 at the end of chap. 9. Written in the wake of the First World War, Spengler’s book set forth a pessimistic view of European civilization. He was largely guided by insights from Johann v. Goethe (1749–1832) and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), especially the latter’s view of an eternal cycle in which cultures flourish and decline. Spengler thus rejected the notion of a linear progression to history and saw European civilization as undergoing serious decline. The world war was merely one symptom of that decline. He argued that a specific culture (e. g., “German culture”) flourishes on the soil of a definable vista and dies when that culture has exhausted all its possibilities. [x] The rest of this subsection summarizes points that Schlink had emphasized in the final pages of his 1959 essay, “Zum Gespräch des christlichen Glaubens mit der Naturwissenschaft” [On the Dialogue between Christian Faith and Natural Science], which was published as a chapter in Medicus Viator: Fragen und Gedanken am Wege Richard Siebecks - Eine Festgabe seiner Freunde und Schüler zum 75. Geburtstag [Wayfaring Doctor: Questions and Thoughts on the Path of Richard Siebeck - A Celebratory Gift from his Friends and Students on the Occasion of his 75th Birthday] (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck]; Stuttgart: Georg Thieme, 1959), 273–295 (see esp. 288–295). Cf. Schlink’s earlier essay, “Thesen über Theologie und Naturwissenschaften” [Theses about Theology and the Natural Sciences], Evangelische Theologie 7 (1947): 93–94. Schlink’s notion of the “disruption” or “rupture” [Durchbrechung] of knowing through divine revelation was initially developed in his post-doctoral theological dissertation (Habilitationsschrift), Der Mensch in der Verkündigung der Kirche: Eine dogmatische Untersuchung, Hab. diss., University of Giessen, 1934; rev. ed. (Munich: Kaiser, 1936), esp. 66ff. He also then made use of this analysis in his later essay on the structure of the dogmatic statement (cf. SÖB, 1/1.24–79, esp. 61ff. [ESW, 1.67–125, esp. 105ff.]). [xi] Schlink here made use of material he had published in an earlier essay, “Die drei Grundbeziehungen zwischen Glauben und Erkennen” [The Three Basic Relationships between Believing and Knowing], Kerygma und Dogma 23 (1977): 172–187.

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[xii] There may be an allusion here to positions that would be familiar to the German reader, e. g., to Rudolf Otto (1869–1937; faith as irrational reverence), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804; faith as an act of the will), Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834; faith as the feeling of absolute dependence on God), and Blaise Pascal (1623–1662; faith as a wager). [xiii] Here Schlink may have been alluding to the metaphor of “thrownness” (Geworfenheit) that Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) used to explain the mystery of human existence, namely, that we are “thrown” into “being.” “Thrownness” refers to all of the factors that constitute human existence, over which people have no say, about which they are not asked, into which they find themselves “thrown”: e. g., one’s body, gender, family, sibling constellation, race, nation, etc. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 174ff., 219–224. [xiv] The Latin phrase by Anselm (1033–1109) is “Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam” (“I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand”). Anselm here alluded to the Septuagint version of Isaiah 7:9b: “καὶ ἐὰν μὴ πιστεύσητε, οὐδὲ μὴ συνῆτε” [“kai ean mē pisteusēte, oude mē sunēte”] (“Unless you believe, you shall not understand”). This Anselmian approach to faith and reason is often shortened to the motto, “fides quaerens intellectum” (“faith seeking understanding”), which had been the original title of the Proslogium. Cf. Schlink’s earlier essay, “Anselm und Luther: Eine Studie über den Glaubensbegriff in Anselms Proslogion” [Anselm and Luther: A Study of the Concept of Faith in Anselm’s Proslogium], in Welt-Luthertum von Heute: Anders Nygren Gewidmet [World Lutheranism Today: Dedicated to Anders Nygren], ed. Yngve Brilioth (Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyreles; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1950), 269–293. Much earlier than Anselm, Augustine of Hippo (354–430) devised a similar formula: “…noli quaerere intelligere ut credas, sed crede ut intelligas” (“Do not seek to understand in order to believe but believe that you may understand”) (Augustine, Homily 29 [on Jn. 7.14–18], in CCSL, 36.287 [WSA, III/12.493 (trans. modified)]). See also Augustine, Sermon 43 (on 2 Pet. 1.17–18, but with significant attention to Isa. 7.9), in CCSL, 41.508–512, where the final sentence reads: “Intellige, ut credas, verbum meum; crede, ut intelligas, verbum dei” (“understand, that you may believe my word; believe, that you may understand the word of God” (512; WSA, III/2.243 [trans. modified]). This sentence is often shortened to the motto, “understand that you may believe; believe that you may understand.”

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[xv]

[xvi] [xvii]

[xviii]

Schlink’s inaugural lecture, “Das Szepter der Universität Heidelberg: Christus und die Fakultäten” [The Scepter of Heidelberg University: Christ and the Faculties], which he delivered in 1947, offers an extended analysis of this notion by Bonaventure. To illustrate his point, Schlink drew attention to Heidelberg University’s fourteenth-century scepter. On top of the heavy, gold-covered silver staff is a stylized, open-sided cube, a miniature room in which the twelve-year-old Jesus is teaching four figures who sit in a semi-circle. These figures represent the four university faculties: philosophy, law, medicine, and theology. None of the four sits higher or lower than any of the others. None is teaching the others. Only Christ does so. He is teaching from an open Bible—the Hebrew Scriptures—and the four faculties are listening to him on an equal plane. Christ is thus represented as the teacher of the university as a whole. It is worth noting, too, that none of the four disciplines is listening solely to what Christ is teaching from the Hebrew Scriptures. Each discipline has its own focus and responsibilities in relation to Christ. For this essay, see SÖB, 5.125–146. For a picture of the scepter and an analysis of Schlink’s inaugural lecture, see Becker, “Christ in the University: Schlink’s Vision,” 12–21. See, e. g., Aquinas, ST, I.1.1, 2, 8; and I.2. Tertullian was well educated in literature and rhetoric before he converted to the Christian faith around 197. A rigorous polemicist, moralist, and leading theologian in the early Western Church, he eventually became a Montanist. “Though influenced by Stoicism and willing to use philosophy as a tool, he distrusted it as a source of truth” (ODCC, 1592). Clement of Alexandria, like other Greek Apologists, defended Christian truth against pagan criticisms. His theology is grounded in the divine Logos, who exposes the errors and immorality of Greek religion, leads the baptized to the true religion (Christianity), trains them in virtue, and educates them to grasp deeper spiritual teaching. Throughout his writings, Clement made us of Middle Platonism to expound what he held to be the deeper truths of the Christian faith (see ODCC, 364). Psychagogy (lit. “guidance of the soul”), a precursor to modern psychology, is a psycho-therapeutic method for changing human behavior through the suggestion of positive life goals. Schlink would have learned about this method during his study of clinical psychology at the University of Marburg.

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1. The Basic Forms of the Theological Statement[i] The divine address that goes forth through the gospel cannot stand without the response of the one who believes. The knowledge of God’s act of salvation, which is proclaimed and takes place through the gospel, calls for the “Yes” to this act of salvation. If God’s love has come to us in his word, then we in turn now have to respond with a word of reciprocal love. Whoever were to refuse to give the response of faith would soon enough lose faith itself. The response of faith is twofold, namely, the address to God and the address to the neighbor. The response to the call of the gospel is prayer to God and bearing witness to people. The two responses are not to be separated from one another, although they do not address the same Thou—indeed both are as different from one another as heaven and earth.[ii] Nevertheless, the one address cannot exist without the other. The inner connection between the two responses is reflected in the fact that prayer as intercession is expressed on behalf of other human beings, even if they are not addressed here, and in the fact that the blessing, even though it is spoken to other people, is carried by the plea for God’s blessing. That prayer and witness belong inseparably together is seen most clearly in the original act of responding faith, namely, in confession. Prayer and witness come together here in a single call. In order to examine the structure of the dogmatic statement, it is essential first of all to consider the different forms of the response of faith to the gospel that is heard and to pay attention especially to their varying pronominal structure. In this connection we must focus on systematically identifying the most elementary, basic forms that underlie the plethora of faith responses in the Old and New Testaments. (a) Prayer is the response to the gospel in the address of the divine Thou. In this response the believer grasps the work of salvation that is proclaimed and occurring through the gospel—one grasps it as having happened for oneself and as empowering oneself, and one lays claim on it as one’s own. Prayer is based on the act of God for the sinner and in turn bears witness to this act before God, indeed, as it is fitting to God. Believers confess themselves to be unworthy, they thank God for his act of salvation, and in appealing to it they plead for the action of God. As in the Old Testament Psalter, where Israel’s deliverance from Egypt is always praised anew, where God is thanked for it, and where in the appeal to that act—and thereby to God’s revealed name—further acts on behalf of God’s nation and its members are being requested, so similarly the response of the New Testament community to

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God’s act of salvation in Christ takes hold of this act in ever-new thankfulness and petition, doing so with praise and prayer in the name of Jesus (cf. Jn. 14.13f. and 16.23ff.). In this name, believers may call upon God as their Father, come before him in childlike confidence, and ask for anything, since he already knows what they need. Believers thus respond to God in such a way that they call upon God as “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (e. g., 2 Cor. 1.3) and pray to God “through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7.25), for “[it] is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us” (Rom. 8.34 [S]). In such response, the act of salvation is acknowledged not merely as a one-time event but also as an event that has happened once for all and as present at the same time. As address to the divine you, prayer is at the same time the expression of the human I. The I belongs to the very essence of the prayer of thanksgiving as well as of the prayer of petition. This I, to be sure, is not to be separated from the we of the congregation—in the Lord’s Prayer the I only appears in the we—and yet the I in the community of the praying congregation remains the irreplaceable, historically unique individual in that person’s encounter with God, who has reached out to that one very personally. The same holds true for the prayer of petition, namely, the I is inextricably bound up with the we of the congregation and, beyond that, to all who are in need of intercession. But in all of that the issue is my guilt, my spiritual struggle, my need. In the hearing of God’s word and in the response of the prayer, a dialogue thus takes place between God and the person in which the person addressed by God becomes the I, who may praise, question, petition, and even besiege God as a you. (b) Among the various forms of prayer doxology assumes a special place in view of its pronominal structure. In doxology believers do not ask God anything for themselves, nor do they ask God to act for other people, but they only worship God. While the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer pray for the coming of the kingdom, the doxology of the congregation confesses “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.” Doxology is all about the praise-filled acknowledgment of the reality of God. God can thus be addressed in the second person—as, for example, in the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer. But, as a rule, doxology speaks of God in the third person, that is, God is not addressed as a You but praised as a He. The adoring praise, “Glory to God in the highest…” (Lk. 2.14) or “to him be glory forever” (Rom. 11.36), does not imply that God is first granted “glory” or “majesty” through the doxology. Instead, the doxology “gives” God the “glory” that God already has. More precisely, it praises the majesty that God has and is, and indeed has and is even if a person does not give God the honor. Doxology is the reflection of the eternal divine majesty in the praise of human beings. The doxological statement does not occur, as one might suppose, first with the advance of the gospel into Hellenistic areas but is found already in the Old

The Basic Forms of the Theological Statement

Testament, and indeed not only in scattered individual statements but as a basic form of communal and personal life. Thus Claus Westermann has distinguished between two “basic types”: “the narrative and the descriptive psalm of praise. They have the same essential characteristic, namely, that God is praised in them. In the one, God is praised for a definite, specific rescue, and in the other God is praised for the fullness of his being and action.”1 Because God, who is enthroned on high, has shown mercy in his historical act of salvation for those who are nobodies, he is praised without end as the Lord, who graciously stoops down from on high and who indeed is without end majestically sublime and merciful, gracious, kind, and lowly. Adoration is the unfolding—in the literal theological sense—of gratitude for God’s act in that the psalmist’s gratitude breaks out into hymnic praise and adoration of the eternal God himself. Likewise, doxologies found in the New Testament live from God’s act of salvation, from the act of salvation in Christ which, despite the parousia yet to come, is already entirely fulfilled. The congregation on earth may now already thus participate in the songs of victory of the glorified, who celebrate the defeat of all the powers hostile to God and the fulfillment of God’s lordship, and who praise God and the Lamb. This basic form of adoring praise has reached its richest unfolding in the New Testament in the prayers of the heavenly liturgy in the Book of Revelation (cf., e. g., Rev. 4.11; 19.1ff.). Because doxology is grounded in God’s act of salvation, the latter is also referred to frequently and explicitly in New Testament doxology. But their use is not essential to the wording of the doxology, and even when they are explicitly mentioned, they appear there more as the occasion and basis for the doxology than as constituting its actual content. Doxology is ultimately about God himself—about God on the basis of his mighty deeds toward us and toward the world—yet about God who does not fully disclose himself in these acts but does them in the freedom of the almighty and loving Lord, who is the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Doxology is about God’s eternal reality. “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever” (1 Tim. 1.17). “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever” (Rev. 7.12). The central concern in these and many similar statements is the acknowledgment of God as God, who forever and ever and who before his mighty deeds of salvation and after them is the same holy, almighty, glorious, and wise one. Statements about God’s being, essence, and attributes thus occur in the etymological unfolding of doxology that praises God’s eternal all-history-encompassing aseity.[iii] The same holds true for the adoration of Jesus Christ, who is praised not only as the crucified and risen Lord but also as the eternal one who encompasses time, and thereby also

1 Claus Westermann, Das Loben in den Psalmen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1953), 14. [ET: The Praise of God in the Psalms, trans. Keith Crim (Richmond: John Knox, 1965), 22. –Ed.]

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as the pre-existent one, who, like the Father, is the first and the last, the beginning and the end. If in doxology the you gives way to the divine he, then the I of the person who sings it disappears as well. While the we and the our are not always absent (cf., e. g., Rev. 19.1), neither is the you. But generally, the I of the one praying recedes. In doxology one asks nothing for oneself, nor does one give thanks for God’s act for oneself, the one praying. Neither the I of the one praying nor finally one’s act of offering praise is mentioned in the wording of the doxology. While the we of the congregation also recedes, yet it is surely persons who are singing the doxology. The basic form of doxology is not “God, I praise you,” but “God be praised!” It is not “God, I glorify you,” but “God is glorious.” Although doxology is the response of an individual to God’s action for that person, here one keeps silent about oneself. In doxology God himself is the one and only focus. Hence doxological statements are “objective” to the greatest degree. Still, the absence of the word I from many doxological statements does not imply an uninvolved onlooker but the utmost involvement, since the I of the one offering praise, while absent in the wording, is not absent in the actual worshiping: In doxology the I is offered up in sacrifice. Doxology is thus always at the same time a sacrifice of praise. (c) Witness is the response to the gospel in addressing the other human Thou, both the individual Thou and the collective Thou. Bearing witness is also the response to the gospel, since here believers testify to other human beings about the very work of salvation which in the gospel God has proclaimed to them and done for them. The response to the gospel is thus a further instance of the gospel. The gospel that has been heard may never remain the silent possession of the believer. It is a busy word, storming into the world, a word through which the exalted Christ is taking possession of the world that God has handed over to him. Christ places each believer into the service of his redemptive calling and sends that believer forth as a witness. Like prayer, bearing witness takes various forms: be it in a carefully prepared and coherent address; be it in conversation; be it in the congregation or in missionary outreach into the world; be it more assuring or more demanding. Yet all these forms of bearing witness have one thing in common, namely, that they are grounded in Jesus Christ and they occur in the name of Jesus Christ. The Thou addressed in the witness is not God. Despite any and all acknowledgment of his effectual impact on the world as a result of the witness, God is spoken of in the third person. The Thou is the other human being, moreover the other human being in that person’s unique historical reality. The very same act of salvation that God has done for the believer is to be witnessed to other humans in their concrete sins and needs, in their concrete bondage to political, ideological [weltanschauliche], and religious powers. The gospel must be proclaimed in a dynamic that penetrates the entire present historical moment, and it does so in that it seeks out the concrete historical present of every individual Thou and of every particular people [Volk].

The Basic Forms of the Theological Statement

In addressing the concrete Thou in the witness, the I of the one bearing witness, as a rule, also expresses itself, and it does so, in fact, not only in the sense that the person is after all a believer who is bearing witness—in this sense, the I also participates in the doxology, even if its wording expresses nothing personal about the individual who voices it. But in witnessing—which is different from doxology—the I of the believer widely comes also explicitly to voice, for it proclaims God’s act of salvation not merely as a past happening but as the event that is decisive for the present and is at work as God’s salvific action in the present. When the I of faith comes to voice in the witness-bearing, it is the witness who is speaking here, who does not merely pass on what that person has heard but proclaims the act of salvation as something that person has experienced. The grace received by the witness and the calling issued to the witness belong as such to the witnessing itself. (d) Among the various forms of address that bear witness to other human beings, doctrinal teaching [Lehre] assumes a special position in view of its pronominal structure. The concept of teaching in the New Testament Scriptures is not uniform. When the writers of the Synoptic Gospels refer to the words of Jesus in individual statements and in collective summaries as teaching [Lehren] and as proclamation [Verkündigen], both terms can often be used synonymously. Teaching and preaching appear as interchangeable terms also elsewhere in the New Testament Scriptures, and occasionally their formulaic combination appears as a hendiadys. In Paul one finds a more detailed differentiation of the statements that believers use to address other human beings on the basis of the divine acts of salvation. So, e. g., in Rom. 12.6ff. he distinguishes “prophecy,” “teaching,” and “exhortation.” In 1 Cor. 12.8ff.: “word of wisdom,” “word of knowledge,” “prophecy,” “speaking in tongues,” and “interpretation of speaking in tongues.” In 1 Cor. 14.26: “psalm,” “teaching,” “speaking in tongues,” “revelation,” and “interpretation of speaking in tongues.” Here it is not only a matter of various statements of faith but of various spiritual gifts, that is, forms of servant ministries [Dienste] that are given to and carried out by the various members of the congregation.[iv] In part, these gifts are so directly apportioned to specific persons that Paul does not merely speak of these services as functional but also as personal, that is, of “prophets,” “teachers,” and so forth (1 Cor. 12.29; cf. also Acts 13.1, and Eph. 4.11). What does Paul mean here by teaching—particularly in contrast to prophecy as the relevant, here and now, revelatory, strengthening, and guiding word of the Spirit and of Christ who is present and active through the Spirit? Teaching does not only mean the communication of moral principles that are attached to the message of salvation.

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In contrast, important for Paul is the close connection that exists between teaching and tradition, as noted by Heinrich Greeven.2 Teaching is concerned above all with the transmission of tradition shaped in the faith community, including the traditions of the Lord’s sayings, of reports about the acts and suffering of Jesus, as well as about the appearances of the risen Christ, together with the transmission of kerygmatic, confessional, hymnic, and other characteristic types of traditional material, including then, of course, ethical rules. Prophecy and teaching thus form “the vertical and the horizontal components” in the witness of the congregation and are thereby “strictly related to one another”: “prophecy without teaching degenerates into fanatic enthusiasm [Schwärmerei]; teaching without prophecy petrifies into law.”3 This means that teaching is not merely the subsequent explication of the act of salvation that has occurred through the gospel message. Rather, the other way around, Paul again and again grounds the message with statements from the tradition of teaching. The result is that the message—in a decisive way as explication of the teaching—encounters, with its concrete assurance, the historical person in that person’s current particular situation. Consequently, Paul understands both the concrete address of the prophetic word and the function of teaching as effects of the Spirit. The exalted Lord works not only through the concrete address that calls for obedience but also through tradition and thus through the teaching. In this sense, teaching should here be lifted up as one particular structure within the various forms of witness. In this connection we should note that Christian teaching, from the very beginning, does not confine itself to the passing on of received tradition but also interprets the individual pieces of tradition, especially in their relationship to the Old Testament Scriptures.

2 Heinrich Greeven, “Propheten, Lehrer, Vorsteher bei Paulus” [Prophets, Teachers, and Leaders according to Paul], Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 44 (1952/53): 1–43. See his references on pp. 20ff. 3 Greeven, “Propheten, Lehrer, Vorsteher bei Paulus,” 29. [The label Schwärmer (from the swarming of agitated bees) was first applied by Martin Luther to the so-called Zwickau prophets. A principal characteristic of the phenomenon of “enthusiastic” (literally, “filled with the Spirit”) movements in the history of the Christian church is the claim to a direct operation of the Spirit, apart from the means of grace. (Schlink also referred to individuals in such movements as Schwarmgeister [“swarming spirits”]. Cf. chap. 18.5 below.) Such movements have also tended to see the locus of salvation as being elsewhere than the external, historical acts of God in Jesus Christ. Moreover, such movements have disparaged the earthly, historical church as an institution, which they reject in favor of a “heavenly” or ideal spiritual community. Luther accused the Schwärmer of having “devoured the Holy Spirit, feathers and all” (Wider die himmlischen Propheten [1525], WA, 18.66 [Against the Heavenly Prophets, LW 1 , 40.83]), and of confusing God’s law and gospel. He also criticized them for rejecting the distinction between the two ways in which God works in the world (i. e., through law and gospel), for disparaging the physical means of grace (e. g., baptism, the Lord’s Supper), for divorcing the earthly from the spiritual (i. e., divorcing “flesh” and “Spirit”), and for essentially misunderstanding the nature of the incarnation and its implications for the church. –Ed.]

The Basic Forms of the Theological Statement

In addition, statements of teaching not only serve to protect the faith but also aim toward its awakening and spreading. But they do not focus in the same direct way on the particular Thou of other human beings in their current historical situation as does preaching. Teaching does not address the contingent situation as the prophetic word does with its pointed word of judging, justifying, and exhorting, which is directed toward the specific individual person or the specific congregation or toward the world in its current state of turmoil and corruption. While teaching is also concerned with individuals, it addresses the hearers indirectly, in that it passes on and interprets what God has done in history for and through human beings—for his people, to and through Jesus, to this and that individual whom Jesus encountered, and further to and through the apostles. But even though the particular Thou (both the individual Thou and the collective Thou) addressed by the teacher disappears in the words of teaching, and the historical facts that God has accomplished once and for all people are handed down and interpreted in relation to their salvationhistory context (evident in the relationship between the Old and New Testaments), this transmission differs from historical reporting as understood today. It is a faith-statement, and it always aims to awaken faith. As teaching about the mighty deeds of God, it provides the indispensable basis for the advance of the various forms of witness into the world. In this respect, teaching is not divorced from witnessing. Likewise, both the history of the Synoptic tradition and that of the elements of the earliest Christian tradition recognizable in the New Testament letters make clear that also in the transmission of singular historical facts and sayings, an awareness—often an unconscious one—of the given socio-religious context is evident in emphases, omissions, and interpretations in the transmission. Nevertheless, teaching is distinguished from the concrete, direct call to repentance, the word of assurance and claim. Its form of address to individuals remains indirect, awaiting its unfolding in the prophetic word and thus in preaching and pastoral care. Just as the particular Thou of other human beings tends to disappear in the work of teaching, so also does the I tend to disappear more in teaching than in the direct address of missionary proclamation or conversation. Indeed, with respect to tradition, its origin is of course more important than its transmitter, who in most instances remains anonymous. When they are teaching, believers speak very little as witnesses to the act of salvation that is taking place for them and the congregation in the present. Rather, believers are passing on what they have received, preserving its identity precisely throughout the changing historical situations, and holding firmly to the received message of the historical witnesses. More precisely, teaching is directly interested in preserving the historic, once-for-all act of salvation by God in Christ as the ground for all the various responses of faith, even when this act of salvation is explicated in its relation to God’s activity in creation and in the history of the Old Testament covenant people.

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So not only do the statements of doxology appear characteristically “objective,” but also, though differently, do those in teaching. Common to both is that the I of the person who is making these statements and the concrete historical situation in which that person is making them remain in the background. As a rule, they are not essential to either form of statement in the sense that they do not need to be stated. The same is true for the Thou of other human beings to whom the teaching is addressed and finally for those other human beings in whose presence the doxology is sung. Common to both doxology and teaching is that God is spoken about in the third person. Nevertheless, naturally the particular I is not absent in both forms of faith-statement, since it is, of course, actual people who are making them. The existential character of these statements is precisely that the particular historical I—in the service to teaching and finally in the singing of the doxology—surrenders itself to God’s historical act of salvation, indeed to God’s eternal glory. In this way, the individual becomes both an instrument for passing on the teaching and a sacrifice of praise. Yet at the same time, the difference between teaching and doxology should not be overlooked: Teaching is directed toward people, doxology toward God. Teaching speaks of acts that God has done in history and, beyond that, it speaks of the creation in the beginning and of the consummation at the end. Doxology, on the other hand, ultimately and actually praises God himself as the Lord in his eternal holiness, omnipotence, love, and wisdom. He is the God who does not first become Lord through his acts, but he is doing his mighty deeds, has done them, and will do them in the glorious freedom of his love. (e) In confession all the responses of faith are concentrated in a unique way.[v] Confession sets forth so clearly the gospel which has been received, that there can be no doubt that the very same act of salvation, the very same Lord, which the gospel proclaims is here confessed in faith. This occurs in the briefest way when the human Jesus is called by one or more of his honorific titles, namely, confessed as Christ, the Son of God, the Lord. In this briefest form, cross and resurrection are not explicitly mentioned, and yet they are also contained in these confessions of faith insofar as the resurrection of the crucified Jesus is the presupposition for the recognition of his honor. However, even when the suffering of Jesus and his resurrection are explicitly mentioned in the confession, it is not content with these facts as such, but at the same time confesses by means of the titles of dignity that the Lord, as the crucified and risen one, is present in the congregation. In his presence the confession is made. In confessing the faith, the believer becomes subject to Jesus Christ, the present Lord. But although the one confessing the faith is aware of this presence, as a general rule the person does not speak directly to Christ himself in the confession. The believer does not confess “You are the Lord,” but instead speaks about him in the third person: “Jesus Christ is Lord.” The aforementioned disappearing of the you is

The Basic Forms of the Theological Statement

consistent with the fact that in the confession, as a rule, Jesus is not called upon as “my Lord,” as surely as my person is wholly subject to this Lord and my person is unconditionally accepted by him. But for all of that, Jesus Christ is acknowledged as my Lord exactly in that he is confessed simply as the Lord, the one to whom God has subjected all things. Precisely when—giving up any claims under the notions of a personal encounter between God and human beings (you and your, I and my)—believers confess the all-embracing act of God’s salvation in Christ, they then are confessing the act of salvation that has taken place for them. Confession is made in the presence of others; indeed, the relation to other human beings is intrinsic to the very nature of such confessing, for in confession the individual believer joins the confession of the congregation. Moreover, confession is to be made before those who are not believers, yes, even before those who are enemies and persecutors. Since the confession is all about the commitment to Jesus Christ, the Lord of the church, both the church and the world have their place in confession, insofar as it is made in their midst and acknowledged by the church. But despite this relation to the people of the world around us, they are not directly addressed by the confession. The Thou is missing. Indeed, as a rule, these others are not at all mentioned in the actual words of the confession. Confession is a statement of the believer. This is expressed with the opening words, “I believe….” However, in the original creedal formulations we find no explicit statement about the act of believing, for here everything focuses on the one in whom one believes. The I is thus not essential to the wording of the confession. The I can be included in the we of the confessing church: “We believe.” The I may even disappear altogether: “Christ is risen,” “Christ is the Lord.” To be sure, the confession is necessarily my confession, and it is all about my unconditional commitment to Christ the Lord. Otherwise it would be no confession. And yet this commitment in the confession is so complete, that there is no further mention of my act of whole-hearted dedication as such in the words of the creed. In the confession the one who is confessed is so absolutely the Lord, that the I of the person confessing is gone from the creedal statement. But at the same time that means the I may know itself to be safely sheltered in the we of the church and, with this we, in the Lord of the church’s confession. Confession uniquely combines prayer and witness, doxology and teaching. Even if God is not addressed as you in the confession, it still is offered to God and is directed to God, as in prayer. Even if other human beings are not addressed as Thou in the confession, it is still spoken and as such is directed to them as witness. Without being simply teaching, confession participates in the way in which it speaks God’s final act of salvation, but without directly applying it to specific individuals. Without being simply doxology, confession participates in the structure of doxology that

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praises God and his Christ in their glory that is superior to history.4 The different basic forms in which faith responds are united and concentrated in confession in an unparalleled “objectivity” [Sachlichkeit] in the creedal statement: apparently no encounter between I and Thou and yet precisely in this way, the response that befits God the Lord and Savior, who encounters the sinner through the gospel by free grace alone. This “objectivity” of the confession is that of a judicial act, namely, the “Yes” of the believer to the judicial act that God has carried out on the cross for the sake of the world, the “Yes” to the covenant that God has established in the death of Christ. (f) These different basic forms of responding to the gospel belong together in the speaking of the congregation and of each individual believer. That these forms belong together is not merely factually evident in the New Testament Scriptures, but it is also a fundamental principle. Even if the gift of prophecy is given to one Christian, to another the gift of teaching, to another the word of wisdom, still to another a psalm, and so on, this differentiation of responses does not exclude the fact that the response of faith in confession, prayer, and bearing witness are due God from every Christian. Only through all of the basic forms together can the whole response to the gospel be expressed, and in a response that is truly fitting to God, since God is not an object of perception and statement like other objects that one can perceive, investigate, comprehend, and define. Rather, God encounters us in the gospel as the Lord, who claims us and is gracious to us and who wants to be honored by us as this Lord in the abundance of his glory, to be honored by the whole person and thus by the person in all that one’s personal relationships, namely, in the total commitment of the person to God, in departing from the world, and in caring commitment toward the world in the mission of God. For that reason, the clarification of the basic forms of theological statement is not only of phenomenological interest but also of normative significance. And since the whole response to the gospel cannot be expressed in each individual basic form but only through all of them together, this clarification has great consequence. If the response of faith were restricted merely to one of the basic forms, this would not only mean a morphological impoverishment but also a curtailment of the content. Beyond that, it would imply disobedience to God since it would mean a refusal to acknowledge fully his act of salvation and the eternal divine abundance revealed in it. The resulting isolation and absolutizing of any one basic form would also soon distort the content of the other basic forms within the totality of the responses of faith that could quite legitimately be expressed in this particular basic form. Doxology without petitionary prayer is no longer true doxology. Teaching

4 Cf. this with Geoffrey Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life: A Systematic Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).

The Basic Forms of the Theological Statement

without concrete assurance is no longer true teaching. Witness without prayer would no longer be undertaken in the power of the name of Christ, just as confession without prayer and bearing witness would soon fall into ruin. Where God is acknowledged only as he and no longer entreated as you, God is no longer honored as Father. Where only the historical act of salvation is being taught but is no longer being spoken to the neighbor as the here-and-now act of salvation for that person, one is no longer bearing witness to God’s act as an eschatological, redemptive act. In all of these basic forms of faith response, the fundamental issue is God, that is, the explicit appeal to God, whether one prays to him, or he is proclaimed or worshiped, or his acts are taught, or whether—all these in one—he is confessed. For that reason, statements of the believer in all of these basic forms can be designated as theological statements. The term theological statement will then be understood not simply as a reflective scholarly statement in contrast to a basic faith-statement but as referring already to this basic faith-statement itself, and it is decisively important to keep an eye on the fact that the starting point for all true theological statements is the basic statements of faith themselves. But then it becomes at the same time clear that the theological statement as such cannot simply be talk about God; it is above all addressing God, it is preaching in the name of God, confessing commitment to God, worshiping God—and only with all of these statements together is it “doctrine of God.” (g) Finally, we must still consider that each of the above-cited five basic forms of pronominal theological statement can undergo structural alteration, depending on whether these statements are made in personal, informal language or in formulaic, prescribed language. Traditional formula come to be crystallized above all in the acts of teaching, confessing the faith, and offering praise. They may then also be used in preaching and then identified as kerygmatic formulas. Consequently, as that occurs, individual kerygmatic, confessional, and liturgical formulas, as well as formulaic phrases used in teaching, are not often easily distinguished in detail from one another since they are all responses to God’s act of salvation witnessed to by the gospel. So kerygmatic formulas can be brought into confession or used in hymns, just as, conversely, formulas from confession or liturgy can be used in preaching. In turn, all are the subject matter of the doctrinal tradition, that is, of what is being taught. But petitionary prayer and the sermon, especially the missionary sermon, being what they are, use fewer such formulas than do doctrine, confession, and doxology, for each petitionary prayer lays out the concrete here-andnow situation before God, and in a sermon the witness aims directly at this same situation. In the pronominal structure of the theological statements there emerge important differences, depending on which of the basic responses of faith have been formulaically worded and depending on the extent to which formulaically worded statements displace or even eliminate informal expression. Of consequential importance, furthermore, is the spatial area for which such a formula claims validity.

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Does a given formulaic statement (that is, a statement with the exact same wording) claim validity for the parish area of an individual congregation or for the regional conference or synod of congregations or for the whole of global Christendom? These structural shifts, too, are not merely of phenomenological interest but of fundamental significance, insofar as thereby the concrete instances of the particular here-and-now responses of faith, and at the same time thereby the here-and-now personal surrender to God’s act of salvation, are repressed. The formulaic and informal modes of faith-response in fact belong together, just as it is only within the community of believers—but in this community precisely as an inimitably unique individual—that the believer says “Yes” to the gospel. Only in the right interplay of formulaic statements and vital informal expression does the church demonstrate itself to be throughout all ages the unchanged one church that is precisely the same in that, grounded in the apostolic tradition, it presses urgently with its relevant, vital witness into ever-new realms of the world. Yet it is important to note in the New Testament Scriptures, despite their common witness to the unique act of salvation of God in Christ, no single formula appears with which the death and resurrection of Jesus would have been confessed and proclaimed with the same wording by all.

2. Structural Issues Regarding the Dogmatic Statement[vi] If we inquire further about the place of dogmatic statements within the various basic forms of theological statements, we should first note that the term dogmatic statement can have two meanings: (a) a statement of dogma itself, that is, one formulated as dogma by a church body or received as such by it and recognized as binding for that church body’s speaking and activity; and (b) a statement of dogmatics that grounds and interprets current dogma or that, beyond this, in some circumstances, makes statements that are received and used by the church body as a preparation for defining further dogmas. This latter understanding of dogmatic statement is significantly broader than the first, just as the history of theology is significantly richer than the history of dogma. Naturally, both meanings are closely connected and often overlap. What follows is mostly about dogmatic statements in the broader sense. We shall thus only briefly point out a few important structural changes in dogma and then deal more extensively with structural shifts in the statements of dogmatics. (a) The root of dogma is the confession of Christ. The question aside, namely, about when and in what sense the term dogma entered into the church, it is still clear that the history of dogma—what it has been and is about—begins in the earliest Christian confessional formulas. Considering the singular concentration of all responses of faith in confession—when inquiring about the origins—one should of course not strictly separate confession-like, hymnic-

Structural Issues Regarding the Dogmatic Statement

doxological, and kerygmatic-teaching formulas, and in no way exclude the latter. In the Apostles’ Creed [Apostolicum] and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed [Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum], dogma is still articulated in the structural form of confession.[vii] Both of these symbols from the ancient church combine doxology and teaching, prayer and witness into one, and it is in this singular concentration of all the responses of faith that they are confessed—whether by the baptismal candidate or by the whole worship assembly. This basic creedal form has not been kept intact in the history of dogma. On the contrary, individual structural elements that are contained in the confession as the originating act of faith began to become self-existent and to distinguish themselves in various forms of dogma. A structural shift is already evident in the initial words of the Chalcedonian Definition [Chalcedonense].[viii] No longer does one hear “we believe” (as in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed), but “we unanimously teach what is to be confessed.”5 To be sure, the content of the christological statements in the Chalcedonian Definition are unmistakably marked by a doxological structure, but its opening words make clear that here the issue is no longer the creedal confession to be used in the worship service itself but teaching about correct confession. The shift in the structure of dogma from creedal confession to doctrinal teaching prevailed at once in the West, and indeed so thoroughly that the doxological force disappeared not only in the opening words but also in the statements contained in the body of the confession. A further structural shift is evident in the “Athanasian Creed” [“Athanasianum”],[ix] whose statements in the body of the creed regarding the attributes of the divine Trinity still have, to be sure, a distinctly hymnic ring to them, but whose formulaic words that open the creed show that the creed has moved away from the action of confessing the faith within the context of the worship service: “Whoever wishes to be saved must, before all else, hold the catholic faith: for unless each one maintains it whole and inviolate, he will certainly perish in eternity. This, then, is the catholic faith: We worship…”6 Not only has a shift taken place in this dogma from the liturgical act of confessing to teaching about the correct confession, but what is more, the momentum implicit in every confession, namely, to separate correct from erroneous belief, begins to become explicit here, even if at first only in the creed’s opening and closing formulaic statements. As a result of the increasing articulation of this momentum toward separation, it is then but a step to develop the negative theses, whereby the rejected erroneous statements are explicitly formulated in dogmatic terms, and whereby finally even such dogmatic theses are defined that consist only of negative statements, namely, anathemas against

5 [The Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith (Denzinger, 301; cf. Tanner, 1.86). –Ed.] 6 [The so-called Athanasian Creed (Denzinger, 75; BSELK, 57 [BC, 24]). –Ed.]

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other doctrinal statements. With this shift, however, not only did the doxological character of confession recede into the background but so also does the positive character of its witness. Already the “Athanasian Creed” has rarely been used as a confession in the worship service. If it is, however—as, for example, in certain church festivals—then these dogmatic statements are structurally, substantially removed from the original act of confessing the faith. Dogma encounters still a further structural shift in the Augsburg Confession.[x] That confession was initially addressed to the emperor and served as the summary of faith before him and the Holy Roman Empire. The author and signatories of that confession were especially concerned about the proclamation of the pure gospel, and thus there is in this confession a focus on preaching. In the Augsburg Confession “teaching” and “preaching” are interchangeable concepts. Consequently, entire sections of Article IV of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession are effective at providing the comforting assurance of justification.[xi] They do not merely set forth a doctrine about this assurance. Likewise, one can still clearly recognize a similar structure of pastoral assurance in the doctrine of predestination set forth in the Formula of Concord.[xii] At the same time, one cannot overlook the fact that the confession which is set forth in these confessional writings is no longer the concentration of all the forms of faith response. To be sure, the Augsburg Confession was spoken in the presence of God, but when that happened, it was not directed to God but to the emperor, that is to say, to other human beings. So the elements of worship of God and doxology, which are contained in the original act of confessing, are not expressed here. This structural modification makes understandable that the confessional writings from the Reformation period were not used as confessions in the worship service but became effective only as “confessional writings.” However, in the course of the history of their interpretation (as is seen already in the “repetition and clarification” of the Augsburg Confession by the Formula of Concord of 1580), the normative function of doctrine by means of preaching was not maintained.7 (b) Just as the morphological starting point for dogma is the confession, so the morphological starting point for dogmatics is doctrinal teaching. Here, too, we leave out of consideration the historical question about which terms church doctrine has come to use in the course of the centuries and when teaching was first called dogmatics.[xiii] We will also restrict ourselves here to its structural aspects. The unfolding of teaching, that is, of doctrine, took place in the life of the church, to begin with, in the instruction of catechumens and their preparation for making their profession of faith, and for their baptism and admission to the Lord’s Supper. In this form, the act of teaching took place in closest connection to assurance and

7 [Cf. the FC SD title: “A General, Clear, Correct, and Definitive Repetition and Explanation of Certain Articles of the Augsburg Confession” (BC, 524; cf. BSELK, 1304–1305). –Ed.]

Structural Issues Regarding the Dogmatic Statement

exhortation, to the call to repentance, to confession, to baptism, and it modulated again and again into the structure of witnessing (cf., e. g., the edifying character of the Catechetical Lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem).[xiv] The unfolding of doctrine, however, necessarily pushed beyond instruction for baptism. The discussion and debate with philosophy and heresies called for further unfolding, also for those already baptized, in order to warn, enlighten, and strengthen them (so, e. g., the catechetical school at Alexandria no longer limited itself to preparing catechumens for baptism). Finally, instructional preparation for those assuming ministerial offices went far beyond instruction for baptism. Here doctrinal teaching is no longer being articulated in direct connection with here-and-now witness, nor with the concrete call to repentance and faith, nor with the invitation to baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Rather, all this now becomes the subject matter of teaching, that is, it does not remain simply teaching about the act of salvation, which is to be preached in the here-and-now witness to particular individuals, but it becomes the doctrine about this preaching, the doctrine about the act of repentance and of faith, and so forth. Thus teaching is no longer tradition and the interpretation of its statements, but it becomes the doctrine about the tradition. With such a continuing development of doctrine in the course of history there has been an enormous expansion of its contents and hence of the material about it that has to be thoroughly studied. Indeed, this has become increasingly the case the greater the distance from the age of the apostles: Teachers cannot restrict themselves to passing on what has been transmitted to them directly, but rather they must go back to the original apostolic teaching and message as the valid basis for all later teaching. On this basis, the word that has been heard is to be critically tested. Teaching also cannot be limited to one particular strand of tradition in the message of earliest Christianity (it cannot, e. g., stay only with the Pauline tradition or the Johannine), but it must be based on the whole of the earliest Christian teaching and proclamation, and thoroughly work through this whole. Because God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ occurred in the midst of history, it follows that the witness of the historical eyewitnesses who were called by Jesus, and who witnessed his working, his dying, and his resurrection, remains of decisive significance for church doctrine of all times. Furthermore, doctrinal teaching cannot be restricted to statements which the one who teaches made in that person’s particular historical setting and in that person’s specific confrontation with unbelief, heresy, and worldly powers. Rather, doctrinal teaching must thoroughly work through all the dogmatic decisions that the church in the course of its history has reached over against different false doctrines and principalities. For it is only when we fully understand the constantly changing forms of assault by false doctrine against the gospel throughout history that we gain clarity about the nature of false doctrine. And only when we understand the dogmatic decisions in the history of the church, are we able to gain clarity about

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the task of making dogmatic decisions today. Only then will we gain clarity about the abiding identity of church doctrine that transcends time and space. That task will include the need to work thoroughly through the acknowledged and disputed statements, the concurrent and contradictory ones, the Christian, pseudo-Christian, and anti-Christian ones that accompany the journey of the church. Doctrinal teaching also cannot, however, restrict itself to statements from the Bible and church dogma and to statements from the world that contradict the Bible and dogma. Rather, it has to interpret the dogmatic decisions in relation to the totality of the theological work of those who have made them. Dogmatics thus has to work thoroughly through not only the history of dogma but also the history of theology. If we keep in mind the fact that the confession of faith brings together and concentrates all the responses of faith and that dogma is rooted in the confession, then, beyond that, dogmatic scholarship will not only need to thoroughly work through theological teaching—be it biblical-exegetical, theological-historical, or dogmatic in nature—but also to take into consideration the full range of faith responses that have come to voice in the life of the church. Dogmatics must thus do its work in relation to the various other responses of faith, namely, in preaching, pastoral words of gospel claim [Anspruch] and assurance [Zuspruch] as well as in prayer, thanksgiving, and doxology.[xv] In other words, it must also take into account the history of preaching and of the liturgy, and grapple with the issues that arise in the present with regard to prayer and bearing witness. In the course of its history, the material content of doctrine has thus greatly expanded. Yet the concern in this expansion is not with a disconnected multiplicity but with one and the same whole. And this expansion is also not merely the factual outcome of church history, but it occurred out of an inner necessity, for dogmatic teaching is concerned with God’s act of salvation that has occurred once and for all, the very same reality that is valid and present in the course of time and change of place. In the midst of the world’s changing assaults and temptations, it is about abiding in the very same crucified one whom God has established as the Lord of the believers, indeed, as Lord of the universe. But if dogmatics is about this one, in whom are revealed both God’s acts in the creation at the beginning and in the new creation at the end, then in the multiplicity of materials that dogmatics has to work through thoroughly, it is also a matter of the whole totality of the church, which in the multiplicity of its prayers, witnessing, and confessions—in the changes of time and in the variety of place—is and remains the one church. But just as every creedal phrase implicitly or even explicitly contains a rejection of other statements, so the dogmatic effort for the unity of the church in the historical multiplicity of its responses to God’s act of salvation is at the same time the effort to identify the borders of the church. Seeking to perceive the borders of the church inherently means at the same time seeking to avoid drawing the wrong borders and thus seeking to remove the disfiguration of the body of Christ. The question of the basis

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for church unity in view of the multiplicity, diversity, and contradictoriness of the faith responses belongs inherently to the task of dogmatics: Dogmatics has to strive for the response that not only a single believer has to give to God but also for the one that the community of believers has to give. The expansion of doctrinal teaching into what we today customarily call dogmatics has brought structural changes with it that are significant for its content. Especially important are the changes that have occurred in the relationship between the statements of doctrine and the other basic forms of theological statement: (1) In the course of its expansion, doctrinal teaching has—beyond its particular function—not only made the other forms of the response of faith its subject-matter, but it has also transferred them into the specific structure of teaching. Then doctrinal teaching no longer leads—as did instruction for baptism—to repentance, faith, prayer, and bearing witness as further acts, but it becomes doctrine about faith, repentance, prayer, and witnessing, and thus falls into the danger of absorbing these other forms of theological statement into the function of teaching—which, while of basic importance for all the responses of faith, still remains related to them all in a serving function. In the same “objectivity” [Sachlichkeit] with which doctrinal teaching thoroughly works through and systematically unfolds the traditions of Jesus’ words and deeds, his death and resurrection—as well as the confessional, kerygmatic, and other formulas, the apostolic directives, and the other elements in earliest Christian tradition in their relationship to the Old Testament Scriptures and their continuing significance in the history of the church—so doctrinal teaching now speaks about that which is expressed and has occurred in the act of prayer, of bearing witness, and of doxology. But these statements undergo change when they are taken out from their original form and function, which is structured quite differently from doctrinal teaching, and are thus objectified into the form of doctrinal teaching. The address to God in prayer becomes talk about God and about the person who prays. The address to another human being in the name of God becomes talk about God and about people who speak and listen. The teacher of doctrine thus runs into the danger of maneuvering out of the situation of being addressed by the assurance and claim of the gospel—that is, out of the situation of being confronted by the God who encounters the teacher in the word—and of trying to think and teach in a neutral position from which this encounter between God and human beings can be observed, described, and brought into dogmatic formulas. The focus shifts from the redemption that the believer experiences in the gospel to an interest in theoretically defining the relationship between what God contributes to redemption and what human beings contribute. There arises the theoretical problem of calculating the relationship between divine grace and the human will, of divine and human causality in the event of redemption. This problem of synergism became, especially in Western dogmatics, mightily disputed. The one who teaches doctrine is tempted to choose a position above, from which God’s twofold address in the word of judgment and the word of grace, in the demanding and bestowing word, is to become explainable as a rational unity. But as long as we are in

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this world, God’s word encounters us as a twofold address, and we do not have the unity of this twofold address as our possession. Rather, we may only seize it again and again in the act of believing, namely, in acknowledging the divine judgment against us and in hastening to the Christ who was judged for our sake. The Pauline statement, “…work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Phil. 2.12ff. [NIV]), makes complete sense as address to the believer, but as a statement of theoretical doctrine it contains an irreconcilable contradiction. Without doubt, significant dogmatic problems—and most far-reaching especially for Western Christendom—actually arose in the first place as a result of changes in the structure of theological statements. Statements of doxology also undergo similar changes when they are brought into doctrinal teaching and then when they are used as statements of doctrine, the use of which, given the latter’s uniquely “objective” character, seems especially self-evident. Doxological statements about God’s being, essence, and attributes, which are used to worship God, now become metaphysical statements of doctrine about God. But the special quality of doxological statements is most often then no longer in view. Doxological statements are ultimate statements, beyond which nothing further can be said by human beings. But when used as statements of doctrine, these ultimate statements become initial statements, that is, they become theoretical premises for logical deductions and thus parts of a theoretical system. While statements of doctrine and of doxology seem to have the same objectivity, in that they speak of God in the third person and refrain from focusing on the person who is speaking them, we cannot ignore the fact that both forms of statement have not only a different life-setting [Sitz im Leben] in the church but also a different function that stems from their content. Neither of these two structures can be reduced to the other without bringing about changes of meaning as well. The most radical consequence of such structural shifts is evident in the history of the doctrine of predestination. The praise of God’s grace that alone saves and of his eternal decree of love becomes, in the structure of theoretical teaching, the issue of determinism, in the face of whose terribly consistent logic doxological jubilation is silenced. (2) That kind of structural change in doctrinal teaching as such does not imply that the other responses of faith are going silent. Rather, they can still be very well heard in the life of the church, alongside of the all-embracing reach of doctrine. But unavoidable tensions will develop between such teaching that has appropriated or indeed absorbed the other basic forms of theological statement and the actual living out of these responses in the life of the church and in the piety of individual believers, since the actual response and the theological statement about this response are two different things. So as an outgrowth of scholastic theology there thus erupted a mystical-ascetic literature; as an outgrowth of seventeenthcentury Protestant Orthodoxy, Pietism; and in opposition to the mildly speculative Danish dogmatics of his time, Kierkegaard’s form of existentialist philosophy. But beyond that, the basic form of doctrinal teaching can prevail among the other basic forms of theological statement with such dominance that it alters their full expression and displaces them widely in the life of the church and in theological thinking. Preaching in the

Structural Issues Regarding the Dogmatic Statement

church then becomes instruction and doctrinal lecture, the witness of the Christian to other people becomes theological discussion, and the songs of the church become doctrinal poems. Such phases can be pointed out in the history of most churches. The more one-sided these phases are, the greater the reaction will be on the part of the other forms of faith responses, even up to deep alienation between teaching and preaching as well as between teaching and prayer, and even between teaching and the life of the church in general. (3) Conversely, however, another basic form of faith response can likewise prevail with a totalitarian claim. This eventuality then has the most serious consequences for the basic form of doctrinal teaching: If the informal expression of personal prayer, the experience of answered prayer, and the leading of the Spirit dominate the thinking of the believer, then teaching falls into the danger of becoming merely the description of religious experience. If the doxological statement dominates the thinking of the believer, then teaching turns into a metaphysical ontology whereby the historical nature of God’s action fades away. Then either no statements are made about human beings, who are after all silent about themselves in doxology, or the ontological structure of the theological statement is transferred also to the human being and the world. If the liturgical-sacramental event dominates the thinking of the believer, then under this domination doctrine becomes mystagogy, i. e., a meditative interpretation of the mystery of this action and of the words belonging to it. But also the basic form of witness-bearing, namely, the form of the historical and concrete word that reveals and strikes the particularity of the I and the Thou can prevail in such a way that it displaces the other basic forms of theological statement in the theological thought-world and inhibits their full completion. If this basic form of personal encounter is thus isolated and given total dominance, then the statements about God himself—about God’s being, essence, and attributes—that transcend the particular revelatory event, must appear suspect, in fact, impossible, and salvation history is absorbed into the present moment of one’s “historicality” [Geschichtlichkeit].[xvi] Then it is only logical that the possibility of making dogmatic statements that remain valid through the centuries is basically challenged.

All the previously identified structural shifts do not remain only formal in nature; they also have a bearing on the content of the dogmatic statement. These shifts also need to be considered, even when the same thing seems to be said in different basic forms. When, however, a basic form is isolated and purely and simply made into the dominant response of faith, then it takes effect as does an alien philosophical schematic pattern—be it a metaphysical-ontological one or an historical-existential one—and leads to a systematic rigidity that suppresses the full range of faith responses that are called for by God. Such rigidity corrupts doctrinal teaching. It is thus no accident that some of the most consistent and one-sided forms of theological systematics have become detached from faith in God’s act of salvation and yet could continue to live on as a philosophical system. This can be illustrated in the

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relationship between scholasticism and the Enlightenment as well as that between Kierkegaard and modern existentialism. Now dogmatics has, to be sure, expressly pointed to the limits of doctrine, even during the times when dogmatics was most fully developed. The seventeenthcentury Protestant dogmaticians were not the first to do this, since the medieval scholastics had already emphasized that doctrinal teaching is practical, in contrast to one that is merely theoretical. Doctrinal teaching is, moreover, a theology of those who are still under way, who have not yet reached the goal (a theologia viatorum in contrast to a theologia comprehensorum),[xvii] thus a knowledge of faith, not of sight. The medieval scholastics furthermore stressed that church doctrine is concerned only with the knowledge that God has imparted by grace, not with the knowledge that God has about himself (a theologia ektypos in contrast to a theologia archetypos).[xviii] Each of these ancient distinctions is correct. Today, one will nevertheless need to consider more precisely where the limits of doctrine are being transgressed, and this includes taking note of the structure of the dogmatic statement within the whole of the responses of faith.

Excursus: The Relationship between the Theological and Philosophical Analysis of Language[xix] It remains a strange fact that it was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that a clear distinction was made between language as an objective means for constructing a community and language as the act of speaking, and that a systematics of statements was first drawn up regarding their basic function in conversation.8 Foundational here were Ferdinand de Saussure, with his distinction between le langage [universal linguistic system that allows for communication], la parole [the actual language spoken, e. g., Chinese, Spanish, etc.], and la langue [individual speech acts], and Karl Bühler, with his systematic conception of the threefold work of language as expression of the sender [Kundgabe], appeal to the receiver [Auslösung,], and representation of object or circumstance [Darstellung].9 These significant rudiments of a morphology of language have a common, systematic starting point in the

8 Cf. Hans Arens, Sprachwissenschaft: Der Gang ihrer Entwicklung von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart [Linguistics: The Course of Its Development from Antiquity to the Present] (Freiburg: Alber, 1955), 204f. 9 Ferdinand de Saussure, Grundfragen der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1931). [Original: Cours de linguistique générale, ed. C. Bally and A. Sechehaye, with the collaboration of A. Riedlinger (Lausanne/Paris: Payot, 1916; ET: Course in General Linguistics, trans. and annotated by Roy Harris [Chicago: Open Court, 1983]). The English descriptions of Saussure’s terms come from Harris. –Ed.]; Karl Bühler, Sprachtheorie (Jena/Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer, 1934). [ET: Theory of Language, trans. Donald Fraser Goodwin (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1990). In translating these three terms, I have kept in mind two other terms that Bühler subsequently

Excursus: The Relationship between the Theological and Philosophical Analysis of Language

speech act.[xx] In distinction from particular speech acts at any given time, language is the “general and constant.”10 It has “no other qualification for its existence than that it makes possible the speech acts, and it subsists only insofar as concrete speech acts are related to it.”11 From this starting point, there arose a linguistic interest in the different speech acts, e. g., the address, the question, the petition, the command, etc. That this subject became prominent so late in the history of linguistics—despite the enormous expansion of knowledge about human languages of the peoples of the world in the prior two centuries and about all the different kinds of speech acts that take place in them—is probably due above all to the fact that the philosophical treatment of language in Western intellectual history, from Aristotle and the Stoics up to the dawn of the modern age, took place under the hegemony of logic, where the effort was made to align language with [the classical field of] logic. Thus the relationship between word, idea, and subject matter, as well as ascertaining statements about a given subject matter, especially about the properties of the sentence’s subject, had been the central themes. It is even more striking that in systematic theology, discussions about the issue of language, speech acts—and thus the special character of the speaker’s personal orientation toward God and others—had not become a central topic already much earlier. For prayer and proclamation, the assurance of absolution, and the words of institution in the Lord’s Supper are all speech acts that were of constitutive importance to the life of the church from the very beginning. All along they fractured the structure of statements that only ascertain and transmit. Here, too, the reason might well be sought above all in the fact that systematictheological reflection about language, and also about theological statements, has been located under the hegemony of logic. This did not mean that theology had simply undertaken the task of the philosophy of language. The nuanced considerations in the ancient and medieval church regarding the issue of the analogia entis [analogy of being] alone make this clear. Decisive for Luther’s understanding of language was being existentially struck by the divine address, but in the scholasticism of old Protestantism the classic issue of analogy again became a central topic of systematic-theological reflection on language—but not, however, regarding the special structure of the divine address and of the human responses to it. Moreover, the newly attempted start of a Christian philosophy of language by Georg Hamann did not prevail in theology. When modern Protestant experiential theology understood describing pious states of mind as the task of theological statements, this only seemed to be a rupture of the traditional representational structure of theological statements.[xxi] Against this development,

preferred—Ausdruck and Appell—along with Darstellung, to depict (in contrast to behaviorism) a linguistic theory of speech as a complex but clear triadic semantic structure of communication. –Ed.] 10 Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Grundzüge der Phonologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1939), 5. [ET: Principles of Phonology, trans. Christiane A. M. Baltaxe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 1. –Ed.] 11 Trubetzkoy, Grundzüge der Phonologie, 5 [Principles of Phonology, 1 (trans. modified). –Ed.], also quoted by Arens, Sprachwissenschaft, 488.

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and with great power, Karl Barth and Emil Brunner stressed the personal character of the encounter with the divine word—without, however, developing a theological systemization of speech acts from this extremely important starting point.[xxii] Originating with Ferdinand de Saussure’s and Karl Bühler’s programmatically new starting point, important efforts in the past decades to systematically analyze speech acts have aimed to work out the foundational structures and criteria for true statements for the various languages and scholarly disciplines. In this analytical-linguistic research, which stemmed especially from the Vienna Circle, from Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and above all was further developed among Anglo-Saxon scholars, various lines of inquiry need to be distinguished, some of which pursue only logical issues, others only linguistic and structural issues, while others are more focused on the philosophical determination of the nature of language on that basis.[xxiii] It has become commonplace to combine and comprehend all of these different lines of research under analytic philosophy. Wittgenstein called the multiplicity of speech acts “language games” [Sprachspiele], and he pointed out that beyond the sentences that establish and depict facts, there are countless types of speech acts.12 Although the questions that Ferdinand de Saussure posed were of considerable importance also for the theological analysis of language, theologians hardly dealt with analytic philosophy for a long time and were initially almost always opposed to it. Moreover, it played a part that both Russell and the early Wittgenstein (of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), in agreement with logical positivism, liked to make decidedly negative judgments about religious and metaphysical statements and called them meaningless “empty formulas” [“Leerformeln”].13 Characteristic for this same attitude is, e. g., the multifaceted and very instructive book on “language in thought and action” by the American scholar, S. I. Hayakawa, which has been

12 [Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 5ff. –Ed.] 13 [Ernst Topitsch, “Über Leerformeln: Zur Pragmatik des Sprachgebrauches in Philosophie und politischer Theorie” (Concerning Empty Formulas: Pragmatics of the Use of Language in Philosophy and Political Theory) in Probleme der Wissenschaftstheorie (Issues in the Theory of Science), ed. Ernst Topitsch (Vienna: Springer, 1960), 233–264. Schlink was alluding to the negative conclusions that Wittgenstein made at the end of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, namely, that all the propositions of ethics, of aesthetics, about the meaning of life, of logic, and even of philosophy itself are, strictly speaking, senseless or meaningless. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden, intro. Bertrand Russell (London: Routledge, 1922). Cf. also idem, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Barrett (Oxford: Blackwell, 1966); Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematica (with Alfred North Whitehead), rev. ed., 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925–1927); idem, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (New York: W. W. Norton, 1940); idem, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1948); and idem, Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950, ed. Robert Charles Marsh (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1956). For an example of a logical positivist’s criticism of all religious and metaphysical statements as “empty” or “meaningless,” see A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (London: Gollancz, 1936). –Ed.]

Excursus: The Relationship between the Theological and Philosophical Analysis of Language

published in many editions and languages but ignores altogether the problems of language posed by religion and theology.14 When analytic philosophy—especially under the influence of the later work of Wittgenstein—developed a certain openness toward the issues of religious statements, there began a lively exchange between representatives of theology and of the analytic philosophy of language, especially in England. The interesting history of these encounters has been described several times.15 Yet, at this stage of the conversation, not a few theologians have made considerable, and in some cases even irresponsible, concessions to the analytic philosophy of language. Thus some have sought to justify theological statements vis-à-vis criticism from linguistic philosophy by denying that it is a question of cognitive statements and by interpreting them merely as expressions of feelings or personal encounters or of convictions that serve to give an orientation to life.16 Undoubtedly, in their discussions with the research of analytic philosophy, many theologians have not fully grasped the dogmatic character of the philosophical—still in part neo-positivistic—presuppositions guiding the researchers. Here basically the same infiltration of the theology of language by analytic philosophy took place at the same time that Christian pastoral care [Seelsorge] was largely infiltrated by psychology, and Christian ethics by sociology, and thus alienated from their proper tasks. Just as there is no purely formal historical-critical method, since content-related principles and pre-understandings are always operative when it is used and help contribute to the results (cf. 429f.), so also there is no analysis of language that is free of content-related principles and pre-understandings. It is therefore necessary that both the philosophical and the theological partners in the conversation become aware of their content-related presuppositions and take them into account in their dialogue. If the theologian fails to do this vis-à-vis the philosopher, and the philosopher fails to do this vis-à-vis the theologian, both continue to owe each other an important scholarly service. In contrast to the presuppositions of analytic philosophy, the first two sections of this chapter began with the gospel, and by means of linguistic analysis it systematized the faith responses that human beings give to the divine address that goes forth through the gospel.

14 S. I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action (New York: Harcourt, 1941). 15 See, e. g., James A. Martin, The New Dialogue between Philosophy and Theology (New York: Seabury, 1966). 16 For this, see my collective report, “Theologische Sprachanalytik im vorfeld der ökumenischen Fragestellung” [Theological Linguistics in the Approach to Ecumenical Issues], Ökumenische Rundschau 26 (1977): 63–72, and two of my book reviews that address the same topic: “Helmut Fischer, ‘Glaubensaussage und Sprachstruktur’” [Faith Statements and Linguistic Structure], Ökumenische Rundschau 23 (1974): 258–260; and “John May, ‘Sprache der Ökumene—Sprache der Einheit. Die Einheit der Menschheit: Zukünftige Grundlage der theologischen Ethik der Katholischen Kirche und des Ökumenischen Rats der Kirchen?’” [Language of Ecumenism—Language of Unity: The Unity of Humanity: Future Principles of Theological Ethics in the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches?], Ökumenische Rundschau 29 (1980): 121–123.

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The goal in doing this is not to make a complete list of all of these theological speech acts, but to highlight and systematically organize the basic structures of faith statements. To be sure, form-critical research in Old and New Testament scholarship has arrived at significantly sophisticated findings of different structures, but since dogmatic and ecumenical work has until now made no systematic use of it, let us here start with the basic structures of faith statements. They are already of considerable importance for the issue of the ecumenical consensus about the differently formulated dogmatic statements. Naturally, the issue of the basic structures of theological speech acts is only one sub-issue within the whole field of a theology of language, since the latter also includes consideration of the multiplicity of languages and the ideas expressed in them about the divine, of being, of nothingness, and of human beings—also the issue of whether and in what sense in the differences of the languages there also exist differences in the logic used to form concepts, judgments, and conclusions. It is also necessary to pay attention to the different anthropological basic forms, as they are operative in languages, the basic forms of the self-object awareness, of existence awareness, of perceptibility and imperceptibility, as well as the basic forms of the movement of thought and the manner of reassurance—forms that are deeply rooted in the varied psycho-physical constitutions of human beings.17 There are still many other issues about which, in discussing them, an ecumenical theology can learn important lessons from philosophical linguistics.18 In the midst of all these issues, the basic structures of theological statements occupy a special position, insofar as they are evident straight through the multiplicity of church bodies and languages, wherever faith responds to the gospel. In this respect, they are of special importance for further inquiry about the unity in diversity, and they also have consequences for the treatment of the classical problems of theological language.19 In all this, the relationship between philosophy and the theology of language is basically the same as that which has been treated above in the discourse concerning believing and knowing and about the relationship between theology and the non-theological scholarly disciplines. Both are different in their starting points. But both are about the same topic, namely, language. Thus philosophical statements are also the subject of theological-linguistic analysis, and theological statements are also the subject of linguistic-analytic philosophy. As already indicated above, this state of affairs need in no way lead to a conflict between the two disciplines, but it no doubt includes a mutual responsibility of both disciplines for each other. In this nexus, it is the task of analytic philosophy to question convenient jargon in the theological usage of language and, by means of this criticism, to force dogmatics to reflect on its specific speech acts. On the other hand, it is the task of theology to expose the dogmatic

17 Cf. Schlink, “Die Struktur,” KC, 47–64, 73ff. [SÖB, 1/1.47–64; 73ff. (ESW, 1.91–107, 117ff.). –Ed.] 18 For this, cf. my comments on the complexity of the linguistic problem, “Die Struktur,” KC, 64–72. [SÖB, 1/1.64–72 (ESW, 1.108–17). –Ed.] 19 Cf., for example, the excursus below on the issue of theological analogy (1071f.) and the one on the issue of the theological syllogism (1169f.).

The Task of an Ecumenical Dogmatics

presuppositions contained in the philosophy of language, which prevent it from seeing the whole of language. In this way, one can speak of a mutual interpenetration of theological and philosophical linguistic analysis in the same sense that the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has done when he described the relation between theological and philosophical hermeneutics as “a very complex relationship” of “mutual inclusion.”20 On the one hand, if we understand philosophical hermeneutics to be general hermeneutics, then, in relation to the latter, Christian theological hermeneutics appears to be a hermeneutics of a sub-area. For are there here not the same categories: word and writing, explanation and interpretation, distanciation and appropriation? But precisely by understanding theological hermeneutics as a special hermeneutics that is valid for the biblical texts, we make visible a reversed relation between philosophical and theological hermeneutics. Theological hermeneutics has such distinct, independent features that the relationship between it and philosophical hermeneutics is inverted step by step, so that theological hermeneutics finally subsumes philosophical hermeneutics as its own organon.21 So, in the final analysis, it would seem more natural to unfold the philosophy of language from the theology of language rather than vice versa.

3. The Task of an Ecumenical Dogmatics[xxiv] Every dogmatics that takes its task seriously claims to be an ecumenical dogmatics, regardless of the church body in which it originated. It makes this claim even when it is entirely denominational [konfessionalistisch] and monological, for it is the concern of every dogmatician, presupposing the authority of Holy Scripture and the traditions of that person’s church body, to teach what the church body has to proclaim and do if it wants to be and remain the true church, “the one, holy, catholic 20 Paul Ricoeur, “Philosophical Hermeneutics and Theological Hermeneutics,” Studies in Religion/ Sciences Religieuses 5 (1976): 17. 21 Paul Ricoeur, “Philosophische und Theologische Hermeneutik,” in Metapher: Zur Hermeneutik religioser Sprache, special edition of Evangelische Theologie, ed. Paul Ricoeur, Pierre Gisel, and Eberhard Jüngel (Munich: Kaiser, 1974), 34. [Another version of this essay, which does not include the section that is quoted here, has been translated as “Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical Hermeneutics,” in Philosophical Hermeneutics and Theological Hermeneutics: Ideology, Utopia and Faith (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1976), 1–20. According to Ricoeur, distanciation takes place when interpreters distance themselves from a text, thus objectifying the text for the sake of understanding it. One appropriates a text only after it has first been “held at a distance and examined” (Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, ed. Don Ihde, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin et al. [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974]), 30. –Ed.]

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and apostolic church.” In view of the fact that dogmatics teaches about God’s act of salvation in Christ, it can be designated as “Christian dogmatics”; or, in view of the fact that Christ has been exalted to be the head of all believers and the Lord of the universe, as “catholic dogmatics”; or, in view of the apostolic gospel, which has proclaimed God’s act of salvation as foundational for all time, as “evangelical dogmatics”; or, in view of the concern for the right praise of God, as “orthodox dogmatics”; or, in view of the church that proclaims the gospel and glorifies God, as “church dogmatics.” All of these designations are ultimately interrelated and basically interchangeable. Each of the above more precise definitions of dogmatics can therefore also be spoken of as “ecumenical dogmatics,” since each of them concerns the faith of the whole people of God on earth. However, the claim to be an ecumenical dogmatics is by itself insufficient today, for it is precisely with this claim that the dogmaticians of the separated parts of Christendom oppose each other and contest it of one another. To be sure, this situation is not new, but Christendom is more profoundly troubled today than in earlier times about these divisions, which consist not only of differences in dogmas but also in the separate nature of worship assemblies, in the mutual denial of communion in the Lord’s Supper, in the non-recognition of ministerial offices, and even in the anathema. More profoundly than in earlier times, we today sense the scandal of this situation of Christendom, for in the midst of the onslaught of anti-Christian powers and in the context of shared suffering of oppression and persecution, we have heard the voice of Christ from mouths of Christians and Christian communities where we previously did not expect to hear that voice, and we cannot forget that cry.[xxv] A new community of mutual help, intercession, and common witness to the world has arisen in many places and is pressing for full unity. In the midst of this spiritual awakening, wherein Christians are newly seeking and finding brothers and sisters in the separated parts of Christendom, and in the midst of a new inquiry about the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” beyond the borders of one’s own church body, it is not enough to claim to be teaching an ecumenical dogmatics. Rather, what is needed is a distinct scholarly endeavor, namely, that the dogmatics be ecumenical not only in its claim but also in its execution and findings. The conflict among the pertinent dogmas in Christendom will need to be questioned with renewed intensity, longing, and love. What is being experienced in the new community, largely without reflection, has to be brought to light, and what is recognized as truth in mutual statements of witness and prayer needs also to be expressed in statements of doctrine. The unity which is shrouded in the conflict needs to be sought with new methods in order to move beyond the ecumenicity that is claimed and longed-for, and to bring about a consummation of an ecumenical unity in faith and action. In this sense, we here undertake the following inquiry about the task of an ecumenical dogmatics. How

The Task of an Ecumenical Dogmatics

should a dogmatics proceed that not only claims to be ecumenical but is obligated to fulfill the ecumenical task in the above-given sense? (a) We will need to address this question below, in the context of ecclesiology, where we will examine it more precisely with respect to method. Here we will only address a number of delimitations that are not self-evident: (1) An ecumenical dogmatics should not restrict itself to looking for statements of the other churches that are identical in content with the doctrine of one’s own Church. To be sure, the presupposition for any work in dogmatics is that specific Church through whose witness we have come to faith and through whose administration of the sacraments we have become members of the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” In this respect, it is tempting from this perspective to inquire about the “constituent parts” [Elementen] of precisely this Church that are in the churches separated from us. But if we do only this, we fail to understand the other churches, since they do not see themselves in terms of a portion of the constituent parts of another church body but understand themselves as complete wholes. Above all, however, we fail in this way to recognize the treasure of Christ, who is acting in manifold ways in the churches and who is attested by them in manifold statements and orders of ministry and worship—not only in those that are familiar and dear to us from our own church body. (2) An ecumenical dogmatics should not restrict itself to going back to what was agreed upon dogmatically in the ancient church, something that was invoked especially in the ecumenical endeavors of the seventeenth century (in the theology of Georg Calixt and the Helmstädter School and also in the discussions between Leibniz and Molanus, on the one hand, and Bossuet and Spinola, on the other), as the starting point and norm for the elaboration of a new consensus concerning the divisions in the church.[xxvi] To be sure, returning to this consensus seems to suggest that, along with the Eastern and Latin churches, the churches of the Reformation also have retained the dogmas of the ancient church, and that thus the ancient church’s dogmatic decisions regarding christology and the Trinity have remained the common, shared dogma of Eastern Christendom and of divided Western Christendom. And yet such a starting point for an ecumenical dogmatics is insufficient today. Since the seventeenth century, Christian communities with strong missionary impulses have emerged and have been constituted as independent churches, whose particularities cannot be overlooked by dogmatics. For these churches, the ancient church’s dogmatic decisions and conceptuality have remained remote. Without consciously referring to church tradition, these independent church bodies have received their strength from the present activity of the biblical word. Dogmatics must therefore go back to the historical, original apostolic tradition and from its center open up the truth of the ancient church’s decisions for those who have come to faith without knowing about them or who do not understand and follow them as their own decisions. Moreover, we see more clearly today than was possible in the

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seventeenth century that the consensus in the first five centuries was only a partial one. The issues addressed by an ecumenical dogmatics for our time are not easily solved through the dogmatic decisions of the ancient church but are in fact posed in the most radical manner. (3) An ecumenical dogmatics should also not restrict itself to comparing the current faith convictions of the separated parts of Christendom and describing which doctrines are held in common. The task of carefully comparing the dogmas on opposing sides of the church divisions and identifying the agreements in the midst of the differences and, in turn, the differences in the midst of the agreements, is, to be sure, indispensable and very helpful.[xxvii] The work in dogmatics of the ecumenical conferences on “faith and order” rightly began with such comparisons at Lausanne in 1927, continued that work in subsequent years up to the world conferences at Edinburgh in 1937 and Lund in 1952, and thus eliminated many prejudices.[xxviii] But this comparing is still not properly dogmatic work; rather, it is preliminary, statistical work in dogmatics. For the doctrinal statements in that work—which ultimately continue to be commonly held statements, even after omitting all differences and oppositions—are so colorless and indefinite that the churches involved, even if they agree with these statements, usually are unable to acknowledge them as adequate doctrine, let alone as a confession in the sense of binding dogma. The attempt to want to solve the task of an ecumenical dogmatics by comparing and identifying a cross-sectional summary of the various doctrinal statements would lead to a minimalism, which necessarily lacks the spiritual authority and intellectual power to elucidate the traditions of the separated churches for one another.[xxix] Ecumenical theology must have the courage to be maximalist, not in the sense of the ideal of being quantitatively complete but in terms of the intensity with which such theology calls attention to the center of the apostolic message. It is only from this center that the recognition of true doctrine or even fragments of true doctrine in another church body becomes possible, but also the recognition of error, incompleteness, or bias in one’s own church body. (4) Finally, in view of the difficulty of their task, dogmaticians should not flee from dogmas to a phenomenological analysis of the experiences of spiritual unity and pious feelings. Not only would they break off dialogue with those churches that are committed to dogma but they would also be overlooking the fact that the Christian faith necessarily calls for common statements of confession. To be sure, for many Christians today, even in the Roman Catholic Church, dogma and dogmatics are discredited. These Christians are afraid that any ecumenical endeavor to formulate a consensus de doctrina will lead to further divisions and to the loss of what has come alive in a new community from within the divided parts of Christendom. Thus some Christians today fundamentally reject the idea that agreement in doctrine is necessary for the unity of the church. But where this happens, and unity is seen solely in a doctrinally irreproducible experience of Christian community, such unity

The Task of an Ecumenical Dogmatics

will almost inevitably morph imperceptibly into a plaything of social, political, and ideological trends, and thus become an exponent of the principalities and powers of this world, and in turn disintegrate. Under no circumstances can we sidestep the task of endeavoring to achieve dogmatic consensus. (b) But what then are the methods to be used in the endeavor to reach unity in doctrine? We cannot yet at this point develop a doctrine of Holy Scripture and of dogma or a biblical and dogmatic hermeneutic (cf. chap. 21.A and B), for this already presupposes christology and pneumatology as well as the doctrine of the church, which will be presented below. Nor can we here discuss the relationship between Scripture and tradition, which is defined in very different ways within Christendom. We can only presuppose the state of affairs that all churches, no matter how they define the relationship between Scripture and tradition, invoke Holy Scripture to ground their dogmatic statements and, at the very least, invoke non-contradiction between their dogmas and Holy Scripture. So in this introductory part we can only highlight some methodological perspectives. Our reflections about the precision of the ecumenical method will be left for later (cf. chap. 22). (1) Refraining from preconceived and obvious harmonization, one must first take note of the multiplicity of biblical statements, their diversity, yes, even their contradictory character with respect to many of their details. Refraining from hastily using isolated biblical statements as timeless dogmatic statements, we must first become aware of the multiplicity of biblical concepts, ideas, arguments, and patterns, for the biblical writings witness to every divine act with a variety of statements. So it is noteworthy that in the Old Testament, God’s act of salvation for Israel is by no means taught only in the conceptuality of covenant and election, and that God himself is called upon and proclaimed with numerous names. The New Testament Scriptures bear witness to God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ by means of an even greater variety of statements, namely, the great plethora of names for Jesus, honorific titles and designations of dignity that are used for him, and the multiplicity of concepts and patterns by which, e. g., the salvific significance of his death on the cross is spoken of as sacrifice, penal suffering, reconciliation, ransom, etc. There is a corresponding multiplicity of statements in the New Testament regarding the effect of this act of salvation (e. g., as forgiveness, justification, sanctification, vivification, adoption by God) and regarding the church (e. g., as the people of God, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit). By no means does this multiplicity of statements imply a tautology, even though all of them are about the same salvific act of God. Each of these statements cannot fully replace any of the others. Biblical statements, however, are to be taken seriously not only in their varied conceptuality but also as historical acts of making a statement. One must take note of the multiplicity of historical situations and fronts in which the biblical witnesses were heard. After all, the historical act of making a statement does not merely

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determine the choice of words but often reshapes the meaning of the words that are chosen. In the process, it will be necessary to inquire about the underlying basic statements and formulas of the earliest Christian tradition that have been developed one way or another by the multiplicity of witnesses in the New Testament Scriptures and in the diversity of their situations. Only by knowing about the diversity of biblical statements and their historical presuppositions and fronts can one rightly inquire about the unity of dogmatic statements. Only by acknowledging the historical dynamic by which Jesus Christ, as the exalted Lord—through the message of his called witnesses—has penetrated new regions of the world, new ideational realms and conceptualities, can the unity of theological statements be disclosed. In this way historical-critical research of the Bible can be of great ecumenical significance. (2) Refraining from preconceived and obvious harmonization, one should note the diversity, yes, even the contradictoriness existing in some particulars, of the dogmatic statements that carry weight in the individual churches. Consider, e. g., the differences within the Lutheran Confessions between Luther’s teaching about the Sacrament, Melanchthon’s, and that of the Formula of Concord, or the differences between the dogmatic positions in the Roman Church on the Augustinian teaching about grace. Such differences within one’s own confession will need to be compared with the differences between the confessions with respect to their content, depth, and scope. In doing so, dogmas should also not be compared to one other like timeless truths, but they must be contrasted with one another as historical statements that have been formulated and received by certain people in certain situations and fronts. A dogma can only then be properly understood as a substantive statement if it is at the same time taken seriously as an historical act of making a statement. From the multiplicity of dogmas, we need to inquire again about the original act of confessing, about its basic christological content, and about the unique concentration of theological statements within it. We will have to endeavor, only as far as is possible, to recognize the multiplicity of dogmas, in both their content and structure, as an historical unfolding of early Christian confessional statements. Only by knowing about the historical presuppositions and fronts in which the dogmas arose and in referring back to early Christian confessional statements, can we properly formulate the inquiry about the unity of different dogmatic statements; for in spite of all the multiplicity of spiritual gifts and historical guidance, the action of the Holy Spirit in the church is always a “reminding” [“Erinnern”] of the historical Christ, to whose revelation the early Christian confessions responded. (3) It is not just the claim that is made about a dogma’s authority that needs to be taken seriously, but rather the authority that Scripture and dogma actually have in the life of the relevant Christian community. The claim to authority and the actual authority do not widely agree, or they do so only partly. Throughout the whole history of the church, it has been the case that, even after the church had the biblical canon, at times it lived more from some biblical witnesses, and then at other times

The Task of an Ecumenical Dogmatics

more from others. And even when the church had firmly settled many dogmas, its thinking was at times determined more by this dogmatic decision, and then at other times more by that one. In addition, however, claim and actual authority can directly contradict one another, i. e., there are Christian communities which are hostile to dogmas that are actually more tightly bound together by common faith convictions, and on the other hand there is a “confessional basis” that some communities have that actually signifies no real commitment for its life together. There are communities that fundamentally reject every principle of tradition but which are actually more firmly captive to a tradition than other communities, which hold to a principle of tradition but thereby use it actually to question their tradition critically.[xxx] An ecumenical dogmatics has to pay attention to the present reality of Christendom. There are churches that are very far apart from each other with respect to their historical claims but are in fact very close to one another with respect to their real-life situation. (4) In confession an ideational concentration always takes place in just a few words that bear witness to the whole faith. Thus only very few of the New Testament’s christological titles of honor have been included in confessional statements. This concentration does not replace the plethora of early Christian statements, and yet here in a few words the submission to the same Lord takes place, to whose act of salvation and to whose name a large number of New Testament statements bear witness. This is not only a matter of systematic concentration in dogma but also in dogmatics, even when dogmatics, in contrast to confession, takes up the multiplicity of biblical statements and thoroughly examines them, for what is here meant by to examine thoroughly [verarbeiten]? ¶Every dogmatics faces the task of summarizing the multiplicity of concepts and theologies with which the biblical writings bear witness to the acts of God. It can do so only by singling out individual concepts from that multiplicity and using them as basic dogmatic concepts, in relation to which other neighboring biblical concepts are subordinated. Thus, e. g., christology in Eastern Christendom is more strongly determined by the epiphany of Christ, while in Western Christendom it is determined by the cross; and regarding the gift of salvation, “life” has greater prominence in the East, whereas justification stands out in the West. In this kind of systematic concentration, in which the plethora of biblical statements is summarized by overarching concepts (e. g., incarnation or justification)—which are by no means present in all of the New Testament Scriptures—both those biblical concepts that are singled out and made into basic dogmatic concepts and those that are associated with and subordinate to them undergo a certain change, namely, the first set of terms by expansion, and the latter set by adaptation and contraction. This is also true of the various foundational settings in the Bible that bear witness to God’s acts of salvation. For this reason, e. g., the relationship between the old and the new covenants is understood in the New Testament Scriptures not only in terms of correspondence,

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fulfillment, and continuation but also in terms of conflict, as the end of the old and the beginning of the new. So in the formation of dogmatic concepts—and ultimately in the formation of a comprehensive dogmatic system—there is always an element of free choice. Thereby, it is not yet a matter of true or false but of a choice about what is to be passed on from within the multiplicity of witnesses that are given with the foundation of earliest Christianity. (5) So one should not restrict oneself to considering the unity and disunity between the existing dogmas and other pronouncements of divided Christendom. In view of the multiplicity of biblical statements, one has to reckon with the possibility that such dogmatic statements have not yet been produced in the history of dogma. This is true both about those theological topics that have hitherto been explored only in a certain way and about those which simply have not at all been decided upon dogmatically. More possibilities undoubtedly remain open than have been considered and developed so far in the history of theology and the history of dogma—something that is in fact true, not only because of the diversity of biblical statements but also because of the constantly changing historical fronts in which dogmatic work has to be done. Since the gospel surely is to be proclaimed to all peoples, the dogmatic work of disrupting, using, and transforming very different ideas and conceptualities in the world around us still has to happen. Today we need to reckon with further dogmatic statements, e. g., in the advance of the gospel into the spiritual realms of the Far East. Every dogmatics, but especially an ecumenical one, has to strive for this fundamental openness and readiness. For the concern here is about Christ, to whom as Lord everything is subject, and thus not only about those who already confess him today but also about those who will confess him in the future. (6) If the above-mentioned methodological considerations are affirmed, then their application also raises fresh perspectives for handling the question of how dogmatic statements can be compared with each other, and about how one can reliably determine their agreement and their difference, and then in turn weigh that difference. The treatment of this question appears simple if one restricts oneself to looking for similar dogmatic formulations in the teachings of the separated churches. But doing this is insufficient because one and the same formula does not always mean the same thing within the total teaching of each of the separated churches. In addition, however, unity of doctrine does of course not necessarily consist in uniformity of the formulation. Moreover, differing formulations can agree substantively. To be sure, in the encounter of the separated churches with one another, one will never be able to be satisfied with this basic possibility of consensus or even with the bare assertion of it. Rather, agreement must be clearly recognizable, mutually demonstrable, and thus capable of being taught. But how is this substantive identity reliably determined? How can one even recognize the non-contradictoriness between differing dogmatic statements? It could hardly be a

The Task of an Ecumenical Dogmatics

question that the comparative method of the old “comparative dogmatics”—whose particularity still largely dominates the textbooks of confessional studies in their chapters that treat the confessional statements of the other churches—is no longer in any way adequate for addressing this issue. Rather, there arises the task of translation that is not merely linguistic. Doctrinal statements that have been made against different historical fronts—using different terminologies, different basic structures of theological statement, and different anthropological/epistemological presuppositions—cannot be directly compared with each other. Rather, they must be translated from the one historical front, terminology, and statement-structure into the other if agreements and differences and the gravity of the difference are to be truly recognized. Of course, there arose differences in dogmatic statements when Augustine spoke about the human will against a self-assured voluntarism and ethical activism, and when at the same time Eastern theologians defended the freedom of the will over against a natural and deterministic misunderstanding of freedom on the part of Gnosticism; and when Thomas Aquinas taught about God’s being and nature principally in Aristotelian concepts, while Gregory of Palamas did so principally in neo-Platonic concepts; and when the Chalcedonian Definition was interpreted in the structure of doxology or in terms of a theoretical definition of the relationship between the divine and human natures; or when the Protestant Reformers set forth the doctrine of justification in the form of a personal encounter of the divine word with the hearer, or when the Council of Trent set forth its statements on the same topic in the form of a description of the process of justification, and so on.[xxxi] If one undertakes such a task of translation (in the comprehensive sense), one will make surprising discoveries. Differing statements can mean the same thing or at least complement each other non-contradictorily. In turn, identical statements may differ in content. The consideration of these forms of linguistic and historical conditioning, if it is held accountable vis-à-vis apostolic tradition, does not imply dogmatic relativism. On the contrary, precisely in this way the authority of the dogmatic statement is taken seriously, namely, in working out what is permanently valid from what is relative, which is quite inevitably given with the historical context of the dogmatic formulation’s origin as well as with its conceptuality and structure. (7) The task of translating one structure of theological statement into another involves the obligation to return to the basic structures in which faith expresses itself. In this way, the basic, foundational structure of speaking theologically about human beings as sinners is not the doctrine of sin but the confession of sins; and the basic, foundational structure of speaking about God is not the doctrine of God but the worship of God. The original function of church doctrine as such, however, is to transmit the historical acts of God. Just as comparing dogmas of the separated churches remains largely unfruitful if that comparison does not result from common reflection on the New Testament foundation and especially on the confession of Christ—the originating source for the development of dogma—so

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also the structures of dogmatic statements cannot be directly compared to each other. Rather, our reflecting together must return to that structure which is to be designated as basic for the dogmatic topic under discussion. In this way, to note two further examples, the basic structure of the gospel is not doctrine but the promise that is proclaimed, and the doctrinal teachings about the sacraments are to be interpreted on the basis of the act of offering sacramental consolation and the believing reception of it. Structural shifts can lead to weighty shifts in content. Indeed, some dogmatic problems have arisen in the first place because of such structural shifts, which, if ignored and their substantive impact is not recognized, can become the source of stubborn misunderstandings and even the occasion for oppositions and church divisions. Taking the structures of theological statements into consideration is all the more important in endeavoring to develop an ecumenical dogmatics because such structures are rooted in the historical dynamic through which God is acting in the world. The structures of the statements are thus inseparable, e. g., from the basic structures of the church, which are characterized by God’s act of redemption for humankind as well as by the obedience of believers to God, by their unity with one another, and by their service to the world, as will be developed below. (c) These preceding remarks on method already make clear that the task of an ecumenical dogmatics is quite wide-ranging, indeed, practically limitless. The task of a full-scale definitive dogmatics would involve presenting as completely as possible the manifold possibilities of dogmatic development contained in early Christian tradition, regardless of whether these possibilities have been realized before in history or not. In this horizon of what is possible, the doctrinal differences and antitheses that have arisen in the history of Christendom would have to be highlighted and then examined regarding the extent to which they have a starting point within the biblical realm. This task would have to be done by taking into account the various historical fronts, conceptualities, and structures in which the dogmatic statements were formulated, and by considering the ecclesiological weight that they have exercised among the separated churches. At the same time, the history and present state of ecumenical dialogue among the individual churches, as well as within Christendom as a whole, would have to be thoroughly studied, whereby some topics would be discussed in great detail and others would hardly be raised at all. This would result in some convergences, but in other cases, estrangement. Added to this would be the difficulties in arriving at the systematic form of such a dogmatics. If one were to undertake this task of laying out the different basic possibilities and historical realities in great detail, entirely new problems would arise regarding the organization of dogmatics. These problems are similar to those seen by modern artists who have tried to include movement in a painting to such an extent, e. g., presenting one and the same person in a single form, but in different poses and from different angles. Just as here lurks the disintegration of the image,

The Task of an Ecumenical Dogmatics

so in such an ecumenical dogmatics’ complex composition of great detail lurks the disintegration of doctrine. The task of this book is more modest. It is not concerned with carrying out a fullscale definitive ecumenical dogmatics, but only with presenting its basic features [Grundzüge]. It realizes only one of many possibilities for beginning, organizing, and developing a dogmatics. It thus represents a selection from the basic possibilities. As indicated above, each choice in terminology, conceptuality, and organization is connected with the dangers of oversimplification, narrowing, and thus separating. It is therefore necessary that this decision be made deliberately, i. e., in full knowledge of the other possibilities. Even if all the possibilities contained in early Christian tradition cannot be presented below, the most important doctrines will point to the multiplicity of ideas, concepts, and patterns that witness to one and the same event. Even if all the differences and conflicts in the history of dogma cannot be mentioned, at least the most profound and consequential ones will be. Nor can we report in detail the course and status of the ecumenical dialogues of our time, and yet, as will be clear at many points, this book would be impossible without them. If in spite of these limitations we dare to put forth here an outline of a dogmatics that is completely ecumenical in nature, it is because ecumenical dialogue about individual controversial topics, as fruitful as that has proved to be, is still insufficient. It is necessary to bring scholarly effort to bear in order to understand the place, the importance, and the weight that individual doctrinal differences play in the whole of Christian doctrine, that is, to make an effort toward understanding “the hierarchy of truths” about which the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism spoke.22 This is to be done with respect to the methodological considerations developed in this section. The structures of the theological statement have so far received little attention in ecumenical dialogue. The author is convinced, however, that by taking them into consideration readers can anticipate further clarifications that go beyond mere attempts at terminological and/or conceptual translation. In the following three sections we will thus inquire about the consequences that arise from these considerations. 22 [“Furthermore, in ecumenical dialogue, when Catholic theologians join with other Christians in common study of the divine mysteries, while standing fast by the teaching of the Church, they should pursue the work with love for the truth, with charity, and with humility. When comparing doctrines with one another, they should remember that in Catholic doctrine there exists an order or ‘hierarchy’ of truths, since they vary in their connection with the foundation of the Christian faith. Thus the way will be opened for this kind of friendly emulation to incite all to a deeper awareness and clearer manifestation of the unfathomable riches of Christ” (Unitatis redintegratio [Decree on Ecumenism, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 21 November 1964], Tanner, 2.914–915 [trans. modified]; cf. Denzinger, 4192). For Schlink’s extended reflections on this notion of a hierarchy of truths, see his essay, “Die ‘Hierarchie der Wahrheiten’ und die Einigung der Kirchen” (The “Hierarchy of Truths” and the Unification of the Churches), Kerygma und Dogma 21 (1975): 1–12. –Ed.]

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4. The Doctrine of the Acts of God Dogma has its origin in the confession of faith. Dogmatics, however, is not confession of faith but doctrinal teaching. If in the confession of faith all the responses of faith are concentrated in a unique way—prayer, worship, witness, and doctrine—then dogmatics as doctrine is structurally different from the other statements. It is not prayer, worship, proclamation, or confession, but is subservient to them all. Indeed, the original function of doctrine is to serve as the tradition about the acts of salvation, on the basis of which God is called upon, prayed to, proclaimed, and confessed. Now a great many traditions about God’s acts of promising and commanding, saving and judging, are found in Holy Scripture, but in the midst of this large number there emerges a tradition of distinct, unique, and foundational acts, which the other accounts and witnesses invoke time and again. Throughout the centuries, these acts have been handed down as the foundation of faith, interpreted further in changing historical situations, and maintained as authoritative in the present. Handed down as God’s foundational act in the Old Testament Scriptures is the deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt. The Old Testament refers to this event again and again. This foundational act of salvation is recorded in confessional summaries of salvation history, among which the ancient creed in Deuteronomy 26.5–9 deserves special mention.[xxxii] Beyond individual reports and summaries, the whole Hexateuch is understood as an interpretation that makes this event a reality for the present and as an exposition of the commandments given in it. In the Psalter it becomes clear how much the liturgy and the feasts of the Old Testament covenant people were determined by the remembrance of that salvific act of God. It is also remembered in the proclamation of the prophets, but now as the basis for the divine judgment that is coming upon that same people who have become rebellious. Taught as God’s foundational act in the New Testament Scriptures is the historical narrative of Jesus Christ, especially his death and resurrection, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. Through Jesus’ resurrection, his earthly activity is confirmed by God, and his death on the cross is revealed as the redemption of the world. Through the action of the Holy Spirit, the history of Jesus is recognized as the humiliation and exaltation of Christ, the Son of God. In this way also, the worship of the church is the ever-new remembrance of Jesus’ death and resurrection, in the certainty that the crucified and risen Lord is present in its midst and acting in it through the Holy Spirit. In these salvific acts God has revealed himself purely and simply as the Lord. Thus it is true that everything that is, has its origin and continuation through his working. Creation myths and cosmogonies existed already before the salvation of Israel, but now the God who saved Israel is praised as the Creator of heaven and earth. In turn, the salvific act of God in Jesus Christ is the basis for the particular

The Doctrine of the Acts of God

statements (beyond those in the Old Testament) by which the Christian community confesses its faith in the Creator: “…for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor. 8.6). The following is true for each of these foundational acts: (a) God has done them in the freedom of his love. They have no basis outside of God. This is true not only of God’s act of creation in the beginning, through which he called the universe into being out of nothing, but also of God’s election of Israel. For Israel was “the least of all peoples” (Deut. 7.7 [L]) and “stiff-necked” (Deut. 9.6ff. et al. [NIV]). Finally, the sending of Jesus Christ was the act of free divine mercy. Although Israel broke the covenant God had made with it, he sent the promised Christ to it; and although it brought him to the cross, through his death God established the new covenant, and through the outpouring of the Spirit he created the people of the new covenant. The fact that God chose Israel does not necessarily follow from his act of creation, and the fact that he sent the Christ and the Holy Spirit does not necessarily follow from the establishment of the Old Testament covenant, for between these acts stands the rebellion of humankind and its fall into God’s judgment. (b) In each of these actions, God acted through his word. At the same time, the relationship between word and act can be different case by case. The main focus of the accounts is the understanding of the divine word as an effective word, an active word. Through his word God brings about what the word promises and commands. In this way, God created the universe through his word (Gen. 1; Jn. 1.3); and in this way, through Jesus’ proclamation of the reign of God, the reign of God has broken into the world. God’s word can also precede his act as a word of call and promise (so in the tradition about Moses’ commissioning, Exod. 3.7ff.). But it can also follow his act and make it manifest as God’s act (so in the reports of the appearances of the risen Lord). But none of the foundational acts was accomplished by God without his word, and without his word none of them would be recognizable as God’s act. (c) Through each of these acts the basis for a relationship between God and humankind is established, to which God remains committed in his further action. Each of these acts is thus God’s free self-determination to continue faithfully in this action. As the one who created the world in the beginning, he preserves and governs it. As the one who chose Israel, he leads it through history and holds to its election, even during those times when Israel turned its back on God and was impenitent. As the one who has reconciled humanity to himself in the death of Christ, God is constantly calling upon humans “to be reconciled to God,” and he renews them through the Holy Spirit. For that reason, the Holy Scriptures refer to these foundational acts as a divine “covenant,” a divine “oath,” or as a divine promise to continue to act in the future as God has done in his foundational act.

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(d) The promise of God to continue in this action means at the same time the promise to fulfill what has begun. Each of these acts points beyond itself. Thus the Priestly account of creation is focused on the procreation of humankind and human dominion over the earth (Gen. 1.28). Thus the story of Abraham’s call contains the promise, “in you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12.3 [L, slightly modified]). Even the resurrection of Jesus has not been restricted merely to him. Rather, it is the dawning of the new creation, which has been growing constantly ever since and will someday be completed. Each of God’s foundational acts promises a dynamic force of divine action that is coursing forward to encompass the universe and is opening a future that far surpasses the present. Thereby, on the basis of the divine act of salvation, faith can be so certain of the consummation that is still coming that it can bear witness to it as having already been accomplished. In this sense, the Psalter bears witness to the lordship of Yahweh over the nations as a fact, the New Testament bears witness to the lordship of Jesus over the universe as a fact; and in the creed, the parousia of Jesus Christ at the end of history is confessed in one sequence with the historical facts of his birth, his death, and his resurrection. (e) None of the foundational acts of God is only in the past since they determine our present. Although they once took place in the past, they have not vanished in the past, for they are events that have happened once and for all. In this way, each of these acts is at the same time God’s act for us. Luther’s exposition of the Apostles’ Creed rightly begins with the words, “I believe that God has created me together with all creatures,” and he continues in a corresponding manner in his exposition of the other articles of the creed.23 Just as the acts that God has accomplished are not only in the past, so the promised act of consummation is not only in the future. Although it is still coming, it determines the present; indeed, it is already breaking into the present. The new creation that is still to come is already happening for the believer, even if it will be revealed and consummated only someday in the future. “If anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creature. The old has passed away; see, everything has become new” (2 Cor. 5.17 [L, slightly modified]). Nevertheless, as surely as God’s actions are happening to us now, they certainly cannot be reduced to a relevant event of present-day experience, for God’s action upon us takes place in the faithfulness of the one who in the beginning created the universe, who redeemed Israel, who in Christ reconciled humanity to himself and poured out the Holy Spirit. If one were to disregard these foundational acts and the promises given with them, certainty about God’s action in the present would fall to pieces. The one-time character of God’s salvific act would be reduced to the existential moment of faith, and humankind would ultimately be solely on its own.[xxxiii] Theology would then be reduced to anthropology. One cannot forget that in the so-called

23 Luther, SC (The Creed). [BSELK, 870 (BC, 354 [trans. modified]). –Ed.]

The Doctrine of the Acts of God

“kerygmatic formulas” of the New Testament and in the confessions of faith from the ancient church, the emphasis is on the acts of God that have been accomplished once and for all. (f) Through each of his foundational acts, God has in a new way made the human being into a Thou [Du] and calls the person to the obedience of faith and to trust that in this way and no other God is here for us today and tomorrow and is calling us to fulfill his commandments. In this way, through his promising and demanding, God brings human beings into the dynamic of his working that embraces the world. If the basic statement-structure of dogmatics is teaching, then above all it has to teach “the mighty deeds of God” (Acts 2.11 [L]). We are not to seek the unity of doctrine in the description of a similar act of faith. The psychological process of faith will always be different from person to person. The unity of doctrine also cannot consist in the description of similar Christian experiences. Such experiences are as diverse as the people involved and as the spiritual gifts. For this reason, the unity of doctrine also cannot consist in making certain anthropological forms of acquiring salvation into dogma. Rather, unity consists in acknowledging the same foundational acts of God. By focusing on them, dogmatics makes space for the ever-new, necessary, and free unfolding of the witness and praise in the fluctuations of history and in the diversity of the peoples. The human situation is constantly changing, and the prophetic word and the specific prayer are being voiced in ever-new ways. But “the mighty deeds of God” are the abiding foundation of all forms of witness and prayer. By focusing on those acts, dogmatics gains an expanse without which it would not be an ecumenical dogmatics. In doing so, the teaching about each and every one of these acts of God is teaching about the faith, even if the relationship between the faith and what is empirically detectible is different case by case. The connection between these acts consists in the fact that one and the same God turns to his creatures in the freedom of his love, and in that very love continues to do what he has begun, even though his creatures have turned against him. The knowledge of faith has again and again inquired about the meaningful connections between the individual acts. Thereby, in Holy Scripture the relationships between the divine promise and fulfillment (or, as the case may be, between divine command and judgment) and between the divine decree and its realization are most prominent. In the history of theology many other models have acquired significance, whether it be by broadening narrow biblical statements to make them into comprehensive systems of meaning, or whether it be by using philosophical and empirical scientific concepts. The first way was followed, for example, by Irenaeus, when he made systematic use of the concept of restorative recapitulation, which is attested to only weakly in the New Testament (cf. Eph. 1.10), to form his doctrine of recapitulation; or when Cocceius and the movement of federal theology transferred as a general principle the Old and New Testaments’ idea of covenant to God’s act of creation in the beginning and its preservation; or when the idea

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of divine education, which is not central in Holy Scripture, was used already in the ancient church and altogether in Lessing’s Education of the Human Race.[xxxiv] Moreover, manifold systematic concepts that are not of biblical origin, such as, e. g., emanation, teleology, or evolution, have been used to summarize the acts of God. Theological thinking has not only undertaken such comprehensive meanings but has also tried to prove the necessity of individual divine acts, not only to faith but also to reason. Thus, in his book Cur Deus homo, Anselm of Canterbury sought to prove the necessity of the incarnation against objections by Jews and unbelievers.[xxxv] Of course if one considers that the acknowledgment of the divine Trinity is one of the premises for the construction of his proof, it was less a matter of rational proof in the strict sense than about exhibiting the meaningful connection between the righteousness and lovingkindness of the triune God in his action toward sinners, and therefore more about witnessing to the appropriateness of the incarnation. Without question, the most comprehensive attempts at rationally deducing all the acts of God have been undertaken within German idealism, especially in Hegel’s philosophy of religion.[xxxvi] If we call the effort to understand the meaningful connections among the acts of God “speculative theology,” then such an effort is already to be found in the New Testament (e. g., Rom. 9–11). By no means should we reject such efforts in principle, nor should they be equated with what was understood and rejected as speculative theology, which had come under the influence of German idealism in the nineteenth century, for it remains to observe that the salvation-historical deliberations of Paul conclude with the words, “…how inscrutable are God’s ways!” (Rom. 11.33; cf. vv. 34ff.). Statements about the meaningful connections among the divine acts become dangerous when a single model is systematized and absolutized in such a way that the freedom of love, in which God is doing his acts, is no longer respected. It should be noted that even the relationship between promise and fulfillment is not subject to human calculation, since God’s fulfillment sovereignly surpasses human expectations. Thus, e. g., the Old Testament nowhere attests to the promised Messiah and the Suffering Servant as one and the same figure. In addition, the future consummation will surpass our expectations. It is fundamentally the case that none of the comprehensive interpretive models is sufficient on its own. The model of restoration endangers the acknowledgment of what is entirely new, that which has dawned in Jesus Christ. The model of teleology obscures the way in which God’s judgment calls into question all historical developments; and the notion of evolution as a comprehensive theological model makes God’s act of salvation on the cross ultimately superfluous.

An ecumenical dogmatics will have to be particularly cautious vis-à-vis the various attempts at producing a comprehensive, speculative system—also vis-à-vis the theology of salvation history, as it (under the influence of idealistic philosophy) played such a key role in nineteenth-century Protestantism—especially since some of the differences between the churches have resulted from the constraints of such systems.[xxxvii] Just as Holy Scripture speaks of very different meaningful connections between the acts of God and at the same time acknowledges the inscrutable

Theology as Doxology

nature of the divine working, so, while an ecumenical dogmatics has to be open to the possibilities of speculative theology, yet it must not pledge itself to any encompassing system. If we adopt a familiar distinction in the Roman Catholic Church between a positive and a speculative dogmatics, then an ecumenical dogmatics must remain in its essentials within the parameters of a positive dogmatics, i. e., within the boundaries of a teaching of the church’s central statements of faith that is exposited from its historical foundation and that refrains from being derived speculatively.[xxxviii] If we have here considered the dogmatic task in light of the structure of doctrinal teaching, we cannot thereby forget that teaching is only one among the numerous types of faith statements. Doctrinal teaching cannot replace the statements of prayer, worship, proclamation, and confession of faith, but has to serve them. It has to teach the acts of salvation, on whose basis God is called upon and borne witness to, confessed, and worshiped by believers in a multitude of voices. Therefore, dogmatics cannot be restricted solely to the doctrine of the acts of God, but it must also be directed toward the responses that believers in the hic et nunc [here and now] owe God in word and deed on the basis of his act of salvation. In this way, with respect to some topics, dogmatics will cross over into the way of speaking found in the other structures. This crossover will be elucidated below with two examples.

5. Theology as Doxology The doctrine of God’s acts is not possible apart from the doctrine of God. Otherwise, dogmatics would not be teaching God’s acts. God does not first become God through his acts. He does not need the world as a vis-à-vis other in order to be God. He does not need the creaturely Thou in order to be the divine I. Moreover, God does not first become God by being acknowledged as such by human beings. He is still the Lord, even when people deny him. What is true about him is this: “Before… you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Ps. 90.2). But is a doctrine of God even possible? Should not dogmatics be restricted to teaching about God’s acts and about the religious experience of human beings? Is it not arrogant to make God himself an object of doctrine? Such questions accompany the history of theology in many forms. They were present, for example, in the negative theology that was influenced by Neoplatonism.[xxxix] They were also operating in other ways in the dogmatics of Schleiermacher, who basically restricted his statements about God to “the whence” of the religious self-consciousness.[xl] In fact, the doctrine of God is surrounded by dangers. We cannot for a moment forget that it is we humans who are here speaking of God nor that all such speaking is grounded in God’s actions. But precisely on the basis of these actions, we do not

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speak merely about them but about God himself, who has accomplished them and continues to do so, for God has not remained hidden but has made himself known through his word. Indeed, he appeared among us in Jesus. God has not remained the mere whence of our existence, but he has testified to us who he is. Making statements about God himself is not only a recent desire of theological reflection, nor are they the result of an alien influence of Greek or some other metaphysics on the Christian belief in God. Rather, these statements are implicit in all the faith-responses to God’s act of salvation. Confessing the faith would no longer be confessing God if only God’s acts were confessed but not God himself, the one who has done these acts, is still doing them, and will be doing them. The structure in which the acknowledgment of God himself comes to explicit expression is doxology. It is prayer, and yet it is not petitionary prayer. As long as we are living on earth, doxology is always accompanied by petitionary prayer and comforting assurance, and in turn prayer and assurance without doxology fall apart. But it speaks only of God and gives him the glory. It gives him glory on the basis of his acts, and it praises these acts, but it is not content merely with praising them. Rather, it praises God himself as the one who is before and after these acts, who is from eternity and to eternity the Holy One, the Almighty, and the one who loves.[xli] Doxology gives him glory on the basis of his revelation in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, and it praises God as him who is the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When believers thus “give glory” to God, they know that they are giving God nothing that God would not have had and would not have been from eternity. Rather, the worshiper acknowledges the glory that God is from eternity. God is the Living One, not only in that he gives life, but as the one who is life, he creates, preserves, saves, and renews our life. He is the one who loves not only in that he loves us, but as the one who is love, he has turned himself to us and is drawing us in love to himself. Not in the least are human beings absent from the statements of adoration, even if they are not the subject of these statements. The fact that people are silent about themselves in doxology does not imply an “objectification” of God but rather is an expression of their complete surrender to God. God is everything in these statements. Here human beings offer themselves to him as a sacrifice of praise. In that respect, it is not appropriate to speak here of statements “about” God. Rather, in adoration God is simply and purely the subject, whose glory finds only an echo in the words of human beings. If the doxological motive in confessing the faith is one of the most important roots of dogma, then this factor must be given special attention when speaking dogmatically about God himself. Such speaking grows from doxology. As surely as dogmatics is not itself doxology, it is certain that, as doctrine about God, it cannot detach itself and make itself independent from doxology without suffering serious loss. Doctrine about God is, to be sure, not doxology, but it has to lead to doxology

Anthropology as Repentance

and has to serve it. Such teaching should therefore remain close to the structure of doxological statements. This necessary relationship between the doctrine of God and adoration is more clearly understood in the Eastern Church than in Western Christendom. That is one of the reasons why the ancient church’s doctrine of the Trinity has become so formulaic and foreign in the West. This doctrine grows out of doxology. To be sure, the ancient church has used pre-Christian metaphysical concepts in service to its doxology, but it has thereby transformed them and also offered them as a sacrifice of praise to God. Without reclaiming the basic form of doxology, no common doctrine of God in Christendom is possible.

6. Anthropology as Repentance The confessions of faith in earliest Christendom have as their content Jesus Christ and his history as well as God and his acts. Although they are about God’s action toward the human being and are made by the human being, they do not contain any statements about the individual human. Thus the ancient church’s confessions of faith confess God the Creator, the incarnation of the Son of God, the history of the incarnate one up to his coming to judge the living and the dead, as well as the effects of the Holy Spirit, but they lack statements about human beings as such. Correspondingly, in the course of the history of dogma, it was christology and the doctrine of the Trinity that first became the content of dogma, while statements about human beings became so only later, and in the Eastern Church, in fact, a dogmatizing about human beings comparable to that of the West did not take place at all. This clear difference is connected especially with the way the Eastern Church’s doctrinal statements have to this day continued to be determined by the structure of doxology—and with the fact that within doxology human beings are silent about themselves. In contrast to the confession of faith, in proclamation and in doctrinal teaching the question has always been about the human being, and in the ancient church the human being very quickly became the object of theological reflection. So anthropological issues concerning the relationship between the body and the soul, and between human creaturely existence and its corruption, were dealt with in the discussion and debate with Gnosticism, as were the issues concerning the freedom of the will and the immortality of the soul. In this connection, it is striking how already in Tertullian’s writing, De anima, ideas from Greek philosophy have been adopted to such an extent, indeed, have become determinative.[xlii] Under these influences, the effort toward a universal definition of human nature gained prominence, a definition comprised of original sin, redemption, and resurrection, which—through the course of historical change—continues to have lasting authority. This interest in developing an unhistorical definition of human nature is also at work in the

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distinction —widely held since the time of Irenaeus—between the abiding image of God (imago) in the human being and the likeness of God (similitudo) that was lost through sin and newly restored by grace. Later, under the influence of Augustine, dogmas concerning theological anthropology were also formulated in the Latin Church, in the course of which considerable differences emerged between the understanding of the human being in the Western Church and that of the Eastern Church. Then in the sixteenth century there arose church-dividing oppositions, especially regarding the doctrine of original sin and the enslavement of the will of sinners. If we follow a line of inquiry from later church decisions back to how the Scriptures speak about the human person, it is striking that there is no independent interest in a doctrine about the human being, its constitution as body and soul, or its faculties of reason and will, and certainly not in the immortality of the soul. Of course, there are statements to be found about all of these issues, but they are quite varied in nature and are not about human beings in and of themselves. Rather, they are contained in statements about the history of the divine action toward the human being and of human behavior vis-à-vis God. The biblical statements concerning human beings are, above all, statements about why God created them, from what he has redeemed them, and toward what end he has re-created them. Moreover, these statements are about how human beings have responded to God’s acts in obedience and disobedience, and what the resulting consequences were. In this connection, the identity of the human being as accountable to God continues, of course, to be maintained, but the focus is not on the state of affairs, the capabilities, and the possibilities of the person—all of which remain unchanged in the difference between obedience and disobedience—nor is it [i. e., the focus] on a general, timeless definition of the nature of human beings. Rather, the focus is precisely on the either/or of obedience and disobedience. But both actions are not only different from each other formally in an antithetical way, as positive and negative, but they each have an entirely different basis. What is true of the freedom of believers is that it is a freedom in Christ and in the Holy Spirit. Their life is Christ living in them, and their good works are the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Their obedience to God does not cease being the obedience of human beings, but they are this by surrendering to God’s action. Disobedience, however, is a completely different type of human decision. Here human beings separate themselves from God and undertake to constitute themselves vis-à-vis God in an independent existence in and of themselves. But in this way they become slaves to their sin/guilt. The acts that humans are doing in the strictest sense as “they themselves” and “of themselves” are their sins. The freedom that they choose on their own is their enslavement. God’s dealings with human beings take place in that he calls them into personal communion with himself. He gives himself to them to know as the one from whom they have life, who exhorts them to live from him as their source, and to live

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unto him as their goal. He addresses the person as his Thou [Du], through the promise of his help and the call to obedience. Holy Scripture speaks of the refusal to obey not merely in narrative reports about actual instances of transgression but also in general statements about the flesh, the dominion of sin, and so forth. But behind these statements stands the existential exposure of the sinner through God’s concrete assurance and claim. In that respect, the fundamental structure of humans’ statements about themselves is the confession of their sin and the cry for divine mercy. Of course this does not deny that human beings, as creatures, even as new creatures, are the subject of doctrine, but all of these statements are rooted in the belief that God is dealing with me as the Creator, Redeemer, and the New Creator, and he will continue to do so. This faith is not, however, without the awareness that I am not worthy of this, his dealing. In this sense, it can be pointedly stated: theological anthropology is repentance, i. e., the statements about the human being have their fundamental structural root in the confession of sin and in asking for God’s forgiveness. While the doctrine about human beings is as little a confession of sins as the doctrine of God is doxology, it has to serve the confession of sins and the cry for divine grace. This should be borne in mind when discussing the differences in theological anthropology that exist in Christendom. That the endeavor to articulate a theological anthropology has to take place in the action of repentance is of special importance for the undertaking and completing of an ecumenical dogmatics. Even if dogmaticians think that they are teaching in a completely christocentric or theocentric way, individual presuppositions, modes of experience, sociological factors, and, above all, individual biblical insights and spiritual experiences are all too easily generalized, absolutized, and dogmatized as unquestioned self-evident matters of fact. What applies to the individual dogmatician also applies to entire Christian church bodies. The endeavor for an ecumenical dogmatics includes the obligation to raise awareness about such anthropological presuppositions. In view of the matter-of-fact self-evidence with which also pious individuals not infrequently assert themselves over other Christians and set limits over against them, not only are the existing anthropological dogmas about repentance to be interpreted from the point of view of repentance but the act of theological teaching itself must be taken up into repentance. These remarks about doxology and repentance should prompt no flight away from dogmatic precision into pious edification. Rather, this getting back to the basic structures of faith-statements has to be carried out with methodical rigor and with the recognition that not all of the contents of the knowledge of faith can be adequately expressed in one and the same structure. The necessity for similar reflection on methodology will also arise with respect to the doctrine of justification as well as the doctrine of law and gospel.

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7. The Organization of Dogmatics If we understand dogmatics to be the doctrinal teaching about the acts of God, who, on the basis of these acts, is glorified as the Eternal One, then it seems obvious to let its organization be determined by their historical sequence. In fact, again and again, alongside various shifts in particular topics, there has been a basic plan in dogmatics from the first comprehensive account of church doctrine by Origen in his work De principiis, up to the accounts by Cyril of Jerusalem, John of Damascus, and John Scotus Eriugena, and in turn from the seventeenth-century Protestant dogmatics up to the present.[xliii] According to this basic plan, after the preceding doctrine of God, the doctrine of creation is treated first, then the doctrine of sin, the doctrines of christology and soteriology, and finally the doctrine of the last things. This same structure is also foundational for the medieval works of Lombard’s Sentences and Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae, although these works usually end with a treatment of the sacraments.[xliv] A similar structure can also be found in Calvin’s 1559 Institutes, which concludes with the sacraments and civic authority.[xlv] The basic plan in the dogmatics of today’s Eastern Church is also determined by the historical sequence of God’s acts, which is preceded by the doctrine of God himself, the Eternal One, who exists solely from himself. In the historical sequence of his acts, God has been confessed and worshiped already in the early church’s confessions of faith. But this organization that seems so obvious, so self-evident, is not without problems. The basic problem with this dogmatic structure is the fact that the historical sequence of the acts of God and the noetic sequence, by which we know these acts, do not coincide. Although God already exists from all eternity in the glory of his love—on the basis of which he freely has done, is doing, and will be doing his acts of creation, redemption, and new creation—yet we only come to know him as this eternal Lord on the basis of his acts in time. Although God’s acts of salvation in the election of Israel and in the sending of his Son follow his act of creation, God the Creator still only comes to be known in truth on the basis of his act of salvation. Just as the Old Testament belief in creation was the development of faith in Yahweh the Deliverer, so the New Testament’s statements about creation are the unfolding of faith in the Redeemer: through Christ God has created the universe. Although the Old Testament law precedes the New Testament gospel, the essence of the law only comes to be known in truth by faith in the gospel: it is first in Christ that the veil of Moses is removed (2 Cor. 3.16). ¶The salvation-historical structure of dogmatics thus brings with it a difficulty. (The term salvation-historical [heilsgeschichtlich] is used here very generally, and not in the specific sense given to it by nineteenth-century salvation-historical theology.) The difficulty is that in the doctrine of the Trinity the doctrine of the works of God already has to be presupposed; in the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of

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redemption has to be presupposed; and in the doctrine of the law, the doctrine of the gospel has to be presupposed—if the first-named individual doctrines are to be presented correctly. If this presupposition does not become clear in dogmatics, then the danger arises that the doctrine of God will be confused with metaphysics, and the doctrine of creation with a philosophical entry to the doctrine of salvation, and that the doctrine of the law will be taught anachronistically from the Jewish standpoint. But neither a Greek-philosophical pre-understanding nor a Jewishlegal pre-understanding may be mistaken for Christian doctrine. So if one lets the structure of dogmatics be determined by the [noetic] sequence of knowing, then christology would have to be treated before the doctrine of creation, and then dogmatics could also begin, e. g., with the doctrine of baptism or the doctrine of the church. These considerations already show that there are very many different possibilities for the structure of a dogmatics. The multiplicity of these possibilities becomes even greater if—in contrast to a practice that became widespread only in the modern age—one does not separate dogmatics and ethics but understands ethics as part of dogmatics. The unity of dogmatics and ethics follows from the fact that the commandments of God are grounded in the acts of God, and that the proclamation of his act of salvation is always at the same time the proclamation of the divine claim. Faith and works are not to be separated. In other words, starting dogmatics with the gospel always at the same time means starting with law and gospel. But how is ethics to be integrated into the structure of dogmatics? As with the issue of dogmatic concepts and terminology, so also the issue of the organization of dogmatics also involves a choice. Indeed, here it is even more a matter of theological choice and decision since at no point in Holy Scripture is a comprehensive teaching about the organization of doctrine handed down to us, not even in the letter to the Romans. In addition, the choice about the organizing principle of dogmatics is of very special importance since it determines to a great extent the line of thought that is taken regarding the particular details, and since already here important decisions are being reached about whether and in what way the individual topics are to be discussed. On the basis of the preceding reflections about the structure of the dogmatic statement and in view of the existing consensus that spans the church divisions, the historical sequence of the acts of God has been selected as the organizing principle in this dogmatics. Thus the doctrines of creation, redemption, and the new creation will be treated one after the other. Also, the treatment of these three dogmatic concepts, especially of the second and the third, involves choices, in view of the multitude of possibilities. In the history of catechetical and dogmatic instruction, the same basic concepts have in no way always been used to expound the various articles of the creed. If here the concept of “redemption” [Erlösung] was preferred as the overarching concept for the doctrine of God’s acts of salvation in Jesus

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Christ, that was because it expresses more strongly the connection between God’s present and end-time saving action than does, e. g., the concept of “reconciliation” [Versöhnung]. The concept of “new creation” [Neuschöpfung] was in turn chosen as the overarching concept for God’s working through the Holy Spirit, because the closely related concept of “sanctification” [Heiligung] (Luther) is for the most part related one-sidedly to human beings, namely, to their ethical application of the faith. The work of the Holy Spirit, however, encompasses the whole human person, including the person’s bodily existence, and is, beyond that, of cosmic reach and effect. This structure of dogmatics also determines the order in which the main issues in ethics are raised. Because God’s commandments are grounded in God’s actions, this dogmatics declines to compress the treatment of ethical issues into one special part of the dogmatics. Rather, the treatment of these issues pervades the entire dogmatics. So if the historical sequence of the acts of God determines the structure of this dogmatics, then that other sequence, the sequence of theological knowing, still also needs to be taken into consideration through a series of important re-positionings: (a) Although the gospel has its historical place after creation, after the old covenant, and after the incarnation of the Son of God, in this dogmatics the gospel was introduced already at the beginning of the “introductory part” (chap. 1.1), for the gospel is the starting point for the Christian doctrine of God and his acts. In its particulars, the doctrine of the gospel will then be unfolded within the doctrine of redemption. There, the doctrine of the law and the gospel stands at the very center of the whole dogmatics, in that it encompasses christology (chaps. 11 and 14–16). (b) Although the triune God is the presupposition for the works of creation, redemption, and the new creation, in this dogmatics the doctrine of God is presented only after the doctrines of creation, redemption, and the new creation (parts 1–3) and in relation to them, for the doctrine of God presupposes the knowledge of his acts in the same way that singing the doxology is begun with the acts of God. In this way, the doctrine of the Trinity is treated as the concluding response of faith to all the works of God (part 4), but it is already envisaged in the introductory part (chap. 1.5) and is anticipated in the concluding chapters of each of the three parts that deal with God’s works, namely, “The Adoration of God the Creator” (chap. 10),[xlvi] “The Confession of God the Redeemer” (chap. 17), and “The Confession of God the New Creator” (chap. 24). This inventive arrangement was chosen because the doctrine of the Trinity is no longer clearly recognized in some parts of Christendom in its meaning for the faith but has become foreign, and is only retained formulaically. For this reason, the attempt needed to be made to derive the doctrine of the Trinity from the doctrine of the acts of God in such a way that it pervades all parts of the dogmatics. This dogmatics, as a whole, wants to be regarded as an unfolding development and comprehensive representation of the doctrine of the Trinity.

The Organization of Dogmatics

(c) Although predestination, as the pre-temporal decree of God, precedes all his works, in this dogmatics the doctrine of predestination is treated after the doctrine of the acts of God (parts 1–3) and after the doctrine of God (part 4), and thus it is placed at the end of the entire dogmatics. In the history of dogmatics the location of this doctrine has varied quite widely. Some have placed it in the doctrine of God or in any case at least before the doctrine of creation (so, e. g., Thomas Aquinas and, for the most part, seventeenth-century Reformed Orthodoxy, also Karl Barth).[xlvii] Others have placed it before christology or between christology and the doctrine of the acquisition of salvation (seventeenth-century Lutheran Orthodoxy, for the most part).[xlviii] Others have placed it after christology and soteriology (e. g., Calvin’s 1559 Institutes), or in connection with the doctrine of the church (e. g., Calvin’s 1536 Institutes).[xlix] When we place the doctrine of predestination at the very end of the dogmatics, that is because the knowledge of the love that God has demonstrated, is demonstrating, and will demonstrate in all his works—indeed, the knowledge of God’s love in the eternal unity and communion of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—is the foundation for unfolding the doctrine of predestination. (d) Although eschatology (in keeping with the sequence of God’s acts) is customarily dealt with at the end of dogmatics, here it is to come to voice in all three parts of the dogmatics. Placing the “doctrine of the last things” at the end of dogmatics has led to widespread misunderstanding, as if it were merely an appendix to dogmatics. But, in fact, God’s eschatological promise determines not only the doctrine of the church but also christology, and not only the New Testament gospel but also the Old Testament law and indeed the creation and preservation of humankind as well. Thus the eschatological purpose of human beings in the image of God will be treated within the doctrine of creation (chaps. 5–7); death and the judgment of the world, as the eschatological background to the preservation of sinners and the world (chap. 6.5; chap. 8.4); the parousia of Jesus Christ as Redeemer and Judge will be treated within the doctrine of redemption (chap. 13.C); and then the fulfillment of the new creation will be treated in the doctrine of the new creation (chap. 23). This reiteration of eschatological statements throughout the entire dogmatics makes it possible at the same time to express the New Testament’s side-by-side presence of eschatological statements that refer to both the present and the future, and to do so in a way that excludes a dissolving of the one into the other. (e) If in the structure of this dogmatics the temporal sequence of the acts of God is broken at a number of points by the other sequence of the knowledge of those acts, then of course at a certain point, conversely, the sequence of knowledge is replaced by the historical sequence: In general, it has become customary in the various churches to begin dogmatics with a section on dogmatic principles, in which the doctrines of Holy Scripture, dogma, and tradition are presented as presuppositions for all individual doctrines. Historically, however, the biblical canon, church dogmas, and the traditions of the church already have the creation, Christ’s act of

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redemption, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as their presupposition, and their locus is the doctrine of the church. In delimiting the biblical canon, in establishing settled dogmas as well as church orders, the church’s concern was—in its sojourning in the world amidst constantly changing false doctrines and hostilities—to abide with its Lord, and that means at the same time to abide by the apostolic gospel. For that reason, the introductory part of this dogmatics restricts itself to starting with the apostolic gospel, from which the faith in Christ everywhere on earth has its life. In contrast, doctrinal issues within Christendom that have been addressed differently with respect to the content and authority of the biblical canon, dogma, and church law (as well as the pertinent hermeneutics) will be treated within the doctrine of the church (chap. 21), i. e., only after christology and the doctrine of the gospel, as well as after pneumatology and the doctrine of the apostolic ministry. For all of these particular doctrines deal with the presuppositions of salvation history that are utterly indispensable for discussing the doctrine of Holy Scripture, of dogma, of church order, and of other church traditions. No other problem treated in the encounter between the separated churches has turned out to be as confused as the one about dogmatic principles. Clearing up this issue appears hopeless here without first beginning with the apostolic gospel and thereby clarifying the issues of christology and pneumatology. Thus, in these “basic features,” only one particular starting point and one particular way of organizing dogmatics have been intentionally chosen from the many other existing possibilities. But even if more was done than has actually been undertaken in this dogmatics—i. e., if a fully executed ecumenical dogmatics (in the above-indicated sense) should be presented, and not merely the “basic features” of such an attempt—then time and again it could only be one voice in the choir of the church’s teaching voices. But it can only be that—for it can never replace this choir—in turning attentively toward this choir and hoping to be recognized as one of its voices. For no single individual can fully portray the riches of God or his acts. That is the task of the church as a whole, and indeed this task happens not merely in its doctrinal teaching but also in its praying, preaching, worshiping, and confessing, and in its loving, serving, and suffering. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 3 [i] The following two subsections are largely based on Schlink’s earlier essay, “Die Struktur,” in SÖB, 1/1.24–79. Professor Spalteholz and I have made a few minor changes and stylistic revisions vis-à-vis our earlier translation of the original essay (cf. ESW, 1.67–125). Schlink himself altered some of the content of his earlier essay before using it here. [ii] Schlink here omitted material from “Die Struktur” that refers to the relationship between loving God and loving the neighbor.

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[iii] In Christian theology, the technical term aseity (Latin: aseitas, from ens [being] a se = “being from itself ”) refers to the quality in virtue of which God exists in and from himself alone (cf. ODCC, 114). In Christian doctrine, this quality is realized solely in God and distinguishes God from all created beings, whose existence comes from God and is dependent on God. [iv] The German noun Dienst, as it is used here and throughout Schlink’s writings, implies more than “service” or “ministry” or “office.” It will thus be rendered normally as “servant ministry,” but also as “ministry” or “service,” depending on the context. While Dienst is a near synonym to Amt, Schlink normally uses the latter to stress the “office” of the servant ministry. [v] The German term translated here as “confession” or “confession of faith” is Bekenntnis. It will normally be translated as “confession,” unless it is clear that Schlink meant it in the sense of “profession,” “creed,” or “statement of faith.” [vi] Cf. Schlink’s earlier essays, “Die Methode des dogmatischen ökumenischen Dialogues” [The Method of the Dogmatic-Ecumenical Dialogue], Kerygma und Dogma 12 (1966): 205–211; “Hermeneutik—Denkformen—Verstehen,” in Neue Grenzen: Ökumenisches Christentum Morgen [New Frontiers: Ecumenical Christianity Tomorrow], ed. Klaus von Bismarck and Walter Dirks, 14–22 (Stuttgart: Kreuz; Freiburg i. Br.: Walter, 1966); and “Die Aufgabe einer ökumenischen Dogmatik,” 89–91. [vii] Schlink preferred to use the Latin designations for the classic creeds from the early and medieval church, just as he preferred to use the Latin term credo to refer to their credal content. In his original text the term Apostolicum refers to the Apostles’ Creed. The term Nicaenum refers to the original form of the creed adopted at the Council of Nicaea in 325. The term Nicaenum-Constantinopolitanum (sometimes also simply called the Constantinopolitanum or the Constantinopolitan Creed) refers to the final form of the creed adopted at the Council of Constantinople in 381, based as it was on the original Nicene Creed of 325, but with additions that were added at this second ecumenical council. As I indicate in the preface, I have chosen not to retain Schlink’s preference for these Latin titles. [viii] Chalcedonense was Schlink’s preferred term for referring to the “Definition of the Faith” adopted at the Council of Chalcedon (22 October 451). See Denzinger, 300–303; and Tanner, 1.83–87. [ix] “Athanasianum” or Symbolum Quicumque were Schlink’s preferred terms for referring to the Pseudo-Athanasian Profession Quicumque, usually called the Athanasian Creed. Schlink placed quotation marks around Athanasianum to underscore the scholarly consensus that this creed was not composed by Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 296–373) but emerged in the late fifth century. See Denzinger, 75–76; BSELK, 57–60 (BC, 24–25). [x] This confession (often identified by Schlink with its Latin title, Confessio Augustana) was authored principally by Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) and read aloud to the emperor on 25 June 1530. See BSELK, 85–225 (BC, 30–105).

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[xi]

[xii]

[xiii] [xiv]

[xv]

[xvi] [xvii]

[xviii] [xix]

The Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531) was prepared by Melanchthon as a defense of those articles from the Augsburg Confession that had been criticized in the Roman Catholic Confutation, which had been read before the emperor on 3 August 1530. For an English translation of the Confutation of the Augsburg Confession, see Sources and Contexts of the Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb and James Nestingen, trans. Mark D. Tranvik (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 105–139. For Melanchthon’s Apology of the Augsburg Confession, see BSELK, 236–709 (BC, 109–294). For Apol. IV (on the doctrine of justification), see BSELK, 267–397 (BC, 120–173). The Formula of Concord (1577) is comprised of two parts, the Solid Declaration (FC SD) and a shorter summary called the Epitome (FC Ep). The FC brought about unity among a majority of the German churches of the Augsburg Confession that had suffered theological disagreements and divisions in the wake of Martin Luther’s death (1546). The principal contributors to the development of the FC included Jakob Andreae (1528–1590), Martin Chemnitz (1522–1586), David Chytraeus (1531–1600), and Nicholas Selnecker (1528/30–1592). The FC was included as the final set of documents in the 1580 Book of Concord. (That is why Schlink linked the year 1580 with the FC.) For FC SD XI, which treats the doctrine of eternal predestination and election, see BSELK, 1561–1597 (BC, 640–656). In “Die Struktur,” Schlink had indicated this likely occurred in the seventeenth century (see SÖB, 1/1.40 [ESW, 1.83]). In the season of Lent in 347 Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. 315–386) delivered twentyfour catechetical lectures to catechumens preparing for baptism. His instructions provide a detailed description of the preparation for baptism in fourth-century Palestine. See FOTC, 61.91–249 and 64.4–140. This is one of only three places in Schlink’s dogmatics where he reversed the sequence, placing Anspruch (gospel claim) ahead of Zuspruch (gospel assurance). He repeated this sequence also in chaps. 6 and 19. Normally Zuspruch precedes Anspruch in Schlink’s dogmatics. This sequence appears more than 30 times in the book. This is a clear reference to Schlink’s disagreement with the existential theology of Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976). That is, “a theology of sojourners,” in contrast to “a theology of those who know,” i. e., those who “know God face to face” and behold his glory in heaven. The theologia comprehensorum is sometimes also called a theologia patriae, i. e., the theology of those who are “at home,” who are “no longer wandering on from one hour to the next, from one decision to another,” but who are standing “once for all at the goal of faith and know God face to face” (Barth, CD, II/1.209 [slightly modified]). Cf. chap. 25.5 and chap. 26.6 below. That is, “a theology that is a copy of the original,” in contrast to “a theology of the original itself.” Cf. Barth, CD, II/1.209. This excursus is based partly on material from Schlink’s essay on the structure of the dogmatic statement (cf. SÖB, 1/1.65–72 [ESW, 1.109–117]) and partly on material from his later essay, “Theologische Sprachanalytik im Vorfeld der ökumenischen Fragestellung.” (See footnote 16 in this chapter.)

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[xx]

[xxi]

[xxii]

[xxiii]

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), a Swiss scholar of linguistics, was the originator of the school of structural linguistics. He had a major influence on the subsequent development of French structuralist philosophy. Karl Bühler (1879–1963) was a German linguist and psychologist. The reference here is to the basic theological approach of Neuprotestantismus or liberal Protestantism, which emerged in the early nineteenth century in the wake of the Enlightenment. It eventually became the dominant form of theological reflection in German universities between the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) and the end of the First World War (1918). Broadly speaking, it was an outgrowth of eighteenth-century German rationalism that furthered the critical spirit of the German Enlightenment in relation to Protestantism. Influenced by the antimetaphysical philosophy of Kant and (less so) by the idealist philosophy of Georg Hegel (1770–1831), this form of Protestantism was also shaped by forces emanating from cultural Romanticism and Prussian nationalism, especially after the defeat of Napoleon (1815). The principal theologian in this tradition was Schleiermacher, co-founder of the University of Berlin. His method of theology is grounded in human experience, intuition, and the feeling of absolute dependence (on the infinite), which he thought found its purest expression in Protestant Christianity. This stream of Protestantism has also been labeled Kulturprotestantismus, since it reinterprets Christian-Protestant teaching to coincide with a cultured/educated outlook, one that takes into account modern scientific knowledge, technology, and secular political and economic structures and theories. After Schleiermacher, the most important figures included Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89), Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922), Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923), and Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), who represented its zenith. While educated within the liberal German-Protestant tradition, Karl Barth and Emil Brunner (1889–1966), along with several other important figures (e. g., Friedrich Gogarten [1887–1967]), broke with that mode of theology to return to the Protestant Reformers’ understanding of the radical word of God that creates faith through the witness of the Holy Scriptures as empowered by the Holy Spirit. For an example of Barth’s early dialectical theology, see the essays that are translated in The Word of God and the Word of Man [1924], trans. Douglas Horton (New York: Harper and Row, 1957). For an example of Brunner’s later understanding of the “theology of the word of God,” see his book, The Divine-Human Encounter [1938], trans. Amandus W. Loos (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1943). For the rise and breakdown of dialectical theology, see James C. Livingston, Modern Christian Theology, 2 vols, 2d ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2000), 2.62–95. The Vienna Circle was a group of philosophers and scientists who met periodically for discussions in Vienna between 1922 and 1938. Formed by the mathematician Hans Hahn (1879–1934), the circle included the philosopher Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) and the social scientist Otto Neurath (1882–1945). Many of its early meetings were devoted to discussions of the Tractatus of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). The “logical positivism” or “logical empiricism” of the Circle influenced the rise of analytic philosophy, one of whose principal founders was Bertrand Russell (1872–1970).

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[xxiv] This subsection is based largely on the chapter that Schlink contributed to a commemorative volume that honored his close friend and fellow Heidelberg theologian Peter Brunner (1900–1981). See Schlink, “Die Aufgaben einer ökumenischen Dogmatik.” [xxv] Cf. Schlink, Der Ertrag des Kirchenkampfes, 19–20, and 39 (SÖB, 5.79, 92). [xxvi] Georg Calixt (1586–1656) taught an irenic form of Lutheran theology at the University of Helmstedt (after 1614). He sought to overcome religious controversies among Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed Christians by proposing that the doctrinal consensus of the ancient church should serve as the infallible norm of church doctrine, in addition to Scripture and the Apostles’ Creed. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was a Lutheran philosopher and mathematician, who was influenced by Calixt’s theology and ecumenical spirit. Between 1691 and 1701, he corresponded with the French Catholic theologian, Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet (1627–1704), in an unsuccessful effort to reach doctrinal agreement. Gerhard Wolter Molanus (1633–1722), who had studied theology at Helmsted, eventually was called to serve as the head of the Protestant consistory in Hannover. There he was commissioned by the duke to engage in ecumenical discussions with representatives of the Roman Catholic Church in order to bring about reconciliation, a goal that remained elusive. These discussions took place periodically between 1676 and 1693. The Roman Catholic representatives were Cristoval Royas de Spinola (1626–1695) and Bossuet. [xxvii] Cf. Schlink, “Aufgabe und Gefahr des ökumenisches Rates der Kirchen,” SÖB, 1/1.16–17 (ESW, 1.57). Schlink here was alluding to Karl Barth’s “dialectical” approach, who had suggested this method to participants in the Faith and Order movement prior to the constituting assembly of the WCC. Barth’s approach was then taken up by the leaders of the Faith and Order Commission. According to its secretary at the time, “The method is to examine our supposed agreements to discover what disagreements they conceal and also to examine our disagreements to see what agreements they contain” (Oliver S. Tomkins, The Church in the Purpose of God [New York: World Council of Churches, 1951], 26). The footnote on that same page gives additional information: “It is an open secret that the method was first suggested by Professor Karl Barth, but it was quickly welcomed by the Lutheran chairman [Yngve Brilioth (1891–1959), archbishop of Uppsala] and by the leading Orthodox and Anglican members of the group, so it can hardly be called a ‘party-line.’” This pamphlet provided an introduction to the work of the Commission on Faith and Order in preparation for its Third World Conference that was held at Lund, Sweden, in August 1952.

The Organization of Dogmatics

[xxviii] The first conference of the “Faith and Order” branch of the ecumenical movement was held at Lausanne, 3–20 August 1927. Its purpose was to promote doctrinal unity among the separated churches of Christendom. The second conference was held at Edinburgh, 13–18 August 1937. An outcome of both conferences was their respective approvals to form the World Council of Churches. That outcome, however, did not happen until after WWII, at the constituting assembly of the WCC in Amsterdam in 1948. The third conference of the (newly constituted) “Commission on Faith and Order” was held at Lund, Sweden, 15–28 August 1952. At this conference, the commission moved away from the comparative model of ecumenism toward a form of theological dialogue that engages controversial matters from a common biblical and christological basis. [xxix] Cf. Schlink, “Aufgabe und Gefahr,” SÖB, 1/1.12 (ESW, 1.50). [xxx] Cf. Schlink, NK, SÖB, 1/2.212 (ESW, 1.505). [xxxi] Cf., e. g., Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings (WSA, I/23–26) and the anti-Gnostic writings by such Eastern theologians as Irenaeus (ca. 130–ca. 200), Chrysostom (ca. 347–407; e. g., his “Homily against Marcionists and Manichaeans” [NPNF 1 , 9.201–207]), Ephraem Syrus (ca. 306–373; FOTC, 91), and Epiphanius (ca. 315–403; FOTC, 128). Cf. Aquinas, ST; and Gregory of Palamas (ca. 1296–1359), The Triads, ed. John Meyendorff, trans. Nicolas Gendle (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1983). For the Chalcedonian Definition, see Tanner, 1.83–87; and Denzinger, 300–303. For the comparison of the doctrine of justification, see AC IV and Apol. IV (BSELK, 98–99, 267–397 [BC, 38–41, 120–173]), on the one hand, and the sixth session of the Council of Trent (Tanner, 2.671–681; and Denzinger, 1520–1583), on the other. [xxxii] Schlink here was alluding to scholarship by his fellow Heidelberg theologian Gerhard von Rad (1901–1971), Old Testament Theology, 2 vols., trans. D. M. G. Stalker (New York: Harper and Row, (1962–1965), 1.121–22. [xxxiii] Here, too, Schlink seems to have been alluding to his disagreement with Bultmann’s existential theology. [xxxiv] Cf. Irenaeus, Adversus omnes haereses, I.10.1; II.22.4; III.16.6; III.21.10 et passim (PG, 7; ET: Against the Heresies; ACW, 55, 64–65). Johannis Cocceius (1603–1669) was a Dutch-Reformed theologian who founded the so-called “federal theology” (from the Latin foedus, “covenant”), which set forth a comprehensive history of salvation from creation to the consummation. G. E. Lessing (1729–1781) published his essay “The Education of the Human Race” in 1780. For an English translation of it, see Lessing’s Theological Writings, ed. and trans. Henry Chadwick (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1956), 82–98. In this essay Lessing laid part of the foundation for the later development of liberal Protestantism. [xxxv] See Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus homo [ca. 1097] (PL, 158.359–432; Cur Deus homo [Why God Became a Human Being], in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, 191–302. [xxxvi] See Hegel, V (LPR). Hegel delivered these three sets of lectures on the philosophy of religion between 1824 and 1831.

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[xxxvii] Cf., e. g., the type of salvation-historical theology (heilsgeschichtliche Theologie) produced by Johannes C. K. von Hofmann (1810–1877) and other theologians influenced by German idealism. See Matthew L. Becker, The Self-Giving God and Salvation History: The Trinitarian Theology of Johannes von Hofmann (New York: T&T Clark, 2004). [xxxviii] Within Roman Catholic theology, positive (historical) dogmatics refers to orderly summaries of teaching that are based on historical investigation of the data of revelation that have been gathered from its “positive sources,” i. e., from Scripture, tradition, and past declarations of the magisterium. Speculative (systematic) dogmatics refers to orderly summaries of teaching that are based on systematic reflection about the data of revelation. That type of reflection seeks to place the individual elements of the data of revelation into a proper relationship with one other and to understand them in light of the contemporary intellectual world. See the entry on “Dogmatic Theology,” in Dictionary of Theology, rev. ed., ed. Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. Richard Strachan et al. (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 133–135. [xxxix] See, e. g., Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite (ca. 500), The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology, ed. and trans. John D. Jones (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980). [xl] Schleiermacher, CG, §29 (1.180ff.). [xli] Cf. Schlink, “Die Christologie von Chalcedon,” SÖB, 1/1.82 (ESW, 1.129). [xlii] See Tertullian, De anima (On the Soul; FOTC, 10.175–309). [xliii] See Origen, De principiis (Origen on First Principles, trans. G. W. Butterworth [Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973]); Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures (FOTC, 61.91–249; and 64.4–140); John of Damascus (ca. 675–749), Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (FOTC, 37.165–406); and Johannes Scotus Eriugena (ca. 800–877), Periphyseon (De divisione naturae [On the Division of Nature]), 3 vols., ed. I. P. Sheldon-Williams (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968–1981). For the organization of topics in the dogmatic works of “the old Protestants,” see Schmid, 24–26 (ET: 5–13). [xliv] See Peter Lombard, In quatuor libros sententiarum (Frankfurt a. M.: Minerva, 1967); ET: The Sentences, 4 vols., trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2007–2010). Following the sacraments, Aquinas treated the resurrection and the last things (see Aquinas, ST, III.69–99). [xlv] See Calvin, ICR, IV.1–20 (2.1011–1521). [xlvi] Here Schlink gave a slightly different title for chap. 10. [xlvii] See Aquinas, ST, I.23–24; Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics: A Compendium of Reformed Dogmatics, rev. ed., ed. Ernst Bizer, trans. T. T. Thomson (London: Allen & Unwin, 1950; reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), 150–189; and Barth, KD, II/2.1–563 (CD, II/2.3–506). [xlviii] See Schmid, §30 (ET: 270–292). [xlix] Cf. Calvin, ICR, III.21–24 (2.920–987).

FIRST PART The Doctrine of Creation

Chapter IV: The Creation of the World

Introduction: The Starting Point for the Doctrine of Creation The history of the Christian doctrine of creation is above all the history of the interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2, wherein for a long time Gen. 2.4bff. was understood to be a continuation of Gen. 1.1–2.4a, namely, an account of the origin of paradise and of the woman. The history of the interpretation of these texts is at the same time the history of the confrontation of the belief in creation [Schöpfungsglaube] with the understanding of the world and of human beings in a given cultural setting. For example, the doctrine of creation in the ancient church took shape in the confrontation with Gnosticism and Greek philosophy. Since the twelfth century, especially in the West, Aristotelian metaphysics has exerted a great influence on the church’s doctrine of creation. Even the dogmatics of old Protestantism was by no means free from that influence. The situation then changed completely in the modern period with the emergence of the natural sciences. In this confrontation, theology continues to owe much to the conversation partners who have empirically and scientifically researched the same world that concerns the Christian belief in creation. In its apologetics theology has frequently failed to reflect on the heart of the biblical revelation and on the time-conditioned manner in which church doctrine was formulated. Thus, in the modern period, the church has often defended obsolete philosophical notions [philosophoumena] instead of the belief in creation, and it has been unable to make clear that it is the world of today that faith recognizes as God’s creation on the basis of the biblical witness. For that reason, let us begin with the question: In what sense are the biblical statements about creation true and binding?[i] In answering this question, it is important to note that in the modern period a precise methodology has been developed not only in the natural sciences but also in historical scholarship. If the natural sciences do experiments, modern historians engage in textual criticism, source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism (the history of traditions), and so on. We thus view more clearly today than previously the differences that exist among the biblical statements about creation: Gen. 1.1–2.4a and Gen. 2.4bff. are two different accounts of creation that originated from independent traditions. Genesis 1.1–2.4a is based in turn on older traditions that have been reinterpreted through the theology of the Priestly source.[ii] But also elsewhere in the Old Testament where we find additional statements about the creation of the world, there too we come upon many differences in the details. For example, according to Ps. 24.1f., God

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“founded (the earth) on the seas and established it on the rivers”; according to Job 38.4ff., its “bases were sunk,” and “the sea was shut in with doors” [S]. God has “spread out the heavens” (Isa. 48.13). According to Ps. 139.13 (cf. also Job 10.11), God has “knit” human beings, and so on. Alongside the notion of holding back the floods of chaos (Gen. 1) in God’s act of creation, we find the notion of his victory over Rahab (e. g., Job 26.12). Yet at the same time, the Rahab myth does not become really clear as such a myth in any of the Old Testament passages. Rather, it is used only as a witness to God’s mighty deed in his work of creating, just as it is used elsewhere to witness to the mighty deed by which God redeemed his people from their bondage in Egypt: “Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to cross over?” (Isa. 51.9–10). The New Testament presupposes the Old Testament’s belief in creation. But here that belief is attested to again in new statements. There is no detailed creation account in the New Testament, nor is there any mention of overcoming the floods of chaos or of defeating Rahab. Yet the Old Testament’s basic statements about creation—that God has created everything—are unfolded in a new way in the New Testament. So, e. g., Col. 1.16: “…all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers.” Named here are mythical powers other than those from the Old Testament environment, which are robbed of their cultic-religious dominion over human beings.

The biblical statements about creation thus differ from one another in manifold respects. But they bear witness to the same foundation and orientation, and that is of utmost importance for the church’s doctrine of creation, regardless of the historical context in which it is unfolded. Three observations are especially important here: (a) The presupposition of the biblical statements about creation is God’s act of salvation. They are unfoldings of the faith in God who has revealed himself as the Lord in his historical salvific action. Thus the presupposition of the Old Testament’s statements about creation is God’s historical covenant with Israel. This has been persuasively demonstrated exegetically by Gerhard von Rad and systematically by Karl Barth.[iii] The God who revealed himself as Lord through the salvation of his people is praised in these statements as the Lord of the universe. In that way, the covenant precedes acknowledgment of the creation, although the creation has taken place before the covenant. This connection between the covenant in history and the act of creation at the beginning of history is so close in the Old Testament witnesses that the word creation [Schaffen] was also used by DeuteroIsaiah to designate the election of the people of Israel. But if faith in the covenantal God who saves was further unfolded in statements about creation, then it is not accidental that this happened first in the form of hymns and that the Old Testament accounts of creation arose only later. In the course of this development, the Priestly account of creation in Gen. 1 presupposes a high degree of theological reflection.

Introduction: The Starting Point for the Doctrine of Creation

So the statement that God created the universe through his word should also not be surprising, for through his active, powerful word God has put the covenant into force. This also holds true for the New Testament’s statements about creation. God has raised Jesus from the dead; life has appeared in Jesus Christ; in him “the old has passed away; see, everything has become new” (2 Cor. 5.17). When this faith is unfolded in statements about creation, then what results is not only the statement that the God who saves us through Christ has created the world but that he has created it through Christ. (b) Another common feature of the various biblical statements about creation is the fact that they disempower the cosmogonic myths that were predominant in that cultural setting. The Old Testament witness, namely, that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, was at the same time a polemical act. It excluded any and every cultic worship of heaven and earth. Thus, as a comparison with the Babylonian creation myths shows, Gen. 1 is the result of a process of demythologizing. Sun and moon are stripped of divine dignity; they are created as bodies of light. Indeed, they are not even named in the Priestly account of creation. The earth is no longer the mother goddess who gives birth; it is created like plants, animals, and humankind. “Tiamat,” however, from whom, according to the myth, the gods and the earth emerged, became the designation for the desolation, the void, nothingness.[iv] That Gen. 1 is not the result of syncretism but is rather a disruption, indeed, a disempowerment, also shows itself in still other details. The dominion of the myths is broken; the reality inherent in them is explained as a created one—insofar as it is not unmasked as nothingness. The residual fragments of the myths are used as verbal expressions for glorifying the one God’s act of creation. The same thing has happened with the different kinds of mythical notions that were used to proclaim the New Testament gospel. Here the disempowerment of the mythical powers took place above all in the unfolding of the witness to the exaltation of Jesus Christ as Lord. God has exalted Jesus above all principalities, powers, might, and dominions, and above every name that is cultically worshiped.[v] The anti-mythological biblical statements about creation do not in any way deny that beyond his historical revelation God also witnesses to all human beings through the works of his creation. For this reason, the creation myths somehow know this witness too. Nevertheless, this truth, which human beings have misunderstood, is first brought to light through God’s incarnate Word, which has always been “the light of all people” (Jn. 1.4). (c) Finally, despite all their diversity, the biblical statements about creation have this in common, namely, that they presuppose the general state of knowledge about the world of their time. Neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament contains any special knowledge of nature that would differ significantly from the knowledge of nature commonly held in that cultural context. With respect to the notions about the structure and form of the world, the statements about creation in both the

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Old and New Testaments share the given knowledge about the world of their time. Cosmology as such is of no importance in either Old Testament or New Testament proclamation. By contrast, what is absolutely crucial is that everything [alles] that is known, and also every cosmic reality that is imagined or dreaded, is subjected to God’s lordship in recognition of his act of creation. In this respect, defining the content of “everything,” by giving details about the reality that was known at that time, belongs to the biblical statements about creation. The concrete details about what has been created are different in the Old and New Testaments. But the concern is always that everything existing other than God is created by God. When in the New Testament Christ is confessed to be the Lord to whom God has subjected “everything,” then this “everything” is that same thing of which the Old Testament statements about creation are speaking. We began with the question: “In what sense are the biblical statements about creation to be acknowledged as true and binding today?” In reply, it first of all needs to be said that we do not yet truly acknowledge them if we merely repeat them and set forth their authors’ understanding of the world and of themselves. We must instead understand the biblical statements about creation as historical acts, namely: (a) as an unfolding of faith in salvation in praise of the Creator; (b) as disrupting the myths of that time; and (c) as subjecting the entire known world of that time to the Creator. We thereby acknowledge the binding truth of the biblical statements about creation only when we reenact the same act today, whose one and only enactment has been handed down to us in manifold forms through the biblical writings. The task of the doctrine of creation is not to repristinate and dogmatize biblical statements that have been individually selected and artificially harmonized. Rather, our task is to continue the act of witnessing in obedience to the biblical witnesses. Determinative for this act is the above-noted foundation and aim of these witnesses: (1) The statements about creation are to be made by faith in the same divine act of salvation to which the biblical texts bear witness. So the task does not begin by considering the Old Testament creation accounts as such in isolation. Rather, it begins with God’s act of salvation for Israel, in which God has revealed himself as the Lord and on the basis of which he was praised as the Creator. In turn, however, we also should not make this point of entry the sole starting point. Doing this would be an anachronism, since the promises of the old covenant are fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and we are no longer living under the old covenant but under the new. The starting point for the theology of creation is not to take place with the isolated word of the Old Testament but with God’s final act of salvation in Jesus Christ—with the Old Testament word fulfilled in Christ. In its encounters with the emerging modern natural sciences, the church’s position would have been clearer and stronger from the outset if the doctrine of creation had taken its point of entry with the gospel

Introduction: The Starting Point for the Doctrine of Creation

and thus with the New Testament statements about creation. After all, Christian ethics does not begin with the Old Testament law but with the New Testament gospel and the New Testament exhortation that is grounded in it, so that from this perspective the Old Testament law is to be interpreted anew as fulfilled in Christ. With this starting point, however, the questioning into which every human being is placed by means of the self-witnessing of the Creator in creation—even apart from the encounter with the historical revelation of salvation—must by no means be disregarded. But this questioning about God is only answered by God’s salvific action and is freed from the misleading, self-chosen answers of human beings. With that in mind, the theology of creation also cannot begin with the examination of nature. Rather, nature is to be examined in the light of the revelation of salvation. (2) Statements about creation are to be made by reflecting on what are arguably the myths of our time, which are disrupted in the witness of the faith. Myths are generally understood to be stories about the gods. It is clear that myths, in this sense of the term, are playing an ever-decreasing role in the world today, but we will nevertheless still examine them not only with respect to how they manifest themselves but also in terms of their origin and purpose. The presupposition of these myths is that God bears witness to all human beings through the works of his creation that he is the invisible Lord whom they are to seek and to honor. In their myths, people have tried, one way or another, to make visible this invisible Lord whom they seek. In the course of the history of religion, this has happened in ever-new ways, whether by deifying natural forces and animals or also humans. One could say that in our time ideological worldviews correspond to myths. Through them as well, human beings try to evade being called into question, which happens to them in their experience of the world and is the means by which God wants to make of them those who are asking about him and seeking him. As a rule, such ideologies arise by employing partial knowledge from the sciences, which is then generalized and used in a dominating way to interpret the meaning of the world and of human life. In this way, knowledge of the determinative nature of physical phenomena was generalized in the ideological worldviews of mechanism and materialism; knowledge of the peculiarity of the organic was generalized in the ideological worldview of biologism; insights into the origin of species were generalized in the ideological worldview of dogmatic evolutionism; and observations about the correlations between sex drives and neuroses were generalized in pansexualism.[vi] It is also conceivable that newly discovered subatomic “spontaneity” would be developed into an ideological worldview that would come close to the starting point of German idealism. With the advent of modern worldviews, something similar has taken place to what occurred with the rise of the ancient myths and cults. Instead of seeking the invisible God, human beings seek a conceptual housing of meaning, in which they shield themselves against God. Moreover, recent history shows that such ideological worldviews have had dominion over human beings in a

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way that is similar to the powers and principalities about which the New Testament speaks—principalities that enslave human beings and ruin their lives.[vii] But even when ideologies are fundamentally rejected, and human beings who are called into question want to constitute their own existence through concepts of their own making, the same thing can happen. There is also an enslaving and corrupting myth of freedom. (3) The world that we know today is to be subject to the Lord, who has revealed himself in Christ. At the same time, we have to keep in mind what far-reaching changes have taken place with respect to knowledge of the world and especially of nature vis-à-vis the period in which the biblical texts arose and also vis-à-vis the later synthesis of biblical and Greek-ontological statements. Most profound are the differences between the biblical world and our own that have become evident in modern atomic physics and genetics. God is confessed as the Creator only when all of the world as we know it today is acknowledged to be his creation. This means that the Creator is to be proclaimed in the context of all experiences of the world and of all worldviews. The precise results in the empirical sciences are thereby not negated but are liberated from the ideological character that some scientific hypotheses have, and there emerges a new relationship to the world.

1. The Freedom of God the Creator The gospel proclaims that God has raised Jesus, the crucified one, from the dead.[viii] According to the New Testament witness, the resurrection of Jesus is purely and simply God’s historical act of salvation. If God’s foundational act of salvation in the old covenant was leading his people out of bondage in Egypt, so the foundational act of salvation in the new covenant is far more than just saving lives from tribulations. Rather, it is the vivifying of a dead man. It is not liberation for continuing to live this earthly life, but the awakening to eternal life, which is lifted up beyond the limits of earthly corporeality and beyond the spatial-temporal constitution of this world—a new creation out of the nothingness of a decaying corpse. The gospel is not merely the message about God’s mighty deed on Jesus. Rather, through the gospel God is acting on us with this very power. The gospel proclaims God to be the one “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom. 4.17). Through the gospel, God speaks about Jesus’ death as having happened for us, and he gives us a share in Jesus’ resurrection. God is doing this apart from any preconditions that are expected of us, on the basis of which we might have deserved our salvation. When we look upon ourselves, we see only sin and the nothingness of those who have fallen into death. On the basis of his free grace, God has accomplished the act of salvation in Jesus. Just as God had chosen Israel, despite it being a small, powerless, and stubborn people, so in Jesus Christ

The Freedom of God the Creator

he has chosen “things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor. 1.28f.). In that God is acting on us through the gospel—judging and saving us, putting us to death and making us alive—we know that he has not become our Lord just because we accepted the gospel, but rather he was already our Lord before we came to faith.[ix] We know that long before [we came to faith], we owed him thanks and were indebted to him for our life, although we wanted to know nothing of him. We were already dependent on him, even when we still thought we could arrange our own lives as we pleased. We acknowledge God, however, not merely to be our Lord but to be the Lord of all people—whether they believe in him or not—and again, not merely to be the Lord of human beings but to be the Lord over all the conditions by which human life is determined—to be the Lord of the whole world. Of course if we were only to confess that we—humanity, the world—are dependent on God, then we would still not yet be confessing God as Lord, for the world’s dependence on God could also be understood in the sense of an eternal inseparability between God and the world, in which God, in his superiority, and the world, in its dependence, were always already coordinated with each other. To be sure, as the origin of the world, God can then also be spoken of with the highest attributes, as was done, e. g., in Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, which taught that God is the First Principle of the world. But if God were never conceivable without the world, then despite acknowledging his superiority, he would ultimately only be part of an eternal structure that encompasses both God and the world. Then there would be no further step in this regard, given that God and the order of the world—indeed, God and the world itself—would be identified, as happened in Stoic philosophy and in other forms of pantheism. But God is the Lord in complete freedom. If God’s lordship were restricted to his dominion over the world that is subject to him, the new thing that God has done in the resurrection of Jesus would be misunderstood, as would the new thing that God is doing in the justification of the sinner, and even that new thing which he had already done in saving Israel prior to the resurrection of Jesus. [If God’s lordship were restricted in this way], the unconditional freedom of his grace would be misunderstood. What would also fail to be understood is that God calls every human being into question through the enigmas of the world and of human existence, and this being called into question does not come to an end with the experience of the world and of ourselves—nor can it come to a peaceful resolution in the modes of thinking in which God and the world are understood to be the constituting elements of a comprehensive whole. But in both the Old and the New Testament God is confessed as the Lord, upon whom the world depends, without him being dependent on it. He is the absolute Lord, independent of whether humans confess or deny him to be the Lord; indeed, he is independent of their existence. He was already the Lord before the origin of the human being, yes, before everything that is outside of him.

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If we inquire about the reason for the divine act of creation, we have to assume that the same God who accomplished it is the one who has revealed himself in his historical acts of salvation. Just as God has shown mercy to us in Christ apart from our works, yes, despite our opposition, and solely from the freedom of his grace, so he has established the universe in his freedom. In its statements about creation, faith cannot go any deeper than acknowledging this freedom, but it does have to ward off all notions that obscure this freedom, i. e., that God had needed the world to be his counterpart. God is not conditioned by any other or for any other. God did not need any reality different from himself in order to be God. He did not need a Thou different from himself in order to become an “I.” He did not need the act of creation in order to be active. Forever and ever, he is after all the active Living One. He did not need the universe in order to unfold himself. He is truly the eternal, perfect fullness of life. He did not need others to acknowledge his glory in order for him to attain glory. God is absolutely the eternal free Lord, free from all external determinations, but free also from all inner determinations, such as those we humans know in ourselves, namely, our neediness and our urge to lift ourselves out of that neediness and our drive to make ourselves into those we would very much like to be but are not. All Christian church bodies have rightly rejected every notion of necessity in God—whether it be Neoplatonic notions about an emanation of the world from God, or the notions of German idealism about a God who is becoming, or a self-unfolding of God through the counterpart nature of this world. This freedom of God, however, is no arbitrary freedom. The same one who in his love has shown mercy to the world in Jesus Christ, he has created the world in the freedom of his love.[x] The same God who comes as the Redeemer to those who do not deserve love has, in his act of creation, turned to what is not, out of love, so that it may be. The same God who comes as the Redeemer to those who do not deserve any love, has in his act of creation turned from loving that which is not toward loving that which is. Here, too, statements about creation cannot go any deeper than acknowledging this love. The same God who gave himself as the Redeemer also did not seek his own interests as the Creator. In the freedom of his love, he has established a reality that is different from himself in order to bestow himself. He does not need the counterpart of a Thou that is different from himself in order to become the one who loves. He is after all the eternal communion of the love of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. He needs no counterpart, as a husband needs a wife in order to love as a husband, or as a wife needs a husband in order to love as a wife. We must here steer clear of any notion of a love by which lovers strive to increase and fulfill themselves. But just as the reason of creation must not be sought in a lack of love, so it also cannot be viewed as a drive of natural necessity that demands external expression and longs for the creature. The Christian faith confesses that the love in which God created the world is, in every respect, a free,

The Act of Creation in the Beginning

selfless love, in which God does not seek his own interest, but wants to share and bestow his love. Even as the Creator, God does not act with desirous love (as do the gods in the pagan religions), but with a love that is bestowing. In this freedom of his love, which surpasses all our notions, God has created the reality of the world that is different from him so that it might be with him and he with it. In this way, reality means not only existence [Dasein] but action [Wirken].

2. The Act of Creation in the Beginning The biblical witnesses to the divine act of creation contradict the notions that we have about the relationship between causes and effects in the world. Although the Old Testament, in bearing witness to the act of creation, also uses words that refer to human making, forming, and shaping, these biblical witnesses make no mention of the necessity for pre-existing materials, which is different from human artisanal activity. The incomparable nature of God’s creative act is conveyed linguistically with a word that in Old Testament theological reflection is used exclusively to bear witness to God’s creative activity, namely, the Hebrew word, bārā [‫]ָבּ ָרּא‬.[xi] In no place does this word refer to a human activity or natural process. But the same word also bears witness to the sovereign act of electing and delivering Israel from its powerlessness in Egypt (Deutero-Isaiah).[xii] The creation of the world is solely the act of God himself. “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who by myself spread out the earth” (Isa. 44.24). God had no helper whom he would have used during his act of creation. He had no opponent over against whom he would have had to prevail. He did not need any pre-existing material in order to accomplish the act of creation. If notions from the Babylonian creation myth might be slightly reminiscent of statements about creation in the Old Testament, those notions have been demythologized and turned into metaphors and images. God’s act of creation is never depicted as a struggle with other gods. Likewise, Gen. 1.2ff. is not talking about God’s struggle with the forces of chaos. The sentence from Gen. 1.2, “the earth was desolate and void” [L], does not presuppose a formless matter that God would have needed in order to create heaven and earth. God did not design the world out of given material, as if he were a skilled worker or an artist. In the freedom of his power, he created the world entirely alone. This idea of “solus ipse” [solely by himself] has been most strongly attested to again and again by the fathers in the ancient church in their conflict with Gnosticism, and to this day it is the witness of all churches. This confession of faith in the Creator is condensed formulaically in the concept of “creation from nothing.” This conceptuality is taken from the exhortation of the Maccabean heroine mother to her last son not to fear a martyr’s death, since

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God, who has made everything “from nothing” (οὐκ ἐξ ὂντων [ouk ex ontōn]), can give life again to the dead (2 Macc. 7.28f., cf. vv. 22ff.). The same idea is echoed in Rom. 4.17 (Abraham believed in God, who “calls into existence the things that do not exist”) and Heb. 11.3 (“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible”). The formula “creation from nothing” is first found in the Shepherd of Hermas.1 It soon became established in the ancient church, and then became the formal teaching of all churches. It is the abstract result of theological reflection, but it articulates what is already implied in the Old Testament’s statements about creation, especially in view of the Hebrew verb bārā. Nor does this teaching contradict the statements in the Priestly account of creation, namely, about the desolation and void of the earth and the primeval flood, since the use of “tohu wa-bohu” [‫תּהוּ ׇובֹהוּ‬ ֹ ] in that context no longer refers to mythic powers or to material that is given to the Creator.[xiii] That phrase is to be understood in the same way that we understand another formula that is also found in some extra-Israelite creation stories, namely, as a statement about the state of things “as… not yet being.”[xiv] If we speak about God’s act of creation, then, of course, abstract concepts are no less exposed to the danger of misunderstanding than are perceptible representations. This “nothing” cannot be understood Platonically, as if it were unformed material from which God created the world.[xv] This “nothing” also cannot be understood as a nothingness, in the sense of Gnosticism, i. e., as an adverse divine power or possibility that God had to overcome in his creating. Coordinating the “from” and the “nothing” is rather contradictory. The “from” is erased by the “nothing” insofar as here the former term in no way refers to a relationship between the world’s origin and “nothing.” The formula “creatio ex nihilo” thus teaches God’s sole efficacy in the act of creation. God created the world not only to exist but to function [zum Wirken]. The selffunctioning [das Eigenwirken] of what is created is emphasized most strongly in the biblical statements. This is repeatedly pointed out in a variety of ways: the movement of the celestial bodies, the change of seasons, the flying of birds, the movement of the waters by the fish, etc. At the same time, according to the biblical witness, this self-functioning is not only established as fact but is willed by God. Thus the Priestly account of creation speaks explicitly of a divine command that the earth bring forth plants (Gen. 1.11f.), that animals and humankind multiply and

1 The Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 1.1.6; Mandate 1.1 [26]. [“God, who dwells in the heavens and created out of nothing the things that are, and increased and multiplied them for the sake of his holy church…” (Holmes, 457; cf. Carolyn Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas: A Commentary, Hermeneia, ed. Helmut Koester [Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1999], 41). “First of all, believe that God is one, who created all things and set them in order, and made out of what did not exist everything that is…” (Holmes, 505; cf. Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 103. –Ed.]

The Act of Creation in the Beginning

propagate all the more in their life, and in addition that humankind subjugate the earth and have dominion over all the animals (1.26, 28). Although the difference between the Creator and the creature is infinite, that does not mean that God’s omnipotence and all-efficacy [Allwirksamkeit] restrict what is created so that it is totally passive. The biblical statements about creation do not limit themselves to understanding what is created to be merely a work of divine action. Rather, what is created is itself intended to be in turn the cause of effects. God wants what is created to unfold in an historical self-functioning of its own. By creating reality that is different from himself, God also created the way reality exists in space and time. We would not be acknowledging God as the Lord if we think of time as an infinite line along which God’s eternity extends and on which God’s action of creation and the events of world history are then recorded as moments. It is also not appropriate if we think of space as a given housing in which God dwells and in which he assigns a place to what is created. Nor are space and time merely the a priori forms of intuition in pure reason (Kant).[xvi] Rather, space and time constitute created reality and cannot be separated from it. Similar to Einstein’s teaching about relativity, space and time are functions of motion, and according to the field theory of matter, things are not in space, but space is understood as the force field of things.[xvii] Thus, according to biblical thinking, time is not a general presupposition but rather the structure of the creation’s self-functioning [Eigenwirken] that is given with created reality. In this sense, both Jewish apocalyptic literature and the New Testament speak of different times (aeons), the differences between which are determined by what happens in them. “[I]t is beyond doubt that the world was not made in time but with time.”2 Correspondingly, we can say assuredly that the world was created, not in space but with space. Time and space are the ways in which created reality exists and works. God is purely and simply the Lord, also the Lord of space and time. If we confess, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Ps. 90.2), we do so as creatures who live and think in time. This “before” is no less paradoxical than the “from” in the phrase “from nothing.” This is also the case if we, who live and think in space, call upon God as “the highest.” With God there is no “before” and “after,” no “above” and “below.” God is not “the first” in a series, in which there then follows a second and a third and so on. Rather, he is “the first and the last” at the same time (Isa. 44.6). God is also not the highest in a spatial series of steps. He is so superior to the spatial order that he is the supreme and the lowest, the highest and the lowliest. Unlike the creature, God is not determined by time or space. He is not one who is

2 Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei, XI.6. [CCSL, 48.326; The City of God, WSA, I/7.7. –Ed.]

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becoming and perishing, but rather he is the fullness of life, out of which he has called his creatures into being with their time and their space. That God created the world “in the beginning” certainly means more than that he merely established its beginning. In the act of creation, he at the same time turned himself toward what had arisen, and he took part in what arose in order then to participate further in the temporal-spatial self-functioning of creatures. In this sense, God also undertook a beginning with his act of creation. He began his outward activity, the history of his acts upon that which he had created. It is not as if through these acts he had become something other than what he is eternally, but the Eternal One had begun to be with that which had not existed before. This is also the case in terms of space. If God is called upon as “the Highest,” as “enthroned in heaven,” as “Father in heaven,” this does not mean that we would here forget that God is the Creator of heaven and earth. We do indeed, however, thereby confess that God not only created heaven and earth but that he committed himself to them, that he is with his creatures, indeed, in the irreversible ordering of the Creator and those created by him, of the “one enthroned above” and those living “under him.” The act of creation in the beginning was not only freely done by God, but it is also God’s loving commitment to creation. The process of the creation from nothing is beyond our perception, for it is always prior to our existence and our knowing. We can think about it only after the fact, as creatures whose notions and words are shaped by our encounter with the world. Nevertheless, faith not only confesses the pure “that” of this act of creation, for we believe that the same God who has accepted us through Jesus Christ created the world in the beginning. In the certainty of the identity of God the Redeemer and the Creator, statements about the “how” of creation have also arisen, both in the Old Testament covenantal people and in the New Testament community, and these statements are of great importance. If God had elected, liberated, and led Israel into the Promised Land through his word, and later had also acted again and again through his word to promise, command, threaten, and judge Israel, so the Old Testament faith about creation confesses that God has created the world through his word. “He spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Ps. 33.9). This is also the recurring statement in the Priestly account of creation: “And God said…. And it was so.” Now these and other witnesses to the act of creation by means of the word are found above all in the later writings of the Old Testament, and an analysis of Genesis 1 reveals that they have been incorporated into an older account that spoke only of creation through God’s action. The doctrine of creation through the word might have its source in the preaching of the prophets. God lets his word bear witness: “It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa. 55.11). This bears witness to God’s word as an active word, which brings forth food, joy, and comfort (Jer. 15.16), but

The Act of Creation in the Beginning

it also ignites fire (5.14). Again and again in the prophetic writings we also find the formula, “Thus says the Lord,” and then the events that follow are understood to be the realization of this word of God. Thus the creation of the world by God’s command not only bears witness to the sovereign freedom and divine ease by which God created but also to the identity between the Creator of the world and the Savior and Judge of his people. If God has justified sinners through Jesus Christ and delivered them from their enslavement to death, so Christendom now also confesses that God has created the world through Christ. “Through him are all things and through him we exist” (1 Cor. 8.6 [S]); “in him all things… were created” (Col. 1.16); “through whom [God] also created the worlds” (Heb. 1.2 [S]). He is praised in the prologue to the Gospel of God as the eternal Word, about whom is said: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (Jn. 1.3). If late Judaism had already spoken of God’s wisdom as the mediator of creation (Prov. 8.22ff.), so the ancient church praised Christ as the wisdom through which God created the world. It is striking that the New Testament’s statements about Christ as the mediator of creation are found in very different writings, quite independent of each other and obviously widespread. Their origin is not to be traced solely to Paul. Moreover, their true home might above all be in hymnic statements. Corresponding notions in Jewish wisdom literature and also in Gnosticism, as well as in Stoic philosophy, were soon used to glorify Christ’s mediation of creation. The source for acknowledging Christ’s mediation of creation is, however, not to be found in such notions but in the certainty—grounded in the appearances of the risen Lord and the present action of the exalted Lord—that Jesus is the eternal Christ and the Son of God who has always been with God the Father. Thereby the historical uniqueness of his incarnation is by no means denied. But a distinction is made between the work he did at the beginning of creation and the work that he accomplished as the incarnate one. At this point, we cannot get into christology, but already here we need at least to say that it is one and the same Christ through whom God has created and redeemed us. With the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, we confess that we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, through whom all things were made, those in heaven and those on earth. If in his redemptive action God has awakened sinners to new life through his Spirit, so God the Creator is also confessed to be the Lord, who has given life through his Spirit and has awakened what is created to its own self-functioning. Just as he has raised up leaders and prophets of the Old Testament covenant people through his Spirit and has created the New Testament community through his Spirit, so he is to be confessed as the same one who created heaven and earth in the beginning through his Spirit. His word is a “powerful word” [Kraftwort], his productive speaking is the action of his Spirit. If believers have experienced this, then in their statements about creation they also cannot leave out of consideration

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the action of the Spirit, for God’s Spirit is an eternal Spirit. There is controversy about whether Gen. 1.2b (“a divine storm hovered over the face of the waters” [S]) is to be understood primarily as a statement about the unformed nothingness of the floods that preceded the creation or as a statement about God’s Spirit as the presupposition of the act of creation, as it was usually understood in church tradition. Unequivocal are the numerous statements in the Old Testament about God’s Spirit as the effective power of creaturely life, of animals and humankind. Word and Spirit belong together in God’s act of creation. “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth” (Ps. 33.6). In the New Testament Scriptures these statements completely recede behind the witness to the action of the Spirit to create anew, by which God renews sinners and builds up the church. Expressed only marginally at first in the ancient church was the idea that God had acted through his Spirit already in creating the world, but that idea was expressed fully and completely in connection with the formation of the doctrine of the Trinity. The church now bore witness to the fact that God had done all of his acts as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and without any restriction on the action of renewing, the Spirit is now praised as the Creator. Thus the church prays, “Come, Creator Spirit, visit the hearts of your [people]; with grace from above fill the hearts that you have created.”3 Among the Protestant Reformers, John Calvin most strongly emphasized the action of the Spirit in creation. He distinguished this creative action of the Spirit from the adoptive action of the Spirit, who awakens faith in Christ and cries “Abba! Father!” in the heart.4 Calvin thus distinguished between the acts that the Creator did in the beginning and the acts that the Redeemer did “when the time was fulfilled.” But one and the same God has done these acts and is constantly doing them through his word and his Spirit. That God created the world in the beginning is a statement of faith. The question of whether and to what extent human reason is able to arrive at and actually attain this knowledge, even apart from God’s revelation, has been answered very differently in the history of theology. Thus, e. g., although Thomas Aquinas taught that one could rationally perceive that the world is created, he considered the knowledge of its temporal finiteness to be impossible apart from revelation.[xviii] Bonaventure, however, did not separate these two types of knowledge in this manner, and the question about whether reason is actually able to acquire true knowledge of the Creator he answered much less positively than Thomas.[xix] While we cannot here go any further into the history of this question, it should be noted that the modern study of world religions has discovered a tremendous proliferation of ideas about 3 Rhabanus Maurus, “Veni Creator Spiritus.” 4 Cf. Werner Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin [The Work of the Holy Spirit according to Calvin] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957), 15ff.: “The Holy Spirit and the Cosmos.”

The Act of Creation in the Beginning

creation beyond the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, especially in Africa.5 In any case, it is clear that the subject matter of the empirical sciences is only the world—i. e., the effects of divine creating, theologically speaking—but not the act of creation itself. Within the horizon of their questions and methods, the empirical sciences can only research matters that fall within the time frame of the world, and thus only inquire about the duration of the world. But the act of creation in the beginning, by which God has established time, lies beyond such research. While the infinite duration of the world was taken for granted in the natural sciences up to the end of the nineteenth century (as also in Greek philosophy), since then a profound change has taken place. Accurate observations have been made that now urge the adoption of a beginning of the world. Two independent calculations, based on the redshift of distant stars and nebulae, and on the laws regarding radioactive decay, especially the transmutation of uranium into lead, have led to the same results regarding a temporal beginning. In addition, the second law of thermodynamics, with its statements about the irreversible direction of the conversion of heat energy, suggests a limited duration of the world. Since this conclusion is based on very different empirical scientific findings, today there is widespread agreement about the probability that the world had its beginning more than ten billion years ago.[xx] Of course, this conclusion is valid only under the presupposition that the natural laws known to us have not changed over time. While this is, to be sure, an obvious assumption, whose heuristic fruitfulness has been proven to a large extent in scientific research, every kind of empirical verification is unable to provide an exact proof that these laws have always been and always will be the same. So also today, alongside the assumption of the temporal finiteness of the world, there are hypotheses that count on an infinite duration of the world. To be sure, with respect to the beginning of the world, this assumption of the world’s temporal finiteness is the simplest one empirically and scientifically since it presupposes the fewest unknown factors. Nevertheless, one will ultimately have to judge whether the question about the temporal (and spatial) finiteness or infinity of the world is fundamentally still open in a way that is similar to the teaching about antinomies in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.[xxi] But even if the beginning of the world were empirically and scientifically more probable than otherwise, yes, even if it were proved with precision, that would not prove God’s act of creation in the beginning. It would be both a theological and a scientific mistake to want to prove the belief in creation by assuming the temporal finiteness of the world. It would also be a mistake to want to refute the belief in creation by assuming an infinite world. However, in their own way, the empirical sciences keep open the question about the beginning and

5 For this evidence, see Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11, Biblischer Kommentar Altes Testament (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1974), 26–101. [ET: Genesis 1–11, 6–73. For examples of African primal myths, cf. Sproul, Primal Myths, 31ff. –Ed.]

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origin of the world, a question that has always confronted human beings, one to which the creation myths of the religions and the cosmogonies of the philosophies have answered in manifold ways. These myths and philosophies have been disrupted by God’s historical revelation.[xxii] Most importantly, every form of mingling God and the world, and every way of understanding cosmogony as theogony, is shattered by God’s historical revelation. The questions that remain alive in these myths and philosophies are in this way exposed, radicalized, and addressed by God. It thereby becomes clear that these questions are not merely about the problem of the origin of the world but are ultimately about the yearning for salvation.

3. The Universe God is only then acknowledged as the Creator if everything [alles] existing outside of himself is acknowledged to be his creation.[xxiii] This takes place in the Old and New Testaments with the concept of the “universe” [“All”] (hakôl [‫ ]ַהכֺּל‬and τά πάντα [ta panta]) and with formulaic summaries, especially “heaven and earth” (Gen. 1.1 et passim), but also, e. g., “things visible and invisible” (Col. 1.16).[xxiv] Moreover, this takes place through the explicit enumeration of all that believers know from their experience of the world around them (e. g., Gen. 1, Ps. 104, Job 38ff.). The belief in creation is unable to be satisfied with either the abstract concept of the universe [das All] or with formulaic summaries. Rather, it celebrates the diversity and concrete corporeality of all things as God’s work, even though no human being can ever fully summarize what all is included in this incomprehensible treasure that is the product of what has been created in the fullness of God’s power and life. That God is praised as the Creator of the universe in all of its specificity is just as essential as concretely acknowledging Jesus Christ, who was exalted as Lord of the universe, to be the Lord above all powers. Here, too, the confession not only praises the fact that “everything” is subject to him but that “all powers in heaven and on the earth” have been delivered over to him. Thus, e. g., Eph. 1.21 explicitly enumerates what all he is over, namely, “all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.” For it is only by such concrete specifying that faith can explicitly subordinate everything to God that seems to be a sovereign power outside of God, whether it creates anxiety or happiness for faith. The concrete multiplicity of that which exists outside of God is comprehended in the concept of the universe. At the same time, this concept has to be developed concretely in ever-new ways, even if belief in creation can never comprehend God and the world with this concept. It is obvious that such concrete enumerations are determined in each case by the biblical authors’ experience of the world around them and by what was known to them through traditions. The world is understood differently in the first account of

The Universe

creation in Gen. 1 (as the earth, threatened by floods above the heavenly firmament), and then differently in the second account in Gen. 2.4bff. (as the irrigated garden, surrounded by the thistles of the desert), and then again very differently in the statements of Col. 1.16 and Eph. 1.21 (as the dominion of invisible powers). But quite different is our experience of the world today: It is simply characteristic of our experience that the world that we experience and perceive has greatly expanded. We know about stars, continents, plants and animals, the circumstances of nations and individuals, about which neither the Jews nor the Greeks had any idea. We recognize that the world is incomparably older and much vaster than what the ancients assumed. Calculating distance in terms of light-years and assuming a radius of the universe on the order of billions of light-years were beyond their imagination.[xxv] On the other hand, behind the world of sense-experience a reality has become recognizable experimentally, which eludes immediate experience but nevertheless determines the world that we have experienced. We today thus know about atomic and subatomic phenomena, about particles and waves, about cells and genes, and about much else that so fundamentally determines our world and ourselves, with the result that the world of sense-experience has become virtually an unreal world, namely, the mere appearance of the actual world that is determined by the contingency of our sense organs, but which is removed from our immediate experience. In addition, the world of experience has undergone incredible change as a result of research into the non-perceptible world, and a technical world has been superimposed upon it. Although human beings have always changed their environment through their inventions and their work, never before has the sensible world become to such an extent the material for a world constructed by human beings, as it is today, and never has this type of transformation happened with such rapidity. What is decisive is that we confess God to be the Creator of the world that is known by us today. There is not only a christological and an ecclesiological Docetism but also a Docetism that can creep into the doctrine of creation.[xxvi] God is not properly confessed to be the Creator if we fail to acknowledge the whole world in which we live—the sensible-perceptible, the imperceptible that is researched, and that which is transformed by technology—to be his creation. Moreover, belief in creation also cannot be limited to experiences of supernatural, spiritual powers and events, of which human history is full. To the extent that faith does not simply consider these powers to be empty superstition, they must be resolutely divested of any divine dignity and designated merely as creatures. That God has created everything has to be maintained in all of its concrete specificity. Here, in the concept of the universe, we will highlight three aspects that are of fundamental importance for the doctrine of creation:

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(a) Every reality outside of God is created by God. Everything—the big and the small, every inanimate object and every animate entity as well as every spiritual being—every existing thing has its origin in God. Nothing that we perceive, know, and infer from its effects is excluded from this. Also, each of the imperceptible elementary particles and each of its force fields, each cell, and each of its constituent parts, is originally from God. In the technical world as well, there are no objects or functions that have not also been a part of creaturely existence, even though technology has brought change to nature and human beings, and yes, has even distorted them. These distortions, however, also remain the distorted creation of God. Everything that humans are able to discover experimentally and to make technically, God has created. (b) As varied as the creatures also are, common to all of them is their origin in God. Only God comes from no one. Everything else, however, is from God. All differences and oppositions are encompassed by the unity of this origin. Infinitely greater than all the differences and oppositions in the world is the difference between God and his creatures. In that respect, all creatures—in the presence of the Creator—belong together. Before him—with all their diversity and oppositions, regardless of whether they are aware of it or not—they are a unity and a totality. The formulas “everything,” “heaven and earth,” and “things visible and invisible” refer not only to the creaturely existence of everything but to how each creature belongs inseparably together with every other creature. They are one in that they are not God. No creature exists solely for itself. No event can be understood in isolation, nor can any spiritual person truly be strictly a single creature. Through their common origin, every created entity is related to every other created entity. Every instance of opposition between entities that we find in the world is a conflict within a God-given unity. Even hostility to God is encompassed within this unity. All churches rightly reject any dualism that denies this unity. While creaturely existence can indeed be corrupted by creatures, it cannot be jettisoned. (c) The theological concept of the creation of the universe also encompasses the dimension of time. There is never a time, be it in the past or in the future, when anything that exists outside of God is not a creature. This is true, no matter what changes have taken place in respect to the beginning or will take place in respect to the present. True for all time is the fact that what is not a creature is not real, apart from God alone. If we understand every reality outside of God to be God’s creation, this understanding is not without consequences for our experience of the world: Despite all that is known about it, we live in a world that has become unknowable. Despite its calculable finiteness, we live in a world that has become massively infinite. Despite our ability to control it through technology, we live in a world that has become strange and unpredictable. We live in the midst of events that are both explainable and inexplicable, both understandable and incomprehensible. We

The Universe

recognize meaningful connections but are then able to observe only the shattering of our interpretations of their meaning. The victorious attitude toward life connected to the Enlightenment’s understanding of the world has largely given way to a feeling of estrangement in this world, and today a new form of human self-understanding has developed, which in some respects corresponds to that of ancient orientalHellenistic Gnosticism, namely, of being lost in the world. If we believe in God the Creator, then we are barred from indulging in such feelings of meaninglessness. By faith in the Creator, however, we do not need to make the reality of the world bearable to us by arbitrary meanings. We do not have to impose a unity upon reality by means of an ideology, regardless of whatever empirical starting point might be taken. We will completely refrain from attempting to derive the world from the positing of the human self. Such attempts to derive the whole of creation from a particular creature have continued to make people blind to reality and to enslave them. Belief in creation is certain of the totality of the world as grounded in God, regardless of whether it is empirically demonstrable or not; and in that certainty, faith can be free from anxiety vis-à-vis the world’s mysterious character. Faith does not need to dim its way of perceiving and knowing in view of an event that it is unable to make sense of, for it knows everything to be secure in the care of the unity whose origin is in God. If we confess that God created the universe through his Word, then we may also be certain that the universe has a semantic and thus a literally “logical” structure.[xxvii] In this literal sense, medieval theologians understood the creation to be a “book” that was written by God, and Luther referred to creatures as “words of God” [“Vokabeln Gottes”].6 Because of the act of creation in the beginning, there is an indestructible correlation between the existence of what is created and the reality of the Word. Creation’s origin in God’s Word is the basis for the amazing correspondence between the logical structure of things and that of human thought, a correspondence which, as the history of epistemology shows, is by no means self-evident. Through this origin, things are knowable and addressable. By faith in the Creator, we can also be certain of the meaningfulness of the world, even where we do not comprehend it and are overwhelmed by the appearance of discontinuity and absurdity. As important as these conclusions are, Christian belief in creation has not yet been fully articulated in what has already been said. The statements above about the universe were at first very formal, and they are in part found in philosophical systems and other religions. If Christian belief in creation keeps a firm eye on the identity of the Creator and of the Father of Jesus Christ, then a certainty arises

6 [Luther, Genesisvorlesung (1535), WA, 42.17.18f. (on Gen. 1.5): “Thus sun, moon, heaven, earth, Peter, Paul, I, you, etc.—we are all words of God (vocabula dei), in fact only one single syllable or letter by comparison with the entire creation” (Lectures on Genesis, LW 1 , 1.21–22). –Ed.]

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that goes far beyond acknowledging that the world is a creaturely multiplicity and unity that is different from God; for by faith in God’s act of salvation, we recognize the intended purpose and original goodness that God gave to the universe for its own self-functioning. Both of these insights about Christian belief in creation determine the whole of Christian doctrine and can only unfold fully in the course of the various parts of dogmatics. Therefore, in the next two sections we will restrict ourselves to the most basic statements. The same applies to the section that follows them, which is about the order of the world.

4. The Purpose of Creation If we start with the formation of the earth, whose age today is estimated to be more than three billion years old, then the first signs of life emerged about 600 million years ago, aquatic flora and land flora around 400 million years ago, the amphibians about 100 million years ago, and then the higher mammals and birds around thirty million years ago.[xxviii] Then Neanderthals emerged about 90,000 years ago, and Homo sapiens about 40,000 years ago.[xxix] The first civilizations then arose around 4,000 years before Christ.7 Although with respect to their details these figures vary among researchers, it is fundamentally clear that as such they do not say anything about the meaning of the succession. This succession can be interpreted very differently. The biblical witnesses to creation also speak of a succession in the emergence of creatures, albeit one that takes place within fewer days. Despite all of the differences in detail, however, these statements about creation have in common the certainty that this succession is not accidental nor meaningless but aimed toward a goal, namely, human beings. God has prepared the earth for them so that it serves as their home and the area of their activity. According to God, humans are different from the earth and the animals. As the final creature, the human being, as the image of God, is the crown of God’s work of creation. Accordingly, in response to the question, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them?” (Ps. 8.4), the psalmist replies, “You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet” (Ps. 8.5ff. [S]). Ultimately, the unique position of humans in the midst of all the other creatures becomes clear through the message about the incarnation of the Son of God.

7 Cf. Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Die Geschichte der Natur (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1948), 135ff. [ET: History of Nature, trans. Fred D. Wieck (London: Routledge, 1951), 146ff. –Ed.]

The Purpose of Creation

God has created everything so that it will relate to him in its self-functioning. At the same time, creatures are intended by God to receive the fulfillment of their existence from him. Here, too, the statements about the special position of humans are not restricted to focusing on their special existence but promise humans a transcendent realization and fulfillment of their existence. All churches teach that the first aim of creation is the glory of God, and that the second is the happiness of spiritual creatures. Yet these two purposes are not juxtaposed but permeate each other, for the fact that God’s glory is the goal of creation does not mean that God seeks his own glory or needs spiritual creatures to glorify him. He is the glory, even without creatures. No creature can add anything to this glory; creatures can only praise it. But nevertheless, God wants spiritual creatures to share in his glory. Just as he has created them in the freedom of his love, so he wants to complete them in this very love. In this way, spiritual creatures find the fulfillment of their lives in the glorification of God. While in the old covenant this fulfillment was understood above all as the expectation of a long life on earth, the New Testament promises the transformation of earthly life into the new mode of eternal life on the basis of Jesus’ resurrection, namely, participation in the life of the risen Christ who is established in divine glory. All creatures should, by their self-functioning, praise the glory of the one from whom they have their existence. In their multiplicity, they should glorify the One; in their temporality, the Eternal; in their finitude, the Infinite. As those who receive, they are to glorify the Giver, and in the “logical” structure of their respective self-functioning they should glorify the Word through which God has created the universe. This intended purpose applies to the creation as a totality and to each and every creature. In the unity of their self-functioning, all creatures should serve the glorification of God. Thus, e. g., Psalm 148 calls all creatures to praise God individually. For this reason, too, the purpose of the universe has often been described in the history of Christian theology as the hymn of a mixed chorus of many voices. The concept of adoration is extended to the actions of creatures who are incapable of speaking words. The concept of cosmic adoration takes seriously the fact that through God’s act of creation all creatures are shaped by the Word and are therefore related to the Word, whether or not they are able to express that. Within this all-embracing adoration, spiritual creatures are given prominence and are intended to lead insofar as in their voices the linguistic [worthaft] structure of the universe manifests itself in words, namely, in a free personal response to God’s creative Word. The non-verbal jubilation in creation is designed to be expressed in the adoring praise offered by human beings. In this sense, a distinction is made between the objective and subjective glorification of God. Raised above the other creatures, humans are designed to be, so to speak, the mouth of the other creatures. If the glorification of God is the purpose of the whole of creation, that creation as a whole also is to reach its fulfillment in the glorification of God. Here, too,

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fulfillment means a transformation that transcends the initial state of the world. In this sense, the expectation of a new heaven and a new earth is already proclaimed in the Old Testament (Isa. 65.17), and at the end of the New Testament there is the word of God: “See, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21.5). God will demonstrate his glory in that what he has begun in the freedom of his love for his creatures, he will bring to completion in this very love. Just as God is the origin of creation, so he is also the goal that is given for the self-functioning of each creature. “For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist” (1 Cor. 8.6 [S]). “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Rom. 11.36 [S]). In contrast to similar statements in Stoic philosophy, which echo these words of Paul, here the unity of origin and goal in God does not signify an eternal intertwining of God and the world. Rather, the goal is God, who, as the Creator, is different from the world. Nor does the unity of origin and goal mean the disintegration of the world into the nothingness from which God first called it into existence. The goal is not God in his solitude. Instead, the goal of the act of creation is God, surrounded by his creatures. If he has called the world into existence through the powerful action of his love, his goal is to create a community of love with his creatures and to call them into communion with the eternal Son through whom God has created everything. In this sense, the Son is not only praised as the mediator of creation but also as the goal of creation: “all things have been created through him and for him” (Col. 1.16 [E]).

5. The Originally Good Creation If in the previous section we proceeded from the succession in which the various kinds of life—including ultimately humans—have appeared on earth, here we will inquire in the reverse direction, moving from the existence of the earth back to its origin. In this line of inquiry, modern science has reached various hypotheses. Despite manifold variations about the details, the most widely held one is still the Kant-Laplace theory, according to which the planets were formed by the condensation of nebula that surrounded the rotating sun.[xxx] If we inquire about the origin of the solar system, a widely held assumption is that there was a Big Bang, which triggered the spatial and temporal expansion of all matter that is known to us. Both theories confront us with a strange and neutral beginning, one that is far from our perception of the world and to which we can have no personal relation. Denying the temporal finitude of the world does not change this impression. Even the biblical statements about creation go behind the pre-existence of the earth. Thus, according to the Priestly account of creation, the creation of the earth was preceded by the creation of light, the separation of light from darkness, and the receding of the waters through the creation of the heavenly firmament. If one

The Originally Good Creation

compares the very different statements about the origin of the universe in the Old Testament, it becomes clear that the Old Testament belief in creation does not stand and fall with any definite idea about the sequence in what God created. What is constitutive for that belief, however, is the certainty that the universe was originally created good by God. Again and again, we find in the Priestly account of creation this judgment by God concerning what is created. The six-day work of creating ends with the words, “God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1.31 [S]). This certainty is by no means found only in this creation account. The Hebrew word (tôb [‫ )]טוֹב‬used here has a fairly general meaning and is not restricted to what is ethically good. It expresses the appropriateness, usefulness, and suitability for a particular task.[xxxi] In this context, “good” means the appropriateness of the creatures’ being with and for one another. But the meaning here cannot be restricted just to this. Since God is the one speaking this judgment (“Behold, it is good”), he thereby places what is created in relation to himself. Stated here is that what is created corresponds to God’s will as the Creator and thus to the purpose that God has given to creation. That God has created his creatures good is not just the content of scattered explicit statements but the implicit presupposition for all of God’s historical activity with his creation. Thus the certainty about the original goodness of what is created is the presupposition for the call to repentance and the announcement of judgment in the Old and New Testaments, for this message presupposes a turning away from God and a failure to fulfill the purpose for which human beings were created. Although in the Old Testament sin is revealed especially as apostasy from the covenant, in the background is an offense against the Creator. The preaching of judgment by the prophets and ultimately by Jesus would be unjustified if God had not created human beings good. The acknowledgment of the original goodness of creation is, e. g., also evident in the fact that Isaiah presents to rebellious Israel the humiliating example of the ox and the ass (Isa. 1.3), and that Jesus presents to those of little faith the birds of the sky and the lilies of the field (Mt. 6.26, 28). Above all, however, certainty about the original goodness of the universe is grounded in God’s act of redemption. On the basis of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and God’s further leading, God has been revealed as the one who is not only accomplishing historical acts of goodness but who is goodness. “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Ps. 103.8). But ultimately God is recognized in Jesus Christ as the one who has not only demonstrated his love historically but is love. Applicable without any reservation is this passage: “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1.17 [RSV]). If God is love, goodness, and mercy, then he has not acted any differently as the Creator in the beginning, and he then requires nothing from his creatures that he has not already given them. By faith in the gospel, the

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original goodness of creation and the justness of the divine judgments against evil are inescapably certain.

6. The Order of Creation The universe is embraced by the goodness of its origin and by its purpose to glorify God. The correspondence between the original goodness of creation and this purpose is the order that God has given to the self-functioning of what is created. That God has created the universe as an ordered reality is a continually recurring statement about the belief in creation in the Old and New Testaments. The phrase “heaven and earth” not only serves to summarize the multiplicity of what is created but also to acknowledge a God-given order in creation. The Priestly account of creation teaches not only about the temporal sequence of the acts of creation over six days but also about a lasting order that is given through them. Thus the separation of light from darkness and the separation between the waters establish a fundamental order for everything else. Even the New Testament formula “things visible and invisible” (Col. 1.16) designates not only the totality of what is created but also its order. This biblical understanding of order is profoundly different from the Greek understanding of the cosmos. Greek philosophy was concerned about the knowledge of the eternal order of all beings and about comprehending them through their timeless relations. The biblical understanding, however, is determined by the order in which God set the orderly structures in the beginning, and the interest here is directed less to order as such than to God’s ordering and its observance or even its non-observance by the creature’s own action [Eigenwirken]. Thus, in the biblical understanding, the linguistic structure of the universe is not understood as a timeless mathematical relation but as the effect of the word by which God called the universe into existence out of nothing in the beginning and addressed human beings. To be sure, the order of creation was a relatively late idea in Israel, and there is no uniform concept of order in the Old Testament, but the acknowledgment of the matter is ancient, and it has been articulated with great clarity especially by Jeremiah, Deutero-Isaiah, the Priestly source, and in the wisdom literature, and it shows up again and again in the Psalter. The biblical statements about the order of creation are full of wonder, adoration, and praise. There are psalms, as well as parts of the book of Job, in which human beings cannot do enough to enumerate the multiplicity of orderings that God has given to his creatures, be it the course of the stars, the limits of the oceans, the change of seasons, and the shape, increasing number, and habitat of different species of animals, and so on. The wonder expressed in these statements was not only about the multiplicity of orderings that were given to individual creatures but also about how they were coordinated to each other, that is to say, about the order

The Order of Creation

of the universe, which embraces every individual thing. God is praised not only because he created the universe and everything in it but because he has given the universe as a whole the purpose of glorifying himself—and because he has given a special place to each creature within this overall purpose. But at the center of these orderings are human beings. They live not only like the animals—in the prescribed order of having the urge for food, sexual relations, increasing their numbers, and living in their habitat—but in contrast to the animals, they are encountered by God’s will as a form of address, and their self-functioning [Eigenwirken] takes place not only as a consequence [Auswirkung] of the given order of their existence but as a response of personal obedience or disobedience to God’s address. In preparing human beings to respond in word and with their free personal decision, God has given to them a special place in the midst of all the other orderings in the visible creation. The previously cited praise for the Creator in the Old Testament (Ps. 8.6–9) has its continuation in the New Testament, in thankfulness for the victory that faith in Jesus Christ has received over the world and over its invisible powers and principalities. In many psalms, the well-being, beauty, and harmony of creatures in their orderings are praised as being so self-evident that the divine act of lovingkindness to order creation should be obvious and undeniable to everyone. But is this here not more a matter of poetry than of depicting reality? Did not people in ancient Israel also know about the threat posed to humans and animals by natural catastrophes, about the struggle of animals against each other and against humans, and about the struggle of human beings against each other and against other creatures? Did Job only speak as an admirer of “Behemoth” and “Leviathan,” and of the hippopotamus and the crocodile, but not as one who was uncannily threatened by them as well (Job 40f.)? In fact, the presupposition for praising the order of creation is not solely its sight but the knowledge about the Creator, who is identical with the covenant God and who, in his faithfulness that transcends the disorder of this world, holds fast to the purpose which he has given it out of love for his creation. What the praise of the orderings is all about is statements of faith that see the disorder in the world embraced by the divine order. The order of creation provides protection to the creatures. It serves their preservation and life together. At the same time, however, it is also the limit that is given to the self-functioning of each creature. If creatures do not stay within their creaturely ordering, they fall into distortion and decay. And what is more, among all the earthly creatures, only human beings are capable of freely forsaking the order, for they encounter the order as a command, and for them existence and order do not coincide. But the rebellion of spiritual creatures against God’s command is not without consequences for the orderings of animals, of plants, and of inanimate nature—orderings that are identical with their existence. To be sure, the struggle that takes place in the animal world and the death that animals suffer are not to be

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equated with the struggle and dying of human beings, for unlike the other earthly beings, humans are created for personal communion with God and for eternal life. Nevertheless, one will have to be careful not to underestimate the suffering of other creatures that is caused by human beings and powers or to equate it with the original divine order. Ultimately, however, the order, as a limit, does not primarily mean prevention, restriction, or exclusion. Rather, it is by means of the order that the limited selffunctioning of the creature is opened up toward the unfolding and perfection of the creatures in the glorification of God. Only within this order, given through its origin and purpose, does the universe have enduring existence. Beyond the God-given order looms the threat of nothingness, from which God called forth the world in the beginning. In many respects, our contemporary ideas about the order of the world differ from the biblical ones. If, according to the biblical statements, the earth, the stars, the species of plants and animals, and humans were created in six days and were present with one another from that beginning, then according to our contemporary insights they have arisen in a succession over many millions of years. If the biblical statements presuppose the constancy of the existing orderings up to the eschaton, then we have visible proof of how they arose and have become extinct (e. g., many species of living things no longer exist). If the biblical understanding of order was essentially shaped by the cross-section of a limited environment, as it was experienced by those living at that time, then our contemporary ideas have been determined by a long cross-section of temporal succession and by an enormous expansion of our experience of space and time. The biggest difference between the perspective of that time and the one of our time might be the fact that, according to the biblical understanding, the self-functioning of the creatures takes place in the concrete orderings given them from the beginning, while modern research has increasingly come to the assumption that the concrete orderings have emerged out of what exists (e. g., the planetary system has emerged from a rotating movement, and the separation and cooling of a gaseous mass, while the species of living things has emerged from mutations and natural selection). Through the discovery of causal laws and the randomness of subatomic events—which eludes exact pre-calculation and can only be grasped in a relationship of indeterminacy—the idea of the self-functioning of creatures has undergone an enormous development, which has led to further changes in the world through modern technology. All of this far exceeds the biblical ideas about the dominion of human beings over the earth. At the same time, biblical knowledge about conflict within creation has become even more inescapable because of the insight into the struggles of living things that is already taking place among microorganisms. What truth is still valid today from the traditional biblical statements about the order of creation? Just as the authors of the biblical writings acknowledged all the

God’s Continuous Creative Action

things that were known to them at that time to be God’s creatures, so we today have to acknowledge all events that are known to us in nature and history as being embraced in his order. Church doctrine would fail its task if it defined as dogmas outdated Oriental or Hellenistic notions about celestial bodies, the earth, plants, and animals, and made faith in the Creator dependent upon the acknowledgement of those ideas. Rather, dogmatics has to direct us to follow the biblical witness and to continue its praise of the divine order. By faith in God the Creator, we are to bear witness, also today, that everything that we perceive, know, and deduce is embraced and preserved by the original goodness and purpose of the glorification of God. Christian belief in creation is not affected by the fact that we know that the traditional theological understanding of the cosmic order was too static, nor by the fact that the dimension of time and the process of becoming must be taken more seriously today in the theological concept of order by highlighting self-functioning in creation. That concept of order has to be understood more dynamically. At the same time, faith in the Creator remains certain that the rebellion of human beings can never destroy the whole order that God has given to the universe. Because the goodness of the origin of the universe and its purpose correspond to each other, and because the order given by this correspondence may be disregarded and disfigured by human beings, but cannot be abolished by them, the glorification of God by creation does not fail to occur, also at the present time. To be sure, this praise is mingled with the blasphemies of human beings and the powers of corruption and with the sighs of non-human creatures. Missing as well is a unanimity of all the voices expressing this adoring praise. And yet, the believer hears the song of praise—penetrating the distortions that befall this creation at the hands of humans and from the powers of corruption—with which the whole creation praises the Creator. While human beings in rebellion deny the Creator, God is incessantly praised by the non-human creation. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge” (Ps. 19.2 [NIV]). Thus the believer recognizes in the creature the confirmation of the message that proclaims the Creator. If we have recognized the Lord who is revealing himself in the word, then we recognize heaven and earth as his work and as the response by which this work praises its Creator.

7. God’s Continuous Creative Action Faith in God the Creator confesses not only the act by which God created the universe in the beginning, so that the universe could undertake its self-functioning, but also God’s continuous creative action, without which the self-functioning of creatures would be impossible. Along with the original goodness of the universe and

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its purpose of glorifying God, God has not only given the universe the ordering of its self-functioning but he is continuously working as the Creator and thus making it possible for the universe to unfold through its self-functioning. It is not just that all things come from God and go toward him, but “from him and through him and to him are all things” (Rom. 11.36). Since the biblical statements about creation are determined by God’s historical salvific action, their witness to his present creative activity is emphasized even over and above the act of creation in the beginning. The statements about God’s continuous creative action and his act of creation in the beginning agree in that they bear witness to the same God as Creator, as the one who has accepted human beings through his act of salvation. Just as he created the universe in the beginning through his Word, he upholds and governs it through his Word. Just as he has given life through his Spirit, he keeps creatures alive through his Spirit. “When you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your Spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground” (Ps. 104.29f. [S]; cf. Job 34.14f.). Old Testament statements correspond to those in the New Testament wherein God’s Son is praised not only as the mediator of creation in the beginning but as the mediator of God’s continuous activity: “In him all things hold together” (Col. 1.17 [S]); he “sustains all things by his powerful word” (Heb. 1.3). Not merely the first creatures but “through him we exist” (1 Cor. 8.6 [L]). In this way, the church has praised the Holy Spirit not only as the sanctifying Spirit of the new creation but as the all-pervading Creator Spirit. Just as the believer cannot live for a moment without God’s new grace each day, so the universe cannot exist for a moment without God’s continuous creative action. God can be without the world, but the world cannot be without God. The world has no self-functioning of itself but only from God’s continuous creative action. This fact is expressed in the German language in that the word Schöpfung [“creation”] designates both God’s act of creation (creatio) and what is created by God (creatura). The creature is not for a moment to be separated from God’s creative action. This certainty has been deeply shaken in the modern era. For example, under the influence of a mechanistic worldview, Deism had restricted the divine action to the beginning, leaving everything else to the action of what had been created, according to the laws established for it. Even more serious than such general worldviews were the consequences that resulted from concrete discoveries and hypotheses by means of which—for particular realms of reality, with disregard of God’s action—the origin of things from other, pre-existing things could be demonstrated or made probable. While Kant still spoke of God in his theory of the origin of the planetary system, Laplace no longer considered “the God-hypothesis” necessary for his further development of this theory.[xxxii] While Linnaeus attributed the origin of species to God, Darwin explained it through the theory of evolution and only spoke of the Creator with respect to the emergence of the first living thing.[xxxiii] At first, as the

God’s Continuous Creative Action

discovery of the emergence of one creature out of others gained wider support, the church saw a threat to the faith in the Creator and sought to defend it, over against the claims of the natural sciences, by asserting that the individual realms of creation cannot be derived from pre-existing things, at least with respect to the origin of life and of humankind. But just in this way, theology has fueled the impression that God has been more and more forced out of the world through the discovery of creaturely self-functioning. If we believe in the Creator, then certainty about his action can never be restricted to what is underivably new. Rather, such certainty knows that God is no less at work in every derivable action of what is created. With calm composure, faith in the Creator can take note of the discoveries about the causal processes in the laws of nature. To be sure, theology will have to examine the traditional distinction between the indirect divine creation of a new thing from something that already exists, on the one hand, and the preservation and governance of what is created, on the other, and then overcome the static condition of this distinction. But believers cannot regard the growing consensus about the discovery of the causal process in the laws of nature that determine the emergence of the new out of what already exists to be a diminishment of the glory of the Creator. On the contrary, precisely herein they will recognize the overwhelming greatness of God’s care for creation. He has called it into being, into a partnership that is unfolding itself through its self-functioning. All churches make a distinction within God’s continuous creative action, namely, between God’s preservation of the world (conservatio) and God’s governance of the world (gubernatio). Through the preservation of the world, God again and again gives creatures the possibility of their self-functioning. Through his governance of the world, God guides how creatures make use of this possibility in their selffunctioning. Regardless of how one might define these two concepts in detail, they are not about two separate divine actions but about two different aspects under which God’s continuous creative action is expressed. In church doctrine, the concept of preservation designates the further work of the Creator with respect to the original goodness of creatures. The concept of governance or guidance envisages the further action of the Creator with respect to the purpose that God has given to the universe. This distinction between preservation and governance is especially obvious in view of the self-functioning of spiritual creatures, since, in contrast to other creatures, they have the possibility of turning against their purpose and thus of separating their existence from their purpose. And yet, in God’s action, preservation and governance are intertwined— insofar as in the preservation God keeps the origin of the world tied to its purpose, and in the governance he upholds its purpose on the basis of its origin. Thus the two concepts protect each other from misunderstandings. The concept of preservation excludes a deterministic misunderstanding of divine governance since God gives each creature its particular possibilities again and again.

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But the concept of governance excludes the misunderstanding of preservation, as if the creature could make arbitrary use of the possibilities given to it. (a) Since what is created has no lasting existence in itself, the preservation of the world signifies an eminently positive divine action, namely, the continuation of God’s creative action, through which goal he upholds the reality that is different from him, permeates it, and guards it from falling into the abyss of nothingness, in which it would pass away without this action of his. At the same time, however, this preservation must not be understood as upholding what had been created in the condition that it had received through God’s act of creation in the beginning. As with the concept of order, the concept of preservation also must be liberated from a static misunderstanding that, to be sure, is suggested by the word but which does not correspond to God’s continuous action. If God has created the universe for self-functioning with a purpose that goes beyond the beginning, then the concept of preservation has to include the dynamic that God imparted to everything through his act in the beginning. The preservation of the world means preservation of the forward-pressing forces given to what was created for further unfolding and differentiation up to and including the decisions of spiritual creatures. (b) The relationship between Creator and creature would also be misunderstood if God’s continuous creative action were restricted to letting the creature’s selffunctioning have its own way. Faith in the Creator is certain about the divine governance of the world: God governs every event, the events in nature and in the history of humanity, the history of nations and of the individual, what is epochmaking and great as well as what is insignificantly the least important. This is the witness throughout the Old Testament, which is also the witness of Jesus: God cares for the birds under the sky and for the lilies and the grass of the field (Mt. 6.26ff.), and God cares even more for human beings. All of this is about a divine action, not just a gazing upon or a knowing about the creation’s own activity. The doctrine of most churches distinguishes between the different ways in which this governing action occurs, e. g., between the action of directing, hindering, and permitting the action of creatures. But by mentioning permission here in relation to the other ways of governing, we want to assure that it too is acknowledged to be an act of the Creator. Although God here appears to withdraw and even permit the creaturely self-functioning to have time and space to contradict him, this is a divine action. God’s governing of what is inanimate, of plants, and of the animals, whose selffunctioning stays in its given order, takes place differently from his governing of spiritual creatures, to whom he has given the freedom to make decisions. But even if they misuse this freedom, he remains the Lord, and in everything he upholds the purpose for which he created the universe. In this way, God is at work preserving and governing. On the one hand, his preserving is not merely a passive permitting, nor, on the other, is his governing merely a passive on-looking; both are efficacious divine actions.

God’s Continuous Creative Action

(c) The question now arises: How do God’s continuous creative action and the self-functioning of creatures intermesh? How is one to define the relationship between the two? This old question has been discussed since the Middle Ages by using the concept of concursus divinus [divine concurrence].[xxxiv] In Roman legal discourse, this term referred to a concomitance of several persons or appeals at one and the same place, whereby the different possibilities of offsetting and compensation would be taken into account. In the doctrine of creation, this term refers to the concomitance of the divine first cause (prima causa) and creaturely secondary causes (causae secundae). By adopting this term, both the exclusive power of God and the sole efficacy of creatures are rejected. Instead, it is a matter of understanding the same event as both the effect of the first cause and the effect of the second cause. How do both causes work together? The problem of concursus arises in different ways, depending on the particularity of the creatures: (l) The self-functioning of inanimate nature takes place according to the laws given to it by the Creator. There is no difficulty here in understanding the same event as being both completely the creature’s own action and completely the present action of the Creator. Here it is possible to disregard the facts surrounding subatomic events that are grasped by the principle of uncertainty, which gives the appearance of a spontaneity of wave or particle, since the laws of atomic events—and ultimately the broader physical and chemical processes involved in them—are not called into question. (2) The problem of the relationship between God’s action and the action of creatures arises differently already in view of the emergence of higher living creatures from lower ones, but especially in view of the origin of humans. Although this special problem is postponed at this point (cf. also chap. 5.5), it must be remembered already here that in the emergence of living beings a progression from the simple to the very complex has taken place, from entities that were not very differentiated to ones that were highly differentiated, and from reactions that were without self-awareness to actions of conscious willing. In this respect, it can be said here that there is a process of becoming that brings novelty, i. e., in the sense of a self-transcendence of what presently exists. But can the creature transcend itself? Here is the answer given by Karl Rahner, according to which evolution, on the one hand, is an active selftranscendence in which the creature itself acts but, on the other hand, is a matter in which the creature cannot with its own powers alone reach the expansion of being [Seinszuwach] that this process of becoming signifies. The basis for such self-transcendence can only be absolute Being, the infinite Cause, the power of God, which, through its transcendent action, enables the emergence of a new reality of being. Yet God’s causality is not to be understood as an action that takes place alongside the action of the creature but within it. God’s causality

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does not want something that the creature does not enact, but it enacts the self-functioning of the creature that overrides the possibilities of creatures.8 (3) Much more difficult is the issue of the relationship between the prima causa and the causae secundae in the decisions made by free spiritual creatures. How can the same decision be held to be an action of God and at the same time the self-functioning of the creature? It is no coincidence that the answers to this question have again and again diverged considerably. Thomas and his school taught that the action of spiritual creatures was unrestrictedly determined through God’s action and at the same time their freedom, since they are determined by God in such a way that they freely make their decisions.[xxxv] But does not the freedom of the creature here become a subjective appearance? In contrast, the Molinist school of the Jesuits sought to secure the freedom of spiritual creatures by distinguishing between two acts in the divine occurrence, namely, between the offering and the conferring of divine aid.[xxxvi] It was asserted here that if the divine will were to encounter the creative will only as action and not as offer, then the decision of the creaturely will would be determined and its freedom destroyed. But does not the creaturely self-functioning appear here as an independent causa alongside the divine causa? Is the omnipotence of the prima causa still acknowledged here? In this respect, it is interesting that in the dogmatics of old Protestantism, the Reformed represented more the Thomistic position, while some of the Lutherans represented more the Molinist understanding.9 In the effort to determine the relationship between God’s continuous creative action and the self-functioning of creatures, conflicting questions thus arise with regard to the spiritual creatures: Does not the acknowledgment of God’s continuous creative action exclude the self-functioning of spiritual creatures? Conversely, does the acknowledgment of the self-functioning of creatures ultimately lead to reducing the divine action of the Creator to the beginning and to the act of preservation, thus negating the divine governance of the world? (4) The problem of concursus becomes radically exacerbated in view of the sinful decision of the human being. In this case, what does it mean that the same event is enacted by both the prima causa and the causae secundae? Does it not follow that God is the prima causa of sin? This view is rejected by all churches, and both the dogmatics of the medieval scholastics and those of the old Protestants distinguished between the “material” cause of sin and its “formal” cause, i. e., between the course of an event and the wrongness of that same action. God gives spiritual creatures only the power and possibility to sin, while the orientation to evil is solely grounded in their free decision. But thereby is not the determination of the causae secundae given up by the causa prima? Are not the prima causa and the causae secundae working side by side here, yes, even against each other? In general, can one still even speak of a concursus divinus in events in which the human being rebels against God?

8 Paul Overhage and Karl Rahner, Das Problem der Hominisation. Über den biologischen Ursprung des Menschen [The Problem of Hominisation: On the Biological Origin of Humankind], Quaestiones disputate 12/13 (Freiburg: Herder, 1961). 9 Cf. Barth, KD, III/3.107ff. [CD, III/3.97ff. –Ed.]

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It is easy to see that the reason for the aporias [the perplexing difficulties] identified above lie in the employment of the concept of “causa,” which is used both for God’s action and for creaturely action. Can the personal encounter between God and humans be understood as the joint action of two causes? Can God and humans even be designated with the same concept of “causa”? One will have to concede to scholastic and old-Protestant theology that their concept of causa—in contrast to our own, which is shaped by the natural sciences—was so comprehensive that it also encompassed personal activity. Furthermore, despite using the same term causa, they wanted to maintain the infinite qualitative difference between God and the creature by means of the predicates prima and secunda. But the aporias remain, even if one avoids the concept of causa, which has become misleading in our time. Here it is worth considering if, when discussing the problem of “concursus,” theological thinking does not move away from the creaturely place of human existence and seek to occupy a place that does not truly exist, namely, a place apart from God and human beings, a place from which one thinks one can observe the action of the Creator and the action of creatures and be able to determine their relationship to each other. On the contrary, in the existential exercise of faith the believer is certain of being both completely responsible before God and at the same time completely governed by him. In the existential certainty of faith in the Creator, there is as little contradiction between these two assertions as between the two contained in the following sentence: “[Work] out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12f.). In the existential hearing of the word, the imperative to work out your salvation belongs together with the assurance that it is God who is doing the working. Aporias arise also here only in theoretical reflection and in the attempt to determine formulaically which part is the divine action in salvation and which part is the human action. It is not enough to criticize the conceptuality used in the doctrine of concursus as such. Rather, beyond that, one must call into question the place from which the problem of the relationship between God’s creative action and the creation’s self-functioning action is being discussed. In other words, we must consider not only the conceptuality but also the structure of these theological statements and seek to transpose them into the basic structure of the statement of faith. It is no coincidence that the teaching about the concursus only emerged as a separate article of doctrine in the later dogmatics of seventeenth-century Protestantism, alongside the doctrinal articles concerning God’s preservation and governance of the world, while the older dogmatics (e. g., Johann Gerhard and Abraham Calov) restricted themselves only to the latter two articles.[xxxvii] In fact, the doctrine of concursus is only a subsequent reflection on statements that are contained in the doctrine of conservatio and gubernatio. What significance does the consideration of the structure of statements have for the issue of concursus? How does this issue present itself if we start with the

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existential encounter with God’s address? In the Old Testament God’s creative action is expressed above all in adoration, and in the New Testament the significance of Christ as the mediator of creation is expressed above all in the settings of hymns. It is therefore necessary to ask: How are the statements concerning the prima causa to be voiced in the structure of the credal confession? If we believe in the revelation of God in his historical act of salvation, then we recognize that through the creation of the world God has not ceased to be the Lord of the world who is acting in freedom. The self-functioning of creatures to move, propagate, develop, and make decisions can never limit the action of God. Although he has established the beginning of the world and committed himself to that beginning, he does not cease to be the eternal Lord in relation to the world. Although he has given creatures their origin and purpose, he is the Lord of this order. He who is the fullness of life brings about the existence and self-functioning of the world with the same freedom by which he has called it out of nothing. At the same time, we confess that God is further acting in the world with the same love by which he created the world. Although he faces it in freedom, he does not stop committing himself to it in the freedom of his love. Although what has been created has no claim or right to exist, God continues to preserve and govern it in this love. Again and again faith rings forth: his steadfast love endures forever. His action in the world is never an arbitrary game. Rather, in his continuous creative action he remains committed to the origin and purpose that he has given to the world. Even the orderings of creatures have no permanent existence in themselves but only in his faithfulness. Yet he upholds the origin and purpose of the world even when spiritual creatures violate that order in their rebellion against him. God, the enemy of evil, respects the freedom of his creatures, even when they turn against him. Despite all their experiences of malice and suffering, believers confess that nothing happens to them that does not come from God, and that even in the midst of the triumph of injustice, God does not cease to be the one who is acting in love. “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God” (Rom. 8.28), for faith recognizes in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross the demonstration of the divine power of love; and in the apparent powerlessness by which he lets the rebellion of the world take place, faith recognizes the condescension of his omnipotence. For this reason, the basic response of faith to God’s continuous creative action is not a theoretical definition of the relationship between God’s action and the sinful self-functioning of creatures but the adoration of the Creator and the confession of our guilt, adoration of the Creator and our petition for forgiveness. In his continuous creative activity, God demands obedience from us. This demand, however, is an invitation to trust him, to thank him, and to pray to him. Because God is able to do all things and because he turns himself in love to the world, there are no limits placed on prayer. Because the world places no limits upon God, we are allowed to pray for everything, and to be certain that he answers

God’s Continuous Creative Action

us, and to trust that he can transform everything. So faith expects the miracle of divine intervention. In this connection, the concept of miracle must, of course, not be restricted to such occurrences that we cannot explain by means of the causal relationships among the actions that creatures take. Such a narrowing would be as foreign to the biblical witnesses as restricting the creative action of God to the creation of new creatures. No less miraculous is the faithfulness in which God remains committed to the given orderly structures and carries out his free actions in them. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 4 [i]

[ii]

This question and most of the material in this subsection are taken verbatim from Schlink’s 1959 essay, “Zum Gespräch des christlichen Glaubens mit der Naturwissenschaft,” 273–295. Schlink also summarized several key ideas about the Christian doctrine of creation in his essay, “Thesen zur Methodik einer kontextuellen Theologie: Wilfried Joest zum 60. Geburtstag,” Kerygma und Dogma 20 (1974): 87–90, esp. 87–88. For background analysis of Schlink’s interdisciplinary engagement with the natural sciences, see Becker, “Christ in the University,” 12–21. Schlink’s statement here reflects his acceptance of the mainstream scholarly theory that the Pentateuch is based on various circles of tradition that were combined and revised over several centuries and that reflect varying historical and theological perspectives. According to this theory, in the early monarchy (ca. 950 BC), a traditionist from Judah first organized Israelite traditions into a written epic. This Pentateuchal material is labeled “J” (the Yahwist source). Sometime later (ca. 900–750 BC), a traditionist from North Israel organized other material that tells the story of Israel in a different way. This Pentateuchal material is labeled “E” (the Elohist source). In the seventh century (ca. 621 BC), the Deuteronomic Code or a version of Deuteronomy was published, although this source also rests upon older traditions. Finally, about the time of the exile, priestly writers set down their own traditions with material that had been preserved by the Jerusalem priesthood. This Pentateuchal material is labeled “P” (the Priestly source). According to this theory, “J” and “E” were combined by a redactor around 650 BC, and “D” was added to “JE” by a redactor around 550 BC. The Priestly source was then added to JED by yet another redactor around 400 BC. While the dating of these various sources has been debated since this theory was first argued persuasively by K. H. Graf and Julius Wellhausen in the nineteenth century, the basic theory of an evolutionary development of the Pentateuch has gained wide acceptance. In his day, Schlink would have relied on scholarly defenses of the JEDP theory that were set forth by his Heidelberg colleagues, Gerhard von Rad and Claus Westermann (1909–2000). For Westermann’s summary of the theory, see his Handbook to the Old Testament, trans. Robert H. Boyd (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1967), 15–18.

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[iii] [iv]

[v] [vi]

[vii] [viii] [ix] [x] [xi] [xii] [xiii]

[xiv] [xv] [xvi]

See Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary, trans. John H. Marks (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961), 43ff.; and Barth, CD, III/1.3ff. According to the Babylonian myth, Enuma elish, Tiamat represents salt water or the sea, symbols for primeval chaos. Her mate, Apsu, represents fresh or sweet water. Coming out of the original chaos, depicted by the sexual intercourse between Tiamat and Apsu, were the births of the next generation of gods. Marduk, the god of Babylon, eventually kills Tiamat, and thereby brings order out of chaos. He then cleaves the goddess’s corpse, making the sea from one half and the sky from the other. For the text of the myth, see Barbara C. Sproul, Primal Myths: Creation Myths around the World (New York: HarperCollins, 1979), 92–113. Cf. Rom. 8.38; Phil. 2.9; Eph. 1.21; 3.10; Col. 1.16; 2.15; and 1 Pet. 3.22. For analysis of the intertwining of “ideology” and biology that can lead to what Schlink here called “biologism,” see Denis R. Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., Biology and Ideology: From Descartes to Dawkins (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010). Schlink’s use of the term pansexualism (Pansexualismus) refers very narrowly to his fundamental criticism of a key assertion in Freudian psychology, namely, that sexual instinct plays the primary role in all human activity, both mental and physical. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) used the term Pansexualismus to describe this view in his book, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego [1921], rev. ed., ed. and trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1990). Cf. Schlink, NK, SÖB, 1/2.10 (ESW, 1.342). Cf. Schlink, “Zum Gespräch des christlichen Glaubens,” 277–79. Cf. Schlink, “Zum Gespräch des christlichen Glaubens,” 278. Cf. Schlink, “Zum Gespräch des christlichen Glaubens,” 284. This Hebrew term means “to shape, fashion, create” (BDB, 135). See Isa. 43.15; cf. Isa. 43.1, 7. While “tohu” occurs 20 times in the Old Testament, “bohu” occurs only three times, always with “tohu”: Gen. 1.2, Isa. 34.11, and Jer. 4.23 (see BDB, 96; and 1062). “Tohu” refers to “the grim desert waste that brings destruction” or to “a desert or devastation that is threatened… It is not a mythical idea but means desert, waste, devastation, nothingness… And when [tohu] and [bohu] occur together there is no real difference in meaning” (Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion S. J. [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984], 102–103). For examples of such myths, cf. Sproul, Primal Myths, 202ff. Cf. Plato, Timaeus, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 1153–1211. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 2d ed. (1787), trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s, 1965), 65–82.

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[xvii]

[xviii] [xix]

[xx]

[xxi] [xxii] [xxiii] [xxiv]

[xxv] [xxvi]

[xxvii]

On the concept of force and the significance of field theories in modern physics, see Mary B. Hesse, Forces and Fields: The Concept of Action at a Distance in the History of Physics (New York: Dover, 2005); Max Jammer, Concepts of Force (Cambridge, MA: Dover, 2011); and William Berkson, Fields of Force: The Development of a Worldview from Faraday to Einstein (London: Routledge, 2014). Wolfhart Pannenberg, who studied under Schlink, has also identified important points of contact between Christian theology and the field theories of modern physics. See Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3 vols., trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991–1998), 2.79–102. See also T. F. Torrance, Space, Time, and Incarnation (New York: T&T Clark, 1979). Cf. Aquinas, ST, I.46.1–3. Cf. Bonaventure, Breviloquium, ed. and trans. Dominic Monti, in Works of Saint Bonaventure, edited by Robert J. Karris (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University, 2005), 2–5, 11–23, 59–76. Since the 1970s, more precise measurements have led astronomers to conclude that the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old. See David A. Weintraub, How Old Is the Universe? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 396–484. Cf. Schlink, “Zum Gespräch des christlichen Glaubens,” 283. For what follows here, cf. Schlink, “Zum Gespräch des christlichen Glaubens,” 284–88. The Hebrew word kôl [‫ ]כֹּל‬means “the whole” or “all,” i. e., the “whole” of something. Without the article, it means “all things” or “all.” With the article (hakôl [‫ )]ַהכֺּל‬it refers to “all” in a wider sense, whether all of humanity or all living things or the universe (cf. BDB, 481–483). Likewise, the Greek phrase τά πάντα, in the absolute sense means “the whole of creation,” “all things,” “the universe” (BDAG, 784). Since the universe has been expanding for approximately 13.7 billion years, the co-moving distance (radius) of the universe is now about 46.6 billion light-years. Docetism (from the Greek word δοκέω = “I seem”) was the tendency in the early church, especially among the so-called “Gnostics,” to view the humanity of Jesus as apparent and not real. Jesus seemed human, but he really was not. In the context of christology, docetic understandings of Jesus undermine his full humanity. In the context of ecclesiology, a docetic view of the church minimizes its human, earthly reality and considers the church mainly as a heavenly, spiritual ideal. Following Luther, Schlink’s reflections here also tease out implications of the teaching in John 1.1ff., namely, that “all things came into being through the Word” (the Logos). The Greek term λόγος (a verbal noun of λέγω [legō]) can be translated as “word,” “what is said,” “statement,” “report,” “speech,” “message,” but also as “computation” or “reckoning,” including the sense of “the reason” or “ground” for something (cf. BDAG, 598–601). Schlink’s use of the term “logical” in this context must be understood in the sense of the Logos of John 1.1ff., i. e., “the independent, personified ‘Word’ (of God). …It is the distinctive teaching of the Fourth Gospel that this divine ‘Word’ took on human form in a historical person, that is, in Jesus” (BDAG, 601).

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[xxviii]

[xxix]

[xxx]

[xxxi] [xxxii]

Schlink’s figures here reflect the state of scientific knowledge in the late 1950s. According to more recent research, the age of the earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old. The earliest direct evidence of life on earth dates from approximately 3.5 billion years ago, although some scientists think life emerged even earlier, ca. 4.1 billion years ago. Most major animal phyla appeared in the fossil record about 540 million years ago, and the diversification of amphibians occurred about 200 million years later (ca. 340 million years ago). The first mammals emerged around 225 million years ago, and the first birds around 110 million years ago. See Brian Charlesworth and Deborah Charlesworth, Evolution: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Today the fossil record indicates that Neanderthals emerged around 400,000 years ago and lived until around 40,000 years ago. Homo sapiens first emerged around 350,000 years ago. Schlink did not refer to other subspecies in the genus Homo. For the Kant-Laplace nebular theory, see Weizsäcker, The History of Nature, 98ff. In 1755 Kant proposed his theory that gaseous clouds (nebulae) slowly rotate, gradually collapse, and flatten out as a result of gravity, and then eventually form stars and planets. Independently, Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1826) proposed a similar theory in 1796. In the twentieth century, the Kant-Laplace theory was replaced by other theories, which could better explain the distribution of angular momentum between the Sun and planets. The dominant theory today is the solar nebular disk model, first proposed by Viktor Safronov (1917–1999). According to this theory, after the collapse of gaseous clouds, pockets of dust and gas collected into denser regions. As these regions pulled in more and more matter, the conservation of momentum caused them to rotate. Increased pressure caused most of the matter to heat up, forming a ball at the center, while the rest of the matter flattened out into a disk that circled around the ball. The ball at the center formed the Sun, while the rest of the matter formed into a protoplanetary disc. See Viktor Safronov, Evolution of the Protoplanetary Cloud and Formation of the Earth and the Planets (Jerusalem: Israel Program for Scientific Translations, 1972). Cf. the entry on tôv in BDB, 373–375. According to a well-known legend, after Napoleon had read Laplace’s Exposition du Systemé du monde (1796), he commented to the author, “Newton has spoken of God in his book. I have already gone over yours and have not found this name a single time.” In reply, Laplace is supposed to have said, “Citizen First Consul, I have no need for that hypothesis” (Cf. C. B. A. Boyer, A History of Mathematics, 2d ed. [New York: Wiley, 1968], 568).

God’s Continuous Creative Action

[xxxiii]

[xxxiv]

[xxxv]

[xxxvi]

[xxxvii]

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) was the Swedish botanist who formalized the naming of organisms. In the autobiography of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), which was edited by his son, one finds the principal reasons why he had gradually given up the Christian faith. Nevertheless, he also indicated there that he continued to be impressed by “the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity for looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity.” He continued, “When thus reflecting, I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist….” He then stated, however, that this conclusion had grown weaker since he had written On the Origin of Species (1859). “The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic” (Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters (1880), ed. Francis Darwin [New York: Dover, 1958], 66). According to medieval scholastic theologians, the concept of “concursus divinus” (“divine concurrence,” which can also be translated as “divine concourse”) refers to “the continuing divine support of the operation of all secondary causes (free, contingent, or necessary).” For any contingent being to act in a free, contingent, or necessary way, “the divine will which supports all contingent being must concur in this action” (Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985], 76). Cf. ODCC, 393. See Aquinas, ST, I.105.5; idem, Summa contra Gentiles, trans. Laurence Shapcote, O.P. (Green Bay, Wisconsin: Aquinas Institute, 2018), III.65 and 69; idem, On the Power of God, trans. English Dominican Fathers (Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1952); and idem, Commentary on the Book of Causes, trans. Vincent A. Guagliardo et al. (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996). The Molinist school was founded by Luis de Molina (1535–1600). His understanding of human freedom also impacted his understanding of the efficacy of grace. Molina held that the efficacy of grace is ultimately dependent upon God’s foreknowledge of those who freely cooperate with this divine grace. Its efficacy is not grounded in the divine grace itself, which is what Thomas Aquinas taught, but in God’s foreknowledge of free human actions. Molina’s position was widely supported by the Jesuits, but attacked by Dominicans and other traditionalists, who defended Aquinas’ teaching. This controversy between the Molinists and the Thomists was addressed at a special congregation in Rome (1598–1607), but the points at issue were left undecided. Since the sixteenth century both positions have been defended by Roman Catholic theologians. Cf. Johann Gerhard (1582–1637), Loci theologici (1610–1622), 9 vols., ed. Friedrich Reinhold Eduard Preuss (Berlin: Gustav Schlawitz, 1864), II.27. For an English translation of the relevant section from this locus, see Johann Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces VIII–XI: On Creation and Predestination, ed. Benjamin T. G. Mayes and Joshua J. Hayes, trans. Richard J. Dinda (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2013), 71–73. Cf. Abraham Calov (1612–1686), Systema locorum theologicorum, 12 vols. (Wittenberg: Andreae Hartmann, 1655–1677), III.1189–1214. See also Schmid, 121–134 (ET: 170–194).

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Chapter V: The Purpose of the Human Being

Introduction to Chapters V–VII The Starting Point for the Doctrine about Human Beings[i] In all churches, the heart of the doctrine about human beings is the doctrine of the image of God. This phrase acknowledges that the human being, in the midst of all creatures, has a unique relationship to God. Within this basic ecumenical concurrence, however, differences that are not insignificant still persist between some churches as well as within some churches, especially with respect to the following two sets of questions: 1. What constitutes the human being’s image of God? The special nature of the human being? Mentioned here especially are reason and the free will of human beings and occasionally their physical form. The special divine gifts of grace that are given to the human being, especially the gifts of the knowledge of God, of justice, and of immortality? The obedience of the human being to the commands that God has given, e. g., to worship God, to multiply on the earth, and to have dominion over it? In general, none of these three answers has been set forth in complete isolation. But even when they have been combined with one another, this has happened in quite different ways. For example, does immortality already belong to the natural condition of human beings, or is it a gift of grace? Is the gift of grace to be understood as a presupposition of obedience or as a reward for obedience? Tremendous differences in answering these questions were already present in the ancient church. 2. Who is God’s image? Every person, also the sinner? Or has the sinner lost the image of God, whether completely or in part? Is it then only human beings prior to their decision against God and then again those who are justified by faith in Christ, whose image of God is renewed? The two main questions above about the nature and the reality of the image of God are closely related. For this reason, different possibilities arise to combine answers that are given to both questions or to place those answers in opposition to one another. Of particular importance here is the distinction between image and likeness (εἰκών [eikōn] and ὁμοίωσις [homoiōsis], imago and similitudo), which since the time of Irenaeus runs down through Eastern and Western theological anthropology to the present, but which existed in approaches to the issue already before Irenaeus.[ii] With this distinction there is the possibility of speaking both about the image of God that has remained with the sinner and also about the

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image of God that has been lost to the sinner. At the same time, of course, then the question arises about how both are to be more closely defined and differentiated. Does, for example, the freedom of the will belong to the imago that remains or to the similitudo that has been lost? In grounding their teaching about the image of God in the human being, all churches refer to Gen. 1.26ff.: “God said, Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…. So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.” In Old Testament research, there is agreement today that the two Hebrew words, s.elem [‫]ֶצֶלם‬ = image, likeness] and demût [‫ = ְדּמוּת‬likeness, similitude], express one and the same correspondence between humans and God.[iii] Perhaps the more abstract second word should defend the first from being misunderstood, as if the human being were the visible representation of the invisible God. But perhaps both words have been used quite synonymously. In any case, here is a hendiadys that is characteristic of the Hebrew language. The change of Hebrew prepositions from be [‫ ]ְבּ‬to ke [‫ ]ְכּ‬also does not contradict this. What constitutes this correspondence between humans and God is also a controversial issue in modern exegesis. That the likeness to God is similar to the corporeality of human beings (so, e. g., Hermann Gunkel) is quite unlikely.[iv] Even if the corporeality cannot be ignored, an exclusive definition of the image of God as a bodily similarity would nevertheless be incompatible with the Priestly Code’s idea of the transcendent God. The image of God in human beings also cannot, however, consist exclusively in their spiritual gift, “in the capacity for self-consciousness and self-determination, that is, in what we are accustomed to characterize as personality.”1 Such a reflection on the abilities of the human being is far from the Old Testament understanding of human beings. There is no doubt that Gen. 1 says of the whole person that God has created the person to be his image and likeness. Thereby, the image of God of the human being is not to be found only in the person’s nature but in the person’s speaking and doing, which correspond to the divine speaking and doing. Thus the image of God has often been interpreted as the dominion that humans have over the earth and the animals. But this dominion might be only one realization of the image. It encompasses, however, the entire activity of human beings.

At its center, the image of God is the correspondence between the address of God to the human being and the response of the human being to God. Claus Westermann, in particular, has pointed out, on the basis of Gen. 1, that the image of God in human beings is to be understood as an event between God and human beings, in 1 Walther Eichrodt, Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1948), 2.62. [This sentence does not appear in subsequent editions of this work, including the fifth edition, which was translated as Theology of the Old Testament, 2 vols., trans. J. A. Baker (Philadelphia; Westminster, 1967). But cf. 2.126f. of the latter text for similar emphases. –Ed.]

Introduction to Chapters V–VII

which the activity of humans has to correspond to the action of God upon them and upon the other creatures. Form-historical considerations support the explanation that God the Creator created the human being as a creature “that corresponds to him, to whom he can speak, and who listens to him.”2 According to Gen. 2, the human being is also “created by God as his counterpart so that something happens between God the Creator and the creature.”3 The question about the loss of the image of God through sin is not reflected in the Old Testament. Apart from Gen. 1, only Gen. 5.1 and 9.6 speak about human beings as the image and likeness of God. The latter passage obviously presupposes that every human is God’s image. The New Testament sets forth another concept of the image, especially in the designation of Christ as the image of God. In the New Testament “the original is always present in the ‘image.’ What is depicted is here given visible manifestation.”4 If 2 Cor. 4.4 and Col. 1.15 refer to Christ as the εἰκών, then “all the emphasis is on the equality of the image with the original.”5 The term εἰκών here denotes the appearance, the manifestation of God himself. The glory of Christ is the revealed glory of God. It is the image of the glory of God, and yet not merely the image and likeness but the revelation of the divine glory itself. His glory is God’s glory. In this sense, Christ is the archetypal image from eternity. For this reason, early Christian hymns praise him as one who, “though he was equal to God,” did not maintain that equality for himself but became a human being (Phil. 2.6f. [L]), as one who is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1.15). In the letters of Paul, the idea of the image is now also used in connection with believers: 1 Cor. 15.49; 2 Cor. 3.18; and Rom. 8.29 bear witness to the transformation of believers into the image of Christ. Transformation into the image of Christ is transformation into the image of God, renewal in the image of God the Creator (Col. 3.10). This renewal thus takes place indirectly, namely, through Jesus Christ, through the transformation into his image. First John 3.2 says the same thing in another way: “We know that when he appears we will be like him” [RSV], for likeness to God and likeness to Christ are indistinguishable here. Transformation into the image of Christ takes place in the reception of the righteousness, holiness, life, and glory of Christ. Because he is glorious, we are made glorious (Rom. 8.30), and we reflect his glory (2 Cor. 3.18). All these statements mean at the same time being adopted by God as his children so that the Son is the firstborn among many brothers and sisters (Rom. 8.29). This transformation takes place in the turning away from sin, by faith in Christ, and in the change to a new life of obedience. 2 3 4 5

Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 217. [ET: 157. –Ed.] Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 218. [ET: 157 (trans. modified). –Ed.] Gerhard Kittel, “εἰκών,” TWNT, 2.393. [TDNT, 2.395. –Ed.] Kittel, “εἰκών,” TWNT, 2.394. [TDNT, 2.395 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

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Thus the statement of Col. 3.10 concerning the renewal of humans into the image of their Creator is surrounded by manifold exhortations: “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity…” (v. 5ff.). “[C]lothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility…” (v. 12ff.). This transformation comes to fulfillment in the whole person. It affects not only the person’s knowledge and action but also the person’s bodily existence: “He will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Phil. 3.21 [NIV]). All these New Testament statements presuppose that the fallen human being is not the image of God. Only by faith in Christ is the person transformed into God’s image. But there are also individual passages in the New Testament that speak not only of believers as God’s image but also of human beings in general as God’s image (as in the Old Testament), or of the man as God’s image: “The man does not need to cover his head because he is the image and glory of God” (1 Cor. 11.7 [L]). With the tongue “we praise God the Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the image of God” (James 3.9 [L]). The concept of the image of God is only rarely found in Holy Scripture. Its meaning is not uniform, and in several passages (especially Gen. 1.26f.) its exegesis is disputed. On the basis of these findings, the question arises as to whether it was justified for the churches to have chosen this concept to be the central one for the doctrine about human beings. In answering this question, however, we cannot restrict ourselves to the few biblical passages in which the nouns “image” of God and “likeness” of God are found. We must also take into account the numerous biblical statements in which the correspondence between the human being and God is expressed through verbs and adjectives, e. g., in the Old Testament command of God, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19.2), and in the Sermon on the Mount, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5.48). There are many statements throughout the Old and New Testaments that refer to an imagelike correspondence between human beings and God without using the words image and likeness. For this reason, the Johannine statements are also to be considered, in which the action of God the Father and the action of Jesus Christ and the action of his own are connected through the words “just as…, so also.” “[J]ust as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes” (Jn. 5.21). “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you” (15.9). Just as the Father gives glory to the Son, so the Son gives glory to his own (17.22). “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (20.21). In these words, Christ speaks and acts as the image of God, and he sends his disciples with the same commission that he received from the Father. This caring turning of Christ toward human beings is grounded not only in the caring turning of God the Father toward his Son but also in the surrender of the Son to the Father.

Introduction to Chapters V–VII

As the Father loves the Son, so the Son loves the Father. Likewise, as the Father glorifies the Son, so the Son glorifies the Father. That the Son thereby obeys the Father does not damage the identity of the glory of the Father and of the Son. In this way, the Johannine writings bear witness to both. As the Father has life and is life, so the Son has life and is life (cf. Jn. 5.26). As God is light (1 Jn. 1.5), so from the beginning Christ is “the true light, which enlightens everyone” (Jn. 1.9). On the basis of the Father’s and the Son’s mutual turning toward each other, the command is given to human beings to turn toward one another. The faithful should love one another, just as Christ loves them (Jn. 15.12). Whoever loves as one beloved by Christ is again loved by the Father and the Son (14.21). They should all be “one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you” (17.21 [S]). The community of believers should be a reflection of the community between God the Father and the Son. In these statements, too, the difference between the archetypal image and the reflected image, between the eternal Son and the human being accepted as child, does not disappear. But the believers are certainly taken into the eternal love between the Father and the Son.

We could here point to numerous other statements in the Old and New Testaments that refer to a correspondence between human beings and God. In this connection it is striking that the structure of these statements is usually that of an assurance and a claim made to human beings but is rarely that of a descriptive statement about human beings. Yet it might have already become evident that the phrase “image of God,” despite its rare occurrence in Scripture, signifies a relationship which is of the utmost importance in all that takes place between God and human beings from the creation to the consummation. It appears that God’s entire salvific action upon human beings is concentrated in this concept. In any case, the doctrine about human beings as the image of God is concerned not only with their creatureliness but also with God’s action upon them through the Old Testament law and the New Testament gospel and through their transformation in the resurrection from the dead at the end of time. The doctrine of the image of God is, therefore, the object of the whole of dogmatics, not merely of the doctrine of creation. The churches have quite rightly developed the doctrine about human beings as a doctrine about the image of God. Looking back on the contents of the Bible, it is not surprising that the doctrine about human beings as God’s image has not been unified in the history of dogma. The controversial meaning of Gen. 1.26ff., the differences between the Old Testament statements and those in the New Testament, the contradictory assertions about the relationship between the sinner and God’s image, the great multiplicity of parallels between Christ and God, humans and Christ, and humans and God—all this offers very different possibilities for the development of the doctrine about human beings. So here we are dealing with a part of doctrine in which it is especially clear that biblical exegesis does not lead directly to dogmatic principles, but that the dogmatic work must be added to biblical exegesis.

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Differences regarding the doctrine of the image of God also resulted from the fact that early on the church had to demarcate the Christian understanding of human beings against very different anthropologies in their surrounding world. It thus became necessary, e. g., to demarcate the Christian understanding against the materialistic denial of the soul and of the accountability that humans face beyond death, or against the Gnostic denial of the human body as a good creation of God, or against the optimistic assertion that humans are capable of doing what they know to be good. In the disputes with these and other historical fronts, various approaches to the biblical statements came to the fore. In making these demarcations, there were at the same time new issues and knowledge taken up from the surrounding world. In the encounter with Greek philosophy, for example, the problem of the body and soul, and with it the problem of the structure of the human being from these and other parts, came to the fore. This issue was addressed by the older Greek theologians in a trichotomic way, by differentiating and coordinating the body, the soul, and the spirit, whereby the soul was understood to be the sentient principle of life and the spirit to be the reason. Western theology, but also, e. g., John of Damascus, preferred a dichotomous anthropology, whereby the soul and the spirit were combined and placed opposite the body. In the encounter with Greek philosophy, special importance was also given to describing and systematically ordering the human functions—such as desiring, perceiving, thinking, and willing—and to reflecting on the capabilities that underlie these functions, such as reason and the freedom of the will. The image of God in the human being was increasingly explained by referring to these two capabilities or even equating them with it. The importance that questions and knowledge from Greek philosophy have been given in the church’s doctrine about human beings is particularly clear in the comprehensive Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by John of Damascus, in which such considerations take up more chapters (II.12–28) than the doctrines of baptism and the Lord’s Supper (IV.9 and 13).6 From reflection that inquired about the capabilities of human beings by looking behind human functions, there then arose, e. g., the disputes in the ancient church about the freedom of the will, and as a result of efforts to establish a system of human functions, scholastic differences over the primacy of knowing or of willing acquired special significance.

It is of course self-evident that the church’s doctrine about human beings has been set forth in a dispute with ideas about human beings from the world of the past, and that the church’s doctrine must also continue to be explained. In view of the history of the church’s teaching about theological anthropology, however, the question arises as to whether it has not been influenced too much by questions from Greek

6 [John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, II.12–28 and IV.8, 12–13 (FOTC, 37.234–259, 342–343, 352–361). –Ed.]

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philosophy and, as a result, has been hindered from engaging ideas about human beings in other cultures as well as engaging new scientific insights and concepts about human beings that are appropriate to the Western world. In connection with these questions, there are some substantive biblical matters that are of continuing, fundamental importance. (a) The basic biblical terms concerning human beings are so numerous and so extensive in their meanings, and not so consistent, that one must conclude that neither in Israel nor in the early Christian community was there a basic interest in the structure of the human being. Thus, in the New Testament Scriptures, there are starting points for a dichotomous as well as a trichotomic anthropology (cf., e. g., Mt. 10.28 and 1 Thess. 5.23). In addition, by inquiring about the functions of human beings, we encounter such a multitude of statements that setting forth a biblical anthropology as a uniform doctrine today, as was still done by Franz Delitzsch, has been made impossible.7 A consistent, systematic presentation of the human bodily functions cannot be drawn from the biblical statements that would make possible a uniform decision about the controversial question regarding the primacy of knowing or of willing. Rather, the complete and central focus of the biblical statements is on the whole person, encompassing all the person’s components and functions. It is thus characteristic of the basic terms about human beings in the Old Testament that they designate a specific organ or a specific function, as well as the personal center. So, e. g., bāśār [‫ ]ָבָּשׂר‬signifies the flesh of the body and “the fallen human being”; nefeš [‫ ] ֶנֶפשׁ‬the throat, the neck, and the living person; rūah. [‫ ]רוּ ַח‬breath, the power of life, and “the empowered human being”; lēb [‫ ]ְלב‬the physiological heart and “the rational human.”8 For each of these terms there is a multitude of other meanings—which are often overlapping and difficult to distinguish—among the ones mentioned above that refer to the origin of the functions of desiring, knowing, etc. But these terms, too, have to do with the functions of the whole person. If one wanted to translate the three Hebrew words mentioned above as body, soul, and spirit, and explain that a human being is composed of body, soul, and spirit, this would not correspond to the Old Testament understanding. Rather, these various terms are focused on different aspects of the same person as a whole. Similarly, in the New Testament, σῶμα [sōma] denotes the human body and the whole person; σάρξ [sarx] denotes the flesh and the whole person (not merely the person’s frailty but also the person’s enmity toward God);

7 Cf. Franz Delitzsch, System der biblischen Psychologie (Leipzig: Dorffling & Franke, 1855). [2d ed., 1861; ET: A System of Biblical Psychology, trans. Robert Ernest Wallis (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1869). –Ed.] 8 Cf. Hans Walter Wolff, Anthropologie des Alten Testaments (Munich: Kaiser, 1973), 25–95. [ET: Anthropology of the Old Testament, trans. Margaret Kohl (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 10–79. Cf. BDB, 142, 659–661, 924–926, 524–525. –Ed.]

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and ψυχή [psychē] denotes the soul and the human life. “The human being does not have a σῶμα but is σῶμα, for in not a few cases sōma can be translated simply ‘I’….”9 While it makes sense to draw inferences from the conflict between knowing, willing, and doing within the human being—and to draw inferences from the disintegration of the person’s body in death—in order to develop a systematic presentation of the functions and structure of the human being, such inferences are rare in the biblical texts. The focus there is on the fact that God has created and laid claim upon the human being as a whole person and that he has promised life to the person as a whole. Thus the totality of the individual as a whole person is not to be divided from the totality of humanity. (b) The biblical statements about human beings are above all statements about God’s actions upon human beings, especially about God’s address to them, and about their responses to God’s word and action, either in obedience or disobedience. Those statements are not primarily concerned with describing human beings but rather with describing the history of the encounter between God and human beings. Given that these statements are determined so much by this event, by the divine assurance and claim, and by the person’s obedience of faith or the person’s disobedience, reflections on the human possibilities of obedience are almost absent. Thus the focus of the biblical texts is hardly on reason as such but rather on hearing the divine address, or on how people close themselves off against that address, and on the divine hardening that thereby follows. There is even less of a focus on the freedom of the will as such. Instead, the focus is on the actual decisions of obedience or disobedience, on the enslavement to sin and the liberation by God. This is in keeping with the fact that general definitions about the nature and essence of human beings that ignore their relationship to God (which, e. g., have fit with the definition of the human being as a rational animal), hardly appear in the biblical statements about humans. To be sure, the Scriptures presuppose as self-evident the identity of the human being in the course of history and beyond death. But the focus is not on human traits, which remain unchanged through the historical succession of creation and fall, corruption and redemption, judgment and fulfillment, but on the identity and faithfulness of God who is acting upon human beings and on the inescapable responsibility of humans vis-àvis him. The Bible’s foundational statements about human beings are statements about God’s action and word, not statements about human beings in and of themselves. Characteristic, e. g., is the answer that is given in Psalm 8 to the question, “What are human beings?,” which is not about how humans are determined in and of themselves but about adoring God, who has given humans their place within the midst of the other creatures (v. 6f.). God’s action

9 Rudolf Bultmann, Theologie des neuen Testaments, 2 vols. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1953), 1.191. [ET: Theology of the New Testament, 2 vols., trans. Kendrick Grobel (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), 1.194 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

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also decisively determines the statements in the New Testament concerning human beings (cf., e. g., Gal. 2.20: “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me”). If theological anthropology is especially a doctrine about the history of the divine address and of the human response to it, it must be added that this history reveals itself to human beings in their being struck by God’s address. For this reason, the existential statements that humans make about themselves in the elemental act of being unveiled and accepted through God’s address are of fundamental importance.

(c) The presupposition of the biblical statements about human beings is God’s historical acts of salvation. On the basis of these acts of salvation, it is clear that from the beginning humans have been given their purpose by God’s loving commitment and demand. The account of the creation of humans (Gen. 1.26ff.) has a central place in the church’s teaching about human beings. Of course, one cannot overlook the fact that this account belongs to the Priestly Code, which presupposes the Old Testament covenant and with it the knowledge of God’s act of salvation in electing and saving Israel, as well as of God’s commandments and judgments. Even the earlier account from the Yahwist (Gen. 2.7 and 18ff.) presupposes this covenant. The New Testament statements about human beings not only accept those of the Old Testament but are also determined by the appearance of Jesus Christ. He is acknowledged to be the image of God and thus the archetype of human beings. People become God’s image through community with him. If Christ is confessed to be the eternal Word through whom God created the universe, so he is also confessed to be the eternal image of God with the creation of the human being. These observations do not mean that the difference between creation and redemption would become invalid, and that God’s act of creation would be dissolved into his redemptive action. Rather, these observations mean that the identity of the Creator and Redeemer must not be overlooked. His redemptive activity, which bestows and commands, sheds light on his creative activity in the beginning. (d) Just as happened in the biblical statements about the creation of the universe, so also in those about human beings a demythologizing has taken place. By pointing to the fundamental importance that the Old Testament and New Testament covenants have for these statements, we are not denying that manifold ideas about the human being as a creature were already prevalent in the social and cultural context of Israel and of the early Christian communities, and that some of them were also partly used in the biblical witnesses. But the starting point in God’s salvific action and in his address as promise and demand signifies the end of a dependence on magic and animism in human self-understanding as well as the end of notions that human beings have a natural divinity, be it of individuals or of nations or of certain human components (e. g., the soul) or of certain organs (e. g., the sexual). Human beings are now revealed in their creatureliness, in their

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difference from God, in their dependence on him, and in their superiority over the other earthly creatures that they have been given by God. The biblical statements about human beings made use of knowledge that people had at that time about human organs and functions. As in the knowledge of the universe, so also in the field of anthropology there are many results today that are far removed from what the authors of the biblical writings knew. For example, they knew very little about the functions of the heart, the kidneys, or the brain. We today also know a great deal more about psychosomatic relationships. Consequently, one has to ask, in what sense are the biblical statements about human beings still true and valid today? Here, too, we would not be acknowledging their truth if we just repeated what they say. In this way, the truth of the biblical way of speaking about human beings could be obscured. As in the doctrine of the creation of the universe, so also here not only is the content of the biblical statements to be taken seriously but also the act by which those statements were made. The biblical statements were in fact acts of an advance in the understanding of humans in their social-cultural context. On the basis of the same presupposition and the same aim with which the anthropological statements were made at that time, we today have to develop a theological anthropology in very different situations of human self-understanding and in the context of a very different state of empirical knowledge in the fields of physiology and psychology. This task will be explained on the basis of the previous statements, which are now taken up not merely as historical statements but as the normative principles of speaking theologically about human beings. (1) Just as the Old Testament statements about human beings presuppose God’s covenant with Israel, and just as the New Testament statements presuppose the appearance of Jesus Christ and are developed from it, so today, in the theological statements we make about human beings, we too must make use of God’s salvific action for human beings. Beyond the observations that have already been made, one also has to ask: Does theological anthropology have to begin with Old Testament statements about human beings or with New Testament statements? As in the doctrine of the creation of the universe, here too one has to engage the New Testament statements, namely, God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ; for we must take into account from the start that the meaning of s.elem and demût was not yet fully known in the old covenant but was first revealed through the appearance of Jesus Christ, the incarnate image of God. Just as the Old Testament promises of the coming one were fulfilled by Jesus when he corrected and surpassed them, so even the Old Testament statements about the creation of human beings in the image and likeness of God have received their unveiling and fulfillment only through the obedience and resurrection of Christ. Just as the church’s doctrine of God’s commandments did not hold to the ancient Israelite understanding of the Old Testament law but made use of Jesus’ interpretation of this law and of apostolic exhortations, so it has to make use of Jesus Christ as God’s image. On the basis

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of God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ, the church is to witness to God’s act of creation as the act of his love and to bring that witness to bear upon the respective findings and hypotheses about the origin of humans. In two respects Jesus Christ is fundamental to theological anthropology: He is the human being who is the image of God, the one who shows us sinners what we are destined for. At the same time, he is the eternal Son of God, the eternal divine archetype, according to which God created human beings. (2) Even today, theological anthropology is to be explained above all in statements about God’s act and address and about the response of human beings. God’s address takes place as assurance and claim. Thereby the purpose and folly of human beings are uncovered, and their renewal is promised and accomplished. The human response takes place when human beings acknowledge or deny their condition as it is revealed, and when they accept or reject the renewal that is promised to them. From this starting point, theological anthropology has to focus on the history of the encounters between God and human beings. So it does not have to start with the self-understanding of human beings but rather with the address of God that encounters this self-understanding, ruptures it, and defines it anew. Theological anthropology also does not have to start with the results of empirical scientific anthropology. It does have to take notice of these results and to learn from them, for there can also be no opposition here between accurate empirical results and the knowledge of faith, but even the most accurate scientific results are unable to answer the question: What is a human being? The answer to this question is given through God’s address. Thus the most obvious structure of the statements of theological anthropology is that of the existential confession of human guilt unveiled by God, the call for God’s grace, and the transmission of the history of divine action upon human beings and of their human responses to it. (3) Where God’s address takes place, it strikes human beings in their wholeness. They are made accountable and unveiled as a whole, and as a whole they are accepted. Theological anthropology cannot restrict itself to identifying and describing the conflict in the human being, which is experienced in the most varied forms, between insight and desire, between willing something and actually fulfilling it, between longing for love and the inability to love, between pride and despair. In this conflict the unity of one’s self-understanding is called into question or disintegrated, for God does not want that self-understanding to continue to be in conflict. Through his address he not only wants to unveil but to heal. God wants to renew the person to wholeness, both the individual human being and humanity as a whole. In unity and wholeness, people should serve him. The same holds true for reflections on the structure of the human being. Here, too, it is foundational that through his address God accepts and commands the human being as a whole. In whatever way body and soul and the somatic, mental, and spiritual functions are to be distinguished, through God’s address the human being as a whole becomes God’s Thou. This Thou

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is not a consciousness that is separate from corporeality but the I that is accepted by God in its corporeality. Beyond the traditional distinctions among the components, functions, and abilities of the human being, theological anthropology can make further distinctions by adopting recent insights and hypotheses (e. g., by following psychoanalytic psychology in making distinctions between the consciousness and the subconscious, the ego, the self, the superego, and the id).[v] What is decisive, however, is that theological anthropology teaches that all these distinctions are encompassed by God’s address, and in this sense that teaching includes the unity and wholeness of the human being, the wholeness in which the human person is created by God and in which God makes promises to the person. (4) In the modern era, many understandings of human beings have arisen using partial insights to make generalizations and form ideologies that dominate human thinking and action in a manner similar to that of myths. In this way, idealistic, materialistic, and purely biological images of human beings have had the greatest effect in the lives of individuals and of society, as have understandings of human beings that have been biased toward freedom or the libido. Such ideologies also can enslave human beings, as the New Testament Scriptures state when they speak of “principalities and powers.”10 Just as the biblical statements about human beings disrupted the myths of that time, so theological anthropology disrupts anthropological ideologies today. This also applies to an individualistic isolation of the human being and to a collectivist dissolution of a person’s incomparable uniqueness. These methodological considerations are important for ecumenical dialogue since many differences in the doctrine about the image of God have arisen because dogmatic thinking has deviated from the basic structures of the biblical statements. This brought with it various shifts in the emphasis of particular issues, and thus to hardenings between the teachings of the churches. Moreover, there arose the danger that time-conditioned ideas about human beings would become dogmatized and would lead to a hesitancy about taking new anthropological insights seriously in theology. These methodological perspectives should be kept in mind when reading the statements about human beings in all parts of this dogmatics. If it has become clear that the image of God is not only a topic in the doctrine of creation but also in the doctrine of redemption and the new creation, then this chapter will not be able to present the entire doctrine of the image of God but only the intended purpose of the human being in the image of God.[vi] This purpose was originally given to the human being by God and remains for the human being regardless of the person’s behavior toward it. This purpose also remains for the sinner, even if it becomes a judgment of the person. Since the presupposition of

10 [Cf. Rom. 8.38; Eph. 1.21; 3.10; Col. 1.16; 2.15; and 1 Pet. 3.22. –Ed.]

The Response That Is the Image of God

the following remarks is not only Gen. 1.26 but also Jesus Christ, the image of God encounters the human being as a fourfold purpose:

1. The Response That Is the Image of God In the omnipotence of his love, God has created the human being. Through his address, God has made the human being his Thou and has opened the person up for community with God, the divine Thou. Toward that end, God has ordained human beings to respond to him as their Thou and to say “Yes” to the “Yes” that the Creator has spoken to them. Human beings should trust God, that in his love as Creator he has withheld nothing from them that they need for their life. So thanks are due to God for the life that he has given human beings. They should trust God, that in the future he will be there for them as the one who loves them and will not deal with them arbitrarily. They may thus ask God at any time for anything that they need. Trusting that God does not require anything from them that is not for their own good, they ought to obey God. They should serve him with body and soul, with all their strength, and in everything they do. In this way, their entire life becomes a response to the Lord who created them. We may praise and glorify him—the Almighty, the one who is to be feared as the Wholly Other—as the one who has turned to us in a loving way; and we may love him in the confidence that he is faithful in his love. The human being is moved by God’s address to give a response that cannot be given by other earthly creatures. To be sure, God has created the universe so that it glorifies him as a whole, namely, through the diversity in its unity, through the movement in its order, through its unfolding in the process of becoming and passing away. But although it was created by God’s Word out of nothing, and although it echoes the divine Word, the universe is still not a response to God in the sense of a free personal decision. Human beings, however, are meant to offer in words to God the speechless praise of the other creatures. In response to God’s act of creation, human beings should be the mouth of creation, which as a whole is ordained for the adoration of God. Reciprocal love, for which God has created the human being, is different from the Creator’s love since God does not need any creature in order to be God. He needed no creaturely Thou in order to be an “I.” He is the eternal “I am,” the one who lives from himself. He also does not need to be loved by another in order to be love, for he is the unending fullness of love in the eternal communion of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In the freedom of this love, he has created the human being.

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Human beings, however, are and have nothing that they have not received. They cannot give God anything that is not already God’s. Human beings are free solely within the created order established by God. But despite these differences, human beings are intended to be—in their freely reciprocating love—the image of the divine love for human beings. Indeed, in contrast to all other creatures, they are to be the image of the love of God.

2. The Community That Is the Image of God God has created the human being not to be an individual but as man and woman, so that both may become one body and multiply. By this ordaining of a duality for the purpose of unity and of this unity for the purpose of the ensuing multiplicity, the root of many irreversible relationships is planted, namely, between a man and a woman, between parents and children and grandchildren, as well as between families, tribes, and nations. Contained within such relationships are the tasks of procuring food and caring for others, of commanding and obeying, of teaching and learning. Mating, multiplying, and propagating also happen in the animal world. Even here there are manifold formations of groups, divisions of labor in seeking food and securing a living space, as well as the distinction between what is superordinate and subordinate. But because God has addressed human beings as a Thou, these relationships have received a determination among humans that distinguishes them from biologically similar relationships in the animal world. Because human beings are God’s Thou, they are to acknowledge and regard each other as a Thou. If God has created all human beings out of free love, then they should love one another in free turning toward each other in loving care. The differences between man and woman, parents and children and grandchildren, families, tribes, and nations should be embraced and permeated by love. In address and response and in their actions, they should be present for each other because God is present for them. As God is steadfast and faithful in his love, they also should be faithful and steadfast in their love for one another. In this way, a husband and wife are not only ordained for acts of physical union but for lifelong personal unity. In this way, too, parents and children are abidingly coordinated to each other. Because God has addressed human beings as his Thou, he has opened up to them space for knowing, decision-making, and designing, which he has not done for any other animal species. In this way, very different nomadic, agricultural, urban, and highly technical cultures are encountered throughout history. However great these differences may be, when all is said and done, human beings should be there for one another and help one another. All groups should be embraced by love, for God has intended human beings for community. Although every human being is

The Dominion That Is the Image of God

a unique, individual person, yet each one is still not to be separated from other humans. Humanity is not merely the sum of individuals or groups but a unity that fulfills its purpose only when all members are related to each other. The solidarity of all humans, their being together with one another, is expressed in the biblical statements in that “Adam” is both the name of the first human and the term for humanity as a whole. At the same time, however, human beings are not dissolved into a collective body. Rather, each person—in that person’s uniqueness and in that person’s concrete context with other human beings—is addressed and commanded by God. This unity of human beings is manifested above all in the common worship of God. There is no sexual differentiation in God. There is no procreation and birth in him by means of which life would arise that was not there before. He needs no multiplication and propagation in order to unfold. He is the eternal fullness of life. Out of free love, he has created the human being as man and woman. But in this incontrovertible difference between the Creator and creatures, human beings are to glorify the creative power of God through their growing variety and to proclaim his love through their caring for one another. By embracing and permeating the diversity of interpersonal relationships with love, the community of humans should be an image of the divine love. In many corresponding ways, this purpose is expressed in the Old and New Testaments. As God loves human beings, so should spouse love spouse, and parents love their children, and those giving instruction should stand up for those who have been entrusted to them.

3. The Dominion That Is the Image of God As God’s Thou, the human being, exalted among the earthly creatures, is intended to rule over them. According to the Priestly account of creation, the human being is commissioned by God first to rule over the animals, then over the earth and all things that grow in it (Gen. 1.26 and 28ff.). Moreover, “all things” are subject to human beings (Ps. 8.7). Paul unfolds what is meant by “all things”: “For all things are yours, whether… the world or life or death or the present or the future” (1 Cor. 3.21f.). Human beings will also reign over the invisible powers: “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” (1 Cor. 6.3). If one reads the Priestly and Yahwistic creation accounts in succession, as they have been handed down at the beginning of Holy Scripture, then the implication is obvious, namely, that this dominion has begun with the naming of the animals (Gen. 2.19f.). By differentiating the kinds of animals and by classifying them with their knowledge, human beings have gained power over them, which was the presupposition for gathering, feeding, and breeding livestock. Similarly, the knowledge and naming of the plants was a presupposition for sowing and harvesting. The

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naming of what was given and its use are always related. This process of knowing and naming goes beyond animals and plants to include the understanding of rocks and metals and their use as tools. That process has gone beyond the immediate experience of the surrounding world to knowledge of the elements that make up the world and, beyond that, to knowledge of atoms, force fields, particles, and waves, which are beyond our immediate perception. This process has led to unprecedented developments in technology. The dominion of human beings is no longer limited to the realm of the earth. In more and more far-reaching ways, human beings are able to change the non-human creation. Human beings may not disconnect the power to subordinate creation to themselves from the one who has given them this power. If God has created the universe out of love, then the fulfillment of the divine mandate to have dominion over creation cannot consist in human beings claiming use of creation arbitrarily for themselves. Certainly, they are to subject it to themselves and to protect themselves against the threats to which they are exposed, especially from their environment, given their weak attachment to instinct. But with this divine mandate they have also received a responsibility for the other creatures. They are not to rule over them as a tyrant, exploiter, and destroyer but as a gardener and shepherd, who in caring for the creatures of the world helps them to propagate and flourish. Human beings are to rule as their friend. Human beings are to “cultivate and preserve” (Gen. 2.15 [L]). In their dominion they shall serve the purpose which God has given to creation. Just as humans may name the non-human creatures—given that in the midst of the mysteries of nature they recognize the Word by which those mysteries have been created—so in the struggle for existence they are to uncover and allow this Word that is at work in the mysteries of nature to shed light on science, art, and technology. In this way, they are to help creatures to unfold their adoration of God who has created them. The dominion of human beings presupposes that the universe has been called into existence by God “out of nothing” and is subordinate to him. The dominion of human beings is therefore profoundly different from God’s dominion. As shepherd and farmer, researcher and artist, artisan and technician, human beings are only able “to subordinate” what has been previously given to them. Their activity in the truest sense is not a creative activity but an uncovering and shaping of that which God has created. Even with the most far-reaching of interventions into non-human reality, humans cannot ultimately create any new structures. While God does not need dominion over the universe in order to be God, from the outset human beings are dependent upon the earth and its fruits. Despite these differences, human beings are the image of the divine creative activity in the freedom of their discovering, inventing, and shaping. Yes, God wants to exercise his dominion through the dominion of the human being. He has appointed the human being to be his viceroy.

The Life That Is the Image of God

Thus, according to their purpose, human beings are both the vicarious representative of God and the vicarious representative of other creatures. As vicarious representative of God [Stellvertreter Gottes], human beings face the other creatures and are to rule over them. As vicarious representative of creatures, human beings face God and are to offer him the adoration that these creatures are unable to offer him in words that they freely and personally choose. While human beings are raised above the other creatures, they do not stop being embedded among them. The orderly structures of organic and inorganic processes are uniquely encompassed within their personal existence. In the dominion of human beings, the orientation of the whole creation toward God should come to light and be heard. These purposes of the human being to be the image of God through response, community, and dominion belong inextricably together. None of them can be isolated. But the sustaining center is the “Yes” of the human being to the divine Thou, the response of loving reciprocally the one who has first loved the human being. If it is separated from this response, the community of humans with one another cannot be a reflection of the divine love, and the dominion of human beings over the other creations cannot reflect the divine care. Nor can the “Yes” to the Creator be torn from the “Yes” to his creatures.

4. The Life That Is the Image of God God has created the human being for eternal community with him. Community with the eternal God guarantees the immortality of the human being, who is thereby raised out of the temporal limitations of other earthly living beings. This promise of immortality applies not only to the human race as a whole but to each individual person. God does not desire the death but the life of each human being. Included in eternal life is not only the promise of an unlimited lifespan but a life like God’s. The response of the human being to God’s address does not enter a void. That response does not fail to receive a response from God. God promises human beings that their response is not only heard but answered. He accepts the gratitude of human beings by bestowing even more upon them. He fulfills their petitions by surpassing what they request. He responds to the love that human beings have for him with ever-new proofs of his divine love. Human life thus becomes a conversation with God, in which God draws the human being more and more to himself, and the human grows ever more in knowledge of the divine power and love. This conversation is not limited to individual acts of human affirmation, but in fact the human being becomes an affirmation to God the Creator. From the decisions [Entscheidungen] that are made for God, there arises a resoluteness [Entschiedensein] for God.

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When human beings turn toward one another in caring love, they are not alone, for they are promised that God’s love is operative in their love for one another. When people are there for each other according to the divine purpose, each person becomes the instrument of divine love for the other. The interpersonal differences are then turned more and more away from threats to unity and toward the unfolding of the riches that are in the human community. From the individual decisions that are made for other human beings, there arises a resoluteness for them. Also, the dominion over non-human creatures is not just something that occurs within the world. The more people are committed to having dominion over the non-human creatures by promoting their existence and activity and by becoming their friends, the more the praise that is offered by human beings and the other creatures will be united in a choir in which God himself becomes known and his creatures blessed. God will be “all in all” (1 Cor. 15.28). The life that is intended for the human being is thus one of marching forward in receiving. Life is not a possession that human beings can dispose of. Rather, it has its lasting existence [Bestand] in the steadfast [beständigen] working of God, and that life is to strive continuously for its fulfillment beyond the present condition, when the thinking of human beings will be fulfilled by God and their will united with his. This does not mean the end of one’s own knowing, willing, and doing but the liberation of the will and of one’s actions from the limits of earthly existence. It means a liberation toward the complete unfolding of spontaneity through God, for through the Holy Spirit human beings receive a share in eternal life, yes, they are taken into the divine life. This fulfillment of the intended purpose of human beings is often promised in the New Testament Scriptures as the “glorification” of human beings. The expectation is that this glorification will be God’s action upon the human being, and it is inseparably tied to the glorification of God by human beings, for in the glorification of God by human beings both God himself and human beings are glorified. This glorification is promised not only with respect to human knowing, willing, and doing, but also with respect to the person as a whole, which includes that person’s corporeality. We are making these statements surrounded by dying people and in view of our own death. What we perceive seems to refute the purpose of eternal life, and yet this expectation is not just an expression of yearning. It is also not merely the result of combining biblical promises that have been arbitrarily selected. Rather, it has a firm foundation in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. All churches confess Jesus to be the incarnate Son of God who, through his obedience, has fulfilled the purpose given to human beings: He has done this through his surrender to God and to human beings, and through his dominion over non-human powers. We would not know that he who was executed as a blasphemer has fulfilled the purpose given to human beings if God had not raised him from death and transferred him into eternal life. As the same one who died on

The Life That Is the Image of God

the cross, he lives—taken from the limits of earthly existence—in a new mode of existing with God. Glorified by God, Jesus is the beginning and the quintessence of the new humanity, in which the purpose of being the image of God has reached its fulfillment. In the appearances of the risen Lord, eternal life has appeared, which Jesus, even in his glorification, does not keep to himself but offers to his own. “He will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Phil. 3.21 [NIV]; cf. 1 Cor. 15.35ff.). This promise of a transformation of the present earthly life, a transformation that begins now in secret and is visibly completed in the resurrection of the dead, belongs to the center of the message of salvation. Can the life that appeared in the risen Christ be understood as the purpose for which God created the human being? Paul has, in any case, taught this at the end of his well-known list of antitheses: “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory…” (1 Cor. 15.42–44). For in the subsequent sentences he speaks about Adam, not as a sinner but as a creature, and he does so specifically in reference to Adam’s creaturely origin: “Thus it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit… Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven” (vv. 45–49). Human beings did not first become “earthly” and “ensouled” because of sin, but rather they were this in the first place, and they remained dependent on being transformed into heavenly and spiritual human beings. Christ is the archetype of the eternal life that God the Creator has promised to human beings from the beginning. All churches teach that human beings are intended for eternal life. But in the history of the churches and in their relationship to each other, significant differences have appeared in this respect, which will be discussed later. For now, this intended purpose of human beings for eternal life will be explained by the following three sets of statements: (a) The purpose of entering eternal life is not the same as being destined for an unlimited continuation of earthly life. Such a promise is neither in the Old Testament nor in the New Testament. Just as the resurrection of Jesus was not a return to his earthly life, so the general resurrection of the dead should not be expected to be such a return. In their earthly constitution, human beings are like the grass and the flower: “the grass withers, the flower fades” (Isa. 40.7f.). Apologists in the early church and several Greek fathers emphasized that human beings in their original, natural state still did not possess immortality but were only intended for it. This is stated, e. g., in the Apostolic Constitutions, in a prayer to God for a deceased person: O God, “you are by nature immortal and have no end to your being…. You have made human beings to be rational creatures, citizens of this world, and in their constitution mortal, and you have promised them immortality.

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You did not suffer Enoch and Elijah to taste of death…!”11 This idea was taken up differently by Augustine, when he stated that Adam had the possibility of dying or not dying.[vii] (b) The purpose of entering eternal life excludes the notion that human beings were originally intended for death. God did not create human beings to die but to live. In the midst of a world of becoming and decay, human beings are promised immortality. The decay of human beings in death is not the condition for their obtaining eternal life. The decay of human wholeness contradicts the purpose that God has given human beings. Death, as the enemy of human beings, has entered in between their origin and their intended purpose. (c) Thus from the beginning, eternal life was expected to be a divine act that is different from the creation of the earthly human being, a divine act that would transform earthly human beings and make them into immortal, spiritual human beings. This transformation into “the image of the man of heaven,” Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15.49), would not entail the decay of earthly human beings but their glorification. The identity of the person would not be terminated by the transformation but would be completely unfolded into the new mode of existence of the spiritual human being who has been taken into the life of God. Thus within church tradition there has often been the idea that if sin would not have entered in between the creation of earthly human beings and their entrance into eternal life, the first earthly body, which was free of fragility and of pain and death, would have been clothed with the transfigured body. In agreement with such opinions of the church fathers, Luther also expected eternal life to be a further act of God. If Adam had not fallen, it would still have been the case that, after reaching a certain number of saints, God would have led him out of earthly life into the spiritual life.[viii] This puts us at the most extreme limit of what can be said. Paul expected the immediate transition from earthly life to the eternal spiritual life—without passing through death—to be God’s act of transformation (1 Cor. 15.51–53) and of being caught up (1 Thess. 4.15–17). But this expected process eludes a clear description. As with Paul, so also for the church throughout the ages, the certainty regarding the expectation of eternal life is not grounded in the attempts to describe this transition, but rather it is grounded in the promise that was given to humanity with the appearances of the risen Christ. Also in the glorification of the human being, the difference between the Creator and the creature remains. God is glorified because he is glorious. But the human being is glorified by God alone. Not only is the human earthly life different from

11 Constitutiones Apostolorum, VIII.41. [Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, ANF, 7.497 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

Origin and Purpose

God’s life but so is the human’s spiritual life. God alone lives eternally, whereas human life has a beginning. Even if the Greek church fathers describe the glorification of the human being as deification, they hold that this alone is God’s action upon human beings. But in these differences, human beings are intended to be the image of the divine life. Although their life has a beginning, they are intended to participate in the divine life, indeed, to be taken into the eternal trinitarian life of God. If the response, community, and dominion of human beings as the image of God are required to be their decision, eternal life is promised to them as God’s gift. God has given them life. He alone can preserve and glorify it amidst the becoming and dying of the other creatures.

5. Origin and Purpose Theological teaching about human beings cannot be restricted to statements about their purpose. Belief in creation is, at the same time, certain that God has prepared human beings for the purpose given to them. Even the report concerning the sixth day of creation (Gen. 1.31) concludes with the pronouncement of God: “Behold, it was very good” [RSV]. It thereby states that the nature of human beings and the task given to them correspond to each other. In the second creation account (Gen. 2.4bff.), an explicit pronouncement of this kind is indeed missing, but here also the correspondence between the presuppositions given to human beings and the divine task assigned to them is clearly expressed. Beyond these creation accounts, the basic certainty of the people of God in both the Old and New Testaments is that God is the giver of good gifts. Accordingly, human beings have not been relieved of making decisions for the good. But they did not first need to create the good. All they needed to do was to affirm and live in it. God has required nothing of human beings for which he had not gifted them. Because God created human beings good, in accordance with their intended purpose, therefore all churches teach not only that human beings are intended to be in the image of God but also that the creation of human beings is in the image of God. God created human beings as his image so that they would become his image in obedience to the commandment to be God’s image of response, community, and dominion, and to live eternally with him. Being in the image of God as a presupposition and as an intended purpose are to be distinguished. In this way, the Greek church fathers in particular distinguished between the image of God that has already been given with the creation and the image of God that is still pending and has yet to be obtained by grace. The eschatological interval between origin and consummation must not be ignored when one speaks of human beings as God’s image. But statements about the purpose of being the image of God should also not

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be separated from the act of creation by which God has prepared human beings to fulfill their intended purpose. If one were to do so, the purpose of being in the image of God would then become a law that puts to death. While the biblical accounts of the creation of human beings focus primarily on God’s instructions to human beings, in the course of the history of theology there soon arose an increasing interest in describing the state of the first human. Moving away from bearing witness to the act, command, and promise of God, the focus shifted to the doctrine of the “original state” of the first human and, in connection with this, to general definitions about the nature of human beings. (a) This is particularly evident in the increasing number of statements about the attributes of the first human. Since God’s action and address are not without effect on human beings, such statements are only natural. The original attributes of the first human have been spoken of in very different ways. The image of God as response, community, and dominion have been encompassed by the concept of justice, which the Creator has commanded humans to do. If God has created human beings good, then it can also be said that God created human beings justly. Since, with his creation, God has given human beings the conditions for fulfilling this purpose, the justice that was commanded was not a strange or even unattainable goal but was present from the beginning in the correspondence between origin and purpose. But the human decision for justice was not yet realized with the divine preparation and purpose. Augustine thus distinguished between the original “ability not to sin” (“posse non peccare”) and the still to come “inability to sin” (“non posse peccare”).12 It is thus possible to speak of the original righteousness of the human being in such a way that the difference between the righteousness that God has given and called for, on the one hand, and the righteousness to be fulfilled by human beings, on the other, is maintained. This difference has, however, receded more and more into the background in the history of the doctrine of the original state. Even if some retained the Augustinian formula, it was taught—with increasing attenuation of the difference between origin and purpose—that from the beginning humans were already in possession of righteousness. It was understood not only as a developing reality but as one that was already existing. Related to this, it was presupposed that the first humans also had a complete knowledge of creation and of humans as well as a lack of desire. Even more striking is the shift from statements about how human beings are intended for eternal life to statements about an immortality that existed already from the beginning. What became faded was the difference between the earthly life that was given originally

12 [Augustine, De civitate Dei, XXII.30 (CCSL, 48.865–866; City of God; WSA, I/7.552); Enchiridion, 104–105 (CCSL, 46.106; WSA, I/8.334); and De correptione et gratia, 33 (CSEL, 92.259; Rebuke and Grace; WSA, I/26.132–133). –Ed.]

Origin and Purpose

and the eternal life that is still to come. To be sure, one can say that eternal life was present from the beginning in the form of the purpose and promise for earthly life, although the transformation of the “earthly” human into the “heavenly” one (1 Cor. 15.45ff.) was still to come. With such statements, the difference between origin and purpose need not be canceled, but this is in fact what has widely happened in the course of the history of theology. Although some repeated the Augustinian distinction between the “possibility of not dying” (“posse non mori”), which was present at the beginning, and the “impossibility of dying” (“non posse mori”), which was yet to be obtained, the difference between origin and promise, between the originally mortal “earthly” life and the still-to-come immortal “heavenly” life was so toned down that eternal life was understood to be a quality that was given to the human being from the beginning.13 In place of the eschatological distance between the creation and the transformation of the human being, the natural and supernatural attributes of the human being were said to have coexisted with each other already from the beginning. Thus, in the history of theology, those voices from the ancient church, such as Justin Martyr and Theodore of Mopsuestia, who had taught that originally human beings were not yet in possession of eternal life, receded into the background.[ix] Along with the immortality that was originally given to human beings, people would now also teach that human beings were originally incapable of suffering.

By shifting the focus from God’s action and address to a description of the human being in the original state, the eschatological fulfillment was largely projected back into the original state. From the teleological relationship that had existed between the image of God that was already given and the image of God still to come—a position held especially among the Greek fathers—there developed the idea of an image of God in which εἰκών [eikōn = image] and ὁμοίωσις [homoiōsis = likeness], natural and supernatural, coexisted simultaneously with each other already from the beginning. The first human was now considered to be already perfect. With these shifts, the doctrine of the original state received an incomparably greater weight in the whole of church teaching than fits with the biblical witnesses, for only a few passages mention the first human, far more seldomly than is the case with humans living at a later time, who are addressed in their creatureliness and responsibility before God. These shifts have led to manifold differences in the church’s doctrine about human beings. Some problems only first arose with these shifts from God’s action and address to a description of the “original state”: the reduction of the eschatological distance between origin and purpose toward an original simultaneity took place to a different degree and in a different conceptuality by means of the distinction between the natural and the supernatural and by variously assigning the original attributes of the human being to the natural or supernatural dimension

13 [Augustine, De civitate Dei, XXII.30 (CCSL, 48.865–866; City of God; WSA, I/7.552). –Ed.]

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of the human being. What is more, such differences to a great extent were rooted not primarily in the doctrine of creation itself but in a projection back to it, based on other parts of church doctrine. (b) Another shift took place by moving from God’s action and address to reflections on the enduring possibilities and abilities of the human being. This is especially true of the human’s freedom of the will. To be sure, in the biblical statements about the human being as God’s creature, the freedom of the will as such is hardly an independent topic. The interest is focused on the occurrences of the divine address and of the human response. But it is indeed the case that the issue of the freedom of the will is contained in the event when human beings are encountered by God’s address, insofar as they are made responsible for their disobedience. So it is understandable why some would reflect on the original possibility of human beings to make a decision between “Yes” and “No,” between obedience and disobedience, and why some would seek to develop general dogmatic statements about the freedom of the will. If one takes up these reflections, from the outset it becomes clear that the freedom of the human being was from the beginning different from God’s absolute freedom. It is a creaturely freedom, a freedom within the God-given creaturely order. But within these limits, human beings have the freedom to say “Yes” and “No” to their intended purpose. Considering that human beings had been created good, their original freedom cannot mean that they should have made something out of themselves that they had not already been. God’s command did not encounter the human being as a neutral being that should have first become good only by freely choosing between good and evil. Rather, as creatures who were created good by God, they were called to thank God by freely choosing to do so and to receive ever-new demonstrations of the goodness of God. All they had to do was affirm what he had already given them. Before they could say “Yes” or “No,” they were already in God’s “Yes.” The “Yes” of the free confession to God was, so to speak, placed in their mouth by God. All they needed to do was to give free rein to the love with which God had loved them. The Creator’s commandment was not difficult. The second account of creation expresses this quite vividly. According to it, from the outset God surrounded the first humans in the Garden of Eden with such a wealth of fruit that the prohibition against eating from only the one tree was not a detriment to their life. The commandment of obedience did not originally encounter human beings as a means of enticing them to sin, not as a “disciplining rod,” not as “law” in the Pauline sense, but as an invitation and permission to live in community with God in which God had placed them from the beginning. By thinking this way about the original possibilities that human beings had for making decisions, then free will was not a neutral matter of freely choosing between loving God and rejecting God but a freedom encompassed and carried by God’s love, namely, by the correspondence between origin and purpose. Such considerations, of course, did not stop people from reflecting about the freedom of the will. In the course of the history of theology, the statements about this have largely been detached from their relationship to the original action and address of God and have been

Origin and Purpose

turned into general statements about the abilities of human beings that then claimed to be valid independently of the decisions for or against God. By shifting to general and commonly used definitions of the nature of human beings, there was an increasing attenuation of the historical differences between the human being as an original creature, the human being as a sinner, the human being as a justified sinner, and the human being as one redeemed in the future. The interest shifted from the determination of freedom by God’s various loving and directing actions toward human beings—and from the various affirmative and negative responses of the human being—to an abiding human freedom that is the basis for all decisions. The concept of free will (αὐτεξούσιον [autexousion], liberum arbitrium) can be so broad as to encompass both the freedom to make decisions and the freedom to make judgments, the freedom to draw conclusions and to act, and the freedom to know and to acknowledge.[x] In each case, both alternatives belong closely together. In the biblical statements, however, the interest is focused less on reason as such and its abilities than on the word, by which God gives himself to be known by human beings, and on the responses of human beings in knowing and doubting, acknowledging and denying. The interest is also less in the ability of human beings to know their surrounding world than it is in their dealings with it. It was only under Hellenistic influence that human cognitive abilities first became an independent topic in Judaism. But in the New Testament, the statements about knowing are focused afresh on the response of human beings to God’s historical act of revelation. Thus, in Paul, knowing is grounded in the fact that God has known human beings, namely, has chosen and loved them. In a different way, in the Gospel of John faith and knowing are most closely related. Also in the history of theology, of course—in the statements about the capability of reason—a far-reaching separation of the very different historical relations between reason and God and the surrounding world has taken place. Reason, like the freedom of the will, has increasingly been understood as an abiding ability and has been used in an unhistorical way to make general definitions about the nature of the human being as a rational animal. Corresponding shifts have also occurred in statements about the immortality of the human being. If for a long time it had still been understood historically—namely, its loss was taught to be the result of sin—reflection here too advanced to make statements about a kind of immortality that belongs to the nature of the human being as a possession, independent of God’s judging and saving action, even thereby independent of death. To be sure, the teaching was not about the immortality of the whole person but about the immortality of the person’s soul. The idea of the natural immortality of the human being has increasingly prevailed since Origen, while earlier Greek church fathers had refused to designate the remains of the dead in their inescapable accountability to God as immortality.[xi]

These shifts brought with them the danger that the purpose of the human being to be the image of God became even less important. Aside from the decision of the human being for or against God, the unchanged, enduring human capabilities of the free will, reason, and immortality came to be referred to as the image of God.

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These shifts, too, have led to profound doctrinal differences within and among the churches. This is especially true regarding the doctrinal teaching about the freedom of the will. Although these differences emerge clearly only later in the doctrine of sin, of grace, and of predestination, they are already found in the doctrine of creation. Ecumenical dialogue about these shifts and differences in the doctrine about human beings cannot, of course, overlook the fact that the biblical accounts bear witness to the creation of human beings by making use of the knowledge and ideas of that time. Empirical scientific work in paleontology, genetics, comparative anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry, as well as in the behavioral and computer sciences, has provided insights that are quite foreign to the biblical witnesses. Without going into the various options regarding today’s assumptions about the origin of humans, and also without discussing in detail the disputed boundaries between precise results, hypotheses, and ideologies, let me point out some of the most important differences between the biblical witnesses and the prevailing scientific ideas today about human beings: According to the Yahwistic account of creation, humans originated when God formed them from the earth and breathed into them the spirit of life, whereas, according to the Priestly account of creation, humans originated through an immediate act of creation. But it is widely accepted today that in the history of a branch of Pongidae primates—which had separated itself, probably already millions of years earlier, from another branch from which today’s great apes have emerged—there took place the development of the erect body, the formation of the fully opposable thumb, the enlargement of the cranium and thus of the brain, as well as the transition from using tools to manufacturing devices, from making accidental use of fire to maintaining it and using it methodically to produce things, from being naked to using clothing, as well as from understanding signs and sounds to speaking intelligently.[xii] The result was living beings who were less bound by instincts and instinctual mechanisms, who were less specialized in the use of their members than the other earthly creatures, and who were thus more open to knowing and shaping their surrounding world. According to the biblical witnesses, humans had a definite beginning in time, and their time frame, according to the genealogies in the Old and New Testaments (cf., e. g., Gen. 5; 11.10–32; and Mt. 1.1–17 and Lk. 3.23–38), comprises only a limited, relatively small number of generations. But research in the natural sciences assumes a “transition from animals to humans” that has stretched about a thousand millennia. According to this scholarly field, after Australopithecus, one can differentiate among Homo erectus (Java-Beijing man), Homo pre-sapiens, the Neanderthals, and finally Homo sapiens (to name only the most important), and the time span of Homo sapiens is estimated to be 30,000 to 40,000 years.[xiii] These different names already make clear that one cannot make a precise scientific determination about the beginning of humans. One of the major difficulties consists in the fact that access to the consciousness of these creatures—variously designated as humans—has been blocked

Origin and Purpose

for a very long time period. For only during the last few millennia, since the formation of writing, have more accurate insights into the thinking and willing of such humans been possible. On the basis of discovered dwellings, places of worship, and graves from the few millennia before that, conjectures about their notions are nonetheless still possible. But the discovery of prehistoric skeletal remains and tools from long ago can hardly be further questioned. If the biblical witnesses had established that from the beginning humans are profoundly different from animals, this difference has been called into question by the theory of evolution. To be sure, the profound difference between contemporary humans and the highest animal creatures is obvious. Already because of their short gestation period and because of the immature condition they have during their first years of life, but especially because of their reason and language, human beings hold a special position among all other living beings. Nevertheless, the acceptance of the origin of humans out of a process of development from animal creatures over millions of years has raised the question of whether human beings are truly different from animals or only as a matter of degree. This question has been intensified through behavioral research, which has found in higher animals a capacity for learning and memory, a certain regularity of action, even a certain capacity for non-verbal abstractions and conclusions as well as an ability to use tools in special situations. These findings are, of course, more surprising to modern human beings, who are alienated from the animal kingdom, than they would have been to people in earlier times. This raises the further question: Is the history of humanity only a part of evolution, or does a history begin with the origin of humans that is fundamentally different from the biological processes of evolution that are determined by mutations and adaptations?

In view of these scientific assumptions, in what sense are the biblical statements about the origin of humans true? As in the general doctrine of creation, here too we must engage God’s acts of salvation in the old and new covenants but especially the demonstration of his power and love in Jesus Christ. By faith in him, we not only recognize that God has accomplished these acts of salvation in the freedom of his love but that from eternity he is the Almighty, the one who is love, and that through his Word he has not only revealed salvation but that he had already created the universe in the beginning (Jn. 1.1). In acknowledging this identity of God, faith has to bear witness to the origin of the human being in view of the research, insights, hypotheses, and ideologies of our time, and it does so in fundamentally the same way as the biblical witnesses did in the midst of the insights and ideas of their time. The church’s doctrine about the origin of humans does not have to repeat in timeless fashion the ideas used by the biblical witnesses, but it does have to continue carrying out the biblical act of bearing witness to God’s creative action in light of contemporary insights. The church’s doctrine thereby need not deny the precise results of empirical scientific research. Church doctrine can indeed, however, by faith in God, set forth statements about the origin of humans that are impossible to

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make solely on the basis of empirical investigation. The following three statements emerge as the center of the church’s doctrine about the origin of humans: (1) No creature can continue to exist without God’s creative action. Still less are creatures able to develop into a more sophisticated, more complex, and more self-aware creature without the action of the Creator. God is the reason for the self-transcendence of living beings in the self-functioning of their development (see chap. 4.7.c.2 above). The human being is not the result of a chance occurrence through mutations and adaptations but the work of the divine decision that is also effective in such an occurrence. God has brought about the upright gait, the fully opposable thumb, the size of the brain, the unlimited openness of humans to the world, and, with it, open space for knowing, planning, and acting. In this way, God prepared the human being for partnership with himself. (2) If God created the universe and human beings through his Word, then, in contrast to his relationship to the other earthly creatures, he also addressed human beings through his Word, made them into his Thou by means of his address, and thus made them preeminent among all other earthly creatures. If, according to New Testament witnesses, God has created the universe through his Son, then this applies a fortiori to the creation of the human being. For unlike the other creatures, the human being has been called out from the other creatures by God through his Son, his eternal image, so that the human being would become the image of the Son and thus God’s image. (3) Like his creative Word, so also the address of the Creator to the creature cannot be detached from the power of the divine Spirit. Just as his creative Word was at the same time the work of the Spirit, through which he created life, so his address to human beings was at the same time a spiritual gift, through which he has revealed himself to human beings and has spiritually awakened them.

Origin and Purpose

Editor’s Notes to Chapter 5 [i]

[ii] [iii] [iv]

[v]

In the following three chapters (chaps. 5–7), Schlink made use of his earlier work in theological anthropology. Portions of chap. 5 were taken from two essays, “Gottes Ebenbild als Gesetz und Evangelium” [The Image of God as Law and Gospel], in Der alte und der neue Mensch: Aufsätze zur theologischen Anthropologie [The Old and the New Human: Essays on Theological Anthropology], Beiträge zur evangelischen Theologie 8 (Munich: Lempp, 1942), 68–87; and “Die biblische Lehre vom Ebenbilde Gottes” [The Biblical Doctrine of the Image of God], in Pro Veritate: Ein theologischer Dialog: Festschrift für Erzbischof Dr. h. c. Lorenz Jaeger und Bischof Prof. D. Dr. Wilhelm Stählin DD. (Münster: Aschendorff; Kassel: Stauda, 1963), 1–23. This essay was later published in Der Mensch als Bild Gottes [The Human Being as the Image of God], ed. Leo Scheffczyk, Wege der Forschung 124 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), 88–113. Portions of chaps. 6 and 7 also draw upon earlier studies: Cf. Schlink, Der Mensch in der Verkündigung der Kirche, especially 117–32; and his essay, “Die Verborgenheit Gottes des Schöpfers nach lutherische Lehre,” 202–221. This essay, which includes material from Der Mensch in der Verkündigung der Kirche, was later reworked to serve as the second chapter (“Die Offenbarung Gottes des Schöpfers”) [The Revelation of God the Creator] in Schlink’s 1940 book, Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften, SÖB, 4.43–65. In 1951 he also published a short summary of the Lutheran doctrine of sin, “Der Mensch als Sünder” [The Human Being as Sinner], Evangelische Theologie 11 (1951): 324–331. It is clear from all this material that the question, “What is a human being?,” was a central theological issue for Schlink, perhaps the central one. In his preface to the first volume of SÖB, Schlink’s brother-in-law, Klaus Engelhardt, makes this very point (see SÖB, 1.7 [ESW, 1.7]). For this classic distinction, see Irenaeus, Adversus omnes haereses, V.6.1 (Against Heresies, ANF, 1.531–532). Cf. BDB, 853 (s.elem = “image,” “something cut out,” “likeness,” “of resemblance,” “semblance”); BDB, 198 (demût = “likeness, similitude, resemblance”). Cf. Hermann Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung über Gen 1 und Ap Joh 12 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1895), 11; ET: Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton: A Religio-Historical Study of Genesis 1 and Revelation 12, trans. K. William Whitney Jr. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 9. For Sigmund Freud’s description and analysis of these concepts, see especially his two late, brief works, Civilization and Its Discontents [1930], trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1961), and The Ego and the Id [1923], rev. ed., trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1962).

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[vi] [vii] [viii] [ix]

[x] [xi] [xii] [xiii]

For similar statements about the human purpose to be the image of God, cf. Schlink, LvT, ESW, 3.71. Cf., e. g., Augustine, De civitate Dei, XII.21 and XIII.3 (CCSL, 48.376, 386; The City of God; WSA, I/7.62, 70). Cf. Luther, Genesisvorlesung, WA, 42.57–62, 65–66, 76, 83–85 (Lectures on Genesis; LW 1 , 1.76–82, 86–87, 100, 110–11 et passim). Cf. Justin Martyr (ca. 100–ca. 165), Fragments of the Lost Work of Justin on the Resurrection (ANF, 1.294–299); and Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 350–428), Commentary on the Nicene Creed, trans. Alphonse Mingana (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1932), 19–20, 61, 77–81, 115–116. Αὐτεξούσιον means “in one’s own power,” “freedom [of a person],” or “freedom of choice” (LS, 279). Cf. Origen, On First Principles, 125ff. Schlink here used a primate taxon, Pongidae, which is now obsolete. Pongids split from hominina between eight and six million years ago. According to more recent research in paleontology, archaeology, and anthropology, the genus Australopithecus likely evolved in eastern Africa about four million years ago and became extinct about two million years ago. The earliest fossil evidence for Homo erectus (“Java Man”) has been dated to 1.8 million years ago and has been found in both Asia and Africa. That species lived to about 143,000 years ago, making it the longest surviving hominin species. Homo sapiens began to evolve around 300,000 years ago. Scientists now think that Homo sapiens did not come after the Neanderthals but were their contemporaries, along with another hominin species known as Denisovans. While Neanderthals lived from approximately 400,000 years ago to 40,000 years ago, Denisovans lived from more than 150,000 years ago to 30,000 years ago. An older hominin species, the Homo heidelbergensis, lived from around 700,000 years ago to 200,000 years ago. One would think that Schlink would have used this latter term rather than the obsolete “Homo pre-sapiens,” given where he lived. The first fossil of Homo heidelbergensis, the jaw of an ancient human (“the Heidelberg jaw”), was discovered in 1907 near the town of Mauer, about ten miles southeast of Heidelberg. Since then, other fossils of this species have been found in Africa and Asia. Other hominin species include the Homo naledi (fl. ca. 350,000 years ago) and the Homo floresiensis (fl. from ca. 700,000 years ago to 60,000 years ago). For further details on the recent scholarship about human evolution, see William A. Haviland et al., Evolution and Prehistory: The Human Challenge, 10th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2013).

Chapter VI: The Failure of the Human Being

1. Turning Away from God If we recognize our purpose, then at the same time we recognize that we have failed to fulfill it.[i] Instead of trusting God, we have relied on ourselves. Instead of loving God in return, we have loved ourselves. We have refused to give the Creator the “Yes” of the creature. We have not wanted to let God be God. The sinful decision against God can be made in various ways, above all by refusing to give the immediate response of thanksgiving and adoration that human beings owe their Creator. But even refusing to love other human beings is a turning away from God. Whoever disregards other human beings refuses to give God the acknowledgment that he deserves. Abusing the non-human creature is also a turning away from God, for God has intended humans to govern these other creatures as his vicarious representative. When human beings use their superiority over the other creatures to plunder and exterminate them, that is rebellion against God. Human beings who view other humans and non-human creatures solely from the point of view of how they can benefit from them for their own life are abusing them, even when they think they are loving them. This violates God’s intended purpose. When human beings recognize their failure against God, that knowledge cannot be limited to individual thoughts, words, and deeds. After all, the human being is created by God as a whole person and, as a whole person, is commanded by God. For this reason, no decision against God, whatever its nature might be, remains merely a single failure. Rather, it violates the relationship between God and the human being as a whole. If one wanted here to separate the individual decision against God from the personal relationship between the human being and God, one would neither take seriously the community for which God has created the human being nor the failure itself. If human beings recognize themselves before God, they not only recognize concrete sins that they have committed in thought, word, and deed, but they recognize that they are sinners. To be sure, this recognition of being a sinner is opened up in view of the concrete transgressions that have been committed, which are accompanied by a sense that one has committed more transgressions than one is aware of. But the recognition of sin can never stop with single transgressions. Human beings have not merely committed rebellion; they have become rebels. By having denied God the “Yes” of love that they owe him for their entire existence, they have walked out of community with God and have doomed themselves as egoes separated from God and locked into themselves. Turning away [Abkehr] from

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God has brought about a corruption [Verkehrtheit] of the human person. Human beings have become “turned [Verkrümmte] in on themselves.”1 Whatever the decision has been in turning away from God, it cannot continue without consequences for human life, for human beings have their existence not in themselves but from God and for God. In their decision against God, human beings have cut themselves off from their origin, from whom they have come, and from their goal, from the one toward whom they are going. They deny the one facing them, without whom they would not exist and without whom they are unable to continue. By separating themselves from God, human beings thus hurt themselves. No longer related to the divine Thou, the human I loses its dominion over itself. The powers and functions of the human being acquire an arbitrariness, and they step away from each other. Thus the shame that is reported to be a consequence of the fall (Gen. 3.1ff.) signifies an alienation of the consciousness over against its own corporeality. In addition, consciousness and the subconscious lose their unity. Contents that have been repressed into the subconscious conflict with the decisions that have been made consciously. The manifold tensions that have been pointed out in modern psychology—e. g., between the ego and the id (S. Freud), between the ego and the self (C. G. Jung), and between mind and life (L. Klages)—receive their actual grounding in the horizon of the loss of the divine center of life. Desiring, knowing, willing, and doing no longer proceed in the same direction.[ii] Turning away from God also spells the loss of the intended purpose of the center of human community. If one refuses to acknowledge the one from whom all human beings have come and toward whom they are going, then the awareness of human community falls apart, for then there is no trust in being carried together by God’s care. By separating themselves from God, human beings become alienated not only from themselves but also from other humans, and mistrust, anxiety, greed, and violence enter into the relationship with them. Rebellion against God unleashes a battle between the sexes, the generations, the families, and the nations. Transgression against God also leads to a breakdown of the relationship with the non-human creation. The dominion of human beings over it becomes perverted if human beings lose sight of the fact that they, despite all their uniqueness, are united with it in a creaturely dependence on God. Thus the rebellion against the Creator brings human beings into dependence on creatures. Precisely by thinking that they are to be the lord of their life, they are calling everything into question, their dominion over themselves, their community with other people, and their special position amidst the rest of the creation. They 1 Augustine, De civitate Dei, XIV.13. [CCSL, 48.434–5; The City of God, WSA, I/7.119 (trans. modified). Cf. NPNF 1 , 2.273. The original Latin phrase is: “inclinatus ad se ipsum.” Luther developed this phrase slightly differently: “Homo incurvatus in se ipsum” (Luther, Römervorlesung [1515/16], WA, 56.356.5 [Lectures on Romans, LW 1 , 25.345]). –Ed.]

Imprisonment in Guilt

become threatened and threatening, and they are never at peace. They attain a size that is fragile and sick in itself, a power that is profoundly weak. That is the misery of sinners. In the history of the doctrine of sin, some have emphasized the sinful decision, while others the condition of sinfulness, and this sinfulness has sometimes been interpreted more as misery and at other times more as guilt. Such differences in reflections about sin need not necessarily be differences between taking sin seriously or trivializing it. These differences could also have arisen from the fact that in view of the various historical attacks on the Christian understanding of human beings, different aspects of the doctrine of sin needed to be given greater weight. Reflection on sin must, however, always proceed from the existential knowledge of sin. In the basic experience in which God encounters and unveils human beings, they recognize not only that they have sinned but that they are sinners. In the act of repentance, both are always confessed to God, namely, that I have sinned in thought, word, and deed, and that I am a sinner. This basic confession is voiced in all churches straight across the differences in theological reflection that exist in them. As surely as we may lament our misery to God, we would still be evading God if we did not at the same time confess ourselves to be guilty before him, for the root of our misery is our turning away from God.

2. Imprisonment in Guilt Even if we deny our origin, we cannot do away with it. Even as those who want to live entirely on our own, we remain dependent on God, for we have our existence solely as his creatures. We can refuse to acknowledge God, but we cannot get rid of him. The purpose that he has given to the human being continues to be valid. As those who have refused to believe in the Creator, to return his love, and to give him thanks, we remain indebted to him. This indebtedness [Schuld] is total, for human beings possess nothing that they have not received from God’s goodness. In all they were saying about life, they should have been thanking him. For this reason, with every single decision against God, they in effect withdraw from him the complete surrender that would correspond to the Creator’s love for human beings. The greatness of our guilt [Schuld] corresponds to the greatness of the one whom we have offended. None of us can get rid of this guilt on our own: If we would want to hide our failure, we would still not stay hidden from God. Even if we refuse to acknowledge God, God still knows each one of us, together with all our thoughts and actions. Although human beings can indeed repress their failures from their own consciousness, they cannot remove them from God’s knowing.

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If we would want to trivialize our failure and assert that it is only a single misstep that we have committed alongside our other good deeds, we still remain subject to God’s claim upon our whole person. God not only commands individual deeds but claims the whole person. Nor can we undo what has happened by resolving to better ourselves. Even if we try to avoid doing in the future those actions that we have committed against God in the past, yet we still cannot undo the separation we have caused. Human beings cannot restore community with God by themselves. No human can do this. There is nothing through which we can make make amends again for our failure against God, for what could we offer to him for which we are not already indebted to him as it is? But if we would want to assume the punishment for our actions, what punishment would be appropriate for rebellion against God? After all, the decision against God is separation from the one who is the source of life, and the guilt before God is total guilt. The punishment for such guilt would utterly destroy the offender. Sinners are thus imprisoned in their guilt. Although sin is committed by human beings, it does not remain in their power but acts as a power against them that binds them. Paradise is closed to them. They cannot force its return. With impressive logical consistency, Athanasius in the East and Anselm of Canterbury in the West have demonstrated that it is impossible for human beings to get rid of the consequences of sin on their own.2 Only one can free human beings from guilt, the one before whom human beings have become guilty, namely, God himself. But if human beings cannot get rid of their guilt themselves, they also cannot free themselves of the misery in which they find themselves. To be sure, they can struggle against it and try to make their lives bearable. They can do a lot to improve their situation. But they cannot remove the ultimate cause of their misery. In many ways human beings can try to restore unity in themselves, either through self-discipline or through living entirely on their own [Sich-Ausleben], by subordinating the divided and disconnected forces in their lives to their thinking and willing, or by elevating pleasure as the principle of their life. Human beings can control their desires to a large extent, and yet what is repressed remains effective in disturbing their wholeness as a person. They can give free rein to the fulfillment of their desires, and yet emptiness, not fulfillment, will be the end of this path—disgust, and not joy. Sinners may also try to remove the disturbances in their relationships with other people, to be sure, in very different ways. They can flee into preferential

2 See Athanasius, De incarnatione Verbi, esp. §6f. and §19f. [PG, 25.95–198; Incarnation of the Word, NPNF 2 , 4.36–67, esp. 39ff. and 46ff.). –Ed.]; and Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus homo, I.19ff. [PL, 158.389ff.; Cur Deus homo, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, 236ff. –Ed.]

Imprisonment in Guilt

treatment of individual human beings or of certain groups; or they may, through engagement and struggle, want to create a better all-encompassing social order. But the resulting illusions of harmony soon pass away. Again and again rivalries and enmities disintegrate human relationships. In this way, human beings remain alienated from themselves and from other human beings, vacillating between love and hatred, between a sense of responsibility and complete indifference, between defiance and anxiety. Only at a safe distance, then, does coexistence appear tolerable. But neither sexual relations nor legal systems nor the retreat into oneself can replace the community with others that has been revealed to the human being by God’s love. The same applies to the disturbance of the human being’s relationship to non-human creatures. In reflection on the imprisonment of human beings in their guilt and misery, the issue of the freedom of the will has been formulated and answered in very different ways in the history of theology. Some have taught that human freedom remains untouched by sin, while others have taught that the freedom of the will has been limited by sin. Still others have taught that free will has become enslaved or even lost because of sin. But these different answers should not be evaluated in isolation from each other or placed into opposition to each other. They, too, could have been occasioned by various historical fronts and various theological connections that extend beyond the doctrine of sin, for the issue of the freedom of the will does not only occur in this article of doctrine. It also surfaces in the doctrine of creation, through reflection on the relationship between God’s action and creaturely self-functioning, and in the doctrine of redemption, through reflection on the relationship between God’s action of grace and human action. In addition, it obviously appears in deliberations about God’s eternal decree, which takes place through his foreknowledge and the election by grace. At this point, we will restrict ourselves to the basic act of confessing sins. Straight through the diversity in the doctrinal statements about the freedom and non-freedom of the will, in all churches people who recognize themselves to be sinners before God are aware, before all systematic-theological reflection, that they cannot free themselves from guilt. In all churches, the confession of guilt implies the acknowledgment of one’s inability to restore community with God through one’s own power. What remains is only the plea for God’s mercy, “Only you, O God, can clear my guilt. Only you can save me from my misery!” In whatever way this confession is reflected in connection with the other dimensions of the issue of freedom, what is certain in the basic act of confessing one’s sins is the inability of the will to free oneself from guilt. Only when the voiced “Kyrie eleison” is taken seriously in dogmatics prior to any comprehensive reflection, can a fruitful ecumenical dialogue between the various churches begin to take place regarding the freedom of the will.

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3. The Urge to Sin If we recognize that our purpose is to be in the image of God, then we not only acknowledge our transgressions and their consequences but discover in ourselves an aversion to this purpose, an urge to turn away from God and to live our life entirely on our own. Although it is impossible for sinners to liberate themselves from the imprisonment of their guilt and their misery, they keep evading the knowledge of their situation before God. The pinnacle of this evasion is the self-righteousness by which sinners praise their works before God, whether evil deeds that they call good or good deeds that they claim in place of the total obedience owed to God. If human beings justify themselves in this way, then individual transgressions become habits and vices. More and more they then call good that which is evil. They add to their sins more and more, and become completely entangled in sinning. At the same time, they more and more lose sight of the root of their misery and of what could give their life true meaning and real fulfillment. From sinful action there arises a passion for sinning, and from the suffering under the misery there arises an infatuation with what harms individuals and increases their misery. This is being in love with nothingness and ruin (concupiscence). If human beings recognize that their intended purpose is to be in the image of God, then they of course also realize that this urge to sin is not only the result of their personal decisions but already precedes them. It arises not only when human beings justify their failures and increasingly harden themselves against God. Rather, in the matter of course in which they do this, there is already an urge operating that makes it easy for them to do it and then to turn a blind eye to their real situation. By refusing to confess their failures to God and to surrender to God’s mercy, human beings give room for this urge in their thinking and acting, and they let it more and more become an addiction that determines their choices. Through this consent of theirs, they make their desire stronger, and their ever-stronger desire ensnares them in their failures. True also about the misery of human beings are the two following givens: the disintegration of one’s unity is a consequence of one’s turning away from God, and this turning away already presupposes a disrupted unity. When human beings turned away from God, they were already living in a condition in which their desiring, thinking, willing, and accomplishing were in conflict with each other. Alienation from other human beings is a consequence of their decision against God, and yet they made that decision already in the midst of a disrupted human society and under the influence of coercive forces within it. Desire can take different forms that go against the purpose that is given to human beings. Desire can appear as an urge to free oneself from God, to harness God for one’s own aims, or to deny him. It can appear as an urge to control other people in

The Urge to Sin

order to secure and advance oneself, by love and hate, by conflict and submission, also to control others by facing them with expectations that only God can fulfill, and that turn about into the very opposite. In this way, various desires can be distinguished, among which sexual desire may not be given special prominence. But even if that diversity would be set forth in a comprehensive and sophisticated psychology of desire, its nature would be misunderstood. Rather, it is ultimately all about the urge to refuse to give God the response that would correspond to his love. By turning away from God, the longing for nourishment, sexual intimacy, personal development, and a place of caring security [Geborgenheit]—all these longings get a wrong direction. It is in the turning away from God that the unleashing of desires has its root. One can become aware of desire in various ways. It can, so to speak, slumber and remain unconscious. It can rise with seductive power against the ego and seek to determine thinking, willing, and doing. Then a struggle arises. The more desire wins in this struggle, the more it turns into a passion that rules thinking, willing, and doing. The more the ego languishes in this fight and undergoes repeated failure, the weaker the opposition between awareness and desire becomes until the two coincide and the human being thinks, wills, and does what the desire wants. When human beings give room to desire and repress the knowledge of their failures, they think themselves to be free. But precisely in this way they are enslaved. The recognition of the urge to sin also gives rise to reflections on the issue of the freedom of the will. These arise not only from considerations about how it is impossible for human beings themselves to remedy the guilt they have incurred by their failure. Such reflections also arise in light of another question, namely, whether and to what extent human beings are free not to become guilty, i. e., if a disinclination toward God already lies within them. Has their free will only become a prisoner through their own decision, or does their decision already take place within a captivity? This question is not just about the consequence of their decision against God but about the presupposition for that decision. In the history of theology, very different judgments have been made about concupiscence. For some, it was understood to be a creaturely urge that was ethically neutral. For others, it was a weakness of human beings in their struggle against sin. For still others, concupiscence was understood to be a propensity to sin, while some understood it already itself to be sin. These positions, too, may not be separated from their historical and systematic contexts and compared in isolation with one another. We would not in that way do them justice. Regardless of whatever arguments theological reflection has made in confronting other understandings of human beings, there emerges straight across the various churches, in the actual doing of repentance, the startling insight that sin does not only consist of individual sinful thoughts, words, and deeds, and of their consequences, but also entails an abyss of contradictions and perversities, a being driven by irrational longings and

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fears, which surface from the unconscious and press toward a decision against God. Before God, I recognize myself to be corrupted already in the presuppositions of my sinful behavior. “For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom. 7.18). In this way, the discovery of the tendency to sin does not imply an excuse for sin or a denial of responsibility. In the act of confessing one’s sins, the urge to sin and the act of sinning cannot be played against each other. Rather, they belong together, they interpenetrate each other. In both ways—inclined to sin and actually sinning—human beings stand before God as sinners, not only when they are conscious of their decision but also in the irrational depths of their existence. Thus, in all churches, the cry for God’s mercy is not only the plea for the forgiveness of sin and deliverance from guilt but the plea for a new heart, indeed, for the renewal of the whole person—for the putting off of the old human being and for the creation of a new human being.

4. The Dominion of Sin The preceding remarks in this chapter can be summarized in the concept of the dominion of sin. Sin has dominion, in that human beings make room for the urge to sin through their decision. “[Everyone] who commits sin is a slave to sin” (Jn. 8.34 [S]; cf. Rom. 6.16, 19). It has dominion in that human beings are unable to liberate themselves from their slavery caused by guilt and misery. They are “sold into slavery under sin” (Rom. 7.14); they serve sin as a “slave” (Rom. 6.16f., 20; Jn. 8.34). It has dominion in that human beings justify their sinfulness and play down their guilt and misery. Sin is thereby brought to its full dominion. It has dominion over human beings like a foreign power, and yet it is their own sin that governs them. The word sin does not mean the same thing in each of these sentences, but here desire and action, personal self-determination and being determined, being guilty and being bound up with guilt, free choice and being enslaved, are peculiarly intertwined with one another. For this reason, it would be wrong to dismiss the Pauline statements about the dominion of sin as a mythological personification of sin. That the concept of the dominion of sin encompasses a multitude of relationships becomes fully clear when one considers that humanity, over which sin has dominion, entails the coexistence and succession of many people who have impacted one another. From birth, everyone is surrounded by people’s failings, arrests of guilty people, and people trying to extricate themselves from guilt and misery. All of this affects everyone. Some of these transgressions have become habitualities which, in the form of moral customs and legal systems, outlast successive generations. These habits encounter the individual with the expectation of self-evident compliance. From their youth, all individuals are embedded in the misery of their surrounding

The Dominion of Sin

world. Thus the transgressions of previous generations also have a consequential effect on their biological heirs. In the context of these influences, temptations, seductions, and compulsions, all individuals make decisions that follow from their urge to sin, which in turn have an impact on their surrounding world. The sin of the individual, the sin of the individual’s contemporaries, and the sin of those who have preceded the individual are all interconnected. Sin has dominion over all human beings, and at all times, yet not in the same way. There are different degrees of awareness and volition by which human beings commit, repeat, and justify their transgressions against God. In a special way, however, the severity of sin depends on the revelation of the one against whom the human being turns. Paul has thus taught, “[The] law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied” (Rom. 5.20 [S]). He speaks here of the Old Testament law that God had given Israel through Moses. Although sin was already in the world, “it was not reckoned” apart from the Old Testament law (Rom. 5.13). “Apart from the law sin lies dead” (Rom. 7.8). It is true that Paul presupposes that even for non-Jews the requirements of the law are “written on their hearts” (Rom. 2.15), but in contrast to this, the Old Testament law encounters the human being in the word and therefore in the most proper sense as an opponent. It shatters the adulterations by which human beings supplant the law that is written on their hearts. It takes people out of their hiding places and places them before God. This is especially true of the Old Testament law, namely, “[I]f it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness” (Rom. 7.7f. [S]). “[W]hen the commandment came, sin revived” (Rom. 7.9 [S]). Wholly unavoidable is the demand of God which human beings encounter in the proclamation of Jesus. Here the Old Testament law is radicalized in an unprecedented way. If, e. g., in the Decalogue certain machinations were forbidden with the command, “you shall not covet,” so then it would be the case that the one who looks with covetous eyes is already placed under that judgment—a judgment which, in the Old Testament law, had been reserved solely for the act of adultery. Now, however, the human being cannot evade the demand of Jesus by means of any such casuistry with respect to the interpretation of the law. God’s commandments are grounded in his deeds of lovingkindness. In this way, the law, which is written on the hearts of all people, has its basis in the fact that God has given them life and upholds them despite the judgment into which they have fallen. The Old Testament law is grounded in God’s act of redeeming Israel. Because God has chosen this people, liberated them from Egyptian slavery, and guided them through history, they have a special obligation to trust, love, and thank him. For this reason, Israel’s transgressions weighed heavier than those of the other nations. The Old Testament prophets branded them as incomparably graver. The radical nature of Jesus’ demand, however, is grounded in God’s

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reign, which he announced, and which broke out through his person, in his forgiving and his healing. The trivialization of sin was here completely refuted by the fact that Jesus accepted sinners and that the righteous opposed him. By rejecting the salvation that appeared in Jesus, sin became even greater than it was under the Old Testament law. The saying of Christ is true: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin…. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin” (Jn. 15.22, 24).

There thus takes place here an awakening, an increase, and a flaring up of sin, depending on the greatness of the divine deeds of lovingkindness and the clarity of the demand against which the human being turns. Already in their time, the Old Testament prophets reproached Israel, which had fallen away from Yahweh, for having an urge to sin through the power of its pride, for being drunk with a lust for sin, for having a confused spirit and a perverse will. What the prophets recognized among their contemporaries in Israel has been revealed as the reality of all human beings through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. All have turned against Jesus, both Jews and Romans. Even his disciples deserted him. All are imprisoned under the dominion of sin. The radicalization of the knowledge of sin through the coming of Jesus Christ is especially evident in the fact that humanity as a whole is described in the Gospel of John as “darkness” and is referred to by Paul as “flesh.” Here the word flesh signifies not only the whole person in that individual’s transience, as in the Old Testament, but the whole person in that individual’s rebellion against God. “[T]he mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot” (Rom. 8.7). In this way, sin is revealed as a power that has dominion over all people, not only over each individual person but also over human society, and not only over those who live contemporaneously with one another but also over successive generations. It also encompasses procreating, conception, and birth. It was due to the mercy of God that he did not first unveil the abyss of sin until Jesus Christ came to save human beings from this abyss. The church’s doctrine cannot go back behind the revelation of sin through Jesus Christ. Both of the following statements are true: Because human beings sin, they are sinners; and, vice versa, because human beings are sinners, they sin. Indeed, this consequence is true not only in the sense that because human beings have become sinners through their sinful decisions they continue to sin. Rather, as those who are born under the dominion of sin, they make their sinful decisions. The dominion of sin is the precondition and consequence of sinful activity. These insights belong inseparably together in the act of confessing sins and crying for God’s forgiveness. These seemingly contradictory mutual statements are intertwined with one another. They are basic paradoxes of the faith that express the reality of the sinner before God.

The Dominion of Sin

In the act of confessing sins, the statements concerning each individual’s own decision for which that person is responsible and the statements concerning that individual’s being born in the midst of a sinful humanity are also not contradictory. When people recognize their sins, it shatters the unquestioned assumption by which they isolate themselves from other human beings. They see the conflicts between their opponents and themselves embraced and relativized by the infinite distance that separates all people from God. Through their confrontation with other people, they become aware of a “we” that resists God, of a “we” in which I am united with other human beings before God. In the confession of sins, the cry for God’s mercy comes out of the depths in which the individual who cries here does not remain an individual, for this crying gives voice to the creatureliness in which all people are bound. It longs for liberation from corruption. Thus, in the act of confessing sins, statements about one’s own sin and those about the knowledge of being grouped with sinners belong together. Isaiah’s response to God’s revelation was thus, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” (Isa. 6.5). When the Old Testament psalmist confessed, “I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me” (Ps. 51.5), this should not be understood to refer to a special transgression of the mother, nor were conception and birth designated sins as such. But the one praying knew that he, together with his mother, was set in a context of sin that is comprehensive (cf. Job 14.4: “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?”). By recognizing this context, the psalmist has not weakened or abolished the confession of his own sin. The confession of one’s own sin and the recognition of the comprehensive context of sinful life that affects all human beings are intertwined. This intertwining of individual sin and the general dominion of sin over all humanity is fully attested to in the New Testament. Here humanity is not just the sum of all individual human beings but a totality to which the individual belongs as a member.

But if a person walks out of the act of confessing sin, then the following antitheses arise: If people become sinners through their sinning, then they cannot be a sinner before they sin. But if people sin because they are a sinner, then they are not guilty. If by their sinning, human beings become enslaved to guilt, then this enslavement cannot be the precondition of their sinning. But if the enslavement already precedes their decision, then their enslavement is not guilt but fate. If by their sinning, individuals join other sinners in sinning, then they cannot be a member of sinful humanity already before their own sinning. But if they sin as a member of sinful humanity, then sin is not their own decision. We could continue with such antitheses, but we will here summarize them in two sentences: If by their sinning, human beings submit to the dominion of sin,

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then they cannot be under this dominion from birth. But if they are already under this dominion before they sin, then sin is not their decision. The church has refused to teach each of these alternatives in isolation. In the struggle against Gnosticism, for example, and especially against Manichaeism, the church rejected the idea that humanity is by nature evil and lacking freedom because of the encasement of the human soul in an ungodly material corporeality.[iii] Conversely, in the discussion and debate with Pelagianism, the church rejected the view that all human individuals begin their life as originally good and only become a sinner by their own free decision.[iv] Both heresies have also appeared later in other forms, but they have been rejected again and again (as has happened, e. g., with the Pelagianism of the modern Enlightenment). Between these two extremes, however, there is a lot of room in which the indicated alternatives have been related to one another and harmonized in very different ways. Such differences not only exist between the separated churches since they have also manifested themselves in various emphases within the same church body. For example, in the case of the Eastern church fathers, the emphasis lay more on the actions of human beings by which they become sinners, whereas with Augustine the emphasis was more on the condition of being a sinner, from which sinful actions arise. While the Eastern Church emphatically maintained the freedom of the sinner, Augustine emphasized the enslavement of this freedom through guilt. While the Eastern fathers understood desire merely as a temptation and a weakness in the struggle against sin, Augustine called it sin. While the former emphasized the ability of human beings to do good works and even occasionally spoke of the sinlessness of children, the latter understood the good works of the heathen to be sins, and that even unbaptized children are fallen sinners who are under God’s judgment. In contrast to the Eastern Church, the Augustinian tradition of Western Christendom has not understood the dominion of sin primarily as a consequence of sinful deeds and misery but as an enmity against God that is deeply rooted in the human being, which manifests itself in sinful deeds. These differences have been perceived to be so significant that Augustine is not acknowledged as a church father in the Orthodox Church and is not infrequently suspected of Manichaeism, while conversely, the Western Church has often seen Pelagian tendencies in the theology of the Eastern Church. It is all the more remarkable that it was not these differences that led to the separation between Rome and Byzantium.[v] Similar differences have also occurred in the history of Western Christendom. With respect to the responsibility of the human being, the Augustinian doctrine of sin has been repeatedly disputed or at least weakened. It was clearly defended by the Second Synod of Orange in 529 against the semi-Pelagianism of Gallic monks.[vi] Thomas Aquinas also maintained it in essential respects.[vii] However, in the Scotist-Ockhamist voluntarism of the late Middle Ages, it experienced a considerable weakening without being excluded from the church.[viii] By contrast, the Reformers returned to the Augustinian tradition by teaching that all human beings “from birth are full of evil lust and inclination and cannot by nature

The Dominion of Sin

possess true fear of God and true faith in God….”3 Against Nominalism, the Council of Trent returned more fully again to Augustinian and Thomistic ideas. On closer examination, the differences between the Reformation and Tridentine doctrines of sin are far smaller than the Tridentine anathemas suggest. Only in part do they touch on Reformation doctrine. Thus, in the statements concerning the freedom of the will of the sinner, there is no essential difference between the Confessio Augustana (Art. II and XVIII) and the first six Tridentine canons concerning justification.[ix] However, both in the Roman Catholic Church and in the churches of the Reformation there were considerable fluctuations between the alternatives outlined above, e. g., between Thomism and Molinism, between Jansenism and Jesuit pragmatism, and between the confessional renewal of the churches of the Reformation in the nineteenth century and the anthropology of the Enlightenment and German Idealism.[x] In this connection it is striking that the differences between the Reformation and Tridentine doctrine of sin in Western Christendom were accorded a significance that was deemed to be church-dividing, even though they are of lesser importance than those between Augustine and the Greek fathers, which did not result in a separation of the churches.

The history of the differences that are cited above cannot be described more precisely as a part of the basic features of this ecumenical dogmatics, and the various arguments in these theological controversies cannot be examined in detail. Several points are to be hightlighted, however, that need to be noted in the ecumenical dialogue about sin: (a) This dialogue cannot be content with comparing the various dogmas and doctrinal statements with respect to their wording, clarifying the terms that are used, and elaborating on the existing commonalities and differences. With no less diligence, it will have to investigate what role the same subject matter has played in the overall life of each church body in its various periods, and what is stated there about sin, in addition to statements of dogma and to doctrine expressed in the other structures of faith-statement. In this way, one can often discover that what one misses in the dogmatic statements of another church body, or what one finds to be insufficiently stated, is encountered in that church body’s actual worship conduct and piety and throughout the other structures of its statements of proclamation, prayer, and confession. The commonality of the confession of sin has already been pointed out. In addition, e. g., study of The Philokalia (the well-known collection of Eastern-Church witnesses, which has become very important not only for Russian Orthodox Christianity) makes clear that despite the strong doctrinal emphasis on human freedom, the consciousness of being a total sinner and of the deep-rooted urge to sin, as well as of the inability of people to liberate themselves from sin

3 AC II. [German text; BSELK, 94 (BC, 38). –Ed.]

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and guilt, is also quite alive in the Eastern Church.[xi] On the other side, we find within the Augustinian tradition of Western Christendom, along with its doctrinal emphasis on the depravity of human beings and the enslavement of their will, the strongest of appeals to their responsibility and manifold witnesses to their engagement in the struggle against sin. Obviously, the statements that are made about sin in the totality of church life are more comprehensive than the particular statements about sin in doctrine and dogma. Hence arises the question: How do differences in doctrine come about, despite far-reaching agreements in piety? (b) It is necessary to take into account the various historical fronts in relation to which the Greek fathers, on the one hand, and Augustine, on the other hand, have reflected on sin and formulated their doctrine of sin. The doctrine of the Eastern Church has received its special character in the fight against Gnosticism. Over against a naturalistic understanding of sin, it has emphasized the responsible sinful decision. Over against the assertion of an inevitable depravity of desire, it has emphasized desire as a weakness and a mere temptation that is to be resisted. And over against the denial of human freedom, it has emphasized the free will, which endures for human beings in their struggle against sin and in their grasping of grace. Augustine, however, develops his doctrine of sin in the fight against Pelagianism, which called into question the total reliance of the human being upon grace. Over against reducing sin to sinful deeds, he emphasized the sinful depravity of humankind. Over against the ethically neutral appraisal of desire, he emphasized its sinfulness. And over against the freedom of the will, he emphasized its enslavement to sin. The Augustinian antitheses have repeatedly been invoked in Western Christendom, albeit with varying intensity. (c) These differences were compounded by the consequences that arose when the doctrine of sin was treated more comprehensively in contexts of systematic doctrinal teaching. In the struggle against Gnosticism, the Eastern Church has emphasized more strongly the continuing creatureliness of human beings and their enduring rationality and freedom, which are not abolished by sin, while the Western Church, in its struggle against Pelagianism, has taught the disfigurement and corruption of human creatureliness by sin, and with it a profound break in the history of humanity. This difference, in turn, had repercussions for the doctrine of the original state, which in the Eastern Church was understood more as a beginning that points toward perfection, while in the West it was understood more as a possession of perfection. Related to the differences about the doctrine of sin is also the fact that the doctrine of predestination never became the subject of disputes in the East to the extent that it did in the West. If in the West this was about God’s eternal free decree to save some from the dominion of sin and to leave others under it, in the East it was understood above all as the divine foreknowledge of human decisions for or against God and of their consequences.

The Dominion of Sin

The differences in the doctrine of sin were also systematically consolidated by consequences that arose from other articles of doctrine. There are statements by Eastern fathers concerning the freedom with which the individual sins that hardly differ in their wording from statements made by Pelagius and his followers. This is in keeping with the fact that in the Eastern Church Pelagianism was not rejected as heresy with the same intensity as it was in the West. It must be remembered, however, that the Eastern understanding of creation, in contrast to Pelagianism, was set forth in light of the salvation of the world that took place through Christ, and thus in the context of the education (paideia) that encompasses the cosmos by divine grace. The statements about human abilities are not only about human nature as such but about the nature assumed by Christ, about the humanity renewed by his resurrection. By contrast, the interest of Western Christendom is focused more on God’s action, through word and sacrament, to save individual human beings out of the mass of lost humanity, and to renew and unite them in Christ. Of course, this focus does not mean that the significance of Christ’s act of salvation for the world is denied, just as conversely, the cosmic understanding of salvation in Greek theology by no means denies the necessity of the personal acquisition of salvation. (d) Behind the differences that arise from the other fronts that the church faces is the fundamental issue of the structure of the doctrine of sin. Sin is uncovered by God, especially through his word. This happens to human beings in a twofold form of address, in God’s demand and God’s promise of salvation, in his claim [Anspruch] and assurance [Zuspruch]. Sin is unveiled through both forms of address. Both forms require and carry out the separation from sin—most radically through Jesus’ commitment to sinners and his demand for better justice. Both forms of address belong inseparably together in the old and new covenants. But they cannot be set against each other and reduced to one sentence, for through the law God requires everything, and through the gospel he gives everything. What he requires, he bestows, and what he bestows, he requires. In the act of being encountered by God’s address, there is no contradiction between these two forms. The basic response of human beings who are unmasked by God’s address is to confess sin and to cry for grace. Under the twofold address of God, human beings recognize themselves as prisoners in guilt and misery and as those who are called to repentance. If this self-knowledge is reflected upon and the basic response of confessing sins and calling for liberation is transposed into the structure of statements about human beings, then the urge for non-contradiction and logical consistency in doctrinal statements takes over. What is inextricably interlinked in the basic act of confession—namely, knowledge of one’s own inability and of the need to fulfill the repentance that is required—diverge from each other, and the issue of theoretically determining the relationship of the emerging contradictions becomes the topic. This then happens in various ways against various historical fronts, whether it is the sinful deed that is given prominence or the condition

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of being a sinner, whether it is responsibility or enslavement. The divergence of doctrinal statements about sin maintains its systematic sharpness if the reflection does not stop with determining the relationship between the sinful deed and the condition of being a sinner but advances to general statements about human abilities that are still valid for human beings even apart from sin. Thus standing in opposition to each other are, on the one hand, the Eastern Church’s statements about human freedom and its abiding character—whereby the same Greek word αὐτεξούσιον [autexousion] is used to designate the aseity of God—and, on the other hand, Luther’s remark that free will does not exist.[xii] (e) If we take into account the particular structure of the doctrine of sin and the particular historical fronts against which it has been formulated, it then becomes clear that differences in the doctrine of sin had to arise from the nature of the matter at stake—differences between churches and within each individual church body. Differing doctrinal statements need not necessarily exclude each other but can complement each other and, precisely through their differences, protect the Christian knowledge of sin from error that comes from varying directions. Even extreme oppositions, such as between the above-mentioned statements of Eastern theologians and those of Luther concerning the freedom of the will, need not exclude each other if we take into account that the emphasis of the Eastern Church on the abiding character of the freedom of the will arose in response to Gnostic determinism, and that Luther’s dispute about the freedom of the will arose in response to the semi-Pelagianism of Erasmus. Moreover, in the Eastern Church, the freedom of human beings is not understood in the sense that it is identical with God’s freedom but that it is like God’s—and Luther in no way denied freedom to human beings, although he did deny that they have the freedom that God has or the capacity to liberate themselves from the dominion of sin. At the same time, however, it also becomes clear that there is a danger here, which arises when the different doctrinal statements are isolated from each other and taken out of the historical context in which each of them emerged. Because the basic statements about sin are based on the claim [Anspruch] and assurance [Zuspruch] of the divine word and are heard in the act of repentance, the doctrinal statements about sin can be particularly misleading when they are detached from the original historical front in which they arose and are validated as supratemporal propositions. In this way, a one-sided emphasis on the freedom of the will—detached from the struggle against a naturalistic determinism—can lead to legalism, existential angst, and the loss of the certainty of salvation. On the other hand, a one-sided emphasis on the enslavement of the will—detached from the struggle against “works-righteousness”—can lead to religious quietism, ethical indifference, even libertinism. Such forms of one-sidedness ultimately blind people to what is happening in the other churches.

The Judgment into which Human Beings Have Fallen: Death

The unity of the church does not yet need to be called into question when what is taught about sin is taught differently over against different fronts. That unity also does not need to be impugned if these different statements are systematized through different overarching frameworks, for no church has dogmatized a comprehensive system of doctrinal statements. But there can and must be disagreement, however, when a necessary correction over against a given front is made on a timeless dogma that hinders the recognition of other dangers and cripples the struggle against other fronts. If we understand doctrine to be especially the transmission of the historical acts of God, and if we understand proclamation to be the assurance and claim of these acts on and for concrete historical people, then the doctrine of sin is the result of reflecting on the human reality that is unveiled through the concrete assurance and claim of these acts of salvation. Since the basic response of the person so unveiled is the confession of sins, the structure of the doctrine of sin is distinguished from the basic structure of doctrine, namely, the doctrine of God’s acts of salvation. Consistent with this difference is the fact that doctrinal statements about sin have received their obligating authority as dogmas only relatively late, and primarily in the West. For the basic structure of dogma is the confession of God and of his mighty deeds, but the structure of dogmatic statements about sin is a very different one. That raises the question whether the Orthodox Church has not acted correctly when it expressed the knowledge of sin above all in the structures of the liturgy, of piety, and of theological reflection, but scarcely in solemn definitions of dogma.

5. The Judgment into which Human Beings Have Fallen: Death Turning away from God is followed by the disintegration of human life. When human beings want to live entirely on their own and under their own control, they lose it. The disintegration of life begins when the self and desire, when what is willed and what is accomplished, fall apart and work against each other, as well as when that happens between man and woman, parents and children, families, tribes and peoples, and in the alienation from the non-human creatures. It manifests itself in the diseases of the individual and of society. It reaches its conclusion in death, after our mortality had already announced itself in the ever-recurring futility of our efforts to run from this disintegration. Death is the end of human decisions in thought, words, and deeds, the end of rebellion against God and of the attempts to conceal, trivialize, or justify this rebellion, the end of propagating and of killing each other, the end of loving and hating, also the end of misusing the dominion entrusted to human beings in relation to the non-human creation. In death, the wholeness of the human being disintegrates. Death ends not only the life of the body, which again becomes earth and ashes, but

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it ends life in the wholeness of the human possibilities for acting. With all this, death adds nothing new to the decisions of human beings against God. Rather, the reality of the sinner is unveiled in death. If death is thus understood as a consequence of sin, that does not mean that the human being would have originally possessed immortality. But the human being was created for immortality and was promised eternal life. With their failure in relation to the intended community and dominion in the image of God, human beings have lost the promise of eternal life and have sealed themselves against the transformation of their transient earthly life into the imperishability that is like God’s. The disintegration of human beings in death is not only the result of their actions but the result of God’s act. The connection between sin, corruption, and death is not only an inherently human kind but consists in God’s action, which leaves room for human decisions and their consequences. Even if human beings withdraw from God, they cannot run from him. They remain dependent on God. Through death, God exposes the sinner as a rebel and puts an end to the rebellion. Human beings are now confirmed as those who have given themselves into the bondage of guilt and misery and have separated themselves from life. In the occurrence of death, God stands by his creative Word, through which he called human beings out from the other living beings and made them his Thou. The command for righteousness becomes the verdict on injustice. The promise of life becomes the handing over of the unrighteous to death. In death, God’s judgment is issued upon sinners. The love of God encounters them now as God’s wrath. “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance…. Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear that is due you?” (Ps. 90.8, 11 [RSV]) If death is the end of life, that does not mean of course that human beings would again disintegrate into the nothingness from which they were called by God’s creative Word. If death is designated as a fall into nothingness, here nothingness means something different than the doctrine of creation from nothingness, for through death the sinner is locked into nothingness and kept there. Death is not only the act of dying but the realm in which the dead remain. This remaining in death is not a continuation of life. Human lives, their possibilities for making decisions, and their having an impact are over. They remain in death as those who have decided and acted, and they cannot add anything further. In death, earthly life has ended and become final. The deceased remain accountable to God for everything they have done, and they cannot flee from the final judgment of God. The ongoing creatureliness of human beings may perhaps be most evident in that they cannot put an end to their existence. Even if they take their own life, they will remain in death. That the dead do not cease to remain in the realm of death is consistently presupposed in the Old and New Testaments and again and again explicitly attested to

The Judgment into which Human Beings Have Fallen: Death

there. To be sure, the Old Testament repeatedly states that the soul of the human being dies (e. g., Num. 23.10; Judg. 16.30; Job 36.14), in connection with the fact that the Hebrew word nefesh means both soul and life.[xiii] But that the dead remain in the realm of death is by no means denied. What in that connection, however, is rejected is to designate as life the existence of a soul separated from the body. The whole human being—body and soul—is struck by death. The New Testament, too, does not speak of an immortality of the soul. God alone is immortal. Human beings can partake of immortality only as God’s gift of salvation. That the dead remain in death is taught by all churches. This raises the question: What constitutes the continuity between the earthly life of human beings and their existence in death? While God’s coming judgment and the continuing accountability of the dead, for what they have done in their earthly life, were from the beginning proclaimed with great emphasis in Christianity, there was initially little interest in a more exact determination of what continues of the human after the decay of the body in death. For Justin, the soul was considered mortal, while Tertullian endeavored to derive its natural immortality from its simplicity.[xiv] Only since the time of Origen did the doctrine of the immortality of the soul begin to be established in the church.[xv] It was also maintained by the Protestant Reformers. Of course, this can mean a lot of different things: a further real life of the soul or a soul that merely continues, which is not understood as a life—in other words, a life of the soul that is freed by death from the limits of corporeality, or a continuation of the soul, in which the soul is injured and disempowered by its separation from the body. Both Thomas Aquinas and the Protestant Reformers have represented the second alternative.[xvi] One would speak more accurately if one spoke of the soul’s indestructibility rather than of its immortality. However, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul—rightly understood—does not need to be dismissed as the result of the foreign influence of Hellenism and as a corruption of the biblical understanding of death.[xvii] Rather, in its own way, it states that the human being cannot cease being accountable to God. Death inescapably awaits human beings, but just as they do with their guilt, they also seek to deny death. Although they see the dying of other human beings, they do not consider their own death. When they do think about it, however, they give it another meaning. They thus play down death, e. g., by understanding it as a natural process that is common to all living beings, or by interpreting it as an event in which the individual person dissolves into humanity or the universe, or by transforming death into an act of human freedom and an entrance into real life. Humanity’s history is a history of the most varied attempts to cover the abyss of death and to put the dead into their proper place in life through religious rites and cults. But at the same time the suppressions and transfigurations of the dead are called into question by angst in the face of death. Ultimately, all efforts at minimizing death break down in the encounter with God.

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Like sin, the reality of death is also revealed through God’s address. Israel’s understanding of life and death was determined by the divine act that delivered it from Egyptian bondage, by the promise of land and of guarding the growing nation. To those trusting in God’s promise and obeying his commandments, life was assured, a life on this earth in praise of the divine acts of salvation. In contrast, the dead are the “matting” [“Matten”] in whom the individual’s individuality and history are indeed preserved, but who lack all strength to enjoy, to will, and to act. In the realm of death, bearing witness and giving birth no longer occur. Above all, however, access to God is closed off: “For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who can give you praise?” (Ps. 6.5); “those who go down to the Pit cannot hope for your faithfulness” (Isa. 38.18; cf. Pss. 88.11–13; 115.17). The certainty of a community with God that cannot be torn asunder even by death is only sporadically expressed in the Old Testament Scriptures (cf. Ps. 73.23–26), and the expectation of a resurrection from the dead arises only late in Israel. Sheol is the region of God’s remoteness. The deceased are trapped there as in a net or a pit. They are radically cut off from life. Every kind of death cult was strictly forbidden in Israel. This understanding of death, however, did not mean that dying would be understood as God’s judgment in every instance. According to numerous Old Testament witnesses, dying in old age, surrounded by descendants—“old and full of life”—was accepted as an occurrence as self-evident as the withering of flowers and grass.4 But on the other hand, an early and sudden death, a death without descendants, or one that followed their loss, as well as deadly catastrophes that affected the whole nation—these were experienced as God’s judgment. The New Testament Scriptures also speak of death as the end of earthly life. At the same time, however, they recognize that earthly life is already embraced by death in such a way that the living are also designated as dead. Since sinners have separated themselves from community with God, the one who lives eternally, they have already lost their life and are dead. Mental and physical vitality as such is not yet life. Jesus thus spoke of living people as the dead who bury their dead (Lk. 9.60). In the letter to the Ephesians the exhortation goes forth to living people: “Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Eph. 5.14). As a sinner, the human being is “dead even while living” (1 Tim. 5.6 [S]). Every living person is now considered dead, not merely (as in the Old Testament psalms) the sick, the persecuted, the abandoned, but also the healthy, the happy, and the powerful. Death also reigns, as universal as sin. “[D]eath spread to all because all have sinned” (Rom. 5.12 [S]). “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6.23). Not only a sudden and childless dying, not only national catastrophes, but death itself is simply considered to be God’s judgment. Here death is not confined to ancient-Israelite

4 [Cf., e. g., Gen. 35.29; 1 Chron. 23.1; 2 Chron. 24.15. –Ed.]

The Judgment into which Human Beings Have Fallen: Death

ideas about the powerlessness and shadowiness of the deceased. Rather, it is now announced with judgment as an “eternal fire” (Mk. 9.43 [L] et passim), an “eternal punishment” (Mt. 25.46), a “second death” (Rev. 20.14; 21.8). It is impossible to dismiss such statements and similar ones in the New Testament message as foreign intrusions from Jewish apocalyptic literature. Through the gospel, the illusions with which human beings seek to deceive themselves about their enslavement to death are shattered, for through his death and resurrection Jesus unveiled the dominion of death, but he also destroyed it. He has redeemed people not only from Egypt but from the bondage of sin and death, and he has brought about not only the preservation of earthly life but also the transformation of this transient life into immortal communion with God. Because of God’s lovingkindness, he has fully unveiled the dominion of death by destroying it. In the history of church doctrine, greater emphasis has at times been given to the continuing dominion of death, while at other times greater emphasis has been given to death’s disempowerment through Jesus Christ. Here again, on the one hand, more emphasis was sometimes placed on the universal disempowerment of the dominion of death over the whole of humanity, while on the other hand, more emphasis was sometimes placed on the salvation of the believer in Christ from the power of death. Even if the one or the other statement has come to the fore in various historical disputes, they still belong inseparably together. For as surely as Jesus has won the victory over death for all human beings, so surely does salvation from death come by faith in him. Because the dominion of death has been shattered through Jesus’ victory, the proclamation of the church calls all people out of this dominion. So it is with good reason that the differences between the Eastern Church’s understanding, which focuses on the more universal disempowerment of death, and the understanding of Western Christendom, which focuses more on believers, did not lead to schism. The dominion of death is to be taken as seriously as the judgment into which human beings have fallen, the judgment from which only Jesus Christ saves. If the judgment of death is truly taken seriously, then considerations about how the judgment upon the dying relates to the announced judgment of the world—and about how the intermediate state between the two events relates to the final state of the risen Lord—become unimportant. The same holds true for attempts to imagine the state of the deceased and to describe the “fire” experienced by those who are judged. Precisely in this way, the New Testament Scriptures are very reserved in comparison to Jewish apocalyptic literature. As for the rest of these issues, one cannot assume that the structure of time is the same for the deceased as it is for earthly life.

Christendom certainly has to take the judgment of death more seriously than it does today. But it takes it seriously only if, in its thinking and teaching about death, it does not persist in gazing upon the dying but turns to Christ himself and clings

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to him as the Redeemer. The decision about life and death is a matter of accepting or rejecting the message of Christ: “[A]nyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life” (Jn. 5.24).

6. Origin and Failure How have we become enslaved to death? Through our decision against God. But we did not first come under the dominion of sin and death through our own sinning. Rather, we sin as those who are already born into the dominion of sin and death. But how did sin and death come to have dominion over human beings? The only reply to this question can be: through the decision of the human being against God. In reference to Gen. 3 and Rom. 5.12ff., the churches point to Adam’s fall and thereby presuppose the human being’s consequent failure that took place in the beginning of time in relation to the human being’s intended purpose, which then effected the entire history of humanity: “Adam” became a sinner completely through his own decision, but subsequent human beings sinned as those who existed under the effect of Adam’s sin. In this sense, all churches distinguish between original sin [Ursünde] (peccatum originans), through which sin arose, and inherited sin [Erbsünde] (peccatum originatum), which has been effecting humankind since that time. Because the concept of inherited sin—which has been set forth in the Latin Church only since Tertullian and completely since Augustine, and which was widely used in a less vivid sense in the Eastern churches—has become misunderstood in the context of modern biological thought, here the New Testament concept of the dominion of sin is to be preferred to that of inherited sin. It is not as if in fact the inviolable contents of the doctrine of inherited sin should thereby be put aside, but they can be stated in a more understandable way today with the New Testament concept of the dominion of sin. In this sense, we distinguish between the act by which sin came to have dominion and the deeds that are committed under the dominion of sin.

With this response, all churches have most resolutely refused to blame God for the origin of sin: This would happen if it were asserted that human beings were already under the dominion of sin from their creation. In the fight against Gnosticism, the ancient church rejected the various attempts to equate the origin of sin with the origin of the human being. This also applied, e. g., to the attempt to interpret the corporality of the human being as the banishment of the soul, which had been created good, but which was sent into ungodly matter. Similar ideas that deny the original goodness of the body/soul totality of the human being were also later rejected again and again.

Origin and Failure

With the doctrine of the fall, all churches distinguish between the good origin of the whole human person—body and soul—and the failure of the human being. God would also then be held accountable for the origin of sin if one taught that from their origin humans had been too weak, too needy, and desirous to trust God—or to love other human beings—amid the temptations and threats in their surrounding world. In this way, it has been inferred from the modern teaching about evolution that humans, because of their descent from animals, could not act otherwise than to follow their desires and thereby secure their own life. With the doctrine of the fall, all churches reject the notion that from their origin humans could not have resisted temptation, whether it had entered them from the outside or from within. With the doctrine of the fall, the churches have also rejected the insinuation that God has begrudged something of human beings and has deprived them of what they needed to develop their humanity, or that they had been able to secure themselves only in rebellion against God. Such questioning of the goodness of God is ancient. It is found already in the snake’s tempting question in the story of paradise (Gen. 3.5). But if the goodness of the Creator is called into question, then it stands to reason that the actual event of the incarnation was not grounded already in the creation by God but in the disobedience of the human being against God. Thus, e. g., Schiller praised the fall as the first wager of reason, as the beginning of moral existence, and as the happiest event in human history.[xviii] In another way, Hegel also interpreted the fall as a departure from the animal state of naturalness, as the awakening of consciousness, and as a self-comprehending of the I, and he designated Gen. 3 as the eternal myth of the incarnation.[xix] Finally, God would be the author of sin and death if one taught that he needed the sin of human beings to unfold himself. Thus Schelling—adopting ideas by Jakob Böhme—interpreted the world’s release from God and its return into God as events which God needed in order to become truly God, namely, in order for God to achieve self-awareness out of an unconscious impulse, and thus to become, out of imperfection, the perfection of God, which is providence and goodness.5 In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel, in a more sophisticated way, also interpreted the division that took place in the fall as a necessary path in the “process” of the trinitarian self-unfolding of God.6 Although Hegel strongly emphasized sin

5 Cf. Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Philosophie und Religion (Tübingen: Cotta, 1804). [In Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke, 14 vols., ed. Karl Friedrich A. Schelling (Stuttgart and Augsburg: Cotta, 1856–1861), 6.11–70. ET: Philosophy and Religion, ed. and trans. Klaus Ottmann (Putnam, Conn.: Spring, 2010). For the influence of Jakob Böhme on Schelling, see especially Robert F. Brown, The Later Philosophy of Schelling: The Influence of Böhme on the Works of 1809–1815 (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1977). –Ed.] 6 [Cf. Hegel, V, 3.15–24, 119–153, and 197–251 (LPR, 3.77–86, 185–223, and 271–328). –Ed.]

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as opposition to God, God still needs this opposition as a moment in the “selfexplication of his life.”7 Thereby, however, the guilt of the human being is ultimately denied. The doctrine of the fall is the rejection of all attempts to trace the origin of the dominion of sin and death back to God. By distinguishing between origin and failure, human beings confess themselves to be guilty. Through their mistrust of God, their ingratitude and lack of love, and their presumptuous arrogance, sin and death have come to have dominion. Within this fundamental agreement, not inconsiderable dogmatic differences have arisen in the course of church history. They concern less the disobedience of the first human than the consequences for that person and for subsequent humanity. Again, some ideal-typical comparisons must suffice. The churches teach in common that by his fall Adam failed his intended purpose of righteousness and eternal life and lost his original righteousness. In other respects, however, the effect of the fall on the first human has been understood by many of the Eastern fathers, but not only by them, merely as a more or less slight injury and weakening, but under the influence of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, it has been understood as a profound injury of human nature or even as its total corruption. Correspondingly, as a consequence for subsequent human beings, the loss of righteousness and eternal life was understood by some as merely an inherited weakness and a slight vulnerability that allowed for resistance to sin, while others understood it as an urge to sin, as being addicted to sin, and as an inability to escape guilt. Correspondingly, the answers to the question about how the consequences of the first sin are transmitted to the humans who follow them also diverge from one another. On the one hand, some have emphasized the effect of the predecessors’ bad example, which later humans follow, while on the other hand, some have emphasized the context in which human beings exist with one another through propagation, which does not necessarily mean that the act of procreation is in a special way designated as sin. These differences produced very different definitions of the concept of inherited sin [Erbsünde]. Some have understood it as an inherited tendency to sin, which as such is not yet guilt. Others have understood it as a real universality of sin, by which all human beings are guilty. Still others have understood it as the imputation of Adam’s guilt, while others have understood it as the guilt contained in the lineage of Adam. The “hereditary” [Erb] connections between Adam and later humanity have thus been understood with very different emphases: some emphasizing more the physical aspect, others more the ethical, still others more the legal. The differences indicated here are in some respects characteristic of the Eastern and Western doctrinal traditions, but they are also found in manifold variations within Western history.

7 [Hegel, V, 3.131–133, 217–218, 230, and 250–251 (LPR, 3.198–200, 293, 306, and 327–328). Cf. idem, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 32ff., 463ff. –Ed.]

Origin and Failure

The differences between the various doctrines of the fall obviously deal with the same alternatives that were discussed already in the remarks above about the dominion of sin, but of course we are now doing so here in the context of the inquiry into the temporal beginning of this dominion. In this context, too, ecumenical dialogue cannot be restricted to a critical comparison between the different statements but must take into account the historical fronts in which the statements were made, the broader systematic contexts, and the structure of the statements. When this happens, it also follows that the variety of fronts give rise to different statements of doctrine that do not need to exclude each other in every case but can also correct each other and complement each other. If, of course, they are removed from their historical setting in the life of the church and asserted as timeless doctrinal assertions, then reflecting on the first temporal sin can trivialize sin even more dangerously than has already been suggested in the alternatives discussed so far. This happens above all when Adam’s fall is so one-sidedly emphasized that all later humans are already found guilty on the basis of their lineage, regardless of their own decisions. If Adams’s act is so remote in time, does it make sense to make excuses by pointing to it? Sin then no longer seems to be one’s own decision and guilt but fate and destiny. In the course of church history, such one-sided views have again and again provoked Pelagian and semi-Pelagian reactions which, for the sake of safeguarding the responsibility of every human being, weakened or denied the statements about Adam’s fall. Although these reactions often expressed an ethical rigor that did not want to weaken sin but to take it seriously, nevertheless they too downplayed sin, though in a very different way, namely, by not recognizing it as an encompassing force. In view of such contradictions, the fundamental question must be asked: In the whole of Christian doctrine what status [Rang] befits the inquiry into the temporal beginning of sin? If we approach the Old Testament Scriptures with this question, it is striking that neither the prophetic books nor the Psalter refer back to Adam’s fall. This took place only in the late-Jewish wisdom and apocalyptic literature. But even in the New Testament there are only a few references to Adam’s fall. Thus, although Paul made very important statements in Rom. 5.12ff. about the effects of Adam’s transgression on humanity, in 1 Cor. 15.45f. the issue is all about Adam as the “earthly” and “spiritual” man in contrast to Christ, not about Adam’s transgression and its consequences. Moreover, the reference to the temptation and fall of the first humans is only marginal in the New Testament Scriptures (cf. 2 Cor. 1.1, 3; and 1 Tim. 2.14). We should also note that Adam is not a proper name in Gen. 2 and 3 but simply the term for human being. Only in the association of the tradition about Adam’s fall with the other traditions about pre-history does Adam become a proper name (Gen. 5.1ff.). Also, in Rom. 5.12ff. and 1 Cor. 15.45, Adam is not only the first human but at the same time the sum and substance of humanity. He is distinguished as

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the first of all later humans, but they all stand with him together as one human being in contrast to the other human being, Jesus Christ. Both are true, namely, the difference between Adam and other people and the unity of all of them, their temporal succession and their present togetherness and intertwining. Here sin is not reduced to the transgression of the first human, nor is the transgression seen only in the sins of many individuals. Paul thus grounded the dominion of sin in a twofold way, namely, in the transgression of Adam and in the transgressions of later humans. Death has come to all people through sin because “through one man sin came into the world” and “because all have sinned” (Rom. 5.12). Compared to the rare reference back to the temporal beginning of sin, far more weight is given in the Bible to statements that unveil concrete transgressions. Also, the remembrance of past transgressions in the history of Israel and of other nations, serves as a reminder, warning, and announcement of judgment in the given present moment of the listener and reader of these traditions, as the research into the history of traditions has shown. In addition, the comprehensive statements about the sinfulness of all people (“all flesh”) and the judgment into which they have fallen uncover the respective listeners and readers as those who are unable to liberate themselves from the guilt and corruption that encompasses them. Obviously, in the course of the church’s doctrinal development, inquiry into the temporal beginning of the first sin and its consequences has gained an importance that it does not have in the biblical statements as a whole. At the expense of the unique interrelationship between past and present, between the first sinner and later ones, reflection has focused one-sidedly on that succession, and Adam’s fall became an independent topic in an historicizing manner. Thereby the relationship between past and future that is specific to the faith also changed. Certainly, in every acknowledgment of sin and in every confession of sin, there is retrospection on the past that is full of guilt. Such retrospection takes place also in the doctrine of sin. But in this retrospection, the human being hastens forward, pleads for God’s mercy, and reaches out for liberation, for God unveils the sin of human beings and the judgment into which they have fallen in order to save them. So, the first Adam is not an independent topic for Paul, but he speaks of him in reference to the “other Adam,” Jesus Christ. One’s gaze should not remain fixed on the first Adam, through whom sin and death have come into the world, but it should be led forward from this retrospective gaze to Jesus Christ, who has brought life for all. The gospel calls for faith in Christ when it calls for the knowledge of sin. These observations do not mean to imply that in its teaching the church could relinquish making statements about the temporal succession between the origin and transgression of the human being. Under the influence of existentialist philosophy, some have indeed attempted to refrain from inquiring into the temporal origin of sin in human history by rejecting a teaching that overly emphasizes the original state or gives one-sided prominence to Adam’s fall. They have restricted

Origin and Failure

themselves to statements about the existential action of sinning and about the sinful nature of each person. Through such relinquishment, however, perennial dangers remain, both in the direction of the Pelagian assumption that from the beginning all human individuals begin with their decisions, and in the opposite direction of the Manichaean assumption that human beings are originally evil—depending on whether one emphasizes the sinful acts or the condition of being a sinner. In this way, concerns also arise about Paul Tillich, who understood the “existence” of human beings from the outset to be a contradiction to their “essence” and thus to their God-given purpose: “The transition from essence to existence… is not an event of the past; for it ontologically precedes everything that happens in time and space.”8 However, it must be borne in mind that, in contrast to an existentialist individualism, the human being is unveiled by God’s word not only as a sinning individual but as a member of sinful humanity. God’s word reveals to human individuals their creatureliness, in which they are bound together with all human beings in their infinite difference from God. But if the knowledge of sin is about the individual as a member of humanity, then the temporal dimension of humanity’s history is included in this membership. If one were to exclude inquiry into the temporal origin of the dominion of sin, both of the following would be obscured, namely, the knowledge of the good creation of God and the knowledge of sin. Like God’s initial address to human beings, so also the initial responses of human beings to God are beyond empirical observation. If one acknowledges that humanity’s history is not simply the continuation of a biological development but the history of personal decisions, then one cannot rule out that decisions were made by people in an earlier time that had a serious impact on the later history of humanity. But these decisions are as empirically and scientifically non-observable as the beginning of humanity is—within the broad “animal-to-human transitional field.”9 When we inquire into history, we often find signs—in the few millennia in which reliable sources for ascertaining human knowing, willing, and decision-making have been handed down to us—of a more or less clear knowledge of an originally close relationship to the deity that has, however, been disturbed by guilt, and we find signs of manifold attempts to do away with these disturbances. At the same time, we encounter difficult struggles of human beings against each other and against

8 Paul Tillich, Systematische Theologie, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1958), 2.43, cf. 48 and 52. [English original: Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951–1963), 2.36; cf. 2.40 and 2.44. –Ed.] 9 [See Gerhard Heberer, “Das Tier-Mensch-Übergangsfeld,” Studium generale: Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Studien 11 (1958): 341–352. Heberer (1901–1973) was a zoologist and anthropologist. In this essay, he coined the phrase “Tier-Mensch-Übergangsfeld” (animal-to-human transition field) and used it to refer to the period (approximately from ten to two million years ago) in which humans developed from their animal ancestors. –Ed.]

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their non-human environment. If we inquire even further back into humanity’s history, the witnesses to human culture become more and more infrequent, and the assumptions about human decisions more and more vague until finally, for thousands of years, we find only the remains of bones, tools, and fire pits—but no statements would be possible regarding what was thought or willed within these skulls. Although the first turning away of the human being from God is beyond empirical scientific observation, the church’s doctrine of the fall still has a reliable basis in knowledge, namely, its grounding in God’s act of salvation. For this reason, one must not overlook the fact that knowledge of a fall of the human being was already widespread in humanity on the basis of the divine law that is written in all hearts and that such knowledge found expression in numerous myths. But although such material was put to use in Gen. 2 and 3, the key reason for the biblical statements about the fall is God’s act of redemption. From this vantage point, it is quite unavoidable for faith that God has created people good, for in his salvific acts he not only acted in love but revealed himself as the one who is love. As the one who is loving, who redeems the sinner, God created the human being in the beginning. Out of love, he made the human being his own. Absolutely impossible for the Christian faith is the assumption that the same God who took the judgment against the sins of the world upon himself in the death of Jesus Christ had created the human being as a sinner. For then the unity of God would fall apart into a creator god and a redeemer god. Facing against the evil creator god would then be—as according to Marcion—a good redeemer god.[xx] But if one wanted to assert simultaneously the unity of God and the dominion of sin and death from the beginning, then, as in August Strindberg’s mystery play, De creatione et sententia vera mundi, God would become “an old man with a severe, almost wicked, countenance.”10 Relinquishing the distinction between the origin of humans and the origin of their sin would entail more than giving up a single theological proposition. It would call into question the whole of Christian doctrine. In view of the salvific acts of God, we can only confess that sin and death have come to power through us human beings. In no way can we make God accountable for them. He has neither created us as sinful nor as too weak, nor has he jealously withheld from us anything that we had to snatch from him. But least of all does he

10 August Strindberg, “Coram Populo! De Creatione et Sententia Vera Mundi: Mystére” (Inferno, 1898). [Before the People! On the Creation and Judgment of the True World: A Mystery; ET: “Coram Populo! De Creatione et Sententia Vera Mundi: A Mystery,” trans. David Scanlan, Tulane Drama Review 6, no. 2 (November 1961): 128–131, here 128. This “mystery,” as Strindberg called it, appears as a play-within-a-play in the epilogue to his 1877–78 history play, Master Olof. Twenty years later, Strindberg used a revised version of it for the prologue to the French edition of his 1898 autobiographical novel, Inferno. –Ed.]

Origin and Failure

need our opposition in order to unfold himself as God. Nor can we apologize for the fact that God has given human beings the freedom—and thus the possibility—of being disobedient. Then we would accuse him, in that he called us out from the bondage to instinct that animals have, made us into his Thou, and destined us in his image. For the sake of being like God, God has given human beings the possibility of making decisions for him and therefore also against him. By freely choosing to reciprocate love, human beings should become the image of divine freedom and love. God gave human beings freedom not so that they would turn away from him and die, but so that they might participate in the divine life. This freedom that God has given is a freedom that from the beginning was born of God’s love. In this way, we are repeatedly thrown back to the inconceivable event that human beings have spurned God’s love. The cause of sin and death is due to an unfounded ungratefulness and an inexcusable arrogance on the part of us human beings. Even if the statements about Adam’s fall were missing in the Bible, reflection on the origin of sin would always give rise to the idea of a fall. We do not need to know at what point in humanity’s history and at which place on earth this turning away from God began, whether it was accomplished by one or more individuals at once, and how sin then continued to expand and become stronger and stronger. Thus, with the doctrine of the fall, the church once again confesses the goodness of the Creator. In view of the struggles, the atrocities, and the bones of world history, the Christian faith confesses with this doctrine that God has created human beings good. The doctrine of the fall is not primarily a theoretical explanation of the origin of the dominion of sin and death, but—in the form of an etiological narrative—the confession of our total human guilt. The confession of our sin and the praise of the good Creator are inseparable. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 6 [i]

[ii]

The German verb verfehlen (noun form: Verfehlung), especially in a theological context, can mean “to offend,” “to transgress,” or “to sin” (as in “to miss the mark”), but more broadly it can mean “to fail to do or fulfill something,” “to misfire,” “to produce no effect.” The term, in its noun form, can also be rendered as “fallibility.” When the noun form is paired with the intended purpose (Bestimmung) that God has given human beings, it has been translated as “failure.” In other contexts, however, especially in reference to what human beings do against God, it has been translated as “transgression.” Cf. Carl G. Jung (1875–1961), Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self [1951], part two of vol. 9 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, 2d ed., ed. Gerhard Adler et al., trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969); and Ludwig Klages (1872–1956), Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele [The Spirit as Adversary of the Soul], 3 vols. (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1929–1932).

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[iii]

[iv]

[v]

[vi] [vii] [viii]

[ix]

The founder of what would come to be called Manichaeism was Mani (ca. 216–276), who had been influenced by Gnostic traditions from East Persia, as well as by the teachings of the apostle Paul. Mani taught that the cosmos is marked by a dualistic conflict between spiritual light and material darkness, between good and evil. According to Mani, the goal of religion is to free the “light,” the soul, that is imprisoned in the evil human body so that it can return to the light from which it came, and that Jesus (along with other religious figures, including Mani himself) had been sent to assist human beings in this process of soul liberation. A key feature of this process is the practice of an austere asceticism, e. g., eating only vegetables, refraining from sexual intercourse and the drinking of alcohol, repudiating marriage and private property, etc. British-born Pelagius (fl. ca. 400) taught a doctrine of free will that left no room for divine grace. According to Pelagius, every human being is born in the same state that Adam was in before he committed sin. Opposed to Manichaeism, Pelagius taught that human beings possess the freedom to choose what is good by virtue of their God-given nature. After the fall of Rome, Pelagius traveled to North Africa, where Augustine became his fiercest critic. Between 412 and 418 Pelagius and his teachings were condemned by several North African councils. He eventually settled in Palestine, where he and his ideas were received by monks there. Pelagius remained in the East, although the date and place of his death are unknown. See, e. g., the description of key differences between Maximus Confessor’s (ca. 580–662) understanding of sin and that of Augustine by Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 5 vols. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971–1989), 2.182–183. For the canons on original sin and grace from the Second Synod of Orange (529), see Denzinger, 370–395. See, e. g., Aquinas, ST, II/1.18–24, 30, 71–89, and 109. The Franciscan priest and scholar Johannes Duns Scotus (ca. 1265–1308) taught that for the human will to be truly free, it must really be able to fulfill what it in fact does not choose to will. For him, the human will is truly capable of moving itself to do what it wills. The Augustinian-Franciscan William of Ockham (ca. 1285–1347) and his followers also defended the freedom of the will and taught that the natural abilities of human beings (e. g., reason and conscience) had not been completely corrupted by the fall of Adam. Cf. AC II (“Concerning Original Sin”) and AC XVIII (“Concerning Free Will”) (BSELK, 94–97, 112–115 [BC, 36–39, 50–53]). Here Schlink was referring to the first six canons concerning justification, which were adopted in the sixth session of the Council of Trent (13 January 1547). These canons contain the anathemas to which he refers in the previous paragraph. Cf. Tanner, 2.679.

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[x]

[xi] [xii]

[xiii] [xiv]

Jansenism refers to teachings set forth by Cornelius O. Jansen (1585–1638), especially in his study of Augustine, Augustinus (1640). Cf. ODCC, 132, 862. Fierce opponents of Molinism and the Jesuits, Jansen and his followers held that without special divine grace human beings are incapable of fulfilling God’s commands. Moreover, according to Jansen, this grace is irresistible. Therefore, human beings are fully subject to divine determinism. Jansenism was condemned as heretical by the Sorbonne (1649) and by Pope Innocent X (1653). See Denzinger, 2001–2007. For their part, the Jansenists argued that these condemnations did not accurately reflect their teaching, which they held to be an accurate presentation of Augustinian doctrine. The Lutheran confessional renewal to which Schlink referred was centered on a circle of theologians who studied and/or taught at the University of Erlangen. Their theology was defined largely on the basis of the experience of baptismal regeneration, the certainty of personal faith, a critical appropriation of the Lutheran confessional writings, and an organic-historical view of the development of the Bible, the church, and the church’s confessions of faith. In addition to Johannes von Hofmann, the most important nineteenth-century Erlanger theologians were Adolph von Harless (1806–1879); J. W. F. Höfling (1802–1853); Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875); Franz Delitzsch (1813–1890); and Franz von Frank (1827–1894). On the Erlangers complicated relationship to the Enlightenment and German Idealism, see Becker, The Self-Giving God and Salvation History, 89–119. See also the essays on Thomasius, Harless, and Hofmann in Nineteenth-Century Lutheran Theologians, ed. Matthew L. Becker (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 99–120, 143–176, and 189–211. See The Philokalia: The Complete Text, ed. G. E. H. Palmer, Kallistos Ware, and Philip Sherrard, 4 vols. (London: Faber and Faber, 1979–1999). According to Cyril of Jerusalem, αὐτεξούσιον is the human being’s freedom of the will. See Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, II.1; IV.18; VII.13 (FOTC, 61.96, 128, 177). According to John of Damascus, this term refers to the main and cardinal attribute of human nature. See John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, II.22 (FOTC, 37.246–251). For Luther’s understanding of the enslavement of the human will, see his 1526 treatise, De servo arbitrio, WA, 18.600–787 (The Bondage of the Will; LW 1 , 33.15–295). “…[W]e do everything by necessity, and nothing by free choice, since the power of free choice is nothing and neither does nor can do good in the absence of grace…. It follows now that free choice is plainly a divine term and can be properly applied to none but the Divine Majesty alone; for he alone can do and does (as the Psalmist says [Ps. 115.3]) whatever he pleases in heaven and on earth” (WA, 18.636; LW 1 , 33.68). The Hebrew term ‫( ֶנֶפשׁ‬nefesh) means “soul, living being, life, self, person,” but also “desire, appetite, emotion, and passion” (cf. BDB, 659–661). Cf. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Tryphon, 5–6 (FOTC, 6.156–159), and Tertullian, De anima, L-LIV (On the Soul; FOTC, 10.288–297).

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[xv] [xvi]

[xvii]

[xviii]

[xix] [xx]

Cf. Origen, On First Principles, 84ff. Cf. Aquinas, ST, I.75–90, but especially I.80 (“On the Knowledge of the Separated Soul”); Calvin, ICR, I.15 (1.183–196) and III.25 (2.987–1008). For Luther’s view on the soul and the resurrection of the body, see Jane E. Strohl, “Luther’s Eschatology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, ed. Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, and L’ubomír Batka (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 353–362. Schlink here was likely referring to the views of Oscar Cullmann (1902–1999), who held that the orthodox Christian teaching about the resurrection of the body was radically different from the classical Greek notion of the immortality of the soul. Cf. Oscar Cullmann, Immortality of the Soul or the Resurrection of the Dead?: The Witness of the New Testament (London: Epworth, 1964). “So if we change that voice of God in Eden, which forbade [the human being] [to eat from] the tree of knowledge, into a voice of his instinct, which drew him back from that tree, his supposed disobedience to that divine commandment is nothing but a falling away from his instinct. It is thus the first expression of his own activity, the first daring act of his reason, the first beginning of his moral existence. This falling away from human instinct, which brought moral evil into creation—but only in order to make possible the moral good in it—is without contradiction the happiest and greatest event in human history…” (Friedrich Schiller [1759–1805], “Etwas über die erste Menschengesellschaft nach dem Leitfaden der mosaischen Urkunde” [1790] [Something about the First Human Society according to the Mosaic Document], in Schillers Werke, 42 vols., ed. Julius Petersen et al. [Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus, 1943–2006], 17.399–400). Cf. Hegel, V, 3.33–44, 139–143, and 224–233 (LPR, 3.96–108, 207–211, and 300–310). Marcion of Sinope (d. ca. 160), the son of a Christian bishop, moved to Rome (ca. 140), where he taught that “the god” of the Old Testament was inferior to the Father of Jesus. According to Marcion, who understood himself to be the legitimate spiritual heir of the apostle Paul, the gospel of Jesus was entirely a message of divine love and completely separated from the Old Testament law. This view led Marcion to reject the Old Testament. The god revealed there is entirely a god of law and judgment who has nothing in common with the Father of Jesus, the supreme God of love and mercy. Chief among Marcion’s opponents were Irenaeus and Tertullian, who stressed the unity of the Creator and Redeemer in the work of revelation and redemption.

Chapter VII: The Preservation of the Human Being

1. The Preservation of the Sinner in the Midst of Having Fallen into Judgment When was the death of the sinner to be expected? Immediately after the sinner’s turning away from God, for the human being is created by God and for God. Human beings have their existence not in themselves but in God’s constant creative activity. God is the source of life. Turning away from God means turning away from life. Choosing to live a life on one’s own, separated from God, is death. “[I]n the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gen. 2.17 [S]). That death is to be expected as the immediate consequence of sin is also attested to elsewhere in Holy Scripture. But even though humanity is enslaved to death, it continues to be preserved by God.[i] Already in the report of the first sin, it is exceedingly remarkable that God does not carry out the announcement of the impending death. Amazement about the preservation of life, in view of the deserved death, appears over and over in the biblical writings, such as in the reproach that God does not bring to an end the actions of sinners, or in expressions of gratitude for God’s patience. “It is the kindness of the Lord that we have not perished” (Lam. 3.22 [L]). To be sure, preservation here signifies not only a conserving but also a dynamic action, since, by preserving them, God grants human beings the possibilities of furthering their own self-functioning, in knowing, willing, and acting. The preservation of sinners is not the suspension of their having fallen into judgment, but God gives them space for life within that fallenness. The human being remains enslaved by death. This is true of every human being, regardless of how long a span of time God might grant each individual. In this sense, the life of the sinner remains a life within death. Death is delayed but not abolished. Thus, in the encounter with Jesus Christ, human beings were unveiled to be dead people even before their life had ended. Human beings who are separated from communion with the living God are dead, even if they are still living. And yet by preserving sinful humanity, God bestows benefits that they do not deserve. God continues to allow for the love between men and women, for the joy of sex and conception, and he brings about the birth and growth of more human beings. In the midst of the alienation of human beings from each other, again and again God bestows upon them the experience of being with and for one another, even beyond the circle of family. Through the sprouting of plants and the reproduction of animals, God continues to meet their need for food and clothing. “[H]e makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on

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the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt. 5.45). God grants human beings the ability to find and implement ways of ordering their common life. God preserves for them the gift of dominion over the earth by enabling them to use their insight for utilizing their surrounding world. This preservation of humanity is not self-evident. It does not simply follow from God’s act of creation in the beginning, since the human being turned against this origin. Neither is preservation simply the continuation of the ongoing act of creating by which God preserves the good creation. For this is about the preservation of a humanity that had stepped outside of the order given to it. The preservation of sinners is indeed a paradoxical action on the part of the Creator, for God preserves sinners despite their having fallen into the power of death, and God grants them benefits despite the divine hostility against sin. By this act of preservation, God seems to be contradicting God’s own announcement of judgment. This paradox will become even more prominent in the doctrine of the preservation of the world (chap. 8) and the dominion over the earth (chap. 9). This divine act of preserving sinners in the midst of their having fallen into the power of death is not limited to a preservation of their bodily life. Rather, God preserves sinners by making himself known to them as the Creator and Preserver. God preserves human life not only in a biological sense but also by continuing to make a claim on that life. Human beings, who disowned God, are not abandoned by God. God continues to pursue them. God bears witness to himself through his self-disclosure in creation, directs humanity through the commandment of the Preserver, and protects them through the ordering of just political power.

2. The Witness of God through the Works of Creation Even though human beings have turned from God, God does not cease to reveal himself to them as the Creator. Again and again, through his self-witnessing, he approaches human beings who are misunderstanding him, by calling into question the notions behind which they hide from him, and he awakens in them questions about himself. (a) Long before human beings heard the law of the Old Testament or the gospel of the New Testament, God had revealed to all people “his invisible nature” and “his eternal power and divinity” (Rom. 1.20 [SCH]). Since the beginning of creation, God has been revealing to all human beings his distinct difference from all visible things and his unparalleled superiority. In this, he bears witness to himself not merely in his absolute transcendence but also as the one working within all that is. “His invisible nature has been recognized and seen from the beginning of creation in his works” (Rom. 1.20 [S]). In the visible aspects of the creation, the invisible Creator is made known. The fact that God bears witness to himself to all human beings

The Witness of God through the Works of Creation

through his goodness is particularly highlighted in the Lukan formula of the speech by Paul in Lystra: God “has not left himself without a witness in doing good—giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy” (Acts 14.17; cf. 17.26). The prologue of the Gospel of John can also be understood in connection with these statements about God’s self-witnessing as the Creator. The same Logos, through which everything came to exist (Jn. 1.3), was already the “light of all people” (Jn. 1.4) before they had been addressed through the word of God in the Old Testament and through Jesus, the incarnate Logos. From the beginning, the Logos was already the “true light, which enlightens everyone, who comes into the world” (Jn. 1.9 [S]). Far beyond the historical events of the divine address, the Logos has an effect on all human beings. In the Pauline and Lukan statements one can find echoes of Greek popular philosophy but, just like the statements in the prologue of John, they have a strong Old Testament foundation. That God not only bears witness to himself through his address but also through the works of his creation, was a basic certainty of Israelite wisdom literature, long before it came into contact with Hellenistic thought. This is also expressed in the Psalter: “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Ps. 19.1–4a). All creatures praise God (Ps. 148.10 et al.). Thus the Creator not only acts with power and goodness but also makes known this power and goodness to human beings through this action. The Creator bears witness to himself “through his works” (Rom. 1.20 [S]). At the same time, it is also true that the works of creation bear witness to the Creator. Both witnessings happen together. This unity is due to the fact that the cosmos is defined by its origin and purpose, which were given to it by the Creator. Thus the Old Testament testimonies to the adoration of God by creation point especially to the order given it by God. The New Testament witnesses, though, imply that this is above all about the non-human creatures and not about human history. In addition, the Lukan mention of the orderly distribution of the peoples over the surface of the earth (Acts 17.26) is likewise less about the historical activity of human beings and more about their natural preconditions of life. The non-human creation has to a greater extent remained within the order given to it by God. The history of humankind, however, has become a history of rebellion against God. In that history God is hidden. God reveals himself to all human beings so that they might know God. This knowing [Erkennen] is not merely gaining knowledge [Wissen] about God but an acknowledgment [Anerkennung] of God. Human beings have to honor, glorify, and thank the invisible one (cf. Rom. 1.21). This means that human beings “understand” (Jn. 1.10), “accept,” and “receive” (v. 5 [S]) the Logos. Such knowledge therefore

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also means that human beings surrender themselves to the one to whom they owe everything. This surrender cannot be replaced by intuitive notions or abstract concepts. Rather, the acknowledgement of God takes place through awe, through inquiry, and through a “seeking” by which one might “grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17.27). After all, God always remains greater than our knowledge of God. Once God reveals himself to human beings, he then awakens their selfunderstanding and unveils them, namely, in their origin from and movement toward God, in their creatureliness, and in their responsibility. God also unveils them as those who have not given the thanks and reverence they ought and before whom God now stands not only as Creator but also as Judge. The seeking for God, therefore, does not remain only a questing after an “eternal power and divinity,” but it also awakens the longing for the removal of what separates human beings as sinners from God. All churches teach that God reveals himself through the works of creation. The theological and philosophical reflection about the “how” of this revelation unfolds, of course, in very different ways. Does this self-witnessing take place through the causal necessity of world events, or through their teleological direction, or through a layering of higher and lower degrees of reality? Or through a need that exists in human beings to transcend everything they observe in the world? Or through an intuition of the Divine that exists in human beings, or through an inborn awareness of God? Some of these various answers have been connected to one another in different ways. At times, the knowledge of God derived through creation has been understood more like an intuitive certainty, at other times more like knowledge that is provable. Proofs of God’s existence have at times been represented more as logically necessary conclusions from experience of the world and subjective presuppositions, at other times more as rational defenses of a faith in a Creator that has come from the word of God. But such differences need not be treated here. They exist across all churches and have not acquired the significance of church-dividing dogmatic oppositions. More important than debating some of these questions is the insight that developed in modern times, namely, that the revelation of the Creator—even if it takes place mainly through the non-human creation that remains in its orderings, and thus not through history—has an historical character. It mediates not only an unchanging, identical knowledge of God’s existence and attributes as well as his commanding and judging, as the natural theology of medieval and the old-Protestant scholasticism and the Enlightenment had taught; but it encounters human beings in their concrete historical situation, for every human being is already influenced by pre-determined religious or anti-religious notions, symbols, and rituals. In that through his self-disclosure the Creator expects all human beings to glorify him and give him thanks in their historical situation, and demands that they turn away from their errors, this self-disclosure of the Creator is both universal (i. e., it concerns all human beings) and historically concrete (i. e., it strikes all human beings in such a way that

The Witness of God through the Works of Creation

they cannot excuse themselves). In this sense, Schleiermacher, in the fifth of his “speeches on religion” (1799), rightly criticized the natural theology of the Enlightenment era as “an indefinite, impoverished, and paltry idea,” “as a uniformity in indeterminacy.”1

(b) In their religions and philosophies, human beings have responded to God’s self-disclosure through creation. How have these responses been evaluated in the New Testament Scriptures? Human beings “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles” (Rom. 1.23). They “worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (v. 25 [S]). They therefore did not acknowledge God as the Wholly Other in his invisibility and power but made him visible and available. This is true beyond the cultus[ii] : “[T]hey exchanged the truth about God” (v. 25 [S]). “[T]hough they knew God, … they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (v. 21f. [S]). Paul further intensifies his judgment by stating, without making any exceptions: “There is no one who seeks in earnest” (3.11 [S]). Likewise, according to the Gospel of John, the response of humanity to the light shining in the world was entirely negative: “The darkness did not accept it” (Jn. 1.5 [S]). “The world did not understand it” (1.10 [S]). These judgments stand in continuation with the prophetic proclamation, which not only opposed mixing the cult of Yahweh with the worship of other gods but also declared the images of gods, indeed the foreign gods themselves, to be as nothing (esp. Deutero-Isaiah). When one considers the treatment of this question in the pre-history and early history of Israel, a different picture emerges. The stories of Abel, Enoch, and Noah presuppose that, even before the election of Israel, certain individuals offered true worship to God. In addition, one can see in the narratives about the patriarchs some similarities to the Bedouin religions of their cultural environment, and the story about Melchizedek, the “priest of God Most High” who blessed Abraham (Gen. 14.18f.), exemplifies fluid boundaries. When, after the liberation from Egypt, the acknowledgement of Yahweh excluded the worship of other gods, the divine title El nevertheless remained common to both Israel and other Near-Eastern 1 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Über die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern (1799) (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1958), 138, 152. [On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, ed. and trans. Richard Crouter (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 195 (trans. modified), cf. 205. The second phrase that Schlink provided here is not a direct quotation from Schleiermacher’s Speeches but a paraphrase of the following: “(The Enlightenment’s adherents of natural religion) simply want (all religions) to be uniform—I mean only contrasted to the extreme on the other side, the sectarians—uniform in indeterminacy (gleichförmig im Unbestimmten)” (152 [ET: 205]). Cf. Klaus Eberhard Welker, Die grundsätzliche Beurteilung der Religionsgeschichte durch Schleiermacher (Schleiermacher’s Fundamental Assessment of the History of Religion) (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 138. –Ed.]

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peoples. In later times, too, certain devout and blessed individuals who did not belong to Israel were recognized, such as Job. In the New Testament Scriptures, positive mention of religious and philosophical responses from the surrounding culture are only found on the extreme margins—e. g., in the occasional use of theological phrases from Stoic philosophy and in the echoes of terminology from ancient mystery cults—but completely separated from the deities, in whose service such language had previously been used. Thus, in the course of Israel’s history and in the apostolic proclamation, a similar radicalization took place with respect to the negative judgments concerning human responses to God’s self-disclosure in creation, as also happened in the radicalization of statements about sin and the dominion of death. The New Testament’s evaluation of the responses to God’s revelation in creation are summed up in this paradoxical sentence: Knowledge of God that arises in this way is not knowledge of God. In Rom. 1.21 the Gentiles are called “recognizers of God” [S], while in Gal. 4.8 the Gentiles are addressed as those who did not know God prior to their acceptance of the gospel. According to Acts 17, Paul spoke of the honoring of the unknown God by the Athenians, but he described the time of this worship as a “time of ignorance” (v. 30 [L]). “Unknowingly you carry out this worship service for him, the unknown God” [v. 23 (S)]. That God reveals himself to all human beings through the works of his creation is acknowledged by all churches, but there remain profound differences in the question about the actual knowledge of this revelation by those human beings who have not yet perceived God’s word. This question became particularly contentious in the discussion and debate with monotheistic Greek philosophy. Thus, standing beside each other in the ancient church were Tertullian’s radical rejection of philosophy and Clement of Alexandria’s broad acceptance of it. In the Middle Ages, too, there were significant differences with regard to this question, i. e., between Peter Damian and Johannes Scotus Eriugena, but also between Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas.[iii] With great confidence, Luther and Calvin advocated that the natural knowledge of God was equivalent to an actual ignorance of God. The Lutheran Confessions thus teach, quite incidentally, that “the natural human being still has a darkened spark of knowledge that a god exists.”2 Yet they forcefully emphasized from the beginning that the ignorance of God is part of original sin,3 and that we “knew nothing of God and Christ” before hearing the word of God.4 This equating of knowledge and ignorance of God, or, more precisely, this opposition between God’s revelation and its misunderstanding on the part of human perception, had been somewhat weakened by the Aristotelianism of old-Protestant Orthodoxy. Yet there remained a difference when compared to the broad natural foundations

2 FC SD II.9. [BSELK, 1348 (BC, 545 [trans. modified]). –Ed.] 3 Apol. II.14. [BSELK, 252 (BC, 114). –Ed.] 4 LC II.52. [BSELK, 1060 (BC, 438). –Ed.]

The Witness of God through the Works of Creation

of Roman Catholic dogmatics, which had a significant effect on their understanding of grace. When the First Vatican Council declared “that God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty from the things that were created through the natural light of human reason,” it appeared to fully contradict the approach of the Reformation.5 However, in more recent Roman Catholic theology, voices have arisen which clearly differentiate between the “potential” [“das Können”] and the actual execution of the natural knowledge of God. For example, Hans Urs von Balthasar interpreted it this way: “It is no objection against the decision of the First Vatican Council if natural reason has never found the way to the living God with certainty outside the sphere of the Bible, or even if we deny that God can naturally be known by those who are not illumined by the light of supernatural revelation.”6 “Just as clearly as the Council had decided the quaestio iuris [question of law], they just as clearly left the quaestio facti [question of fact] open.”7

In discussing this question, it has often been pointed out that Paul and the other authors of the New Testament Scriptures only had a small cross-section of extant religions and philosophies in view, namely, the religions of the Near East and the Mediterranean region, as well as popular Greek philosophy. Even the great monotheistic philosophies of Plato and Aristotle were evidently unknown to them—and clearly also the great religions of the Middle and Far East. How would Paul have acted toward them? Here, of course, only speculations are possible. However, it must be asked to what extent fundamental judgments—which go beyond opinions about the concrete religious and philosophical interlocutors of that time—are contained in the New Testament’s statements: Obviously, the Pauline references to presumptuous wisdom (Rom. 1.22) and the depiction of God with the likeness of humans and animals (v. 23) are examples which do not make a claim of completeness. Nevertheless, they are arguments toward the following conclusion, namely, “All are obedient to sin…. There is no one who has understanding, no one who seeks God, all have turned away….” (3.9–12 [S]; cf. v. 18). Here, as elsewhere in the New Testament, there is no mention of exceptions. In the same way, the prologue to the Gospel of John states generally and without exception that the world has not accepted the Logos nor understood it. Thus it is likely that Paul would have also regarded the philosophical monotheism

5 Denzinger, 3004. 6 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth: Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie (Köln: Hegner, 1951), 320. [The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 308 (trans. modified). This quotation, which Balthasar included in his study, was not made by him but by Michael Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik, vol. 1 (Munich: Hueber, 1948), 204. Apparently Schlink did not catch the quotation marks or Balthasar’s reference to Schmaus’ dogmatics. –Ed.] 7 Balthasar, Karl Barth, 318. [ET: 306 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

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of Plato and Aristotle as lacking consideration for the difference between God and creation. After all, neither of these philosophers understood God as a free personal agent relating to the world, but instead they held God as the highest principle of a world that had no beginning, as the highest idea and entelechy. The same goes for the experiences of unity in Far Eastern mysticism, which also disregarded the difference between God and creation. It is also fundamentally significant that the later so-called “natural revelation” was not a separate theological topic in the New Testament that was discussed alongside the revelation of God in the Old Testament word and in Jesus Christ. The self-witnessing of God through creation is a presupposition that was given minor emphasis, and, in contrast to the revelation in Jesus Christ, it is not part of the content of the apostolic kerygma. Throughout the New Testament, even in Luke, that self-witnessing is only used as an argument in favor of the claim that all human beings are without excuse and that no human being can escape the call to repentance. In the discussion of this question in the history of theology, of whether there is a truly natural knowledge of God, one can clearly see a shift in the approach to this question, away from the thrust of New Testament statements about the self-witnessing of God in creation. Both of these observations suggest that the New Testament statements about human responses to the self-witnessing of God in creation are to be understood as fundamental responses. (c) But no matter what reply human beings give to God’s self-disclosure in creation, no suppression of God’s truth on the part of human beings can refute God’s revelation. Whatever projections of human need and desire have taken place in the history of religion, and however much God’s revealed truth has been “exchanged… for a lie” (Rom. 1.25), the religions nevertheless have their power from the revelation of God, however misunderstood. The same goes for theologies in philosophical systems. Even the pathos of atheism is itself the result of the divine revelation that is negated. The truth of God is distorted by humanity’s sinfully erring thoughts about God, yet these aberrations are animated by the truth of God, which they have distorted. The self-disclosure of God through the works of creation has not been turned into an event of the past by human disregard and distortion, but it continues to happen to all human beings, and again and again it sets their thinking in motion (apart from the extreme case of the hardening of hearts). Even when human beings think they have settled the question of God in this or that way, God does not leave them alone. Every self-generated answer is called into question by God, motivating human beings to keep seeking for more answers. Thus the history of religions is at the same time the history of the decline and extinction of gods and cultures and the emergence of new answers. In this way, polytheistic religions are replaced by the quest for the one God, and monotheistic systems are replaced by the quest

The Witness of God through the Works of Creation

for the even bigger and unknown God, and mystical experiences of identity are disproven by the descent into a radical falling away from God. Philosophers and their theological statements can change even more quickly than the sociologically more or less rigid religions. Repeatedly, by his self-disclosure in creation, God deprives human beings of the peace that comes with being self-contained. The restlessness of being called into question and of being questioned anew is at work in them. Here, not only are ideas and rites called into question, but so too is humanity itself. It is an act of kindness on the part of God that humanity, which has fallen into the power of death, is not only preserved physically, but, through the revelation, it is preserved as a humanity that is continually questioning, investigating, and transcending that which can be observed. Precisely in this way, the human being’s humanity is preserved. This continued questioning is also the reason for the advancement of our knowledge of the earth, the invention of tools, and the flourishing of the arts. When one compares non-Christian religions to one another, major differences become apparent: polytheistic, monotheistic, and atheistic religions; God as the transcendent Other to human beings, or as the depths of the human soul; God as the origin of active human worldliness, or as the goal of ascetic inwardness; God being controlled by magical practices, or hearing prayers in freedom, etc. Major differences are also evident in the history of philosophy. The self-understanding of human beings is equally diverse in these different contexts. When one compares non-Christian ideas with Christianity, there are similarities and contradictions. For instance, the monotheism of Plato, Aristotle, and even the Stoics is closer to Christianity than polytheism; salvation religions are closer to Christianity than nature religions; mystical unity with a personal divine you is closer than atheistic identity mysticism. While Christian worship appears very distant from magical practices, it closely resembles the prayers of repentance, intercession, and thanksgiving in other religions. It is no coincidence that ancient Christian hymns contain elements of other hymns, and not only those from the Old Testament. There is also a far greater comparative closeness to those philosophies that persevere in seeking after God than to those that aim, by constructing a system, either negatively or positively, to bring this seeking to an end. Such comparisons have been carried out with increasing care during the last two centuries. This took place with the expectation that one might thereby bring to light the truth about God that, covered over in this way or that way, is present in the religions and philosophies. Some have even claimed that they could uncover the hidden Christ in the other religions.[iv] Now to be sure, the comparative explication of similarities and differences between Christianity and other religions is essential. Without it, e. g., the translation of the gospel into another language shaped by another religion would be impossible. How, e. g., is the name of God to be translated? At the same time, however, such comparisons have led to unexpected

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surprises: Religions that seemed to resemble Christianity in many respects turned out to be more profoundly separated from it than those that seem far off. Advanced monotheistic religions have rejected the Christian message, while people, anxious and suffering within the sphere of animistic and polytheistic religions, have accepted it. In the end, the truth of God is precisely not already contained in the notions about God that can indeed be compared to one another, but it is found in God himself.

The theology of religions will need to respect the hiddenness of God in the religions. It will need to evaluate the truth and the salvation of other religions more cautiously than is common today. The truth hidden in the other religions does not emerge through analytical comparison but through the encounter with the gospel. Whoever accepts the message of Christ in faith, has their eyes opened to the discovery that God has already been disclosed to them, even before they heard the gospel. In Jesus Christ, the truth of God, previously hidden and yet present, steps out into the open. Through the gospel, truth and error in the previously held religion are distinguished. The fact that human beings had already recognized God’s truth and received God’s salvation is evident in their recognition of the proclaimed Christ as the one from whom and to whom they had already been living previously, without knowing him. In the experience of this unveiling there arises the freedom to adopt statements from the spheres of other religions and place them into the service of bearing witness to Christ. This separation of truth from misconception is God’s sovereign action, which cannot be preempted by phenomenological comparisons between Christianity and the other religions. The same is also true about the encounter with theological statements in philosophy. In no way can the truth of God that is hidden in religions and philosophies be recognized without decisively renouncing self-generated notions about God, which are continually found in the responses human beings give to the revelation of the Creator—a renunciation that is also again and again required anew of every single Christian.

3. The Commandment of the Preserver The self-disclosure of the Creator cannot but have an effect on the behavior of human beings toward one another, for by God’s self-witnessing to all human beings through the works of creation, he unveils them as those whose differences from each other are relativized by their common difference from God. All differences and oppositions between human beings—between men and women, parents and children, rulers and subjects, between families, tribes, peoples, and races—turn out to be bracketed by God’s preserving action. Thus the Creator unveils the unity of humankind and of every person’s membership in it.

The Commandment of the Preserver

(a) When by self-disclosure in creation God demands to be acknowledged as Lord, this demand cannot be restricted to the isolated behavior of the individual toward God. Proper glory is only given to the Creator when this takes place within a relationship with other human beings that corresponds to God’s working. If every human being lives by God’s preservation, then the commandment applies to everyone, namely, that every person has to stand up for the neighbor as they do for themselves. “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you” (Mt. 7.12). This “Golden Rule” is not first found in the Sermon on the Mount but was already widespread—whether in affirmative or negative formulations (e. g., “do not do what you do not wish others to do to you,” or “do what you wish others would do to you”). Jesus’ adoption of this rule in the Sermon on the Mount merely recalls it, affirms it, and gives it a new interpretation. Here it is described as the center of the Old Testament’s law and prophets, but it already followed necessarily from the Creator’s self-witnessing. And wherever human beings let themselves be called into question by the self-disclosure of God in creation and recognize their creaturely commonalities, it again and again arises anew. God has made known his commandment to all human beings. Thus Paul said of the Gentiles, “They have the law in themselves, even though they do not have it. For they demonstrate that what the law commands is written in their hearts” (Rom. 2.14f. [S]). Such a declaration of the divine law to all human beings was also presupposed when Paul taught that Gentile political power was instituted by God in order to distinguish good from evil, specifically for the promotion of good and the punishment of evil (Rom. 13.3ff.). God not does first make the distinction between good and evil to be known through the historical revelation of his word. Paul spoke of the law being effective “by nature” (Rom. 2.14 [L; RSV]) in all human beings, using the terminology of popular Stoic philosophy. But this topic is far older. The Old Testament already presupposes a distinction between good and evil, even outside of Israel. This is evident not only in the stories of the patriarchs but also in the proclamation of the law by the prophets against heathen peoples. They, too, are held responsible for their wicked deeds. All churches teach that God makes the divinely commanded will known to all people. Here, too, theological reflection over the centuries has made an effort to delineate precisely how people came and still come to know this divine will: Does it happen through the voice of conscience or through an inborn idea of the Good? Or is God’s will recognized by observing human nature, its needs, or the manner of human social life? Both kinds of reasoning were combined by ancient and medieval theology in the adoption of theories about natural law from Greek philosophy.[v] For example, Augustine interpreted Platonic ideas as the thoughts

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of God, and he described the idea of justice as “lex aeterna dei” [eternal law of God].8 Just as the Platonic idea is both known in the conscience and depicted more or less clearly by earthly reality, the eternal law of God is both put into human beings and encountered by them in nature. Thus the “lex aeterna dei” is also “lex naturae.” Using the presuppositions of Aristotelian philosophy, Thomas Aquinas also taught this equation.[vi] The natural law of God is the ontological ordering of the world and the noetic ordering of reason. It is thus “natural” in a dual sense in that it is given in natural reason and in the nature of creation. Thomas Aquinas systematized the way from the eternal law of God to positive rights. The overriding principle runs as follows: good ought to be done; evil to be avoided. From this he derives the principia communissima, such as suum cuique, pacta esse servanda.9 From these general principles, subordinate principles were derived by means of logical inferences, and finally the stipulations for positive rights were derived from the investigation of specific historical situations. No comparable systematic understanding of natural law has gained acceptance in the Eastern Church. The Reformers kept the terminology of medieval natural law. They also could say, “ratio docet” [“reason teaches”] and “natura docet” [“nature teaches”].[vii] But in contrast to the logical character of the medieval scholastic deduction from first principles, they put greater emphasis on the immediate historical demand of the divine commandment. They also had qualms about making an all too obvious equation between the currently existing orders of this world and the originally good order of creation. Since the Enlightenment, this common acknowledgement of a natural divine law has been profoundly questioned. Some began to undo equating the divine law and natural law, and natural rights were redefined as human rights, although the nature and the needs of humanity were treated in very different ways. Later on, thinking about natural law was called into question by greater historical insights into the major differences between human customs, legal systems, as well as the corresponding appeals to conscience. The idea that behind all of this there could be a normatively preordained and unchanging divine law now appeared as its own historically contingent conception, which had been utilized for a variety of different goals (e. g., toward the retention or abolition of slavery). Obviously, in the course of the history of theology, the notion of a natural divine law had not infrequently been so closely connected with existing questionable customs and legal systems that the critical counterpart of the divine domain was no longer clear. But even if the terminology of natural law is largely avoided or rejected today, belief in the Creator is nevertheless certain that God puts all human beings under the divine demand and that this demand encounters them as an obligating authority for all human beings and for their life together. Thus even if articulations about “human rights” do not mention God, those rights themselves nevertheless have their

8 [See, e. g., Augustine, Contra Faustum Manichaeum, XXII.73 (PL, 42.446; Answer to Faustus the Manichaean, WSA, I/20.350). –Ed.] 9 [According to Aquinas, these “most common principles” (or most universal principles), include those stated here, namely, “to each his own” and “agreements must be kept.” See, e. g., Aquinas, ST, II/2.58 and II/1.99. –Ed.]

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foundation and authority in God’s law, which, along with God’s self-disclosure, is addressed to all human beings.

In view of the very different meanings for which the concept of the divine natural law has been utilized throughout the history of theology and philosophy, and in view of its increasing liability to be misunderstood in connection with the use of the term law in the modern natural sciences, we prefer here to speak of the commandment of God the Preserver, which is “written in the hearts” of all human beings, for it concerns the specific manner in which God the Preserver shows human beings, who have fallen into judgment, through which kind of behavior they can preserve life and achieve the common good. Since God preserves humanity, it is required of all human beings that they join in the divine work of preservation. Since God bears with all human beings despite their opposition to him, human beings should likewise bear with one another despite the oppositions that exist between them. Since the discovery of how extensively the doctrine of a generally applicable divine natural law has developed in connection with a particular (i. e., Western) history of thought, and of how it has been defined by its customs and legal systems, it seemed obvious to restrict statements about its content to a formal regulation, as, e. g., the Golden Rule in the form of Kant’s categorical imperative.[viii] But the commandment of the Preserver also contains material regulations and unfolds in a multiplicity of commandments, which take a critical stance toward existing customs and legal systems. This unfolding takes place in various historical situations, but it is not dissolved in the flux of change over time. Rather, its content remains defined by the basic relations grounded in the determination of humankind in the image of God. From this we get, e. g., the following basic obligations: (1) Despite the differences between genders and generations, families, tribes, peoples, and races, despite our relationship to friend and foe, we are to preserve every human life. Here preserving means not only stopping threats, damage, or destruction, but also helping every single human individual person and helping to support that person’s life. This preservation is extended to everything in terms of food, clothing, housing, work, property—all that is necessary for life. (2) The commandment of the Preserver calls for the preservation of every single person in that one’s concrete need. Thus we ought to fight for life growing in the womb, for life being born and growing up, for the blossoming and for the fading life. In various ways, the struggle for the unborn, children, youth, men, women, for the sick, the old, and the dying, and again in a special way for those oppressed and marginalized, the innocent and the guilty—it must all be done according to their

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need in the moment. In this sense, the old natural law maxim holds true: “to each his own” [Jedem das Seine].10 (3) The commandment of the Preserver obligates us not only to fight for other human beings as individuals, but also for the preservation of the community in which they live. This means concretely that we are also responsible for our common life, defined by the irreversible ordering of reproduction, conception, and birth, by education, transmission, and reception of tradition, and by the life together in families, nations, and states. We must resist the tearing apart of marriage and family life and the dissolution of comprehensive forms of society, in which the individual is secure and protected. (4) The commandment of the Preserver extends beyond the existing small and large particular groups of families, tribes, nations, and states. It enjoins all human beings to exist together and for one another. We are to work for the eradication of the oppositions and strife between particular communities for the sake of a peace that embraces humanity. (5) The work of preservation to which the commandment of the Preserver obligates us can never remain restricted to the protection and the support of bodily life. God requires respect for the personhood of the neighbor. If God preserves humanity so that it might seek, recognize, and acknowledge God, we are obligated to keep this space of questing after God and reverence for God open for every human being. This opening must not only respect the “Yes” but also the “No” with which a human being might respond to the testimony of God. After all, even God preserves those human beings who do not honor God. These indications already make it clear that God’s commandment does not receive its content from the customs and regulations of human beings, but rather it encounters them. We can summarize them with the concept of the righteousness that is called for by God. By this, we mean such behavior on the part of human beings that corresponds to the righteousness of God the Preserver. This divine righteousness is a paradoxical righteousness. Although human beings have turned away from God, he gives them the aid of his commandment, through which they are shown what is in their best interest. Although human beings have fallen under judgment, God gives them the benefit of preservation. In response to this benefit, human beings ought to thank God by working on behalf of their neighbor.

10 [It must be pointed out that Schlink understood this ancient ethical principle (suum cuique = “to each his own”; Ger.: Jedem das Seine) in a way that was radically opposed to how the German Nazis understood it, e. g., when they placed the German translation of this Latin legal phrase on the main gate of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. For the history of this ancient Roman legal concept, see Marko Petrak, “The Ancient Origins of General Principles in International Law,” in Contemporary Developments in International Law, ed. Rüdiger Wolfrum et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 851–859. –Ed.]

The Commandment of the Preserver

(b) How do human beings respond to the commandment of the Preserver? Since it is given to them together with the revelation of God through the works of his creation, this response is connected to their response to the self-disclosure of God through creation. If God is not acknowledged as the Wholly Other, as the one who is different from the creatures, then the community of human beings—which is defined by the common differentiation of all creatures from the Creator—falls apart as well. Then the knowledge that the differences between human beings are encompassed by the infinitely larger difference between God and humanity—indeed, are encompassed by God’s absolutely superior might and goodness—undergoes diminishment. While Paul has, however, condemned all human beings because they have not thanked God on the basis of his revelation in creation and because they have not recognized him in truth, one finds in Paul’s writings a completely different evaluation of the effects of the law written in the heart. It is very surprising that, in view of such people who have not acknowledged God on the basis of his selfdisclosure and have become “ignorant,” Paul also presupposed a knowledge of God’s commandments, and he acknowledged their deeds of obedience to the law. In contrast to the overwhelmingly negative evaluations of the cultus and wisdom of the Gentiles, there are certainly positive evaluations in the New Testament about their recognition of and obedience to the law. Thus Paul not only spoke of the demand of the law, which is written on the hearts of Gentiles, but also of their deeds of obedience: “They naturally do what the law wants” (Rom. 2.14 [S]). Paul not only teaches the divine mission given to political power, but he has confidence that the Gentile state would reward good deeds and punish evil ones (Rom. 13.3ff.). Such positive evaluations are all the more remarkable since they are made in places, e. g., in the Roman state, where true knowledge of God cannot be presupposed on the part of those who are acting. A certain correspondence between God’s commandment and the Gentiles’ knowledge of the good is also presupposed by the adoption of statements from Hellenistic catalogues of virtues and vices for use in Christian parainesis [moral exhortation and advice]. Knowledge about what God requires among Gentiles is also presupposed when, e. g., bishops are told, “[H]e must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace” (1 Tim. 3.7). All of this is about correspondences between God’s commandment and Gentile knowledge, both in knowing what is good as well as in doing what is good. The adoption of some of the customs and legal regulations of their Near Eastern environment on the part of Israel (e. g., in the law of the covenant) already included the acknowledgment that knowledge about what is wanted by God existed also there. Indeed, it is unmistakably true today that good deeds for the sake of the neighbor are done without explicit acknowledgment of God—in marital faithfulness, in the love of children, in caring for the elderly and the sick, in supporting the socially disadvantaged and, beyond this, in struggling for a just ordering of society. In all

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this, there is no claim that the whole law of God could be fulfilled without God’s saving action. But these are nevertheless deeds that correspond to the law. Paul expected that God will also acknowledge the good works done by Gentiles in the coming judgment: “Glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek” (Rom. 2.10). Of course, knowing about the commandment of the Preserver and actually doing good are under constant threat—indeed, all the more so, the more fundamentally human beings have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1.25). The less God is acknowledged as the Wholly Other in God’s “eternal power and divine nature” (v. 20), the more room there is for arrogance against other human beings and for the disinhibition of one’s desires. Striving for one’s own advantage displaces the work on behalf of other human beings and compromises their right to life. The “suum cuique” is no longer understood as an obligation but as an entitlement. The relationship between the sexes and between the generations becomes a power struggle, and instead of the community of families and peoples, we get the oppression and exploitation of one by the other. Although the distinction between good and evil remains, it is conformed to the desires of human beings. They call good whatever serves them and increases their own possibilities in life. They call evil whatever restricts and hinders them. Just as human beings seek to make the invisible God into their accessory through self-created rituals, they also seek to conform God’s commandments to their own desires, thereby deluding themselves into seeing a correspondence between their own behavior and God’s demand. Violations against the commandment of the Preserver are not limited to individual decisions, but rather they have the tendency to become established and solidified into habits, customs, and legal systems. As such, they influence future generations and define the space in which they make decisions. The more human beings justify their disobedience and institutionalize their customs and legal systems, the more their knowledge of the commandment of the Preserver disappears. Although the refusal to obey presupposes knowledge of the commandment, in the long run knowledge and obedience are as inseparable in the realm of interpersonal behavior as knowledge of God and worship of God. When the knowledge of God’s commandment is denied through disobedience, and disobedience is insisted upon, then this knowledge is falsified, and consciences fall under the power of errant norms. And just like the knowledge of the self-attested power and goodness of the Creator, the knowledge of God’s commandments is turned into ignorance during the concrete process of knowing. Then the law is still “written on the hearts” of human beings, but they do not possess the law. They are “lawless” —not only in the sense that they do not have the law of the Old Testament but also in that they have falsified the commandment of the Preserver.

The Commandment of the Preserver

Thus one can find in the New Testament Scriptures negative judgments about the responses that human beings give to the commandment of the Preserver that are just as radical as those about the self-disclosure of God through creation. In the conclusion to his arguments in Rom. 1.18–3.8, Paul summarizes his findings in this way: “There is no one who is righteous, not even one… there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one. … Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known” (Rom. 3.10, 12, 15f.). The apostle Paul made these judgments also about all human beings. Similar negative judgments about the behavior of human beings before they came to faith are likewise found in other New Testament letters. In view of this New Testament situation, it is understandable that in the course of the history of theology contradictory dogmatic positions have arisen. On the one hand, one could see broad possibilities for subsuming Gentile ethics and customs into Christian ethics. On the other hand, the New Testament Scriptures provide a strong foundation for the judgment of Augustine that even the virtues of the pagans are “glittering vices,”11 and for the following sentence from the Second Council of Orange (529), which was influenced by Augustine’s theology: “No one has anything of their own except lying and sin.”12 In the same Augustinian vein, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession teaches: “[I]t is false to say that people do not sin when they do the works prescribed by the law outside of grace… for a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.”13 The Lutheran Confessions cite the following word of Paul no fewer than six times: “[W]hatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom. 14.23). The Council of Trent, however, anathematized those who declare “that all acts done prior to justification, no matter for what reason, are either truly sins or deserve God’s hatred.”14 Accordingly, to this day, one finds in Roman Catholic dogmatics the accusation that the teaching of the Reformation destroys moral character, while, conversely, in Protestant dogmatics, one finds the accusation that the Tridentine teaching minimizes sin. Of course, the teaching of the Reformation rejected with special vehemence the sentence that human beings could achieve grace by doing what is in them (facere quod in se est [“to do what is in you”]). What is often overlooked in these juxtapositions, however, is that neither the Reformation teaching nor the Tridentine teaching is as self-contained as first seems. It is true that the Lutheran Confessions reject the opinion that human beings who do works of the law outside of grace do not sin. Yet “natural reason remains to the extent that I can know evil and good in those things that can be grasped with sense and reason. Thus our

11 [The expression “glittering vices” comes from the Latin phrase, “Virtutes paganorum splendida vitia” (“The virtues of the pagans are glittering vices”). While this expression has often been attributed to Augustine, its source is unknown. –Ed.] 12 Canon 22. [Canons of the Second Council of Orange (Denzinger, 392 [trans. modified]). –Ed.] 13 Apol., XVIII.6 [BSELK, 550 (BC, 234). –Ed.] 14 Canon 7, Sixth Session. [Tanner, 2.679. –Ed.]

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free will’s potential can in many ways be lived honorably or dishonorably.”15 This is often explained by pointing to the possibility of being obedient to parents and authorities, and of refraining from murder and theft. On the other side, one must not ignore that Trent clearly taught that it is impossible for human beings “to believe, hope, love, and repent” “without the preceding impartation of the Holy Spirit….”16 Although it is denied that all works done before justification and without faith are sins, there is nevertheless a distinction here between natural and supernatural good, and therefore between the good works of the natural human being and the gracious renewal of the human being. On the basis of the New Testament statements, both of the following can be affirmed: There are non-Christians who do the works of the law; and there is no one who does good, for even those actions that correspond with God’s law cannot break the dominion of sin. This is only achieved by faith in Jesus Christ. Of course, the thrust of the New Testament’s statements on this matter are aimed at the new life in the obedience of faith. Judgments about the good works of Gentiles, however, are not encountered as a separate topic in the New Testament, but rather they are used as an argument in the exhortation of Jews and Christians. Indeed, one can find among non-believers a readiness to serve one’s neighbor that puts a Christendom that has become complacent to shame.

(c) Just as God continues to make himself known to all human beings by working within creation, so (apart from the extreme case of the hardening of hearts) God also continues to challenge them through the commandment of the Preserver. In the midst of unrestrained desires and the distortion of the difference between good and evil, God does not cease to bear witness to his commandment. Although human beings resist the claim of the Creator, God does not leave them alone. Over and over, God calls their behavior into question, breaks through the security by which they ignore or abuse their neighbors, shows them what their neighbors need, and what they owe them. Again and again God troubles the conscience, rattles it, and shakes it out of the hollow peace of self-chosen norms so that it will inquire anew about good and evil, and be stirred by how one’s conflicting thoughts accuse or excuse one another (Rom. 2.15). By doing this, God not only calls the individual human being into question but also the whole of society. God not only aims at individual deeds but also at customs and legal systems, by which injustice is tolerated and transgressors are protected. Even when the search for a just order is suppressed by selfishness and violence, through his commandment God does not cease to awaken in human beings the desire for a better order of human life together, in which every person’s life and freedom are respected and supported. In whatever

15 Apol., XVIII.4. [BSELK, 550. These sentences, which are found in Justus Jonas’ German translation of the Apology, are not included in the editors’ footnotes to Apol. XVIII in BC, 233–234. –Ed.] 16 Canon 3, Sixth Session. [Tanner, 2.679 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

The Establishing of Just Authority

way human beings respond to the commandment of the Preserver in obedience or disobedience—in whatever way they might present their evil deeds as good to themselves and others—they can never escape the distinction between good and evil. This is true even when it is turned into its opposite or suppressed from one’s consciousness. Even a criminal gang has its code of honor and its moral norms. Even though God does not redeem the sinner out of the dominion of sin through the commandment of the Preserver, this commandment is nevertheless an act of God’s lovingkindness, for it keeps the conscience awake and makes it possible to determine what is useful for the communal life of human beings. Indeed, it enables actions that serve the common good. God thereby also awakens the knowledge of one’s own failings and vices and the desire for renewal. By the commandment of the Preserver, too, God not only preserves human beings physically but he also puts them into a service that corresponds to the image of the divine preservation. Through God’s word, however, the call to repentance is addressed not only toward individual sins but toward the whole human person, not only toward disobedient deeds but toward the personhood of the individual, for God requires far more than mere individual actions and virtues in relation to the neighbor. God requires the surrender of the whole person. Then it will also be unveiled to what extent the good works mask hostility toward God, selfishness, and vainglory. This means that, by faith in the gospel, the law written on the heart is freed, the conscience is unbound from erring norms, and a fresh perspective is opened up for what actually reflects the commandment of the Preserver within the manifold distorted differentiations between good and evil. When by faith in Christ the paradoxical kindness of divine preservation is recognized, it becomes clear which actions and customs can be retained in obedience to God, and which must be rejected. The final unveiling of all deeds, also those of Christians, will be done by God in the Last Judgment.

4. The Establishing of Just Authority The common life of human beings always takes place within the manifold and irreversible relations of man and woman, parents and children, those helping and those receiving help, teachers and learners, those giving instruction and those receiving it. These relations become all the more multifarious, the closer human beings are living together and the more differentiated the activities are in human society. Giving and taking, teaching and learning, commanding and obeying are not contradictions in the concept and fulfillment of love. Obedience and freedom are one in the fulfillment of love. But when human beings turn away from God, these relations undergo profound changes. The same self-love that opposes God also violates the relationship between human beings. The togetherness of giving

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and receiving, of commanding and obeying, turn into opposites of hierarchy and subjugation. Instead of giving instruction in love, there are orders and threats of punishment. Instead of obedience in love, there is the self-yielding of the subservient in fear. Separated fiefdoms arise, which seek to secure and expand their existence through threats and the application of force. In a very broad sense, we call such force political power [politische Gewalt], without limiting this term to a particular form of political order (such as the patriarchal leadership of a tribe, or the Greek polis, or the modern state). The manner in which this power encounters the human beings within its sphere of authority can differ a great deal. Differences already arise in accordance with how power was assumed—whether because of age, hereditary succession, election, or usurpation. There is a difference between ruling one’s own people and ruling conquered foreign peoples, which is different again from the structure of nomadic society, or the rural and urban cultures of a fully developed modern society. The stance of political power in relation to its subjects has become incomparably more differentiated in modern times than was the case in the classical differentiations between forms of ordering the state in Plato and Aristotle, in Thomas Aquinas, and in the Reformers. But even when the people are understood as possessing this power and it is wielded by a multiplicity of human beings due to the separation of powers, it nevertheless stands over against the people, even when it is commissioned and controlled by them. The relationship of the various realms of power to one another also varies greatly. It might be defined by self-isolation or aggression, or by contracts and alliances, and if it is these latter two, then one needs to differentiate between agreements that are voluntary and those that are coerced. The boundaries between absolute and limited sovereignty are constantly moving. The conquest of neighboring peoples, the building of empires, the struggle for freedom by the subjugated, and the fall of empires—all of the above trade places in quick succession. As in the previous sections about the self-disclosure of the Creator and the commandment of the Preserver, here, too, it is necessary to differentiate between God’s claim and the human response. In this case, it is between the divine employment of rulers and the use that they make of divine instruction. Here one must not forget that the biblical statements about divine instruction to political power are addressed to very particular political situations, powers, and threats, which belong to the past. Therefore, they cannot be directly generalized and applied to today’s circumstances. Despite their historical contingency, however, the abiding relevance of these instructions is evident when they are understood within the overall context of God’s creative and redemptive action. (a) God does not abandon the use of power to the arbitrariness of those who wield it, but rather requires of them that they put their power to use in serving his preservation. With this requirement [Anspruch], God encounters every political

The Establishing of Just Authority

power, in all the various ways such power takes shape in history and in all those who are subject to it. Together with all human beings, those who exercise political power are also obligated to be obedient to the commandment of the Preserver and thereby to the “Golden Rule.” No ruler has the right to determine arbitrarily what is good and evil. Through subjection to the commandment of the Preserver, the use of political power is limited. Those who exercise this power are bound to the command for justice that applies to all human beings. At the same time, God has empowered those who exercise political power to use their authority for the carrying out of justice, and thereby for the preservation and support of human life in their realm of authority. Of course, to be engaged in working for justice is commanded to every human being, but the means by which those who exercise political power carry out that power are of a special kind. Such individuals are commissioned to use their power for the promotion of good and the restraint of evil. Humanity, threatened by destruction under the dominion of sin, needs such protection. Mere knowledge of justice and its necessity for the common life has been shown to be impotent time and time again, unless supported by the threat of force. In that God grants such force to his commandment and empowers it for the execution of justice, he takes it into his service. The political order defined by this assignment and empowerment is “God’s order” (Rom. 13.2 [L]), whereby the word διαταγή [diatagē] describes both the action and the result of the divine order.[ix] When the one who exercise political power acts in accordance with this divine assignment and empowerment, that person is “God’s servant” (διάκονος [diakonos], λειτουργός [leitourgos]; Rom. 13.4 and 6). This political power, ordered and limited by God, can be described as secular office [weltliches Amt].[x] The term office [Amt] (ministerium) is not meant to refer to the mere possession of power. Rather, it underscores that God’s commission empowers the officeholder to use that political power for the sake of other human beings. Here the term secular office does not refer to a certain form of governance but to the condition of being employed by God in the work of preserving human beings who are threatening one another. The limitation and empowerment of political power through God’s commission necessarily belong together. Their togetherness rule out for a present political power (in a positivistic way)—simply because it has established itself—understanding itself as commissioned by God, and its rule and judgment as God’s rule and judgment. Romans 13.1–7 has frequently been misinterpreted in this way. However, one cannot ignore that Paul is speaking here of a political power that knows how to distinguish good from evil (v. 3f.)—even if only in the superficial way explained in the previous section. Nowhere does Paul leave this distinction between good and evil up to human beings. Rather, it is decided by the law of God, which is written in every human heart and is revealed in the word through Moses and explained by Jesus. The use of this terminology in Rom. 13.3f. must be understood in connection with

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2.9f. and v. 14f., and it is an indication of the critical norm, given by God, to which political action is also subordinated. “Good” and “evil” must not be trivialized, as if they only concerned good behavior toward the state and whatever pleases the state. The tasks entrusted to the secular office by its divine commission are not the same for all time with respect to details. Depending on the various historical, geographical, and economic circumstances, different measures are required on the part of political power, especially considering what inner and outer threats are leveled at the community. It is therefore not possible to compile a comprehensive list of the specific tasks that are to be fulfilled in the same way, always, and in every place by the secular office. But in the same way that the commandment of the Preserver is not a mere formal demand but still points in a consistent direction within the various historical situations (cf. 287f.), so also the basic tasks that apply to every political power can be recognized, whether they are carried out by a tribal leader or the government of a modern state. Above all, the following tasks should be emphasized: (1) In obedience to the commandment of the Preserver, the secular office must protect the life and freedom of every human being within its sphere of authority, supporting them in the particularity of their needs. The secular office must especially work for the oppressed and the poor against the transgressions of the powerful and the rich. It must settle disputes, balancing the different interests for the sake of the common good and a peaceful communal life. In all this, it is not only responsible for the preservation and support of biological life but for the respect given to every person and, above all, for the freedom to worship God. These tasks must be carried out not only through concrete individual regulations but also through laws that are put in place with considerations beyond the present moment and that are binding for those who exercise the secular office and for the people subject to them. The secular office is obligated to explain, by means of decisions and laws, to all who belong to its sphere of authority, the commandment for justice that is valid for all human beings. (2) The secular office must take care that its regulations and laws are followed. It must hold those who injure the common good or harm the wellbeing of individual members of the community accountable, subject them to a trial, and punish them, so that the peace of the community is preserved. (3) The task of the secular office is not limited to human beings within its own sphere of authority but also concerns the relationship to neighboring political communities. Since they are not subject to its power, its duty here is a different one from the one it has toward people in its own sphere of authority. But the commandment of God the Preserver also applies to behavior toward neighboring political communities. Just as the Golden Rule forbids those who exercise political power from misusing their authority against the people within their sphere of authority, so it also forbids selfishly utilizing this power to expand their own sphere

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of authority at the expense of neighbors through threats, war, subjugation, or destruction. Even though the secular office’s primary task is the preservation and support of the community it serves, it must nevertheless consider what will benefit the neighbor. It therefore must also be concerned with keeping peace outside its borders. (4) The secular office must protect the people within its sphere of authority from attacks by foreign political powers, by threatening the use of force and, if necessary, using it. It must also assist other political communities that are being threatened, attacked, or oppressed, and who are crying for help. (5) Because the commandment of the Preserver is addressed to all human beings, the task of making peace cannot be limited to the relationship with one’s closest immediate neighbors. Instead, it is the task of every secular office to work together with all other political powers for the peace of humanity. International law that is recognized by all and applicable to all, serving the common good of humanity, is important at all times, even if its work has only become recognized and urgent to a greater degree in the last four hundred years. In determining the relationship of these tasks toward one another, it would be a serious misunderstanding if one interpreted these tasks one-sidedly as only applying to the use of the sword in internal and external matters. Its primary mission, rather, is peace in internal and external matters with a view toward the peace of all humankind. However, as long as human beings persist in rebellion against God and in strife against one another, peace cannot be guaranteed without the threat of force. Yet, increasing the level of force is not permitted as an end in itself. The sword must serve peace. With these conditions in mind, one can understand the apostolic instruction: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” (Rom. 13.1) and obedient to its regulations and laws. This obligation is owed to the highest holders of political power as well as to their subordinated instruments of governance. The obedience required here is not just about non-resistance. Rather, it is also about being “ready for every good work” (Titus 3.1). It is not just about individual deeds of obedience. Rather, it is about obediently honoring and acknowledging the secular office. Even more, Christians are to make “supplications, prayers, intercession, and thanksgivings” for the secular office (1 Tim. 2.1f.). Just as the commandment of the Preserver forbids rulers to use their power in arbitrary ways, so it also does not permit arbitrariness in one’s obedience to the regulations of rulers. Ruling and obeying are subject to the same norm of God’s commandment, before whom every person is responsible. When Paul exhorts people to be obedient “because of conscience” (Rom. 13.5), what is meant is the conscience bound to God’s commandment. The human beings subject to political power are not obligated to obey it merely because it has the power to enforce its

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regulations and break resistance but because it is employed by God for carrying out the divinely commanded good. Being subject to the commandment of the Preserver therefore signifies a political responsibility that all human beings have. The possibility of participation in political decision-making can be secured by law in various ways—up to the expansive level of security exemplified by a modern pluralistic democracy. But no matter what form the political ordering of community life takes, every member of this political community bears common responsibility for it, and it will have to express itself in word and deed. This is true even in those places where such participation is not legally secured but is left up to spontaneous action, or is even suppressed. To what extent such obedience is already a responsible political decision is made clear by the fact that no tyrant can remain in power unless the subjects stay obedient to him. Let us summarize what has been said about the tasks of political force and those who are subject to it: By establishing the secular office, God intends to bring about a political community in which those who exercise power and those who are subject to it feel jointly responsible to the commandment of the Preserver and serve God’s work of preservation. All churches recognize political power as God’s order, namely, as the order of God the Creator. While medieval scholastic theology understands it to a greater extent as having been given as part of the original creation, Reformation theology tends to see it more as intended for the restriction of evil. Relatedly, the medieval scholastics understood the state as a “societas perfecta,” albeit only “in naturalibus,” while the Reformers understood it more as an emergency measure.17 But even Thomas Aquinas knew how sin changed the way this power is used. Luther, in turn, could already speak of orders of authority in discussing the original creation. When power armed with the ius gladii [the right to bear the sword] is discussed as part of the preservation of sinners, we need to remember that in the biblical stories of origin these regulations are only mentioned after the proliferation of sin in connection with the Noahide covenant: “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind” (Gen. 9.6). The churches are also in agreement that the commission given to the secular office can be realized in a variety of political orderings and that the same ordering is not appropriate for all people in every time. In most churches a preference for a certain type of ordering of the state has developed, and this preference has been held onto even after profound changes in their political circumstances. It is all the more important that this does not concern dogmatic

17 [The notion of a “perfect society” or “perfect community” can be traced to Aristotle (cf. his Politica, I [Politics; in Basic Writings of Aristotle, ed. and trans. Richard McKeon [New York: Random House, 1941], 1114–1115). This notion was later developed and qualified, e. g., by Aquinas in his reflections on the law. See Aquinas, ST, II/1.90–91. –Ed.]

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differences. Indeed, all churches in principle affirm the possibility of developing new legal structures beyond the historically known types of state constitutions that protect the life of humanity in view of its particular threats today.

(b) The use of political power—i. e., the responses of human beings to God’s establishment of this power—varies greatly: In the Old Testament Scriptures, one finds stories about just rulers not only in the sphere of the old covenant and its law but also outside of it. Thus the Persian King Cyrus is praised as a kind of anointed one by the exiled Jews of Babylon, even though he did not participate in the religion of Yahweh. In the New Testament Scriptures, one finds positive evaluations especially about the Roman Empire. Apparently, some biblical authors relied on the possibility that Gentile political powers, despite their ignorance of God, were nevertheless commissioned by God in order to secure for human beings a life in peace and justice. However, the Bible frequently reports in addition that such political powers also twisted the commandment of God the Preserver to fit their own desires, who masqueraded injustice as justice, oppression as peace, exploitation as the common good. They arbitrarily called justice whatever served to increase their own power. Thus the secular office misuses the power entrusted to it when it tolerates transgressions against God’s regulations or even rewards them, or when it discriminates against or oppresses as troublemakers those who are duty-bound to God’s commandment. Here the secular office does not leave space for the freedom to worship God and for obedience to his commandments. The more God’s justice is distorted, the more grating becomes the moralistic pathos with which the distortion of the divine commandments is presented as a fight for good against evil. The distortion and denial of the commandment of the Preserver can also proceed from those who are subordinated to political power. They might push their rulers to let evildoers go unpunished or even to reward them, while treating those who are duty-bound to God’s commandment as enemies of the common good. Disregard for divine instructions not only takes place when the secular office misuses its power, but also when it neglects to use it when necessary. The more those who exercise the secular office and those who live within the sphere of their authority agree in holding a low view toward the divine commission, the more severe the threat becomes to internal justice and to peace in relation to neighboring peoples and states. A condition can arise in which the truth of the divine commandment becomes all but forgotten. Thus, in the midst of so many possibilities for distorting political power, the most extreme aberration is the selfdeification of the rulers and the demand that their subjects worship them as divine, combined with the threat that all who refuse to undertake this worship will lose their right to exist. This is demonic usurpation and perversion of the order given by God. The possibility of such a degeneration of political power against God need

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not be limited to a single ruler. It can also be the self-deification of a people and a realm. However, in the midst of such distortions and degradations of the secular office and political community (and apart from the extreme case of God’s hardening of hearts), again and again through his commandment God awakens in rulers and those who are governed a knowledge of what is good and evil, what is life-preserving and life-destroying, what is just and unjust. God thereby calls to account political powers who abuse their power and those who affirm this abuse, and he leaves them no rest. Again and again through his commandment God awakens human beings, who see through the abuse of power, demand its removal, and who serve the preservation of life in justice, peace, and freedom. Of course, the history of politics is not merely a history of human action; it is also a history of God’s struggle with human beings for their preservation, namely, for such responses on the part of human beings that correspond to the commandment of the Preserver. (c) For this reason, one needs to differentiate between the divine establishment of political power and the very different use that human beings might make of this entrustment. In addition to the just use of the secular office we find in human history much abuse of it, even to the point where there is so much distortion that the divine commission is no longer recognizable in the regulations of the political power. Among churches there is agreement that there is no duty to obey laws that contradict God’s commandment. In such a case, the rulers are to be admonished, and if they do not listen, disobedience is not only permitted but is even commanded by God. This is especially true when the public proclamation of Christ is forbidden: “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5.29). Such disobedience against a single law does not mean that the authority in question is no longer recognized as God’s servant. It does mean, however, that this particular law must not be followed because it contradicts God’s commission. Moreover, there is agreement among the churches that we must reckon with the possibility that political power would rebel against God’s commission in such a fundamental and destructive way, forcing the people in its sphere of authority to rebel against God, that it can no longer be said to be ruling its subjects as the servant of God the Preserver but as a tyrannical degeneration of the secular office and as an instrument of demonic powers—as the “beast from the abyss” (Rev. 13 [S]). Within this fundamental agreement, there remain many open questions among the churches: Aside from the prohibition of true worship, the order to participate in the rituals of other religions, or the affirmation of atheistic ideologies, when must obedience be refused? Where is the line between the rejection of particular regulations of a state and the determination that the entire authority of a state has become degenerate? Do those who refuse to obey only have the possibility of suffering trial and punishment, or should they flee from the political

The Establishing of Just Authority

consequences of their resistance? Should the resistance remain passive, by refusing to obey, or should it become vocal, by publicly making accusations against the political power? Further still, should one strive to coerce the political power by threatening the use of force or actually using force to repeal its law and to release those arrested, or should it be altogether removed by force? Once the possibility of active resistance by force is affirmed, the question remains, who is justified to forcibly remove the present political power? Incumbents of other secular ministries within the same political community, or every person who recognizes the injustice? Answers to these questions have varied greatly throughout church history, both in the theory of the right to resist and in carrying out this resistance. Thus the Eastern Church—as in the systematic unfolding of a doctrine of natural law—has been cautious regarding the issue of a theological justification for resistance by force against political power. In the Latin Church, however, the issue of murdering a tyrant and the related question about the definition of a tyrant have been thoroughly debated since the early Middle Ages. For example, Thomas Aquinas differentiated between the tyrannical abuse of power and the tyrannical usurpation of political power. In the first instance, he charged the public authorities and therefore all other legal authorities of the community with working for a bloodless cessation of the abuse, while in the second case, he justified tyrannicide—even when carried out by an individual—as an extreme measure.[xi] At first, Luther only allowed the word that points to the injustice, prayer, disobedience, and suffering to be the means of resistance, and he rejected the use of force. Only reluctantly did he later acknowledge the princes’ right of resistance, including the violence of the sword, against the anti-evangelical measures of repression taken by the emperor.[xii] Calvin taught: “We have no other instruction than to obey and to suffer.”18 But he also encouraged the political offices emerging from the people to confront the capriciousness of the kings. In the face of rising absolutism within the nobility, the Jesuit and Calvinist Monarchomachs taught active resistance, including the consequence of assassinating a tyrant.[xiii] In the Lutheran Church this theory found almost no support. In the last few decades, the question about the forceful resistance against totalitarian governments has been much debated in the churches, but precise criteria for the boundary between the necessity of nonviolent and violent resistance could not be determined. In the theologies of revolution and liberation that have spread in recent years, especially in South America, the use of force as a legitimate means for bringing about a just order has often been demanded as a matter of course. In the course of history, violent resistance against a higher-ranking political power has been undertaken for very different reasons and in very different ways. This history cannot be treated here in detail. Suffice it to say, the theory of the right to resist and the actual execution of resistance by no means always overlap in history. For example, the Orthodox cautiousness vis-à-vis the violent removal of political power is contradicted by an astonishing number

18 [Calvin, ICR, IV.20.31 (2.1518). –Ed.]

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of violent takeovers of the Byzantine imperial throne by Orthodox usurpers, whereas the radical demands of the Monarchomachs were not so much met by the Jesuits and Calvinists themselves but by the Jacobins of the French Revolution, who naturally did not seek any theological justification. In the history of the theory and practice of resistance, one finds again and again the effort to protect the political community against encroachment by political power by regulating the political-legal system in advance. Such protections are found, e. g., in the Germanic feudal contracts and oaths to kings embedded in medieval estate laws. Modern democratic constitutions contain the most comprehensive protections. It is indeed important that foreseeable cases of conflict are constitutionally regulated as much as possible from the outset. When the abuse of political power is then ended by force according to existing laws, one cannot strictly speak of resistance against the secular office as much as of its restitution and defense. At the same time, history shows that no constitution, no matter how carefully it is written, can prevent in advance a tyrannical-totalitarian degeneration of the secular office. That is why the foundational arguments that undergird the given historical legal systems and power relationships are of the utmost importance.

When, after considering the problems of the theory and practice of resistance, one returns to the witness of the New Testament letters, one notices that they contain only a few statements on the topic of political behavior and that they call exclusively for obedience to political powers (Rom. 13.1–7; 1 Pet. 2.13–17; Titus 3.1)—or, as the case may be, for intercession and thanksgiving on their behalf (1 Tim. 2.1–3). In the letter to the Romans this power is the Roman Empire with its various offices of governance. But when taking other such New Testament exhortations into account, one can also think more or less directly of the power of Rome, since it had brought the entire Mediterranean region under its control and had turned regional rulers into its vassals. In this state, a multiplicity of gods was worshiped, and in the cult of the emperor a comprehensive cohesion of these cults was intended. The Roman state had expanded considerably beyond its original boundaries through the use of force, and it had robbed many peoples of their freedom. It subjugated the conquered with a severe hand and cruelly suppressed any resistance. As the example of Pontius Pilate shows, even the highest representatives of the state did not consider themselves duty-bound to the law alone. All the more striking is the matter of course in which the New Testament letters exhort obedience to the state without limitation and without criticism. It is also surprising that—apart from the few brief affirmative references to God’s commission (Rom. 13.1f.) and will (1 Pet. 2.13f.), as well as to the employment of political power by God (Rom. 13.4, 6)—a more precise justification for this duty to obey is missing. Revelation 13 also deals with the Roman state, which by this time had started enforcing the imperial cult and was openly opposing Christians, making the purchase of their livelihood dependent on their acceptance of “the mark, that is, the name

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of the beast” (v. 17). The origin of this political power is not traced back to God’s establishing but to the work of the satanic dragon. The statements of the Book of Revelation are warnings against adopting the mark and participating in the worship of the “beast.” Yet there is no call for forceful resistance against this degenerated political power. Rather, the call is for “endurance and faith of the saints” (v. 10). Why did the New Testament letters so vehemently call for obedience to the Roman state, and why did Paul evaluate the Roman state so positively, theologically, and politically? Was it because obedience and subjugation were the only way for those subjugated by Rome to survive? Or was it because they wanted to protect themselves apologetically against the suspicion of hostility to the emperor? Or was it because they did not want to transgress an ethical exhortation belonging to the wisdom of Jewish-Hellenistic culture? None of these suppositions is convincing. Or is the reason to be sought in Jesus’ rejection of the Zealots’ use of force against the Roman occupying power? Surely, the example of Jesus’ behavior at his arrest and during his trial cannot be underestimated. But this reference is missing in the exhortations for the church to obey political power, even while in other contexts the participation of persecuted Christians in the suffering of Christ is prominently emphasized (e. g., in 1 Pet. 2.21–23; 3.13–18). The exhortations in the letters deal with how a subject should behave toward a superior political power, not with a theological doctrine about the state. But some important insights for understanding the political order arise from the brief Pauline arguments in Rom. 13.1–7, provided one understands these brief arguments in connection with the whole of Pauline theology. We can point, therefore, to the following theses: (1) All human beings stand under the dominion of sin. All human beings are sold into slavery under guilt, and no one is able to liberate oneself from this bondage. Without exception, it is true, “[t]here is no one who is righteous, not even one… There is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one” (Rom. 3.10ff.; cf. Ps. 14.1–3). (2) God has arranged political power to be “the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer” (13.4) and to acknowledge good deeds (13.3b, 4a). The Pauline distinction between good and evil is defined here by God’s law, which the Gentiles also “carry within themselves” as “written on their hearts” (2.14f. [S]). Even though Paul does not talk about the possibility that there might be a difference between what the political power thinks is useful or harmful and God’s law, it is nevertheless unthinkable that Paul leaves the determination of the content of good and evil to the capriciousness of political power. (3) The punishment of evil and the acknowledgment of good has a threefold limitation:

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(3.1) Even though God has written the law on the hearts of all human beings, the human distinction between good and evil only matches the divine commandment up to a point (cf. 288ff.). This also goes for political officeholders. (3.2) Even where the laws of the state do correspond to the commandment of the divine law, their effects are limited, for, according to Paul, the doing of good cannot be coerced. The power of the state can therefore only punish gratuitous transgressions and excesses of evil, but it cannot do the same with evil thoughts and every single evil deed. Otherwise, the rule of law might fall apart. (3.3) Even the best laws of a state and the most careful administration of justice cannot liberate human beings from their entanglement in guilt and their having fallen into God’s judgment. It cannot change them into new human beings. The community of the liberated and the renewed arises not through the power of the state but through the message of Christ that is accepted in faith. In these three limitations one can see the transitory character of political power and of its possibilities. Even when it executes the judgment of divine wrath (v. 4), those who exercise this power are themselves under God’s judgment and remain dependent on the justification of the sinner that comes by faith in Jesus Christ. (4) In view of these limitations, what is all the more surprising is how the New Testament letters so vehemently exhort the Christian congregations to obey political power, and how the congregations are expected to recognize every political power as God’s commission and to show it “honor” (Rom. 13.7; cf. 1 Pet. 2.17). (5) This contradiction between the authority given by God and the limited possibilities of political power can be seen as one of the characteristic examples of the sort of paradox that is typical for the divine preservation and governance of a world that has fallen under judgment. Because God wants to preserve humanity that has fallen under the power of death, he stoops down to keep awake the knowledge of the necessary distinction between good and evil in a domain where good and evil are more or less misjudged, and to protect those who do good, through the judgments of political power against the attacks by those who do evil. We know nothing about the occasion that caused Paul to exhort the Roman congregation so vehemently to be obedient to the state. We also know little about the composition of this community. Much like the other early congregations, it probably consisted of politically insignificant people who had no direct access to the holders of political power, let alone who held political office themselves. When we seek to understand the exhortations of Rom. 13.1–7 in their overall context, there are of course consequences that extend beyond the contemporary context of the church in Rome. From the five theses above it follows, e. g., that Christians have the task of making clear to political power its divine commission and the true distinction between good and evil. It also follows that it is possible for Christians to serve God by filling a secular office. There thus arises also the duty of Christians not only to resist any prohibition on bearing witness for Christ but also to resist other

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misuses of political office and to refuse to cooperate. Indeed, if the highest political power is extremely degenerated, there might arise for Christians the duty to use the power God has given them in their secular office to remove this degeneration. Whether human beings abuse their political authority or use it to prevent the abuse of political power, the greatest danger is that they will forget about the dominion of sin and the limited possibilities of the secular office, desiring to actualize a kingdom of justice and peace that no human power but only God can bring about. In other words, the greatest danger for the stability of political communities is the confusion of a merely temporary secular justice for the ultimate, divine justice revealed in Christ, the peace of this world for the peace of God that is given in Christ. The more the Roman Empire and the Christian church came to identify themselves with the kingdom of God, the harder the inner and external political struggles became in the Crusades and the wars over confessional differences. When, after the French Revolution, a secularized eschatological expectation for a community of equality, liberty, and fraternity, free of state coercion, began to spread, totalitarian political powers emerged that unleashed oppression to a degree of perfection unknown to pagan antiquity. The seemingly one-sided exhortation of the New Testament letters to be obedient even to questionable political powers corresponds to the paradoxical patience with which God gives power and honor even to those who more or less misjudge the distinction between good and evil. The exhortation to obey political powers is thus a summons to live in such a way as to be the image of divine patience. In a time in which barely two months pass without a government being toppled somewhere in the world in the name of the common good, and by which the common good is often more hurt than helped, a sober reflection on what secular justice and secular peace can accomplish becomes especially urgent, and the New Testament exhortations become highly relevant.

5. The Conservation of the Distorted Image of God Human beings have failed to live up to the purpose for which they were created. By elevating themselves above God and other human beings and by exploiting non-human creatures, they remain guilty of failing with respect to the response, community, and dominion that are like God’s. By failing to live up to this purpose, they have also failed with respect to the eternal life promised to them. They are trapped in the dominion of sin and death. But despite this reversal, sinners have not ceased to be human. Even when they do not give God the glory, they are met by the self-disclosure of God in creation. Even when they ignore their neighbors, i. e., other human beings, they remain under the commandment of God the Preserver. Even when they become deaf and insensitive toward God, so that one can speak with the prophets of a “heart of

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stone” (Ezek. 11.19; 36.26), they are not turned to stone. Even when the oft-cited psalm verse applies to them, and human beings have “become like the unreasoning beast” (Ps. 49.12 [Vulgate])—Augustine added that “the honor” of human beings consists “in being like God, but [their] dishonor in being like an animal”—they do not become animals.19 Even in the breakdown of their earthly life in death, they do not cease to be human beings. Although life is finished, they remain in nothingness. They are locked within it. In this way, the sinner is distinguished from the animal, even in death, for the animal perishes, but the human being remains in death. Thus there technically is no “dehumanization.” Human beings can turn against their purpose, but they cannot strip off their humanity, nor can they escape it. Naturally, sinners have no reason to boast in their indestructible peculiarity before other creatures. This becomes clear when one asks, Is sinful humanity above the animals or below them? Isaiah, for his part, cried out, “The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand” (Isa. 1.3). That human beings have become “equal” with the animals means, therefore, that they have become worse than animals, for animals remain in the creaturely order of their instincts. Even the courses of the stars and the sequence of non-living processes remain, after all, in the order given to them, while human beings have departed from theirs. The fact that human beings, in contrast to other earthly creatures, turn against God is truly no badge of honor, but rather it is their shame and their undoing. Can such a human being be regarded as the image of God? Is the fact of a remainder of humanness enough to grant such a lofty title? All churches teach a diminishment of the divine image through sin. But they do so in different ways: Since Irenaeus it has been customary, when treating the divine image, to distinguish between εἰκών [eikōn] and ὁμοίωσις [homoiōsis], imago and similitudo. The relationship between these two has been explained differently. In Eastern theology, ὁμοίωσις is understood as the purpose and goal of humanity (e. g., eternal life and deification) and εἰκών as the ability, given by God to human beings with their creation, to reach this goal. In Western theology, imago has usually been defined as the natural reason and freedom received in creation [Schöpfung] and similitudo as the supernatural gifts of righteousness and eternal life received at the creation [Erschaffung]. Through sin, the purpose of the ὁμοίωσις is not fulfilled and the similitudo has been lost. But the εἰκών or the imago remains for the sinner. To be sure, one can also find occasional statements that indicate the imago has been weakened by sin, but it is not destroyed by the loss of the similitudo. No doubt, a shift has occurred in the understanding of the imago, from statements about the correspondence between human behavior and God’s past and present action upon

19 Augustine, De Trinitate, XII.16. [CCSL, 50.370; On the Trinity, WSA, I/5.331 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

The Conservation of the Distorted Image of God

human beings toward a reflection about those abilities of human beings that remain in place regardless of their behavior toward God. In this sense, it was possible to speak then of the immortality of the natural and the sinful human being (cf. 260f.). Refusing to distinguish between imago and similitudo, the Reformers taught that sinners have lost the divine image and that, at best, one can speak of a remainder (e. g., of the authority of parents over their children as an image of divine authority over human beings).[xiv] These differences should not be underestimated, for the question arises, Can the reason, responsibility, and freedom of sinners, and their indelible state of remaining in death, be described as the image of God? After all, sinners’ reason is dulled by dishonoring God, their responsibility weakened by their urge toward evil, and their freedom enslaved by guilt and misery. What do love of God and rebellion against God, obedience and disobedience, life and death, have in common? Are we not dealing here with opposites that are greater than the difference between heaven and earth? Is the abstract human potential for good and evil enough to be called the image of God, and can one ignore the fact that sinners are not able to liberate themselves from the dominion of sin? This dogmatic controversy cannot be decided through biblical exegesis since the biblical statements are not univocal. The distinction between the remaining imago and the lost similitudo cannot be deduced from Gen. 1.26, since here, as we have already shown (cf. 213f.), the two words s.elem and demût denote the same correspondence between human beings and God. In addition, the Old Testament does not mention any loss of the divine image through sin. By contrast, the New Testament presupposes it, both in the statements about the transformation of believers into the image of Christ and in the many comparisons between the actions of God and Christ upon believers and the works expected of them. Only in two places (1 Cor. 11.7; James 3.9) are human beings called the image of God in a general way. Therefore, every one of the controversial dogmatic positions captures only a portion of the biblical statements, while their interpretation is determined by broader systematic considerations. Here, too, it is therefore not enough to compare opposing dogmatic sentences in isolation from one another. Rather, much as in the controversies about original sin and free will, one must consider the historical fronts where they originated. One must also consider the structure of the different statements and inquire about the basic statements of faith in which they are rooted. The following will elaborate them. When God places us in the divine presence and uncovers our reality, we must confess: We have not loved you back, even though you first loved us. We have not turned to our neighbors with the kind of love with which you have turned toward us all. We have not ruled over the other creatures with the kind of caring attentiveness by which you reign. In us there is nothing with which we could boast before you. The fact that we are your creatures is no excuse either, since we have misused our

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good createdness and have not thanked you for your gifts. We have closed ourselves off to life with you and have fallen under the power of sin and death. We must confess that we are not an image of your divine freedom and love. At the same time, we recognize that God does not let go of us and does not let the purpose for which we were created fall, namely, the purpose of being in his image. Through his self-disclosure, God continues to seek a response like his, and through his commandment of preservation he seeks a community with us that is like his. God keeps lifting us above the other creatures so that we might rule over them as God’s representatives. So the image of God that we have failed to fulfill constantly enters us in God’s self-witnessing and is thus present through his actions and his requirements in the midst of our turning away from him. In this knowledge of our failure to be the divine image, we confess: You hold fast to our origin and purpose. You seek us for the sake of our fulfillment. Even when we are unfaithful, you are faithful. You still desire that we would be an image of your freedom and love and participate in your life. Whatever words are used to make known our personal failure and God’s work, the same certainty is found throughout the churches in the act of confession: We have left our origin and failed in our purpose to be the image of God, but God steadfastly upholds our origin and our purpose. We cannot liberate ourselves from the dominion of sin and death, but God can do it and wants to do it. If in our thoughts we distance ourselves from the event in which we encounter God and are uncovered, and if we make the human being the object of our contemplation, then the focus shifts away from the acknowledgement of the divine action upon the human being toward statements about humankind. Then it seems reasonable to view human beings not as sinners, but to deduce from the steadfastness of the divine action in order to make statements about some abiding abilities and attributes of the human being. From there emerges the issue of how to differentiate between the depravity and the createdness of the human being, and how to define their relationship to each other in such a way that the emphasis on depravity does not override the createdness, nor the emphasis on createdness override the depravity. When we step out of the act of confessing our failure and the steadfast divine action of the Creator, then these two confessing statements, each of which deals with the whole human being, are replaced by particular statements about a humanity that partly remains the image of God and partly has lost it. In these reflections, one can see an interest in defining exactly what stays the same, even in the sinner, indeed throughout human history from its origin to and past the fall and on to the future renewal in the resurrection. But if that which remains in sinners were to be called the divine image and were to be defined in terms of content by pointing to the abiding abilities and qualities of human beings, like reason, free will, and immortality, then the critical counter-question cannot be avoided, whether sin has not in fact been trivialized. Is the term image of God not voided of all meaning

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by using it to describe a misused and blinded reason and freedom, and an existence in death? By contrast, the Reformation’s denial of the sinner’s divine image remains in closer proximity to the self-knowledge that we gain in the shock of being encountered by God. But even though the content and structure of the confession of sin was the starting point for the Reformation’s statements about the loss of the divine image, these statements were soon developed in such an objectifying manner that the oldProtestant dogmatics ended up separating the structure of their doctrinal statements about sin far from the structure of the confession of sin. The counter-question then emerged, whether the Reformers’ theological understanding of humanity might not have been defined so one-sidedly by the dominion of sin, that depravity had taken the place of createdness. The Formula of Concord clearly negated this by rejecting the anthropology of Flacius Illyricus, but the question has kept on resurfacing, especially in Jesuit polemics.20 In light of this development of doctrine, it is noteworthy that biblical statements rarely treat humankind in its self-contained existence [An-und-für-sich-Sein], nor in terms of its abiding capabilities and attributes. Instead, they are above all statements about God’s action upon human beings and about human behavior vis-à-vis God. The biblical witnesses show surprisingly little interest in describing the identity of the human being who was originally created good, then sinfully corrupted, justified and renewed by faith, and of the human being raised from the dead. As surely as this identity is presupposed everywhere, including statements about the dead, the biblical witnesses are not interested in precisely differentiating between that which abides in the human being and that which changes. Furthermore, we need to consider that the basic biblical structure of doctrine consists of stories about the mighty deeds and promises of God. The question thus arises, whether, in the doctrine about the human being, reflection should not above all be directed to the faithfulness of the God who acts upon human beings, to the steadfastness by which God has upheld, is upholding, and will uphold the purpose of the human being to be in his image: God upholds our purpose to be in his image, even though we have failed to fulfill it. God preserves human beings vis-à-vis this purpose and awakens within them again and again, through his self-disclosure and commandment, the knowledge of the response and community that are like God’s. In the midst of a refusal to give

20 See FC SD 1. [BSELK, 1318–1346 (BC, 531–542). Matthias Flacius (1520–1575), who was from Croatia (and so he is often called Flacius Illyricus), was a leader of the so-called “Gnesio-Lutherans” and an opponent of Melanchthon. At the Weimar Disputation of 1560, Flacius stated that sin is the substance of the human. Even if Flacius himself did not intend this controversial statement to have the ontological consequences that his interlocutors accused him of making, the notion that original sin is the substance of the human is rejected in FC SD 1. –Ed.]

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this response and to live in this community, God called Israel out from among the nations. God sanctified Israel and called for it to live as his holy people. Despite the disobedience of Israel, God realized the divine image in the midst of this people through the incarnation of his Son. This incarnated divine image was also rejected and killed by Jews and Gentiles. But through the message of Christ’s cross and resurrection, God speaks the divine image into believers, and through the Holy Spirit, God transforms them into the image of Christ until the future consummation in the resurrection of the dead. The identity of the human being exists in the context of these actions. In view of the faithfulness of the divine action, one could describe the four purposes of the human being in the image of God (named in chap. 5 above) as foundational-ontological existential factors [Existentialien] of theological anthropology, though as existential factors of a special kind. For they have their existence throughout the history of humankind, not in human beings in and for themselves but in the steadfastness with which God acts upon human beings. Even though the original goodness of humanity has been turned into depravity, and the promised eternal life into an existence within death, God faithfully preserves the origin and the purpose of human beings. In this sense, namely, in view of God’s working, every human individual should be seen with the eyes of faith, hope, and love to be God’s image. For the promise of the gospel, that God desires to transform us by faith into the image of Jesus Christ, is a banner over every person. This promise applies not merely to a part of the individual but is true for the whole person. In this sense, the sinner is God’s image. Thus we must love even the most degenerate, the most “petrified” or “bestial” human being as God’s image, namely, as a creature whom God has created to be his image, whom God is still encountering (as before) with his commandment to give the response that is like God’s, and to whom God promises the transformation into the image of Jesus Christ. God wants the reflection of his love to shine in all human beings, that in this love they might participate in eternal life. Like the statements about the creation and purpose of human beings, this acknowledgement of the sinner as God’s image is not the result of empirical scientific research but the result of faith in God’s salvific action. And yet, this faith is in no way meaningless for the knowledge of empirical reality. Only in this faith does the center finally come to light, which is hidden beneath the constantly growing insights of somatic, psychological, and sociological anthropology, and the question of the meaning of human existence, which cannot be answered in an empirical scientific way, receives an answer. Only from here is light shed on the errant ways human beings experience their self-worth, on the ups and downs of their future plans, and on their disappointments.

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Editor’s Notes to Chapter 7 [i]

[ii]

[iii]

[iv] [v]

[vi] [vii]

[viii]

[ix]

The verb erhalten can mean either “to preserve” or “to sustain.” While we have chosen to translate it consistently as “preserve,” one should keep in mind this other shade of meaning. That is also the case with related expressions, e. g., “God the Preserver,” which could be translated as “God the Sustainer.” Schlink frequently used the word Kultus (translated literally throughout as “cultus”) to refer to religious-sacrificial worship or the honoring of God through sacrificial rites. Cf., e. g., ESW, 1.166–167. Cf. Peter Damian (ca. 988–ca. 1072), The Letters of Peter Damian, 7 vols., trans. Owen Blum et al. (Washington: The Catholic University Press of America, 1989–2005), esp. letters 81 (3.185–201), 119 (5.344–386), and 153 (7.15–71), which speak negatively about the use of philosophy in theology. Johannes Scotus Eriugena’s book, Periphyseon (On the Divine Nature), has been called the “final achievement of ancient philosophy” since it synthesizes “the philosophical accomplishments of [the previous] fifteen centuries” (George Burch, Early Medieval Philosophy [New York: Kings Crown Press, 1951], 5). For the contrasting positions of Bonaventure and Aquinas, see chap. 2 above as well as editor’s notes 15 and 16 at the end of that chapter. Cf. editor’s note 3 at the end of the prefaces by Fries and Nissiotis above. Some of the material here on “natural law” first appeared in Schlink’s essay, “The Theological Problem of Natural Law,” Contributions to a Christian Social Ethic, Papers of the Ecumenical Institute 4 (Geneva: WCC, 1949), 54–66. German translation: “Das theologische Problem des Naturrechts,” in Viva Vox Evangelii: Festschrift für Hans Meiser zum 70. Geburtstag am 16.2.1951, ed. Lutherischen Kirchenamt in Hannover, 246–258 (Munich: Claudius, 1951). See, e. g., Aquinas, ST, II/1.94. For Luther’s understanding of how “reason teaches” and “nature teaches,” see Brian Gerrish, Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962). For Immanuel Kant’s notion of the “categorical imperative,” see his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Thomas K. Abbott (New York: Macmillan, 1989); and idem, The Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1985). The categorical imperative is the originally legislative principle, namely, that one should “act only on that maxim whereby one can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (Kant, Fundamental Principles, 38 [trans. modified]). This Greek term refers to “that which has been ordered or commanded, ordinance, direction” (BDAG, 237). It only appears twice in the New Testament, in Rom. 13.2 and Acts 7.53.

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[x]

[xi]

[xii]

[xiii]

For the remainder of this chapter, cf. Schlink’s earlier summary of the nature of this “secular office” in his chapter on “Weltliches und Geistliches Regiment” (Secular and Spiritual Government) in TLB, SÖB, 4.188–223, esp. 215ff. Within German Lutheran theology the word Amt translates the Latin terms officium and ministerium, which refer to the service, function, task, commission, authority, duty, office, or the responsibility connected with or derived from the office of a minister. Schlink typically used Amt (plural: Ämter) to stress the office of ministerial service. Therefore, when the word occurs without an obvious modifier, it will be translated as “office,” “ministerial office,” or “ministry,” depending on the context. When modified by an adjective, it will be translated as “office” or “offices.” By translating the adjective weltlich as “secular,” I have tried to maintain the close connection to the Latin saeculum (“world”). The term could also be rendered as “worldly” (cf. ESW, 1.488). It should be clear from Schlink’s statements that God the Preserver is working through the secular office (weltliches Amt) and that thus the term secular, as used in this context, should not be understood as implying that political power is free from this divine connection and activity. For Aquinas’ willingness to justify the murder of Julius Caesar, see Thomas Aquinas, Commentum in Quattuor Libros Sententiarum, II, dist. 44, art. 2, in Opera Omnia, 25 vols. (New York: Musurgia, 1948–1950), 6.788. For his later reflections on the conditions for justifying tyrannicide, see Aquinas, ST, II/1.95.4 and II/2.42.1–2. For Luther’s early views toward political authority and resistance, see his treatises, Von welltlicher uberkeytt (1523), WA, 11.245–280 (Temporal Authority: To What Extent Should It Be Obeyed, LW 1 , 45.81–129); and Ob Kriegesleute auch in seligem Stande sein können (1526), WA, 19.623–662 (Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved, LW 1 46.93–137), as well as his writings in the context of the peasants’ revolt. Luther was opposed to a right of resistance on the part of the princes as late as 1530: “No Christian, including a Christian prince, may obey commands of the emperor that violate the conscience but must refuse to obey, invoking Acts 5.29, testifying in verbal protest for the sake of the truth. Then, they are to suffer the consequences without resisting, following Christ’s example” (1530), WABr, 5.258–261 (quoted by Eike Wolgast, “Luther’s Treatment of Political and Social Life,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, 408 [trans. by Theodore J. Hopkins]). For Luther’s so-called “turn” on this issue after October 1530, when he allowed princes and city councils to bear the right of resistance against the emperor, as well as for his later, nuanced abandonment of this limitation after the crisis of 1538–1539, see Wolgast, “Luther’s Treatment of Political and Social Life,” 408–410. For helpful analysis of the sixteenth-century Huguenot theorists who sought to restrain the powers of the monarchy, and who would be labeled “Monarchomachs” (lit., “those who fight against monarchs”) by their detractors, see Andrei Constantin Salavastru, “The Theory of Contractual Monarchy in the Works of the Huguenot Monarchomachs,” META 10 (December 2018): 512–539.

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[xiv]

“Also, there is no slight quarrel over ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ when interpreters seek a nonexistent difference between these two words, except that ‘likeness’ has been added by way of explanation… There is no doubt that Adam, when he fell from his state, was by this defection alienated from God. Therefore, even though we grant that God’s image was not totally annihilated and destroyed in him, yet it was so corrupted that whatever remains is frightful deformity” (Calvin, ICR, I.15.3–4 [1.186, 189]).

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1. The Corruption within the Creation The turning away of human beings from God has an effect not only on human community but also on the non-human environment. After all, the human being is called to rule over the earth as God’s representative. The turning away of human beings from God, therefore, cannot remain without consequences for how human dominion over the non-human creation is understood and practiced. Through alienation from God, human beings are not only alienated from themselves and the neighbor but also from the surrounding creation. As the history of religion demonstrates, this alienation can result in human beings deifying certain powers and forms of nature, thereby reversing the relationship between God and creature–a reversal that has to some extent been continued in materialistic, biologistic, and other modern ideologies. Above all, this alienation has the effect that human beings arbitrarily abuse other creatures for their own purposes. Instead of caring as God’s image for the other creatures, they unscrupulously exploit them for themselves and treat them as mere material for the fulfillment of their own desires. No other species of animal has become anywhere near as thoroughly the destroyer of other living things as has the human being. Not to the image [Ebenbild] of God but to the counter-image [Gegenbild], a usurper and enemy, has the non-human creation become subject. Thus Paul spoke of the “eager longing,” “groaning,” and “labor pains” of creation: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it” (Rom. 8.19f. [S])—namely, through human beings (cf. Gen. 3.17b). The prophetic proclamation of a messianic peace that would include the animal kingdom (e. g., Isa. 11.8) already presupposed a disturbance in the relationship between creatures. Such biblical statements are often overlooked or rejected as mythical. But today they strike us with a new and unexpected relevance in the face of the appalling interventions by which human beings have altered the environment in modern times, presuming that everything that has become scientifically possible is permitted to be technologically realized. This distortion of the dominion of human beings has not been without consequences for humans themselves. Of course, the historical progress in dominating the environment has been monumental. Yet the result has been not only an enslavement of creatures by human beings but also an enslavement of humans by the non-human creation. At the beginning of the Bible, a double effect of Adam’s disobedience is reported: The curse upon the ground on account of Adam, and the toil of human labor on account of the ground. In modern times, however, it was

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believed that this toil could be eliminated. But with the increasing domination of nature, the freedom and self-understanding of human beings have come under the dominion of mechanistic, automatic, and other structures that are derived from the study of nature and that enable dominion over nature, but that also alienate humanity from itself. It is obvious, moreover, how much the environmental changes caused by human beings through pollution and poisoning have diminished human life, and how such great discoveries in the areas of atomic physics and genetic biology threaten humanity as a whole. People have long spoken of the uprising of nature and of technical tools that can be used against human beings. More precisely, however, one should speak of the abuse of the dominion over the earth that has been entrusted to human beings, and of the effects of this abuse: Humankind succumbs to the power of nature, whose order has been disturbed by the human rebellion against God. Just as the dominion of sin is more than merely the sum of individual sinful decisions, the corruption that has broken into creation through sin does not simply consist in individual distortions and individual catastrophes. It is not limited to the individual effects of selfish human beings on nature or the individual consequences of the mistreated natural world on humans. Rather, it rules over humanity and its environment as a power that is hostile to creation. The corruption is effective in the midst of creation as a power of distortion, disintegration, and destruction. Of course, one must consider here as well that the perishing of plants and animals is not the same as the death of human beings, for only the human being had received the promise of eternal life. In the same way, the struggle of humans against their own and against the non-human creatures cannot be equated with the “struggle for existence” in the animal kingdom, for only the human being was made in the divine image through God’s address. Despite this distinction, however, humans cannot be indifferent toward the becoming, the self-functioning, and the perishing of non-human creatures. It is of great consequence whether all these processes remain in the order that God has given these creatures by origin and purpose, or whether this order falls apart. The biblical statements about the cosmic effects of sin have become very foreign to modern people. They have almost lost all sensitivity for other creatures and what humankind owes them. On the one hand, human beings are filled with the confidence that all the resistance, struggle, and suffering that the environment causes them can be overcome. On the other hand, they live in fear of not being able to control the environment. Especially with the ever-advancing technical conquest of the world, the experience of a loss of purpose has increased. For many people, the earth has ceased to be perceived as a basic foundation [tragender Grund] and a home. The human being feels lonely and alien in the midst of the other creatures. Sensitivity for the purpose of the other creatures and for that which the human being, as God’s image, owes them, has also weakened in Christendom. A renewed

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pondering about these issues is only now beginning, but faith is certain of this, namely, that the whole of creation will never fall under the power of this corruption.

2. The Service of the Angels Even though the corruption that has come through human beings has also broken into the non-human creation, the praise of the Creator has not ceased. In the same letter in which Paul talks about the eager longing and the groaning of creation that has been subjected to nothingness (Rom. 8.19ff.), he points to the revelation of God, which still addresses all human beings through creation (1.18ff.). The distortion within creation thus remains surrounded by creaturely processes that have remained in the order of the Creator and that glorify God. Holy Scripture speaks not only of an adoration that takes place without a personal response to God’s creative action, namely, through the abiding created order that is incapable of making a decision, e. g., as the stars move in their courses without being able to go against that movement. In addition, Holy Scripture presupposes that, despite the turning away of humankind, God has never remained without spiritual creatures who glorify him with the free “Yes” of their personal decision. The biblical definition of the cosmos is not limited to “visible things” but includes “invisible things”—a part of creation that is outside of human reach, but whose effects proceed into the visible parts. That God is surrounded by personal creatures who are distinct from human beings is presupposed at the beginning of Holy Scripture, indeed in its most varied of traditions. According to the Old Testament witnesses, the “sons of God,” the “holy ones,” the “mighty ones,” the “host of heaven” are all with God.1 In a sense, God is surrounded by a heavenly court. According to the New Testament witnesses, the “multitude of the heavenly host,” “many thousands of angels,” are facing God. These spiritual beings are sometimes designated according to their relationship to God (e. g., “sons of God”), sometimes according to the manner of their service to human beings (e. g., ἄγγελος [angelos], messenger). Sometimes they are named as a special group (e. g., cherubim, seraphim), and later individual names are added as well (e. g., Michael, Gabriel). Their earthly manner of appearing is described in various ways: Sometimes in the inconspicuous form of a human being, sometimes surrounded by a shining light, sometimes with wings and other animal characteristics, so that they appear as a kind of epitome of all creation (cf. Ezek. 1 and 10, as well as Rev. 4.6ff.). These notions play a particularly large role in post-exilic Judaism, especially in apocalyptic literature. In the New Testament, the service of the angels is

1 [Cf. Gen. 6.2f.; Job 1.6; 2.1; 5.1; 38.7; Pss. 89.5f.; 103.20, et passim. –Ed.]

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subordinated completely to the salvific action of God in Jesus Christ and, compared to the Judaism of its time, plays a relatively minor role. In attempting to organize the biblical statements about the functions of these creatures, two main directions of their action emerge: (1) They deal with human beings by delivering divine messages to them and by intervening in the history of individuals and peoples according to God’s commission; (2) toward God, however, they offer adoration. Even if this function of heavenly worship is not mentioned as frequently as the other, the Scriptures nevertheless give it such prominence (as, e. g., in Isa. 6.1–3; Ezek. 1 and 10; Lk. 2.13f.; Rev. 4 and 5) that one must grant this adoration a great significance, also for human beings. In the explicit dogmatization of doctrinal statements about angels, the church has practiced great restraint, restricting itself mainly to the acknowledgement of their createdness and thus to their reality (the Nicene Creed in 325; the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215).[i] Of course, theology has gone much further than this. It has thoroughly examined these very different and incomplete biblical statements, supplemented them with syllogisms from biblical and philosophical premises, and summarized them systematically. It has concentrated the many biblical references in the term angel, has made estimations as to the number of angels, and, inspired by Dionysius the Areopagite, it has arranged the angels into hierarchical orders.[ii] Theology has pursued the question of when and in what condition angels were first created (before or after the rest of creation? with the ability to achieve grace or already equipped with grace?). A special effort has gone into defining the nature of angels. The opinion has prevailed that they are purely spiritual (Thomas Aquinas: pure form without matter), though they have the ability to take on visible form when they appear.[iii] The manner of recognizing angels has been treated with special care: What inferences about their knowledge of themselves and of the world can be drawn from the premise that they see God? To what extent is this knowledge superior to human knowledge? To what extent is their knowing discursive or intuitive, sequential or concurrent, partial or comprehensive, etc.? The peculiarity of the will of angels has also been the topic of different considerations in connection with their special, super-human freedom and their power over material creation. For example, Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine of angels, in particular, made use of Aristotelian philosophy to set forth a comprehensive, speculative unfolding of the ontological possibilities given with creation.2 Opposing this development was the denial of the reality of angels, which had announced itself already in the church art of the Renaissance period, in the playfully harmless depictions of angels as putti and the like, and then stepped into the open in the Enlightenment. Since then, questioning the received doctrine of angels has taken place straight across most of the

2 Aquinas, ST, I.50–64, 106–114.

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churches. The least amount of such questioning is found in the Eastern Church and the most in Protestantism. For example, Schleiermacher did not deny the possibility of angels, but he did not grant their reality any significance for Christian teaching. The notion of angels “can continue to appear in Christian language, yet without obligating us to establish anything as to whether it refers to something real.”3 Beyond this, notions about angels have at times been explained as personified depictions of divine attributes and powers, at other times as archetypal ideas of the good creation, and sometimes as archetypes of goodness and wholeness emerging from the human subconscious.

But what does “reality” mean here? If angels “really” exist, then this is surely not in the same sense in which we speak of the empirical reality of this “visible” world. Even if statements about angels are based on experiences, such experiences cannot be produced by human beings. Instead, according to all the reports, angels appear through an inbreaking from another dimension, as a kind of flash. In what sense can we then speak about the reality, power, majesty, and glory of the angels, these “mighty heroes” (Ps. 103.20 [L])? When we take the biblical reports about such appearances as a starting point, without treating in depth the particularities of the concepts and terminology of the individual traditions, the following statements can be made: (a) When angels appear to human beings as ones who are speaking, they encounter the human beings solely as instruments of divine speaking. In their speaking, the divine promise, instruction, and warning is everything. Even when they appear as those who act to direct human fate, people encounter them solely as instruments of God’s action. In their action, God’s lordship over human history is everything. Angels appear therefore as the mouthpiece and instrument of divine speaking, directing, protecting, and judging. The fact that God encounters human beings in the appearance of angels is shown most emphatically in the Old Testament narratives about the angel of Yahweh. The appearance of this angel is almost identical here with the appearance of Yahweh himself (e. g., Exod. 3.2–6). (b) Even though in their speaking and acting it is God’s speaking and acting that befall people, angels encounter them not only as functions of the divine action or as a mode of appearance for the divine attributes but as persons distinguished from God. Even the angel of Yahweh in the Old Testament texts is not said to be merely an appearance of Yahweh but also someone who is distinct from Yahweh (e. g., 1 Kings 19.5–12). This distinction is clearest in the sound of their adoration, for in worship the angels are facing God, responding to him, giving glory to him as the Lord. In this they are turned toward God alone. The content of their adoration is God alone. God’s glory is reflected in their worship and breaks through the

3 Schleiermacher, CG, §42. [ET: 1.229. –Ed.]

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appearance of the angels in the world. What is also true here is that when angels appear, God is everything. (c) Through the appearing of angels, human beings are thus confronted by God. To put a finer point on it, through the appearing of angels, human beings are confronted not by angels but by God, for human beings are faced with the one who, as the commissioning of the prophets demonstrates, does not need the angels to address human beings, to strengthen or warn them. God also does not require angels in order to direct the fate of individuals and peoples. The angels are merely God’s servants, who accompany his historical salvific action upon human beings and bear witness to God’s eternal glory. (d) Therefore, the obedience that the message of the angels requires of human beings is obedience to God. Even when their message calls for trust, this faith is not in the angels but in God. They are creatures. Thus Holy Scripture does not contain prayers to angels. God alone is to be called upon. A cult of angels is rejected (e. g., Col. 2.18). The worship of an angel is completely and explicitly forbidden: “You must not do that! I am a fellow-servant with you and your comrades the prophets… Worship God!” (Rev. 22.9). Even after adopting the practice of revering angels, which happened in the third century, a fundamental distinction has been made between reverence and worship. Worship is due to God alone. All of this means that in their speech and action the angels claim nothing in their own self-interest. As suddenly as they appear, they suddenly disappear. Their dignity, power, and glory consist in their total dedication to God’s commission and glory. The reality of the angels consists in their pointing away from themselves to God. The above observations lead to the critical question of whether the development of the doctrine of angels that has taken place in most churches, especially since Dionysius the Areopagite, corresponds to the actual structure of the reality that emerges in the reports of their appearances. Since the biblical statements were significantly expanded through syllogisms based on biblical and philosophical premises, there is no doubt that a notable shift in structure has occurred in talking about angels. Angels increasingly became a topic of their own and received a significance of their own. This shift in the doctrine of angels corresponds to the shift of their place in worship and piety. Not their pointing away from themselves toward God but they themselves increasingly gained significance. And despite the fundamental distinction between veneration and adoration, angels have not infrequently received a kind of veneration in popular piety that is de facto indistinguishable from worship. From this vantage point, another question arises about whether the modern rejection of the reality of angels has not perhaps been courted by the previous objectification of their reality in teaching and cultus. While the angels point to God alone in the biblical reports of their appearances, they seem, not infrequently, to

The Service of the Angels

block human access to God by having taken on a life of their own through later doctrinal and cultic developments. The denial of the reality of angels was partly an attempt to clear the way again to see God’s historical action and eternal glory. At the same time, those who deny the reality of angels need to be asked the critical question about whether humankind might not in some way be absolutizing “the visible” here, thereby narrowing human understanding of the world and losing openness for the unknown dimensions of creation, and ultimately also becoming blind to God’s free agency in the midst of the visible world. The teaching of the church should tread a middle way between an autonomy of the angels that does not correspond to their specific service, on the one hand, and a denial of their reality, on the other. But what interest could Christian faith have in the teaching about the service of the angels if this service consists only of glorifying God? One could respond to this question by saying that reference to the angels keeps awake the knowledge of the universe’s limitless vastness, going far beyond what can be empirically perceived and concluded from here. But this answer does not quite yet suffice. One needs to add that in the midst of the turning away from God, the teaching about angels frees us to consider spiritual beings who have not denied but affirmed the purpose that has been given to creation, and who, in their adoration of God and in their participation in God’s speaking and acting, again and again affirm it anew. That human beings failed to fulfill their purpose does not mean that it has been failed by the whole creation. God has never been without spiritual beings, who respond to God’s loving address with a “Yes” of gratitude and reciprocating love. The doctrine of angels opens our perspective for the kingdom, in which the dominion of God is acknowledged by creatures, and the creatures participate in God’s dominion. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” it is presupposed that God’s will happens in heaven, and we pray that it might also happen on earth. Before it arrives in Jesus Christ, God’s reign is already a reality in the community of the triune God with the heavenly spirits, who glorify God and are permeated by God’s glory. Human beings who accept Jesus’ message of the reign of God are added to this already-existing community. Thus, in almost all churches, the angels are mentioned in the middle of the service, namely, in the proper preface of the Sanctus, and with them we sing, “Holy, holy, holy is God, the Lord of hosts…” Through this “with” our focus is redirected from ourselves and from the angels toward God, whose glory is the adoration by creatures. At the same time, we are taken up into the community that bridges the “visible” and the “invisible” creation.

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3. The Dominion of the Powers of Corruption The corruption consists not only of the individual consequences of sinful actions, but it rules over human beings and their environment. The power of corruption reigns because human beings have turned away from God, but it is not only due to human causation. In the New Testament Scriptures there is also mention of personal powers of evil and corruption, which test, tempt, enslave, and destroy human beings. These powers are the enemies of God and of his creation. Jesus thus spoke of a kingdom of Satan and demons into which he has invaded, against which he is fighting, and which he is overcoming. When he taught his followers to pray, “deliver us from evil,” this probably means not only evil in general but also the evil one, the personal power of evil who tempts and enslaves human beings (Mt. 6.13; cf. Acts 26.18 and Col. 1.13). Powers of evil and corruption are named in different ways in the New Testament: diabolos (devil), satanas, Beelzebul, the enemy, the tempter, the prosecutor, the evil one, the great dragon, the unclean spirits, etc. The “powers” and “principalities” also belong in this context (cf., e. g., Rom. 8.38). In keeping with Jn. 8.44, the influence of demonic powers on human beings can be summed up in two activities: lying and murdering, the temptation of human beings to turn away from God and the destruction of their life, the bringing about of human blindness and the handing over of the blinded to the consequences of their delusion. All religions know of evil spirits and demons. It is thus all the more noticeable that they barely played any role in the religion of Yahweh. Satan, however, belongs to the assembly of the sons of God, a kind of heavenly court of God (Job 1), and in it he works as the accuser as well as the servant of God (cf. also Zech. 3.1). Only in post-exilic Judaism do demons gain increasing significance, partly because of an increasing experience of God’s distance toward the world, partly under the influence of the ideas of their Persian and Hellenistic environment. However, Jewish notions about demons are different from Persian ones in that the power of evil is not understood dualistically, as an opponent of God, but as subject to God. Jewish notions are also different from Hellenistic ones insofar as the latter understood the demonic as something divine and helpful, while in Judaism the opposition of demons to God and the good angels was crucial. In the proclamation of Jesus and the early Christian community, these Jewish notions were presupposed, but they did not remain unchanged. On the one hand, they recede somewhat, especially in the New Testament letters (Paul thus mentions none of these powers in his elaborations about death and sin in Rom. 1–7). On the other hand, their dominion is understood to be more radical and expansive than in Judaism. Demons are now spoken of as members of a cohesive, hierarchically organized satanic power-structure, whose power holds sway not only over individual human beings and nations but the entire world. Satan is “the ruler of

The Dominion of the Powers of Corruption

this world” (Jn. 12.31; 14.30; 16.11), “the god of this age” (2 Cor. 4.4 [NIV]). This radicalization corresponds to the fact that the New Testament’s understanding of sin and death also represents a monumental radicalization compared to Old Testament ideas. Only in their encounter with Jesus Christ have sin, death, and the devil been fully revealed in all their power that opposes God and rules over the whole of humanity.[iv] While the New Testament statements about these powers are defined by their struggle against God and creatures and by their defeat through Jesus Christ, theology—in the course of its history and aided by allegorical scriptural interpretation and speculative syllogisms—developed a doctrine of the origin, nature, and hierarchy of the fallen angels, much as it did with the doctrine of angels. While in the New Testament the Jewish teaching of the fall of the angels is mentioned only in passing (2 Pet. 2.4 = Jude 1.6), it now takes on a fundamental importance. Inquiry is now made into “Lucifer’s” original position, the point in time of his apostasy, his motives for that apostasy (desire for divine equality, pride, envy vis-à-vis the eternal Son of God?), as well as the number of angels who fell with him. The correct concern here is that Satan is not a counter-deity [Gegengott] but a creature of God, who was as such originally created good. Like the good angels, the evil ones are described as invisible, incorporeal spirits, who have the ability to take on a visible form. Their intelligence and effectiveness are, as is the case with the other angels, greater than that of human beings. They are immortal like other angels. Their purely spiritual nature, which is different from human beings, is seen as the reason for the fact that their turning away from God results in a radical reversal of their life and excludes the possibility of their conversion. Inquiry about the type and place of their damnation, etc., is also made. Since the Enlightenment, questioning and denying the reality of these powers has become widespread. Jesus’ words about Satan and his kingdom of demons are interpreted as an adaptation to the conditioned understanding of his Jewish environment and to the notion of personal powers of corruption as a personification of the power of corruption. Experiences of demonic possession are explained as immanent psychological occurrences (division of the ego, obsessive thoughts, or compulsive acts, and the like), and the character of evil as an overtaking power was explained by the collision of negative tendencies in the collective subconscious. “The demonic” took the place of demons, namely, the “positively irregular,” the “tension between form creation and form destruction.”4 Many have repeated Schleiermacher’s saying, “The notion of the devil, as it has taken form among us, is so unsupportable that a conviction of its truth cannot be expected of anyone.”5 Thus, in modernity, a widespread de-demonizing of the biblical texts and of the general consciousness has taken place—a de-demonizing through the denial of a personal demonic reality.

4 Paul Tillich, Das Dämonische (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1926), 7f. 5 Schleiermacher, CG, §44. [ET: 1.235. –Ed.]

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But what do we mean here by “reality”? The doctrine of the powers of corruption was developed by the churches in an antithetical parallelism, namely, in the distinction between good and evil angels. But the difference between them goes deeper than it initially seems. It consists not only of the opposition between the obedience of the former and the disobedience of the latter, as well as the blessedness of the former and the damnation of the latter, but it is also encountered in the very different structure of their mode of appearing: (a) The reports of the Synoptic Gospels about possessions might give the impression that the work of demonic powers was obvious to everyone back then. History-of-religion parallels from the Jewish-Hellenistic environment also seem to confirm this. Still, a more precise investigation of the New Testament statements reveals that they certainly do not speak about the work of these powers only in the context of such noticeable phenomena. Instead, their work more characteristically takes place in secret. For instance, when Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Mt. 16.23), Peter was not aware that his desire, i. e., that Jesus might be spared suffering and death, made him an instrument of Satan. When the Johannine Christ says to the Jews, “You are from your father the devil” (Jn. 8.44), this saying was directed at people who were certain that God was their Father (v. 41). Even though the congregation is warned about these powers, it is presupposed that such powers are not immediately recognizable. Hiddenness, even disguise and camouflage, is in fact a characteristic feature of the work of satanic forces. “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11.14). He works through false prophets and false Christs. He appears to human beings not as an enemy but as a supposed helper. He is a liar and the father of lies (Jn. 8.44). This is also the case in view of experiences of the invasion of uncanny powers in the inner life today. Without minimizing the agony of obsessive thoughts, compulsive behavior, split personalities, and losses of identity for people affected by them, it would nevertheless be a trivialization to subsume the work of the powers of corruption under such phenomena. Precisely at those times when people felt sure that they had clearly identified satanic powers on the basis of certain indicators, some of the worst misjudgments have tended to happen, e. g., in the witch trials. (b) The powers of corruption generally do not appear as they truly are but are exposed against their will. Thus, according to the Synoptic reports, suffering people, together with their relatives, came to Jesus from everywhere, and in their encounter with him demons began to scream, fight back against him, and confess him against their will (Mk. 1.24; 3.11; 5.7 et passim). Thus even the “spirit of muteness” was revealed “[a]fter crying out” (9.17 [S] and v. 25f.). Likewise, throughout church history, unveilings of the powers of corruption have tended to happen where the message of Christ was proclaimed with authority and the exorcising power contained within it came into full effect.

The Dominion of the Powers of Corruption

(c) The unveiling of the powers of corruption is at the same time their disempowerment: In their unveiling, the power they previously had over human beings is taken away from them. Unveiling and disempowerment [Enthüllung und Entmächtigung] are interconnected. This is not merely a noetic occurrence but a victory and salvation. Even beyond the New Testament’s healing accounts, it is fundamentally true that wherever false prophets and saviors are unmasked, and the power of evil is unveiled, the disintegration of this power takes hold. (d) In this disempowerment, it becomes clear that the power of evil and corruption is finally only an apparent power, i. e., a presumptuous power. It would have no power over human beings if they had not also turned against God. The self-glorification of human beings has its lord in the self-glorification of the power of corruption. This lordship is at once the consequence of human action and divine judgment. It comes to naught wherever God redeems human beings. The demonic powers, too, are not objects of perception and verification like objects in the world. They, too, are only recognizable in a flash and disappearance. But in contrast to the angels, they appear not spontaneously but under duress, not as servants but as enemies of God, not as helpers of human beings but as their opponents. If the reality of angels is revealed in the majesty and dignity of their service to God, the reality of the powers of corruption is unveiled as a presumptuous, disintegrating, and ultimately empty power. But while the doctrine of angels is about God in community with his creatures, the doctrine of the powers of corruption is about God’s victory over the rebellion of creatures. Since the angels are not an independent topic in the biblical reports, it is especially the case that neither are the powers of corruption. When it comes to demonic powers, the focus is on their disempowerment, not on their existence and thus also not on their description. This focus of the biblical statements has not always been maintained in the history of the church. The work of the powers of corruption has largely been objectified and has become the topic of special theological reflection. Questions about the origin of these powers, their being, their abilities, etc., took on a life of their own in a manner that is foreign to the biblical witness. When the focus shifts from the unveiling and disempowerment of these powers toward a description of them, superstition and witch hunts inevitably arise. Of course, if one would therefore conclude that the reality of the powers of corruption should be denied and the biblical statements about them should be de-demonized, one would thereby underestimate the power of evil and corruption. The problem of de-demonizing has been treated too lightly in modern times. It is accomplished not by denying the existence of such powers but by unveiling and exorcising them. Rational reinterpretation cannot liberate humankind from the powers of corruption.

But which structure of theological statement would be appropriate to speak about these powers?

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The basic structures in which church doctrine has to speak about the powers of corruption begin first with that of warning. Only so much should be said about their power of temptation, deception, and corruption as is necessary to impress upon people this warning and to call them to vigilance and resistance. Under no circumstances should these powers be obeyed. In no way should they be invoked. Another appropriate structure of theological statement here is exhortation, especially the exhortation to prayer. “This kind can come out only through prayer” (Mk. 9.29). All churches pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Deliver us from evil.” They thus recognize that human beings cannot liberate themselves from the thrall of this power. In the name of Jesus, who has broken this hold, Christians pray that this victory might become theirs as well. The doctrine of the powers of corruption finally must also encourage embattled and tortured people to separate themselves from these powers by a clear renunciation. With good reason, many churches have retained the abrenuntiatio diaboli [renunciation of the devil], to which the ancient church had given a fixed place within its catechumenate and order of baptism.[v] It is a good thing to know that it is possible for human beings to stand up against the personal power of evil and reject it in the name of Jesus. All of this means that one should teach only so much about the powers of corruption that it becomes clear to whom one must say the ultimate “No.” Therefore, the demand that one must believe in the devil is absurd. Whoever talks like this has understood neither the nature of faith nor the nature of the devil. For the Christian, Satan can be neither an object of faith nor a subject for meditation.

4. The Judgment into which the World Has Fallen: The End We can summarize the observations in the previous chapters by using the New Testament (especially Pauline and Johannine) term world (κόσμος [kosmos]). This term primarily circumscribes the human race, although it is not restricted to this since, in addition, it has a “cosmic” perimeter. It also describes the environment in which humanity lives. Yet here the world is not understood as a sum total of the individual human beings and the individual objects in their environment but as a realm of influence that covers and determines human beings and their environment. In this way one can speak of a “kingdom of the world.” Within this term four aspects [Momente] belong inseparably together: The world is (1) God’s originally good creation; (2) the realm of creatures who have turned away from God, who (3) have fallen under the dominion of the powers of corruption, and who (4) have fallen under divine judgment. This understanding of the world must be thoroughly differentiated from the Greek concept of cosmos, which expresses above all the positive element of the universal order. In light of the revelation of

The Judgment into which the World Has Fallen: The End

Christ, the world is recognized as that creation which stands under the dominion of sin, death, and destruction. In the interplay of these four aspects, various accentuations are possible. Indeed, throughout the course of church history, depending on the changing fronts in which faith in God was being confessed, multiple shifts of emphasis have taken place. For example, the ancient church, when faced with the Gnostic separation of creation and Creator, put special emphasis on the creatureliness of the world, but in its engagement with Hellenistic libertinism, it emphasized the element of sin and destruction. Later, over against an ascetic contempt for the world, on the one hand, and an enlightened glorification of the world, on the other, the church spoke with different emphases about the world. Of course, there have also been certain shifts that abandoned the interdependence of the four aspects. Such imbalances were caused not by the necessary defense against errors but by weariness with the Christian understanding of the world. Some thus denied responsibility for the world and left the world to its own damnation, while others no longer took seriously the dominion of sin and the powers of corruption, believing that the world could be renewed by its own powers. Even if—aside from the expulsion of the Manichaeans and their Medieval successors (the Cathars, Bogomils, et al.)[vi] —no church divisions have taken place on the basis of differences in the understanding of the world, and even if there have also been no comprehensive dogmatic definitions of the Christian understanding of the world, in actuality, however, variations and differences in approaching this topic have significantly affected the relationships between the churches and their understanding of ministry in the world. This becomes perfectly clear when one considers that the term world has not yet been fully explicated by the aforementioned four characteristics alone. The world is determined not only by the creatures’ own action, and by the consequences of that action, but also by God’s own action. This action, however, is not restricted to God’s work of creation in the beginning and his judgment of the world. The world is also (5) being preserved by God despite its having fallen into judgment; and it is (6) being governed by God despite being God’s enemy in its self-functioning. Indeed, it is (7) loved by God in Jesus Christ. The options for accenting the understanding of the world differently and for developing starkly opposing concepts of the world have thus increased even more. Has not the dominion of sin already been overcome by Christ’s death? Have not the powers of corruption already been disempowered by his ascension? Has not the world already been renewed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit? In what sense is this true, and in what sense is it not? In what way do the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world relate to one another? These questions unmistakably reveal the broad ecumenical significance of the Christian understanding of the world. At this point, we cannot yet enter into an elaboration of these questions and the very different answers which have been offered in the course of the church’s history. But it should already be pointed out that the New Testament

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nowhere calls Jesus Christ “Lord of the world” (κύριος τοῦ κόσμου [kurios tou kosmou]), even though he is confessed as the Lord to whom all things are subject. Likewise, the New Testament nowhere describes the creation that is liberated from sin and destruction as the “new world,” but rather as the “new creation,” “a new heaven and a new earth,” a new “universe.” In the New Testament’s understanding of the world, the aforementioned four aspects of creation—which is ruled by sin and destruction and has fallen into judgment—are so inseparably connected that the final dissolution of this union is understood to be the end of the world. If the world is that realm of creation which is under the dominion of sin, death, and the powers of corruption, then this world can have no lasting existence [Bestand]. Turning away from God is turning away from life. If this means death for the individual human being, it means the end of humanity as a whole. This is also true of the powers of corruption. They have not only fallen victim to disempowerment and exorcism in individual cases but also to the absolute end of their power. Likewise, the condition of the environment, which has been disfigured by human beings and subjected to corruption, cannot remain as it is. “For the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7.31). “And the world and its desire are passing away” (1 Jn. 2.17). These statements are not merely about catastrophes within the world but about the end of the world. That the rebellion against God spells the end of humanity and its world was already known by Israel. While the prophetic announcement of the “day of Yahweh” was initially directed against certain nations, even there the announcement of this day already had a dimension that surpassed the particularity of internal history: This universal knowledge of the world’s final disintegration found a consistent expression in Jewish apocalyptic. But this knowledge did not emerge only in the post-exilic period. The Yahwist already knew that the creation no longer had a right to exist before God. The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air. (Gen. 6.5–7).

Along with the flood, the powers of chaos invaded the world, against which God had protected the earth by means of the firmament of the heavens. When the new creation was initially announced by the later Old Testament prophets and then fully in the New Testament, it did not happen without the end of the world also being announced.

The Judgment into which the World Has Fallen: The End

That being said, the concrete biblical imagery about the end of the world varies greatly: The Scriptures speak of the flooding of the earth (Gen. 6ff. et passim), of a warfare of cosmic proportions (e. g., Zeph. 1.14–18), a darkening of sun and moon, the tumbling down of the stars, the passing away of heaven and earth (e. g., Mk. 13.24f. and 31), as well as the burning up of the world in a sea of flames (2 Pet. 3.7). When one seeks to describe the end of the world using expressive imagery derived from the realm of this world, it is inevitable that such imagery will turn out to be insufficient and will point to this end in merely a fragmentary way. Similarly, indications about the scope according to which the world is affected by this end vary greatly: only the living things on earth? or also the earth itself? or even heaven and earth? Just as we are not able to measure the extent to which the corruption has become effective in the creation, in the same way we cannot state the extent of that which is corrupted. However, the entire creation will certainly not be affected, at least not that sphere in which God is glorified by the spiritual beings that are turned toward him, the angels — the same sphere that is meant when one prays: “Our Father, who art in heaven.”

Despite this diversity, the biblical announcements have in common that the end of the world is proclaimed as the coming of God, as his “day,” as his act of judging. Just as the death of humanity is the result of both human choice and divine choice, so also is the end of the world. Just as human death is the completion of the disintegration that started with the turning away from God, so also the end of the world is the disintegration of that creation which willingly or by force departed from the order given it by God. Just as in death God’s judgment befalls human beings, so at the end God’s judgment befalls the world. This judgment is announced as God’s wrath breaking upon the world, which topples the proud and brings an end to the mockeries, the injustices, and the disfigurations in the midst of his creation. Thereby God does not add anything to the world that it did not already have. He merely unveils the delusion of its self-derived existence and the emptiness of its power. God’s judgment is announced as the “day of wrath,” not only by the Old Testament prophets (e. g., Zeph. 1.18; 2.2f.) but also by the New Testament (e. g., 1 Thess. 1.10; Col. 3.6). Since the end of the world means a downfall into nothingness, this nothing has a different meaning than the one found in the teaching about the act of creation in the beginning. When the latter is spoken of as a creation “out of nothing,” the meaning is that God needed no raw materials nor any helper. Also, he had no opponent when he created the universe. He did it solely out of the freedom of his power and love. Because he created the universe, not for destruction but for an unfolding through its own self-functioning, and because he created spiritual beings for eternal life, the “nothing” here must describe something completely different, namely, that which is opposed to the creation, yes, to God himself, for the goal of creation was not God alone but God in community with his creatures. The nothingness [das Nichts] of the world’s corruption must therefore be distinguished from the nothing-yet

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[Noch-Nicht] of the uncreated. Here nothingness threatens the world like a cruel power. Notions about an end of the world are found in many cultures. But nowhere are warnings of a catastrophe so free from the idea of divine capriciousness, and so clearly grounded in human guilt, as in the message of the Old and the New Testaments. The expectation of the end of the world has faded in the consciousness of modern Christendom and is dismissed as Jewish apocalyptic. But the imagery of that proclamation has in the meantime received such a vivid concretization, both in the catastrophes that have occurred and in those further catastrophes that are now possible, that being threatened by nothingness has today virtually become the lived experience of a large portion of humanity.

5. The Time of Divine Patience When is the end of the world due? It is long overdue. Through the prophets, through Jesus and the apostles, it was announced as being close at hand. From the moment creatures departed from the order given to them, they have already fallen to the end. Yet despite the announcement of the end, the world continues to exist. In this continued existence, faith recognizes the further working of God the Creator. Neither human beings nor other creatures nor even the invisible powers can continue to exist for even a moment without God’s preservation. This preservation of the world is not the suspension of its having fallen into judgment, just as the preservation of individual sinners is not the suspension of their having fallen into the power of death. As with the individual human being, so also the preservation of the world is only a period of forbearance. And yet, this preservation signifies a divine act of kindness. God does not abandon creatures to the nothingness they have chosen and into which they have fallen, but he gives them space and time and further opportunities for their selffunctioning. In the preservation of the world, it becomes clear that God’s love for creatures is not swallowed up by his wrath over sin. Here, too, preservation means not only conservation of a persisting condition but the continued enabling of dynamic processes, both in nature and in human history. God thus gives human beings the possibility of a better ordering of human society, of a caring dominion over the earth entrusted to them, and of the struggle against the powers of corruption. Of course, through preservation God also gives the world the other possibility, to continue in its opposition and to increase it through further excesses of injustice, oppression, and exploitation. Preservation of the world is also preservation of the powers of corruption. Here the paradox of divine action emerges anew in cosmic proportions, which was already noticeable in humanity’s having fallen into the power of death. Despite

The Time of Divine Patience

his announced intent of destroying human beings and all living things through the flood, God has preserved humanity and all living things. Strangely enough, the same reason is given for both the corruption and the preservation: “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Gen. 6.5; cf. 8.21). God, the enemy of sin, enables further sinning! The same paradox is at work in the absence of the world’s judgment, a judgment that had been announced by the prophets and by Jesus and the apostles. God enables the kingdom of the world to persist in rebellion against him. How is this paradox to be understood? If we proceed from the divine threat of judgment, the omnipotence of the Creator seems to be called into question: If it is true that the sinner has no right to exist, is God then powerless to put an end to sin and corruption? Is he too weak to realize his threats of judgment? Is his only recourse to stand by idly and watch the rebellion and the corruption take place? If we proceed from God’s constant creative activity, however, another question arises, namely, whether the preservation of the world might not be the negation of the divine “No” against sin. Are sin and corruption then not merely crises of development, or misunderstandings on the part of those who do not understand the necessity of such crises? But if one embraces both, that God is the mortal enemy of sin and the Preserver of the sinful world, then God’s speaking and acting seem to diverge, indeed God’s very identity seems to be called into question. Does not God then recede into a kind of twilight, a darkness in which he is hidden? Indeed, the contradiction between God’s omnipotence and his non-removal of evil, the contradiction between God’s opposition to evil and his preservation of evil, is one of the strongest trials and tribulations for faith in the Creator and one of the most common reasons for turning away from God. The God who commands good and preserves evil seems to lose his existence in this contradiction and to abandon human beings to meaninglessness. Christian faith does not resolve the paradox of the world’s preservation. It denies neither the omnipotence of the divine Preserver nor the truth of his announcement of judgment. It also does not deny that God seems by his action to expose himself to the appearance of being powerless, indeed of being a promoter of sin. But Christian faith denies that this apparent powerlessness of God is not an expression of his power, and it denies that his apparent promotion of sin is an actual approval of sin,[vii] for Christian faith recognizes in the paradox of the world’s preservation already a divine willingness to suffer. Even though God could end the opposition of creatures, he exposes himself to this opposition. If faith is certain about the self-abasement of God, which took place once and for all in Jesus Christ, it already recognizes in the paradox of the divine preservation of the world the self-surrender of God to the world. By preserving the world, God began—already before the incarnation of his Son—to enter into the sphere of sin and corruption as one who suffers.

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Thus the preservation of the world must be distinguished from the preservation of the originally good creation. Although the preservation of the world is the continuation of the preservation of the good creation, one does not follow from the other. To be sure, the existence of creaturely reality should never be taken for granted, as it is not grounded in itself but in God’s action. In the freedom of the same love in which God had created all things “good” in the beginning, he gave his creatures the possibility of their self-functioning toward the realization of the good, namely, community with him. But this preservation must be distinguished from the preservation of the kingdom of the world—the preservation of those creatures that have turned away from their origin and their purpose. The preservation of the world cannot be derived from God’s act of creation in the beginning, nor from his preservation of the good creation. Like the preservation of the individual sinner, the preservation of the kingdom of the world should be acknowledged as a special action of the Creator. The special nature of this preservation has often not been sufficiently expressed in dogmatics. Under the influence of an ontology shaped by the Greek understanding of the world, the connection between the Creator and the world appeared much more self-evident than it does in the Holy Scriptures, and the particular paradox of the preservation of the world was highlighted too little or not at all. Most of the time, God’s judgment of the world was treated far apart from the doctrine of creation, at the end of dogmatics. But eschatology begins already with statements about the purpose of the universe and of the human being. Thus the doctrine of the world’s judgment already belongs to the doctrine about the failure to fulfill this purpose. Therefore, the flood narrative in Genesis is to be taken seriously in dogmatics as not merely one of many reports about God’s judgment and patience but as the transmission of a particular divine covenant-making that became, in the formation of the Hexateuch, the basis for the whole further history between God and humanity. Through this covenant, humanity is not yet saved from the dominion of sin, death, and the powers, but humankind is preserved through it for the coming salvation. We will call this period of forbearance that has been granted to the world through its preservation and despite its having fallen into judgment, the time of divine patience. Hereby, the two aspects that are contained in the New Testament term ἀνοχή [anochē][viii] should be dogmatically held together: First, the “passing over” of sins (Rom. 3.25), God’s holding back on judging and working wrath. Second, the divine forbearance and suffering of the sinner. As such, the time of patience is not yet the time of grace, but it points to the time of grace and derives its meaning from it. To be sure, all of God’s creating action can be described as grace since it is received entirely without merit. In particular, the preservation of the world can be described as grace since it is preserved by God despite the deserved judgment. But thereby the world is not yet saved and

The Time of Divine Patience

renewed. The New Testament’s concept of grace, by contrast, specifically describes the salvific action of God through which the sinner is justified, sanctified, and renewed, and through which a new universe is created in the place of the perishing world. Paul thus contrasted the time in which God patiently permits sins with the “kairos” that manifests his righteousness in Jesus Christ, namely, the time of the forgiveness of sin, of justification (Rom. 3.25f.).[ix] The development of the concept of grace to include God’s preservation of the world need not be completely excluded, but then one must make a clear and precise distinction between God’s preserving grace and God’s re-creating grace. However, since a misunderstanding is again and again close at hand, as if conclusions about God’s goodness could already be drawn from the existence of earthly beings, it would be preferable to use the term grace, in continuity with the New Testament’s use of this term, as describing specifically the justifying, sanctifying, and re-creating action of God.

If the kingdom of the world means that sphere of creation that exists in a state of rebellion against God, that is under the dominion of the powers of corruption, and that has fallen into the judgment of God, we should now add: The time of this world, “this aeon,” is not merely marked by rebellion, corruption, and its ending but also by God’s patience. Without God’s patience, there would be no world time. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 8 [i]

[ii]

[iii] [iv]

[v]

“We believe in one God the Father all powerful, maker of all things both seen and unseen. And in one Lord Jesus Christ… through whom all things came to be, both those in heaven and those on earth…” (Tanner, 1.5); “…one principle of all things, creator of all things invisible and visible, spiritual and corporeal; who by his almighty power at the beginning of time created from nothing both spiritual and corporeal creatures, that is to say angelic and earthly…” (Tanner, 1.230). See Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, The Celestial Hierarchy, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, ed. Paul Rorem, trans. Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem (New York: Paulist, 1987), 145–191. Cf. Aquinas, ST, I.50.1–2. Cf. Luther’s explanation to the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed: “[Jesus Christ] has purchased and freed me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil…” (SC, 2 [BSELK, 872–873 (BC, 355)]). In all early liturgical sources, the sacrament of baptism included the renunciation of the devil. Candidates would face west to renounce the devil and all his works and pomp. Then candidates faced east to declare their commitment to Christ. See Schlink, LvT, ESW, 3.156–157. Cf. Frank C. Senn, Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 150.

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[vi]

[vii]

[viii] [ix]

In the tenth century a Bulgarian priest by the name of Bogomil (= “worthy of God’s pity”) adopted a position similar to Mani’s. Bogomil and his followers professed a belief in a dualistic world that is starkly divided between the forces of good (God) and those of evil (Satan). This sharply dualistic worldview was maintained elsewhere in medieval Europe, e. g., by some in southern France who adopted the name Cathari (= “the pure ones”). The Cathars are also known as the Albigensians because of the French town of Albi, which had a high concentration of them. Stated positively, Christian faith affirms that the apparent powerlessness of God is actually an expression of his power, and it affirms that God’s apparent promotion of sin is not an actual approval of sin. Both aspects are found in the third definition for this term in BDAG: “the act of being forbearing, forbearance, clemency, tolerance” (BDAG, 86). In classical Greek, the term χρόνος (chronos) referred to “an indefinite period of time during which some activity or event takes place, time, period of time” (BDAG, 1092), whereas καιρός (kairos) referred to “a point in time,” frequently with the implication of being especially fit for something and without an emphasis on precise chronology, e. g., “a welcome time,” a time of special crisis, “the right time,” “favorable time,” an opportune moment, a fixed moment in time (BDAG, 497–498).

Chapter IX: The Governance of the World

1. God’s Dominion over World History By history people usually mean the sequence of human decisions and their effects. Here decision must be defined very broadly: it includes discoveries, plans, resolutions, actions—decisions by individual human beings and by groups of people. The definition of effect needs to be equally broad: one needs to consider intended and unintended consequences—repercussions affecting people themselves as well as their environment, those who are living at the same time as well as future generations. As preconditions for the decisions, one must consider above all the traditions in which those acting in history live (religious notions, worldviews, customs, technical abilities, etc.), as well as the challenges they face due to the environment (human beings and natural processes). We look back on a history in which humankind first went from being gatherers and hunters to farmers, i. e., from being nomads to settling down. These early states are also handed down in the Bible, but as we know today, they took place over many thousands of years. In comparison to this prehistory, the steps that went from the establishment of cities to the great cultures and kingdoms and then on to the technical civilization that spans nations and cultures today make up only a small fraction of human history as a whole. In the course of this history, the differences between humankind and other living things have become ever more evident. This is most clearly seen in the increasing dominion that human beings have over the earth, from the intentional use of fire and the production of tools up to modern science and technology. Of course, other differences between humankind and other living things have become visible as well. While most animals do not destroy members of their kind, humans have again and again killed their own, to an incomparably greater extent and in a less restrained fashion than is known among animals of the same genus—even the killing of many millions of humans in the few years of both world wars. Whenever earthly kingdoms did not exist parallel and unrelated to one another due to geographical distance—as, e. g., the Roman and Chinese empires—they have almost always attempted to conquer each other. In our time, with the discovery of previously unimaginable technical possibilities for destruction, an unprecedented consciousness of the interdependence of all human beings has indeed awakened. But the oppositions between human beings have not thereby been overcome, and the danger of humanity’s self-destruction is obvious to all.

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Regardless of which decisions and effects in the whole of human history one chooses to highlight as particularly characteristic— faith in the Creator is certain that none, absolutely none, of the decisions of human beings and their effects could have taken place without God’s creative action. Even when creatures turn against God in their self-functioning [Eigenwirken], this is not possible without God’s constant action [Wirken]. The creative action of God would not yet be adequately understood if by it one meant only the preservation of humankind and the world. God preserves the life of humanity despite its having fallen under the power of death, thereby granting human beings time, space, and power for their individual self-functioning. Likewise, in relation to the powers of corruption, God’s creative action would be misunderstood if one recognized only that he grants these powers the possibility to act. If God as the Creator is to be taken seriously, then one must acknowledge that he governs world history.[i] Both the Old and the New Testament bear witness to God’s dominion over world history in the strongest of terms. In view of concrete events, and also fundamentally, they bear witness again and again to God’s leading, commanding, and hindering, his leading and his handing over, his lifting up and his casting down, his saving and judging. It is the basic certainty of faith in the Creator that God governs every occurrence without exception, the small and the great, the unremarkable and the fateful, the life of the sparrow and the life of the human being, every individual life, every family, every nation, and humanity as a whole. God’s constant creative action consists not only in making decisions possible but also in directing the decisions of human individual action. God encounters human beings not only with his claim, to which they respond in this or that way, but he also governs the history of their responses. He grants human beings not only the preconditions for responding to the challenges of their environment, but he even governs this response. Here God’s governance is not restricted to those decisions through which people assent to God’s claim. He is also Lord over disobedient action. He governs the decisions by which he is praised and those by which he is reviled, the decisions by which one’s neighbors receive justice and those by which injustice is done to them. Not only the just but also the tyrannical powers are under God’s direction. God also governs the effects of human decisions. He gives children to the union of man and woman, he gives the sower the harvest, the scientist the discovery. Through the work on behalf of the neighbor he brings about just orderings of life together. But even those things which were described as consequences of sin in the preceding chapters must now be considered under the aspect of divine governance. The dissolution of human unity is not only the consequence of their turning away from the divine Thou, but it is a divine action of handing human beings over to the life they themselves have chosen. This is true of the individual human’s inner strife, of the rebellion of the desire against the will, but it is also true of the dissolution

God’s Dominion over World History

of humanity’s unity. The enslavement of humankind to guilt is the consequence of humanity’s decision against God and of God’s judging action by means of which he holds humanity to that decision. If in the previous chapter we understood the “kingdom of the world” to be that sphere of creation in which the dominion has been usurped by creatures, so that corruption has attained dominion, we must now add that this kingdom of the world is governed by God, despite the opposition against God. God governs not only the self-functioning of the good creation but also the self-functioning of the “world,” i. e., that creation which has rebellion and corruption in its midst. This is also true of the powers of corruption. Even though they fight against God and his creatures, they are under God’s dominion and have no greater sphere of influence than is given to them by God. The New Testament Scriptures emphasize not only the radical opposition between the dominion of Satan and the reign of God but also the irrevocable dependence of Satan on God in all this opposition. Satan has no more power than is “given” to him (cf., e. g., Lk. 4.6). No temptation with which he encounters human beings can be greater than God intends. If God is acknowledged as the Creator who in his freedom governs all that occurs, the understanding of history broadens. It is now no longer possible to stop at observing the decisions of individuals, nations, and kingdoms, and their consequences. Instead, history must inevitably be understood as universal history. Already in Israel, the recognition of God as Lord resulted in a universalistic way of thinking about history (cf., e. g., Gen. 1–11), even though Israel was only familiar with the nations of its immediate environment. Here the concept of universal history is not restricted to the history of humanity but is expanded to include the history of the universe. It is now no longer possible to separate nature and history in the same way as became customary when people made the modern distinction between the natural sciences and the human sciences. To be sure, in contrast to the action of human beings, the self-functioning of inorganic, plant, and animal creatures does not occur in free decisions. With the history of humanity something new has begun, which is foreign to plants and animals, the history of a personal community between humankind and God as well as between other human beings. The broadening of the concept of history in this universal way cannot overlook these differences, and the history of human decisions and their consequences cannot be understood simply as a part of biological evolution. But even though no personal decisions are made in the sphere of inorganic, plant, and animal life, they are nevertheless subject to the free decisions of God. In acknowledging this divine freedom, one can also speak of a history of nature.

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2. The Hiddenness of God in World History The statement that God governs everything is found in many religions. But if we only recognize that God governs all that occurs, we have not yet recognized what the events of world history mean for us—namely, what God is doing with us through these events and where he is leading us through them. This question has been posed and answered in various ways in the course of human history. But even where the question about God has been repressed and silenced, it stays alive as the question about the meaning of history. (a) By bearing witness to all people to his claim of dominion and the command of preservation, God the Creator awakens among all a knowledge of the difference between good and evil. The human being cannot escape this distinction. Generally, this is connected to the knowledge that God recognizes good deeds and punishes bad deeds. It makes sense in this context to inquire about God’s action in history. Even when the question about the meaning of history is discussed apart from God, there always arises further inquiry in the face of failures, not only about their cause but about the guilt that follows. Not infrequently, those in the sphere of atheistic worldviews search more rigorously for the guilty than those who know about God’s patience and forgiveness. In fact, it is an ever-recurring historical experience that obedience to what we have called here the command of God the Preserver results in the flourishing of life. Working on behalf of the preservation and the freedom of one’s neighbor creates a connectedness of trust through which the individual is protected and the community is strengthened. Conversely, history shows that selfishness, the exploitation of others, the oppression of their freedom, capriciousness, and injustice destroy community and result in disintegration and failure. Again and again we see that hubris in the use of power is followed sooner or later by a downfall. Of course, such interpretations of history are often suddenly shattered by experiences of a very different kind. Peace-loving nations and just orderings of the state have frequently been destroyed by brutal violence. Often it was not the effort at preservation for the sake of the neighbor, but cunning, violence, and technical superiority that led to terrible consequences. In search of the permanent, the true, and the divine, many have turned away from history. Thus, e. g., the peoples of the Near East saw the permanent in the cycle of earthly events, which resulted from the unchanging validity of the primordial myth. The Greeks found the permanent in unchanging numbers and ideas of the cosmic order. The steady course of the celestial bodies appeared to them more real than the unsteadiness of history. This corresponds to the fact that Aristotle refused to define historical research as a science because of the irregularity and randomness of history.

The Hiddenness of God in World History

(b) Israel’s understanding of history was defined by the divine saving act of liberation from Egypt and by the promise that God, as the very same Savior, would continue to lead Israel and support it in the struggle against enemies. At the same time, Israel was subject to the command to obey this Savior. Here history was understood as the unalterable path of divine action by which God, despite the opposition of human beings, verified ever anew the validity of his promise and his commandments and carried them out through his deeds of lovingkindness and his judgments. On this path, life is announced to the obedient as a result of divine blessing, and death is announced to the disobedient as a result of a divine curse (e. g., Deut. 30.19). In the light of these promises and threats, Israel has again and again sought to interpret its history and to recognize God’s action. This was done most consistently in the Deuteronomistic history. To be sure, the pattern of this interpretation is also found in the environment of the Near East, indeed all over the world, but because of the historical act of salvation and the revelation of the divine commandments in the word, the standard by which obedience and disobedience was measured was perceived much more clearly in Israel. Thus the Deuteronomistic history evaluated most of Judah’s and Israel’s kings negatively (“what he did displeased Yahweh”). In the end, only two kings of Judah, Hezekiah and Josiah, were fully acknowledged. Israelite history reports many divine acts of helping the nation and individuals by leading them and saving them from dire straits, when Yahweh was trusted and his instruction was obeyed. But the history of Israel and Judah has been handed down even more as a history of divine judgment. Such an interpretation of history has of course also been repeatedly disrupted in the historical experiences of Israel. Hence, one finds in the Psalms the lament of individuals and even of the nation about the mockery, oppression, and suffering of the righteous who fear God and keep his commandments, and about the wellbeing and successes of those who despise God and practice injustice. Such questions also arose in the face of the contradiction between the lack of success and powerlessness of the prophets, on the one hand, and the triumphant power of their opponents, on the other. But nowhere in the Old Testament is the experience of the Godforsakenness of the righteous discussed as thoroughly as in the conversations of Job with his friends and in his declarations before God. Throughout this biblical text, Job refused most definitely to understand his suffering as a deserved punishment. How has such historical action by God been answered by Israel? In the Psalms, one frequently finds prayer as an expression of the hope that God will end the suffering of the righteous and punish evildoers. A different response was to acknowledge that God wills the suffering of his servants as a necessity, leading ultimately to the insight about the vicarious suffering of the Servant of God for the guilt of others (Isa. 53.4f.). Yet again, another response was given by apocalyptic literature, which expected the solution of the problem not within world history but from the resurrection of the dead, the judgment of the world, and the coming of a new and

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wholly different age. Some sought to explain the suffering imposed by God through an ever more casuistic investigation of hidden sins. But Job received his answer through the revelation of the Creator, whose miraculous action upon his creatures cannot be questioned any further but only praised. In the skepticism of the book Qoheleth, however, there is a complete refusal to recognize God’s action in history: All is vanity! All is for nothing! “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccles. 1.9). In no other Old Testament writing is the meaninglessness of world history so consistently articulated and the closeness to the cyclical understanding of history so great. (c) The problem of recognizing divine action in history has reached its pinnacle in the suffering and death of Jesus, for Jesus had lived in total obedience to God.[ii] He claimed human beings, not for himself but for God, and he sought no position of power for himself, but rather he served others. In his sacrifice of himself to God and to human beings, his proclamation of the reign of God was more than a mere announcement. Through his message the promised salvation was already breaking in: The forgiveness of sins was received, the sick were healed, the dominion of the powers of corruption was broken. For anyone who acknowledged the dominion of God over world history and expected from him a reward for doing good and a punishment for evil, this death on the cross had to mean that God had prepared the way for the end of Jesus’ working, that God had handed him over and treated him as a criminal, that God had repudiated the message and work of Jesus through this death. For anyone who understands God’s historical action as a corresponding response to human behavior, the crucifixion of Jesus must appear as God’s judgment. The following emerges from the above considerations. If we inquire about God’s action in history in view of the law, that the obedient receive life and the disobedient death, then God remains hidden in world history. Attempts to understand the course of history as the consequence of divine action in this sense must fail sooner or later. This is true even if the correlation between human actions and their consequences are again and again and continually obvious. Again and again the announcement of divine blessing for the obedient and divine judgment for the disobedient turns out to be true. But over and over, these interpretative correlations are also shattered by the inexplicability of an opposite occurrence. What is most vexing, then, is not even the question of how failing human beings can understand their own fate, but how they understand God and his relationship to evil. In the doctrine of preservation, we were already met with the paradox that God, the enemy of sin, preserves the life of sinners, even though they are subject to death, and he grants them the possibility to sin further. In addition, we came upon the paradox that he continues to preserve the world, namely, the creation marked by rebellion and corruption, and even though he had announced its end, he preserves it further and grants the powers of corruption more space and further time for their

The Mystery of World History: Jesus Christ and the New Creation

own self-functioning. These paradoxes are incredibly intensified by acknowledging God’s governance of the world. While the doctrine of the preservation of the world merely acknowledges that God grants creatures the possibility to continue in competition against him and one another, the doctrine of God’s governance of the world goes beyond this, in that no action of creatures, whether great or small, good or evil, takes place without God’s direction. Indeed, not even the blaspheming of God is excepted from God’s governance of the world.

3. The Mystery of World History: Jesus Christ and the New Creation Christian faith perceives the meaning of world history in the place where God is most profoundly hidden within it, namely, in the death of Jesus on the cross. Of course, God’s action here is not yet revealed by looking at Jesus’ crucifixion and death but only takes place because of the appearances of the risen Lord. After his death, Jesus appeared to his own as the same one who had called them into discipleship and whose words they had heard and whose actions they had seen—the same one who was arrested, tried, and crucified. But now Jesus was recognized as the one who had been accepted and confirmed by God. Because of his appearances, the salvific significance of his death was revealed, and the certainty emerged that God had offered up Jesus for sinners and that the innocent one had taken upon himself the judgment into which they had fallen. The risen Lord encountered his own in a mode of existence that differed from his earthly being: liberated from the limits of earthly life as the one transferred into a new life, no longer threatened by death— as the one glorified by God—as the new human being. In him was now fulfilled the purpose God had promised to humankind from the beginning: eternal life. Jesus has not kept this victory over death to himself but came and appeared to those who had abandoned and denied him. His greeting of peace with which he resumes community with his disciples contains this encouragement: died for you and risen for you. This caring commitment to his disciples found its continuation in the commissioning of the disciples and in the message of Christ to all peoples. Thus his death and resurrection were the dawn of a new humanity that by faith participates in his death and in his resurrection, the beginning of a new creation. Because of Jesus’ appearances, the turn in world history that God has carried out in Jesus’ death was recognized. The contexts of the effects between sin and corruption, which define the kingdom of the world, are hereby disrupted. The mystery of world history is therefore Christ and his own, Christ and the church. In view of this community, God had acted upon Israel. God’s decree of creation at the beginning was aimed toward this community. For now, the church is still on its earthly sojourn; it has not yet reached its goal. It is the community of faith but

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not yet the community of seeing: Even though it has been put into service as the force for God’s reign, it is not yet that reign; even though it is the result of God’s re-creating action, it is not yet the fulfilled new creation. Its new life is still hidden beneath weakness and sin, suffering and death. Yet because of Jesus’ resurrection, faith may be certain that God will perfect that which was begun in Jesus’ death and reveal the new thing hidden within world history. Just as Jesus went through suffering to glory, so his own will be glorified by going through suffering. Just as he was snatched from death, so the same is also promised to his own. But the expectation of the new creation is not restricted to the new humanity. The disfiguration and suffering that has come upon the non-human creation through sin will also be no more. World history thus receives its meaning, not in itself but in the coming of God. He has come and will come to save the world. The salvation of the world, however, signifies the transformation of the world and, in that sense, the end of the world. The meaning of world history is therefore not the lasting existence of the kingdom of the world but the establishment of the kingdom of God and the completion of the new creation. That new thing has already dawned within world history. The breakthrough has already been completely accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and it takes place wherever human beings give themselves over to Jesus in faith.

4. The Revealed Action of God through the Gospel Since God’s action in world history is hidden, and since the meaning of history is found precisely where God is hidden the most, namely, in the death of Jesus on the cross, the message of Jesus’ death and resurrection is of decisive importance for recognizing God’s action in history. Through the gospel, God’s action is revealed in the mysterious character of world history. By faith in the gospel, one recognizes not only that God governs world history but also how, with what attitude and with what intention he does so. Though hidden under human words and under earthly signs of water, bread, and wine, the gospel reveals the work of God’s love, through which he breaks open the kingdom of this world and lets the new creation grow in its midst. Thus for the believer, the course of God’s word throughout history becomes the decisive theme of world history. Certainly, the proclamation of Christ has not always been delivered with the same clarity and power. Not infrequently, it was harnessed to other purposes, and the pace of its progress was slowed down. Often the lack of faith has obscured the saving truth, but again and again throughout history the gospel has broken forth in its original force and advanced to yet more peoples.

The Revealed Action of God through the Gospel

Since the gospel is an historical action-word [Tatwort], there are epochs in world history whose sequence is basically irreversible, even if they unfolded not only sequentially but also in tandem. Because the gospel calls human beings to a decision, there are constant transformations taking place in world history, in which the unique turn that has occurred in Jesus’ death and resurrection is worked out in the life of individual people and nations. Such transformations take place both through the acceptance of the gospel and through its rejection. Thus the members of the Old Testament people of God are no longer the same after the coming of Jesus. If they accepted the gospel, they now belong to the New Testament people of God, which has received the promise of the Old Testament. But even those Jews who reject the gospel are distinguished from the Old Testament people of the expectation, since they reject the one who was promised to Israel and has now come in Jesus. Moreover, the gospel brings about a turn in the history of all peoples. Whoever accepts the proclamation of Christ is no longer the same as before. “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5.17). Yet even those who reject the gospel are still thereby making a decision that changes their further course. An especially epochal decision takes place when those who had previously accepted the gospel, who had received liberation and renewal through Christ, then fall away from the faith, ripping the liberty they had in Christ from its connection to him and arbitrarily misusing it. A return to paganism is impossible for them, for the binding power of its symbols and its ethos has been shattered by the Christian faith. What arises is the post-Christian, the ultimately lawless human being. For millennia, humans have divided world history into epochs. Originally this was done by conceiving of one sequence of epochs, according to which the whole of human history unfolded (e. g., in the ancient teaching of the Golden Age leading to the Iron Age, or the newer concept of a sequence from antiquity to the Middle Ages to the modern era). It soon became clear that certain sequences of historical development have taken place not only once in human history but multiple times in similar ways in various peoples and cultural milieus. This has been pointed out especially by Oswald Spengler and in a more nuanced way by Arnold J. Toynbee.[iii] The legitimacy of such historical periodization will have to prove itself through historical scholarship. It is by no means categorically negated by the Christian faith, but the values that determine it ought to be tested. For instance, what is progress, or an apex, or a decline in history? But straight through all such ways of periodization runs the history of the gospel, which proclaims as the decisive world-historical turning point an event which was insignificant to the political and cultural history of its time, namely, Jesus’ death and resurrection. At the same time, it proclaims as the decisive turn in the history of every person the acceptance of this message by faith, and it is rarely the powerful and wise who allow themselves to be called and renewed by the gospel, but rather the powerless and the uneducated. In crossing out

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the values that would usually be used as a norm for dividing world history, a way of organizing it emerges through the message about Christ, which runs strangely counter to the others. Though hidden within world history, this message has the power to cross out and invalidate the epochs of history that we take for granted. Through the gospel something actually new happens in world history. Despite the greatest visible ups and downs, everything else ultimately turns out to be a mere jogging in place on the part of a humanity that is already marked by its end. If we consider the line of argument in the preceding sections, the liberating effect of the message of Christ for the question about God’s action in history becomes apparent: (a) The gospel liberates the believer from the compulsion of needing to understand God’s action in history on the basis of the demands, promises, and threats of his law. Since Jesus Christ died on the cross, it is impossible to equate success and victory with God’s blessing, or failures and defeats with God’s curse, or health and long life with God’s “Yes,” or illness and death with God’s “No.” Precisely the opposite can also happen, namely, God can also judge people by blinding them through success and victory, and he can help them by wrecking their plans. “[T]he Lord disciplines those whom he loves” (Heb. 12.6). Believers are permitted to interpret persecutions and suffering as reasons for joy and to boast in them, for it is precisely through suffering that believers are conformed to the suffering Christ. Of course, we should not therefore measure God’s action in history according to a reverse law, whereby achievement is God’s judgment and failure is God’s grace, for again and again the Creator also answers those engaged in working for justice with blessings, and he lets the arrogant fail. (b) The gospel liberates also from the fateful compulsion of cosmic laws, which once defined the cyclical schemes of Eastern and Greek interpretations of history, for it unveils the history of each individual human being as an unrepeatable singularity, and it opens up a future in which each person will experience something completely new. As one liberated by Christ, the believer stands facing the laws of the world. Thus “the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you” (1 Cor. 3.22). In antiquity the cyclical interpretation was able to provide stability in the face of the unpredictable randomness of history, but in the post-Christian era the “return of all things” is perceived no longer as true, real, or permanent, but rather as meaninglessness and emptiness.1 (c) The gospel also liberates us from the teleological understanding of history, which has become widespread since the Enlightenment due to a secularized

1 [For the teaching of Nietzsche about the “eternal return of all things,” see the penultimate chapter in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885), in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1954), 435–436. –Ed.]

The Humiliation of God in His Governance of the World

eschatology.[iv] For example, the idea of historical progress has been developed in very different ways by Kant, Hegel, and Marx. The idea of progress has increasingly been combined with concepts of biological development, whether the development of individual organisms, or the complete evolution of life forms. In contrast to the cyclical understanding of history, the consciousness of an irreversibly forwardmoving process of history is alive here. But the monstrous catastrophes of these past decades have shaken this optimistic concept even more than attempts to interpret history from the vantage point of reward and punishment. In contrast to antiquity, there is today no common ontology to which one could flee from the mysteries of history, and because the expectation that God’s new creation would result from catastrophes and suffering has been widely abandoned, the question of the meaning of history has become more unfathomable today than ever before.

5. The Humiliation of God in His Governance of the World In the old covenant, it was above all the word of the prophets that shed light on history. This concerned not only the promise and threat of future divine action but also statements about what God was doing in Israel and the nations through events in the present. Even nations and individuals outside of Israel, such as the Persian King Cyrus, have thus been understood to be servants of God, through whom he judged and saved, cast down and built up. The prophetic word was both an event through which God worked in history and an interpretation of historical events as God’s action. To be sure, even if the action of God in this or that event was illuminated by prophetic preaching, the mysterious character of his working in history was not thereby suspended, whether for the hearer of the prophetic proclamation or for the prophets themselves. In the New Testament Scriptures all attention is concentrated on the history of Jesus Christ, on his contemporary work through the Holy Spirit and on his parousia. In contrast to the Old Testament, the New Testament contains scant references to the political events in Palestine and the fortunes of the surrounding nations. Despite the universal-historical understanding of the world, as it emerged from the eschatological expectation of the early Christian community, the question about concrete divine action in specific events of world history had curiously receded. Of course, it is not entirely missing. Paul, especially, discussed it in view of the fact that the majority of the Jewish people had rejected the gospel (Rom. 9–11). Above all, however, it is kept alive in various New Testament Scriptures by the question about the signs of the parousia of Jesus Christ, the end of world history. In connection with prophetic and apocalyptic traditions, the respective historical situation was investigated and interpreted in light of these expectations. But despite the knowledge

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of the signs, the exact moment of the parousia is reserved for God’s freedom and unknown to human beings. Even if an historical situation is illuminated by the spiritual gift of prophecy, this resembles more a flash of lightning than the end of darkness. The most vexing problem, however, is not the incomprehensibility of individual historical events and processes, but rather the fundamental contradiction that God is governing the kingdom of the world, that the Creator is governing the rebellion of creatures. The real challenge to faith consists of the paradox that God, the enemy of sin, also governs sinful deeds and risks appearing to cooperate with the injustice of this world. In the history of theology, this paradox has not always been expressed with the same degree of offensiveness, depending on how the relationship between the divine action and the self-functioning of creatures was defined. Yet even when, in statements about sin, human agency was strongly emphasized, and the action of God was only acknowledged to be a kind of permitting, this paradox still cannot be eliminated as long as one does not reduce God’s permitting to a mere observing, thereby ceasing to acknowledge the lordship of the Creator. If we consider the humiliation of God in Jesus Christ, then the paradoxes of his governance of the world step forth in a new light. By governing good and evil deeds, by governing secular justice and injustice, and by not only punishing injustice but also giving it room, by not only saving the just but also letting them suffer, a selfabasement of God takes place. By governing sin, God bears and endures the world’s hostility. In the patience with which he guides the kingdom of the world and lets it be—despite having the power to end the rebellion through his judgment—God has already begun to take upon himself the sins of the world and their consequences. Thus the paradoxes of the divine preservation and governance of the world already take part in the paradox of the incarnation and the cross, indeed, they find in it their basis. The Preserver and Governor of the world endures the rebellion of world history because he honors the responsibility of human beings themselves, even when they abuse the freedom granted to them, and because he wants to redeem them from their bonds through Jesus. And yet, the humility of God in his governance of the world has to be distinguished from his self-abasement in Jesus Christ. Even though the patience of the Creator in his preservation and governance is described by some as grace, this grace must be distinguished from the saving, redeeming, and re-creating grace in Jesus Christ. To be sure, the preservation and governance of sinners is likewise entirely unmerited; indeed, it is the opposite of what they deserve. Yet sinners are not saved and do not already become new creatures by God’s preservation and governance but by faith in Jesus Christ. The Creator preserves and governs the perishing world in his patience toward the redemption and re-creation through Christ. Thus, in the New Testament, the term grace (χάρις)—in contrast to patience—is used for the justifying, sanctifying, and life-giving action of God.

Theodicy

6. Theodicy[v] World history is full of the cries of the hungry for bread, of the oppressed for justice, of the perishing for life. It is full of laments [Klagen] to God, indeed, accusations [Anklagen] against God, who permits all of this injustice and suffering. After all, he is the Almighty, who has the power to prevent all of this suffering. In such accusations, human beings hold God accountable for the evils in the world. In the suit that humanity files against God, the central question is: Can God be justified in the face of the world’s evils? God has frequently been protected against such accusations. In modern times, he has been especially protected with the argument that evil is only an impetus toward the good in the world. Thus Leibniz taught that evil is necessarily given with the good of creation, namely, with the distinction between the Creator and creation, between God’s perfection and the imperfection of creatures.2 In this “metaphysical evil” he saw the basis for the possibility of moral and physical evil. Thus God used sin to let the good stand out all the more in contrast to evil. Though founded on completely different empirical and philosophical presuppositions, a similar weakening of evil is found in the thought of Teilhard de Chardin. Hardship, sin, suffering, and death are understood as “necessary” for the ascent of life. “Suffering and failure, tears and blood: so many by-products” on the way to the unfolding of the noogenesis until the convergence of personal life with the Omega Point.3 Although a treatment of the problem of theodicy is not the express concern here, these thoughts have nevertheless been widely accepted as a modern answer to this problem. Such attempts to justify God in the face of the accusations of those who suffer do not, of course, hold up when the great historical catastrophes befall humankind. Justifying God through an optimistic interpretation of the world can hide the problem of evil for a while, but it cannot silence the accusations against God. In the midst of the catastrophes of our century, countless people have condemned and turned away from God. 2 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Essai de Théodicée. [1710; ET: Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil, ed. Austin Farrer, trans. E. M. Huggard (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952). –Ed.] 3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Le Phénomène humain (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1955), 347; Ger. trans.: Der Mensch im Kosmos, 7th ed. (Munich: Beck, 1964), 310. [ET: The Phenomenon of Man, trans. Bernard Wall (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), 313. According to Teilhard, noogenesis (the emergence of mind) is the third of five stages in the process of evolution. It follows geogenesis (the beginning of the earth) and biogenesis (the beginning of life). The final two stages are anthropogenesis (the beginning of humanity) and Christogenesis (the advent of what he called “the total Christ”). Accordingly, the process of noogenesis moves from mind through spirit to converge on the ultimate goal, which he called “the Omega Point.” –Ed.]

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But if we begin our investigation of evil with our turn away from God and with the immeasurability of our guilt, if we recognize our own decay and death as effects of decisions by which we have chosen to live entirely on our own, and if we consider that God created humanity for life and not for death, then the usual framing of the problem of theodicy is radically reversed. We then no longer ask how evil in world history can be reconciled with God’s justice, but how can we justify the patience with which God still gives sinners space, time, and energy for their sinning, how can we justify the blessings with which God preserves and directs sinners in manifold ways. Once we recognize that the differences between good and evil, between the just and the unjust, are superficial and that finally no one can stand before God, then the question emerges: Can God’s glory be reconciled with his toleration of being dishonored by creatures for so long? Is God just when he continues to refrain from carrying out the judgments he announces and does not end the history of the world? The question of theodicy, then, is not: How can we reconcile evil with God’s goodness? Rather, the question is: How can the humiliation of God in his governance of the world be reconciled with his being God? If our starting point is the reality of our sin, then it is not the evil we suffer that is incomprehensible but the patience with which God puts up with us.

7. Providence All churches describe the work of the Creator upon creatures as providence. This term generally highlights the planning aspect of the Creator’s work. We use it to summarize the statements about God’s preservation and governance of the world. Both the historical action of the Creator upon creation and the pre-temporal decree of God that underlies this action are called providence. We will restrict ourselves here to God’s historical action, and we will treat his eternal decree only in the final chapter of this dogmatics, i. e., after the doctrine of God’s acts and of God himself. As in the doctrine of providence, there is a distinction in the doctrine of election between the historical act of election and the pretemporal decree of election. This pretemporal election, too, will not be treated until the last chapter. God’s historical providence and election cannot be separated from one another, insofar as both are concerned with the actions of the same God in one and the same history of humanity. They must be distinguished from each other, however, in that providence is about God’s work upon the whole creation, while election is only about his action upon human beings, specifically the acceptance or rejection of the sinner. The concept of providence has at times been defined so broadly, e. g., by Thomas

Providence

Aquinas, that it includes predestination.4 Most of the time, however, providence and election are distinguished and treated in separate places within the structure of a dogmatics. Thus providence, the action of God the Creator, is distinguished from election, the action of God the Redeemer. The case for the differentiation between these doctrinal topics is strengthened by the need to recognize God’s act of election as a free and new action that is not necessarily derived from God’s creative action. God’s historical action of election will therefore not be treated until the second and third main parts of this dogmatics. Radically ignoring the salvific action of God would of course deflate the doctrine of providence and destroy the assurance and joy that are opened up for the believer through this doctrine, despite the hiddenness of God in history. The concept of providence (πρόνοια [pronoia], providentia) is not of biblical but of Greek origin. In its Stoic interpretation, it had become a central concept of Hellenistic and Roman philosophy and piety. It referred to the world’s divine reason working, planning, and caring in the ordering of the cosmos. The fates of human beings and the events of nature are harmonically integrated into the organized cosmic whole, and human beings may find a sense of security in the divine, which is identical with the cosmic order. From Hellenism onward, this concept entered into late Jewish literature. It is significant, however, that it is entirely absent from the New Testament as a term for divine providence. It is only used in the context of human planning (Rom. 13.14; Acts 24.2).[vi] The fact that Christian theology quickly adopted this concept and gave it central significance is justified, in that during its advance into the Hellenistic world, Christian proclamation could not ignore the most important concepts of its culture’s piety and philosophy. As with other concepts of Greek philosophy, it also transformed and utilized this one, for faith in Jesus Christ now proclaimed God to be the Creator who is distinguished from the world, and it proclaimed providence to be his free action of governing world history, along with the careful, benevolent planning for this action. Thus the adoption of the concept of providence does not signify a foreign infiltration into Christian theology. Instead, the same word has taken on the meaning of central statements of the Old and New Testaments. Providence is taught by all churches as the planning action of the triune God. Of course, when one looks at the history of Christian teaching about providence, one might wonder if the rupturing and transforming of a given Hellenistic concept was always done consistently. The utilization of major concepts from the cultural environment always brings with it the danger that their original meaning could regain significance in the church and weaken the Christian message. This has happened not infrequently with the doctrine of providence. Naturally, the history of Christian teaching about providence shows much variation. But these are not so much variations between churches as ones that are found more or less within all churches. In contrast to the doctrine of predestination, however, the doctrine of providence has not caused any church divisions. But this fact cannot pacify the

4 Aquinas, ST, I.22ff.

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ecumenical consciousness, considering to what extent the confidence in God’s providence is shaken throughout the church bodies today.

Since the word providence is taken over from Greek philosophy, it made sense to derive the doctrine of providence from “natural revelation” and to present it as a statement of “natural theology.” No one can deny that the self-witnessing of God in creation is simultaneously the attestation of his dominion. But just as we have already distinguished between the revelation of God through creation and the recognition of this revelation by human beings (cf. chap. 7.2 above), we must likewise distinguish between the revelation of providence in creation and the recognition of providence by human beings. As is shown not only by the Stoic notion of providence, here too many kinds of misunderstandings of God take place when adjusting ideas to fit the desires of human beings and the circumstances of the world. By contrast, both the Old Testament’s and the New Testament’s statements about God’s planning and forward-moving action in the world and in every single person are grounded in God’s salvific action and the concomitant promise. The true recognition of providence can no more be assumed as general knowledge than the true recognition of God. God’s providence must be proclaimed. When, however, God’s salvific action is kept from establishing the doctrine of providence, it is obvious that this doctrine is not fully unfolded. In fact, it is noticeable that providence has been taught in a strangely unhistorical way, especially in the textbooks of dogmatics in the schools and seminaries of the various churches. The paradox of the divine preservation and governance of the world and its contrast with the originally good creation is deemphasized here, as is the connection to the new creation begun in Jesus Christ and that is expected at his parousia. Trust in providence is grounded in a general nod toward God’s goodness rather than in the promise that God gave to humanity in his act of salvation. Even though there is a traditional distinction between “general providence,” by which God preserves and governs the universe, and “special providence,” by which he preserves and governs all people, and “the most special providence,” by which he preserves and governs Christians, this distinction remains noticeably formal. It often seems intended more to illustrate the completeness of providence than to explain the historical connection between these three types of divine providential action. In the context of this formalization, the problem of the relationship between God’s action and the self-functioning of creatures has moved into the foreground. Indeed, some depictions of the doctrine of providence can give the impression that concrete questions about God’s action in history have been replaced by the timeless question about the relationship between God’s omnipotence and human freedom. Here we once again encounter the problem of the concursus divinus, i. e., the intersection of the divine first cause and creaturely second causes in world events (cf. chap. 4.7.c above). The relationship between these two causes vacillates,

Providence

as mentioned above, between the one extreme of understanding the divine first cause as total determination, whereby the freedom of the human being is removed and God is made the author of sin, and the other extreme of reducing the divine causality to his omniscience, whereby God is negated as director of world history. The ways in which the relationship between these extremes has been explained vary significantly. These differences, too, are found more or less pronounced throughout all churches. Here, too, it should be noted that a theoretical solution to this problem is impossible. Nevertheless, it is illuminated by the divine address, in which God gives everything to us and requires everything from us. The more the doctrine of providence becomes disconnected from God’s historical salvific action and departs from the existential setting of being addressed by God, the more will certainty in God’s governance of the world continue to fade. Then this certainty becomes overgrown by the mysteries of world history, and God’s action in history becomes utterly incomprehensible. The recognition of providence turns into the recognition of the unknown God and submitting to his unknown will. Then God’s personal Thou sooner or later becomes an It, indistinguishable from the course of events. There is no doubt that in popular Christian piety, belief in providence has often turned effectively into a belief in fate. While retaining the word providence, various notions about fate that were already typical in antiquity return: necessity, mysteriousness, chance. But when the providence of God is understood as fate, then it is already rejected, even if the word is retained. Through the gospel notions of fate are overcome, for through it God reaches out to us in personal freedom. Here, in the midst of the mysterious course of events in this world, he makes his will known in Jesus Christ. This will encounters the world, calls us out of the world, and liberates us from the arrogance and despair by which we seek to interpret the world. For through the gospel God turns toward us in his love, speaks to us as his Thou, and opens us up for the “Yes” to his divine Thou in faith and in prayer. The recognition of divine love, however, never remains restricted to the act of the divine address. Faith is assured on the basis of the gospel that God has already loved us before we came to faith and that his love will keep leading us further. (a) By faith in the gospel we see our past with new eyes: We recognize that we have done wrong to God and our neighbors, and that we have abandoned God, the giver of life, and misused our life. At the same time, we recognize the patience with which God has carried us, even though we abandoned him. He was already pursuing us when we had been going down a completely different path. He was already seeking us before we looked for him. This certainty does not mean that the mysteries of the individual occurrences of our life are now solved, but we now know that they are encompassed by God’s relentless effort to find the lost.

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The mysteries of God’s blessings and judgments are now incorporated into the certainty that even God’s chastisement is a blessing. Although the intentions with which people have treated us are completely different, God has carried out his intention for us. Thus when we look back on our life, there is not only shame and strife but awe at God’s leading, and thanksgiving. (b) But the future is also disclosed to faith in new ways. It does not remain in the dark. If we are liberated from guilt by the gospel, so we are simultaneously put into service by God. The recognition of providence means recognizing the purpose for which God acts upon us. In his providential action, God struggles against the kingdom of the world, and he takes the believer with him into this struggle. The recognition of providence also means being conscripted into the service of the creative action of God, which is aimed at salvation and the new creation. The gospel does not unveil to believers what dangers, fears, woes, and suffering still lie ahead of them. But they are assured that such things cannot tear them out of God’s salvific action. To the question, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Rom. 8.35), comes the answer, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, … nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8.38f.). These negations are the concrete assurances of the all-encompassing certainty “that all things work together for good for those who love God” (8.28 [L]). Here “for good” means decisively: to be raised with Christ in glory (cf. vv. 17f. and 30). Thus the believer may trust the providence of God, under whose dominion even the powers of corruption are subject. When we know our life to be embraced by the accomplished victory of Jesus on the cross and by the coming revelation of his victory in the parousia, then faith in providence is solidly grounded. (c) To faith in the gospel, restricting the certainty of providence to the individual is impossible. After all, Jesus died for the world and has ascended to be Lord of the universe. By believing in Jesus Christ, we affirm that God’s providence is his creative work that permeates humanity and the universe. No action by the Creator in the kingdom of the world can be separated from the Christ-event. In connection to it, the plan of divine working is revealed. The crucified and risen Christ is not only the reason for the justification and renewal of sinners but also the reason for the patience with which God preserves and governs sinners. If in the beginning God created the universe through the eternal Christ, so through the incarnate Christ, who has taken the world’s judgment upon himself and who was raised to be the Lord of the universe, he preserves and governs the world that has fallen into judgment. Hence, one finds in many churches the phrases “propter Christum incarnandum” [on account of the Christ to be incarnated] and “propter Christum incarnatum” [because of the incarnate Christ]. Before Jesus’ birth,

Providence

God preserved and governed the world for the sake of Jesus’ birth, his suffering, and his resurrection, and on the basis of these events he is preserving and governing the world toward the parousia of Jesus. The action of providence is not, however, aimed at Jesus Christ alone but at him and the people of God, indeed, toward the completion of the new creation, which has dawned in Jesus’ resurrection. Not the preservation and governance of the kingdom of the world but the end of injustice and suffering, the reining in of the powers of corruption, and the end of the kingdom of the world—this is the goal of providence: the consummation of the reign of God. Therefore, the aforementioned three types of providence do not exist timelessly in parallel to each other, but rather they refer to each other eschatologically: The action of “general providence” in the universe is, from the beginning, aimed at humanity. The action of “special providence” in the history of humanity is aimed at the people of God. The perfection of God’s people, however, is promised with a new heaven and a new earth. This is the overarching context in which God acts upon every single person, giving them space and time, revealing himself to them, challenging them, and—by freeing and determining, permitting and restraining—directs their decisions. Faith in providence is the certainty that the history of every single person is comprehended within the planning of God’s creative action and the expectation that God will finally illumine the darkness of this history. In the perfected new creation it will become apparent what God was already doing in other religions as the Redeemer, even before Jesus Christ came and before his work in Israel and in the church. The justification of God in the proper sense is the death of Jesus on the cross. Here sin is not trivialized but taken seriously. Here God’s judgment is also not trivialized but carried out. Both things have taken place in this event, namely, the execution of judgment and the gift of justifying grace. In Jesus Christ “the righteousness of God has been disclosed” (Rom. 3.21). Thus the cross is the answer to the question of theodicy. The problem of theodicy is not about the condemnation or justification of God through human arguments but about the condemnation and justification of the sinner by God. “But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God?” (Rom. 9.20). When we believe in the God who justifies sinners, a new way of seeing God’s blessings opens up, far beyond the normal ideas about wellbeing and evil. We recognize that God’s blessings are far greater than the evils that affect us. Indeed, such evils are viewed in a completely new light. Through suffering God takes believers into Christ’s suffering, lets them participate in it, and thereby he demonstrates in and through them Christ’s life-giving power.

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Editor’s Notes to Chapter 9 [i]

[ii]

[iii]

[iv]

[v] [vi]

Sections of this chapter echo emphases Schlink made in his earlier essay, “Theodizee als fundamentaltheologisches Problem” [Theodicy as an Issue in Fundamental Theology], SÖB, 5.171–199, esp. 171–178. Sections of this chapter also hint at lines of thought that Schlink first set forth in an early essay, “Die Frage der Erkennbarkeit göttlichen Handelns in der Geschichte” [On the Question of the Recognizability of Divine Action in History], Evangelische Theologie 1 (1934): 257–277. See Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte, 2 vols. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1919, 1922); ET: Decline of the West, 2 vols., trans. Charles Atkinson (New York: Knopf, 1922). For further details, see editor’s note 9 at the end of chap. 2. For Toynbee, see Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946). Cf. Schlink’s earlier essay, “Zum Begriff des Teleologischen und seiner augenblicklichen Bedeutung für die Theologie” [On the Concept of the Teleological and Its Momentary Significance for Theology], Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 10 (1933): 94–125. Cf. Schlink, “Theodizee als fundamentaltheologisches Problem,” SÖB, 5.171–199. Cf. BDAG, 872. In general, this Greek term refers to “thoughtful planning to meet a need, forethought, foresight, providence” (BDAG, 872), but in the New Testament it is used only to refer to human decision-making, as Schlink noted here.

Chapter X: The Confession of God the Creator

1. God the Father, the Creator How do we respond to God’s work as Creator? By confessing him as “the Father, the Pantokrator” ([the Ruler of All] The Constantinopolitan Creed); “the Father, the Almighty” (the Apostles’ Creed).1 (a) We would not confess the Creator if we accepted a becoming [Werden] of God that takes place together with the becoming of the universe. Any connection to cosmogony or theogony is incompatible with the confession of the Creator. God also did not achieve self-awareness through the counterpart of the world. God is already perfect without the world. He does not need it in order to be God. We would likewise not be confessing the Creator if we spoke of him as the original source [Ursprung], the primordial ground [Urgrund], or the first cause [Ursache], from which the universe proceeded by necessity, for God is not subject to any necessity. He created the world by a free decision. We would not even be acknowledging the Creator if we spoke of him merely as the immanent purpose, the order, the law, or the essence of the world. We would also misunderstand him if we were to acknowledge him as the principle of the world, in the sense of an eternal unity of source and world. Instead, God freely stands opposite the world and is at the same time freely active within it. We would not even be confessing the Creator if we acknowledged him to be the independent author of the universe but thought that he subsequently withdrew himself from his creation, leaving the world to its own autonomous mechanisms and to the decisions of human beings. Instead, God is the Creator who is actively present in every occurrence, preserving and governing. All churches confess God the Creator as the Lord, whose unqualified freedom and immeasurable power has called the universe into being and who continues to preserve and govern it. The world is completely dependent on him. But he is in no way dependent on it. He is Lord over all creatures and over the time and space in which they exist and with whom they will perish. (b) We would also not be confessing the Creator if we thought of him as a capricious ruler, who created the world as a toy, or who had given creatures time

1 [For the original Greek of the Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, see Tanner, 1.24; BSELK, 50 (cf. BC, 22–23), and Denzinger, 150. For early Latin creedal traditions that contributed to the development of the Apostles’ Creed, see Denzinger, 10–30. For the traditional final form of the Apostles’ Creed, see BSELK, 42–43 (cf. BC, 21–22). –Ed.]

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and space to experiment with respect to their self-functioning. Instead, all churches recognize God as the Father. The confession of the Lord and that of the Father belong inseparably together. Addressing the Creator as Father includes within it also the recognition of the Lord, the Master, and the Judge. Above all, the name of Father confesses that the Creator is the one who created the universe out of kindness, who cares for the wellbeing of his creatures, who has mercy on them and looks after them. His creating, preserving, and governing is praised as an action of fatherly love. It is aimed at the creaturely Thou, which recognizes God’s love and should love him in return. It is aimed at the community of God’s people, who call upon God the Father and are certain that he hears them—that people of God who, in communion with God, attain the fulfillment of their longing, namely, eternal life and eternal joy. Many religions have creation myths that speak about God as the Father. Here, of course, the origin of the world is often imagined as the result of a sexual union between a male and a female deity. But the Father who is confessed by the Old Testament and by Christian faith as the Creator, exists beyond gender distinctions. He did not beget the world like a father, nor is the world birthed by a mother, but he has called it into being out of nothing by his Word, and he has given it life by his Spirit. While in the surrounding culture of the Orient and in Platonic and Stoic philosophy God was primarily described as a Father who brought about the world, the name of Father for God in Israel has its basis in Yahweh’s act of salvation, through which he liberated the enslaved tribes from Egypt, led them into the Promised Land, and united them as his people. Through his historical act of redemption Yahweh made the Israelites his children. In his mercy he lovingly committed himself to Israel and accompanied it with such care and tenderness that the fatherhood of God is nearly identical with motherhood: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Isa. 49.15). “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem” (Isa. 66.13). At the same time, Yahweh as Father is also the Sovereign Lord who requires obedience and laments the unfaithfulness of his people, who punishes them, and takes away their freedom and the land he gave them because of their apostasy. Through the destruction of Jerusalem, however, and through the exile, trust in Yahweh as the Father was placed in serious doubt. Nevertheless, in the midst of that despair and despite God’s sternness, the name was maintained: “[Y]ou are our Father … our Redeemer from of old is your name” (Isa. 63.16 [NIV]). While in the old covenant Yahweh was addressed predominantly as the Father of Israel, Jesus exhorted people to pray to God as Father with an almost intimate familiarity, so that all people would have the assurance of being known and heard by him in their sin and need and sheltered in his fatherly love. By breaking the

God the Father, the Creator

connection between guilt and judgment with his message of the inbreaking reign of God, and by speaking salvation to sinners, sufferers, and mourners, Jesus opened their access to God the Father in a new way. Jesus’ witness to the “Father in heaven” was first and foremost a way of teaching the disciples. But in it the boundary of Israel was crossed. When he taught his disciples to ask the Father in heaven, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven,” this was about the universal work of God which comes to all humanity. And when he countered the anxieties of the disciples by teaching about how the heavenly Father provides for the birds under heaven and the flowers of the field (Mt. 6.26ff., cf. 10.29), he at the same time pointed to the heavenly Father as the Preserver and Director of the entire creation, including its non-human creatures. What is decisively new about this is that the coming of Jesus provides access to this wholly personal and wholly universal Father. Finally, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, and through the spread of the message of Christ, it became clear that God’s fatherhood is not limited to Israel, but that all human beings are called to be God’s children. Redemption in Christ expands the horizon for the recognition of the universal Father: “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor. 8.6). God is adored as the “Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name” (Eph. 3.14f.). Many of the Apologists of the ancient church then adopted the term used in Greek philosophy for the origin of the world, namely, Father, for use in bearing witness to God, the Father of Jesus Christ. While the point of entry for confessing the Creator as Father and Lord remained the belief in God’s historical act of salvation, there then arose the danger that the confession of the Creator might become disconnected from the confession of the Redeemer. Of course, consider what that means, to praise the almighty Creator, Preserver, and Governor of the world as Father—the one who makes the sun to shine on good and evil alike (Mt. 5.45), without whose permission nothing takes place, neither birth nor death, neither love nor hate, neither peace nor war. Is not faith in the Father negated as soon as one acknowledges God’s omnipotent lordship and takes his permitting seriously as his governing and therefore as his doing? Does not faith in his fatherly goodness then sink in deep mire, into the discontinuities, mysteries, absurdities, and disasters of this world?2 Does not the almighty Creator then turn into a capricious god? Or does he not appear impotent to resist injustice and unable to carry out justice? Indeed, faith in God the Creator as Father is not self-evident. It does not follow from the observation of nature and history. For some who regard it as self-evident in good times, it falls apart in times of catastrophe. The confession

2 [For the language here, cf. Ps. 69.1ff. –Ed.]

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of the fatherly Creator is based on faith in Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, who places the cry of “Abba” into our hearts. By faith in Jesus Christ, we may trust God as our Creator. After all, none of the injustices and disasters of this world remained foreign to Jesus. He proclaimed the Father by taking upon himself the sin and condemnation of the world, and therefore transformed the suffering of those who follow him into a path to glory. All experiences receive new meaning through faith in him. In confession all of the faith-responses to God’s mighty deeds are concentrated. That is why the confession of the Creator must be unfolded in all the structures of faith-statement: We confess him by thanking him for his mighty deeds and by passing them down to the next generation. We confess him by calling upon him as our Father in the confidence that he hears us and desires the best for us, and by bearing witness to our neighbors about his power and fatherly kindness. We confess him by offering ourselves to him as a sacrifice of praise in the adoration of his acts.

2. God the Eternal Father We would not be confessing God the Creator if we confessed only his act of creating, and not himself. (a) God is the eternal Lord. He did not first become Lord through his act of creation in the beginning or through his preserving and directing lordship over created reality. Finally, he did not first become Lord when creatures acknowledged him as their Lord. On the contrary, he is the eternal Lord prior to every extra-divine reality and prior to every reaction of creatures to his action. Before the creation and governance of this universe, he was already Lord over the boundless possibilities for calling an existence into being that is distinct from him, for he is the Almighty. The exercise of his authority is not limited to the creation of this world, with its spatial-temporal structure in which we live. He is able to make everything new (Rev. 21.1–5; cf. Isa. 65.17; 66.22). (b) God is the eternal Father. He did not first become Father by creating the universe out of love—nor by proving himself to be a loving Father through the liberation and leadership of Israel. Jesus’ proclamation of the “Father in heaven” would likewise be misunderstood if one thought that he first became Father through Jesus’ message or even through the acceptance of this message and the church’s address to him in the prayer that is based on this message. On the contrary, God is the eternal Father. He does not require creatures in order to be the Father, for he is the eternal Father of the eternal Son and the eternal source of the Holy Spirit. From eternity, God is the one who loves, the one who gives, the one who turns himself

God the Eternal Father

toward the Thou. From this eternal community of love and fullness of life, God created the universe and, in its midst, the Thou of the human being as God’s image. In the modern reaction against scholastic doctrines of God and the Greek metaphysics employed by them, statements about God’s eternal lordship and fatherhood have frequently been avoided or rejected. But whoever refrains from making statements about God’s eternal being, whoever restricts their statements solely to the confession of the divine acts, does not confess the living God—and that person’s confession would sooner or later fall apart and be dissolved into cosmology and anthropology. Whoever does not confess that God is the eternal Lord and Father will soon cease to confess him as the active Creator. The statements about God’s eternal lordship and fatherhood are not added to the confession of the Creator as a result of metaphysical speculations; they are already contained within this confession. The acknowledgment of God’s eternal lordship and fatherhood is most clearly articulated in adoration, in doxology. Not that God becomes the eternally Existing One through adoration, for he is from everlasting to everlasting. But in doxology, he is not only thanked for his great fatherly acts but is praised as the Father and Lord he has always been and always will be. Doxology is not merely a liturgical structure that is left to the church’s whims. It is rather a necessary response of faith to the mighty deeds of God, without which the other responses in prayer, witness, and doctrine would sooner or later wither. Thus it is no coincidence that the biblical statements about God the Creator and about Christ the mediator of creation are found above all in hymnic texts. The fact that God is confessed and glorified as the Lord does not imply a favoring of those who govern on earth over those who serve them. For God is the Lord beyond this contrast. He is the Lord of humanity also by serving it, and he did not cease being the Almighty when he entered into the powerlessness of Jesus the man. The fact that God is confessed and called upon as Father does not imply a favoring of men over women. God’s existence as Father transcends gender difference. His commanding and punishing are free from the violence of earthly fathers, and the gentleness of his mercy is free from the sentimentality of earthly mothers. God did not receive the names of Lord and Father from us, but he has revealed them to us through his actions and put them in our mouths with the promise that he hears us when we call upon him with these names. The name of Father for God is no anthropomorphic projection of earthly fatherhood onto God. But earthly fatherhood and motherhood ought to be continually reassessed and redefined in the light of God’s fatherhood.

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SECOND PART The Doctrine of Redemption

Chapter XI: The Old Testament Law

Introduction: The Old Covenant Since human beings have obscured the self-witnessing of the Creator with their own wisdom, conformed the commandments of the Preserver to their own desires and purposes, and have misused political power, God has broken through these arbitrary human actions in his action for the people of Israel. Though God was hidden in world history, he revealed himself in the history of Israel, and in his salvific action for this nation he also unveiled the purpose of the other nations. The foundation of Israel’s history is the act of redemption in which God heard the cry of the Hebrew tribes enslaved in Egypt and led them from bondage into freedom. This act of salvation did not take place in the ambiguity of God’s silent governance of the world, but through God’s word. By his word, he answered the suffering, gave them the promise of redemption, and instructed them to depart from the land of their captivity. Another foundation of Israel was God’s revelation on Mount Sinai/Horeb and the declaration of his commandments for the journey of the liberated. Here the sequence of events, God’s redemption and the communication of the commandments, is not merely temporal and spatial. Instead, the liberation was the basis for the commandments. The Decalogue is thus preceded by these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exod. 20.2). For this reason, the Deuteronomic law states again and again that the fundamental motive for requiring obedience is gratitude for God’s redemption. Both acts are reported in the traditions of the Book of Exodus as frightening, death-threatening, and all-consuming acts of God’s power. Accordingly, the first act took place through severe plagues on Egypt up to and including the annihilation of the firstborn and the pursuit by Pharoah’s army that chased the Hebrews to the Reed Sea. The second act was a revelation of God, who, in fire, thunder, and smoke, forbade the Israelites to approach the mountain: “Anyone who touches the mountain shall be put to death” (Exod. 19.12 [NIV]). With these terrors, God revealed himself as the Wholly Other, the Holy One, the arch-enemy of sin. Thus he defeated the Egyptians because Pharaoh had hardened his heart against the divine command to let the Hebrews go, and in this refusal he was hardened completely by God. But with these acts of power, God committed himself to the enslaved tribes and dealt with them as the Redeemer. Through the deadly action upon the Egyptians, he gave Israel freedom, and, despite the threat of death, he let Moses and

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the seventy elders ascend the mountain: “…and they saw the God of Israel. … God did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel” (Exod. 24.10f.). By sprinkling the people with the blood of sacrifice, he brought them into community with himself. These reports presuppose the traditions of God’s work among the patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In the beginning was God’s call to Abraham: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing … and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12.1–3). Abraham followed this call, and possession of the land of Canaan was promised to him for his descendants. Redemption from Egypt was experienced as the answer to the cry of the enslaved descendants to the God of their fathers and as God’s remembering of the promise which he had made to Abraham. In faithfulness to this promise, God called Moses to demand of Pharaoh the release of these tribes. To the Israelites’ query, he was to answer: “Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you” (Exod. 3.15 [S]). Just as Moses is portrayed by later Old Testament texts as the leader, the mediator, yes, as the one who encountered the people in the brightness of the divine glory, his call was very similar to the callings of the later prophets, according to the oldest tradition. Given the broad sweep of this dogmatics, it is not necessary to engage the historical problems of the particular patriarchal traditions and their formation into the whole of Gen. 12–50. One can also dispense here with discussing the question of which tribes were led out of Egypt by Moses and had witnessed the revelation on Sinai and which ones only joined them later. In addition, the various theories about the location of the Reed Sea and Mount Sinai/Horeb and the course of the various tribes can be set aside here. An ecumenical dogmatics, however, cannot restrict itself—within the doctrine of creation, christology, and soteriology—to making reference only to individual statements of the Old Testament Scriptures, as happens in most Christian dogmatics. Instead, God’s address to Israel in the Old Testament must be taken seriously as a special address and action distinct from the gospel of the New Testament, and it should be treated in a special chapter, for the issue of the unity and difference between the old and new covenants has great ecumenical significance. In contrast to Marcion and others who wanted to expel the Old Testament Scriptures from the liturgy and doctrine of the church, all churches include them as canonically binding. But the relationship between the Old and New Testaments has largely remained unclarified in the churches and among the churches. In fact, this problem has given rise to major conflicts, even schisms. This is true, e. g., of the unthinking transference of the identity of the Israelite religious cult and Israelite state, as well as the Israelite holy war and the Jewish offices and ideas of sacrifice, to the self-understanding

Introduction: The Old Covenant

and practice of the Christian church. In what sense is the church identical with the people of Israel? In order to answer this question, it is important first of all to disregard the manifold and at times significantly diverging typological, allegorical, and systematic interpretations that the Old Testament Scriptures received in the history of the Christian church. Instead, we must begin with the words of the Old Testament texts themselves and the understanding that their authors, transmitters, and hearers had of God’s speaking and doing. The shared starting point in the inquiry about this understanding is also essential in the contemporary dialogue between the church and Judaism. That is why we will begin with this question: In what sense were the redemption from Egypt and the revelation of the commandments foundational for the later history of the Old Testament people of God? (a) The deliverance of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt was a unique historical event. Thus it quickly belonged to the past, but it did not become engulfed by the past. It determined the future of Israel, and not merely in the sense in which every historical event has great or small after-effects, but as the redemptive action of the God who intends to continue acting as the Redeemer of the liberated, leading them into the land of Canaan, and protecting them in that land. Just as God’s redemption from Egypt affirmed the promise he had given to the patriarchs, he established that promise anew among their descendants. Thus the redemptive act of God toward the enslaved had the meaning of a divine vow, which defined his future behavior, and through which Israel became for all time the people of God. Oath is one of the Old Testament’s basic concepts expressing God’s intent to remain faithful to the promise given in his salvific act. When this nation would later remember the redemption from slavery—in psalms and instruction, and above all in the feast of Passover—it was not a mere historical looking-back but the confession of the God who is for Israel, today and always, the same one who had once liberated it from Egypt. The revelation of the name Yahweh, which is handed down in connection with the exodus from Egypt (Exod. 3.13ff. and 6.2ff.), also bears witness that the deliverance from Egypt is simultaneously the promise of further divine action. Even if this divine name might have been already known previously in the circle of Moses’ relatives (the Midianite-Kenite hypothesis), it is for Israel the name of the God who led it out of bondage.[i] It thereby received a unique meaning that determined the future of this people. With this revelation, God essentially put his name in the mouth of the Hebrew tribes and permitted them to call upon him continually by this name as the same one who had rescued them out of Egypt and who remains their Savior. The promissory character of the revelation of the name is also attested to by the interpretation that Exod. 3.14 gives to the name Yahweh: “I am who I am.” Under the influence of Greek metaphysics, this name was long understood in all churches as the eternally identical Being who is distinct from all changeable existence. Today, there

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is widespread agreement in exegesis that this explanation is not primarily about God’s being-in-and-for-himself but about God’s being related to Israel, God’s beingfor-Israel. The name Yahweh is not primarily a divine self-definition but a divine promise. Although God escapes the grasp of humanity through the abstractness of this “I am,” he turns toward humanity in the announcement of this name and opens to them a future with himself. The promise to Moses that “I will be with you” (Exod. 4.12 [S]) precedes the revelation of the name Yahweh and its explanation and is connected to them. Through the deliverance from Egypt, therefore, the nation is given a life that stands under the promise of further divine acts of salvation and preservation. These acts accompanying the history of Israel are praised in the Old Testament Scriptures above all as mighty deeds of divine justice. Here justice (tzedakah [‫)]ְצ ָדָקה‬, in contrast to the usual use of the word, means not the just apportionment of what each one deserves, namely, reward for the good and punishment for the evil. In the Old Testament, God’s justice is equivalent to God’s covenantal faithfulness and community, i. e., to salvation. If one intends to highlight the factor of analogy contained within the concept of justice, one would need to say that the mighty deeds of divine justice are analogous to God’s salvific act in the beginning and the promise delivered thereby. They are evidence of the faithfulness by which God keeps his oath. (b) The proclamation of the commandments on Mount Sinai is also handed down as a unique historical event. This, too, has not been engulfed by the past. Like God’s promises, his commandments have no temporal limit. Promise and commandment belong together already in the patriarchal narratives (e. g., the call of Abraham). They also belong together in the call of Moses. In these instances, however, the issue was about concrete instructions to an individual for a one-time action—in the departure of Abraham from his home and in the exodus through Moses from Egypt. The commandments given at Sinai, however, apply to the whole journey of the tribes through the desert into the Promised Land, and beyond this, for remaining in this land. Among the many Old Testament legal texts, the Ten Commandments, more precisely “the Ten Words” (Exod. 20.2–10 and Deut. 5.6–21), have a unique place that takes precedent over all other statutes. They initially address behavior toward God and then toward the neighbor. But these latter commandments are also about obedience to God. Whenever Israel remembered the revelation at Sinai, it remembered these commandments. Of course, remembering them always meant a renewed acknowledgment of their current validity. This acknowledgment happened not only in the instruction of subsequent generations but probably also in the so-called “liturgy of the gate,” which was done as one entered the temple and which dealt with admission to the rituals, especially the feast of covenant renewal. The unrepeatable event of the proclamation of God’s obligations to Israel at Sinai was recognized

Introduction: The Old Covenant

as having lasting validity, which is also evident from the fact that collections of prohibitions, commandments, legal statutes, and ritual ordinances that emerged much later were categorized under the Sinai event and were derived from Moses. This is true, e. g., about the Book of the Covenant that developed after the conquest of the land, the Deuteronomistic literature that appeared toward the end of the period of the kings, and the priesthood’s collections of laws that arose during the exile. All these collections dealt with obedience toward the same God who was revealed on Sinai. As historical circumstances changed, the interpretation of older, traditional regulations set forth a new statement about what God’s commandments, revealed once and for all, required in the present.

(c) Additionally, the response of the people to the proclamation of the divine commandments has been transmitted. “With one voice” they answered: “All the commandments, which Yahweh has given, we will keep” (Exod. 24.3 [S]). This “Yes” to God’s address, this promise to trust in his promise and obey his demand, was made by those who were then assembled at Sinai. But just as God’s promises and commandments are valid forever, the “Yes” of that assembly was meant to stretch beyond the present moment of that assembly to the coming generations. With this promise, the people entered forever into the partnership into which Yahweh had brought them. Their history remains determined by this “Yes,” and that is why this “Yes” was repeatedly renewed. The tribes thus declared before Joshua at Shechem: “We will serve Yahweh, our Lord, and obey his voice” (Josh. 24.24 [S]; cf. vv. 15, 18, 21). The exhortations in Deuteronomy also urge their hearers to offer this “Yes.” Even after the exile, the people bound itself with “an oath to walk in God’s law, which was given by Moses the servant of God” (Neh. 10.29). The commitment to obey God’s commandments was also implicit whenever one participated in the feast of covenant renewal. These three historical events—the divine deliverance, the divine demand, and the human “Yes”—constituted the people of Israel and determined its entire future. Here the sequence of these decisions is highly significant. The salvific act of deliverance is the foundation not only for the commandments but also for the obedience. The deliverance and the promise were not merited through the obedience, but the way of obedience is opened up through the deliverance and through the promise, and it is protected through the commandments. Corresponding to these three observations, God’s action is emphasized and often exclusively named in the theological reflection and concepts that would later summarize these foundational events in the prophetic and Deuteronomistic texts: God had “chosen” and adopted Israel as a “son,” indeed, he “created” Israel (so Deutero-

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Isaiah).1 But even when Israel’s “Yes” was made into a comprehensive conceptuality, such as that of a love relationship, it is nevertheless God who has created this mutual relationship. He has betrothed himself to Israel, he has made Israel his wife, he has been faithful to her—thus he expects that Israel loves him back and remains faithful to him. God’s love and faithfulness are what are determinative and essential. It is similar with the consolidation of the three foundational events into the concept of covenant. This concept probably took on a dominating importance toward the end of the period of the kings in the Deuteronomistic history, and it then became the central concept of the Sinai and Abraham stories through the Deuteronomistic revision of older narrative traditions. Indeed, wherever the Scriptures of the Old Testament mention the founding covenants of God with Noah, Abraham, and the people of Israel, it is not about a contract between two equal partners but about the establishment of a covenant by God and about the question of whether Israel intends to keep this covenant. God has called Israel to live with him as his partner. Israel would not have been able to establish a covenant of love with him. God has done this, and Israel assented and swore him faithfulness. The summarization of the three foundational events—the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, the proclamation of the commandments, and Israel’s commitment to obedience—in the concept of covenant means that God’s covenant is at work in all of his subsequent speaking and acting vis-à-vis Israel, and that all subsequent behavior on the part of the people is either an affirmation or a denial of the solemn promise made at the establishment of the covenant. Thus every unique historical event has remained present in the faithfulness of God the Redeemer to the people who have become his own—a faithfulness that was expressed even in God’s wrath against ungrateful, unfaithful Israel who went whoring after other gods. When the church distinguishes between the covenant made at Sinai and the new covenant which God established through the death of Jesus, it must not overlook the fact that the covenant at Sinai was already the free act of divine love, that God’s commandments already at that time had their foundation in his redemptive act of salvation, and that the decisive factor was calling for the redeemed merely to say “Yes” to him who had loved them first. But why did God choose Israel of all people and make them into his covenant people? Why not the Midianites, for instance, or the Kenites, or even the Egyptians? In the Scriptures of the Old Testament there is no answer to this question that could point to special qualities that Israel had over against the other nations as the reason for this election. This election is in no way based on the one who was chosen. Quite the contrary! Israel was no strong or great nation: “It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose

1 [See, e. g., Isa. 41.8–9; 42.1; 43.1, 7, 10, 20; 44.1–2; 45.4; 49.7. –Ed.]

Introduction: The Old Covenant

you—for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you…” (Deut. 7.7f.; cf. 4.37). The nation God chose before all others was also not a good nation: “It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to occupy [the Canaanites’] land; … Know, then, that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to occupy because of your righteousness; for you are a stubborn people” (Deut. 9.5f. [S]; cf. v. 13). Establishing the covenant was a free act of divine election, based solely in God’s love. In the Old Testament witness, the terms electing and loving are frequently used synonymously. Just as a man chooses a woman from the multitude of women, so God loved Israel. Just as a lover gives gifts to his beloved, so God gave gifts to Israel—in the hope of being loved by her in return. God’s covenant with Abraham also has been handed down in the tradition as a free act of divine favor. Because God’s promise and demand, together with Israel’s “Yes,” were the events that defined the subsequent history of this nation, it unfolded with the utmost drama. It was not only dramatic because the promises and commandments received their continued concrete interpretation in the sequence of very different historical situations, but because Israel—whether it was particular members or groups of the nation or even the nation as a whole—kept disobeying God’s commandments and falling away from God. The promised blessing then turned into a curse, and precisely because Israel was loved by God in a special way and had been set apart from the other nations, it fell under divine judgment in a special way. With the establishment of the covenant there had thus begun a history of God’s struggle with his people, who again and again remembered him only half-heartedly, or even abandoned him. In this struggle, God’s way of speaking to his people drew deeply on expressions of human passion: pleading and loving, lamenting and suffering, calling to repentance and offering forgiveness, raging and rejecting. Like an abandoned father or a cheated husband, God pursued his people. But even when Israel broke the covenant, God raised up a new promise over the apostates. Even in destroying he remained faithful to his oath. Because this struggle of Yahweh with Israel took place throughout all of this nation’s stages of cultural development, from nomadic life to agriculture to statehood and involvement in global politics, this history has paradigmatic significance for all people and all stages of cultural development. The history of this struggle cannot be presented here in detail. What follows will merely highlight: (A) the most important promises by which God’s subsequent action toward Israel was determined, and (B) the most important obligations by which he determined Israel’s behavior. So the matter at issue here is both Israel’s most important historical statements about God’s promise and demand and God’s most important responses to Israel’s behavior. As stated above, the focus of this chapter is first of all on the understanding of God’s and Israel’s words and acts that are found in the witnesses, traditions, and authors of the Old Testament. Another

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question is the New Testament’s understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures. This will be investigated later, in connection with Jesus’ resurrection (chap. 13.A.4). When the prohibitions and commandments attributed to Moses are summarized in section B with the concept of law, it must be noted from the start that the Hebrew word Torah [‫ ]תּוֹ ָרה‬has a long history in Israel, in which it certainly did not always mean the same thing. In the older traditions, Torah is frequently used without special distinction along with many other Hebrew words (such as h.oq [‫חק‬ ֹ ], [ii] mis.vah [‫]ִמְצ ָוה‬, mišpat. [‫]ׅמְשָׁפּט‬, edut [‫)]ֵﬠדוּת‬. In various ways, they all describe God’s demand and are often used synonymously. Torah is also frequently used in the plural, and like other terms it can refer to a concrete instruction or to lasting ordinances of God. The term Torah only gradually became distinct from the other terms of divine demand. In Deuteronomy it is often found as an overarching term or concept, which includes the other terms, yet without suppressing their diversity. The paraenetic structure of the Deuteronomistic demand contradicts the idea that the term Torah at this time exclusively meant scripturally fixed prohibitions and commandments. Its consistent use as a comprehensive term for scripturally fixed commands of God only took hold during and after the exile. If, in the heading of this chapter, the term promise is included with prohibitions and commandments under the overarching concept of law (chap. 11.A), this reflects an even later linguistic convention, which must be addressed. After the fulfillments of the promise—which Israel had received with the conquest of the land, the rise of the kingdom of David, and the building of the temple—had been nullified by the destruction of Jerusalem, the foundation of the law in God’s act of salvation was so shaken that law became a comprehensive term for God’s address as such to Israel. This late Jewish understanding of the law was then encountered by Jesus and the early Christian message. Thus ancient Christianity distinguishes within the Old Testament Scriptures between the Law and the Prophets, and yet the whole of the Old Testament Scriptures is also called law. Paul, too, distinguished within the Old Testament Scriptures between promise and law, but he also called the whole of the Old Testament Scriptures law. The heading of this chapter and its two parts are not meant to disregard the history of the term Torah. But the question should be raised and kept alive for what follows, whether these changes in understanding the divine requirements that took place in the history of Israel follow with theological consistency from their origin, or whether an alienation and distortion might have occurred. Since, as we have already suggested, the issue of the distinction between law and gospel has special ecumenical significance, this question cannot be avoided.

The Promise

A. The Promise 1. God’s Leadership The content of the divine promise announced to Israel was many descendants and the possession of the land of Canaan. These were thoroughly earthly gifts. Nevertheless, the promise was not exhausted by these earthly gifts, for it promised that God would give these gifts and that Israel would receive the evidence of his covenant faithfulness in these earthly gifts. Many descendants meant: God will raise up seed for you “as the sand of the sea.” And Canaan meant: God will give this land to you and protect you in the possession of this land. Israel understood its journey through the desert and its expansion in the land of Canaan as the fulfillment of this promise: Through Moses Yahweh led the tribes through the desert, to east of the Jordan, and up to the borders of this Promised Land, even though they often resisted him. Through Joshua Yahweh led them over the Jordan and, partly in peaceful ways and partly through his help in warfare, he let them overtake the regions where they would spread out. Among them there remained regions of Canaanites with fortified cities. Thus they remained threatened for a while longer and suffered many defeats and much oppression. But Yahweh preserved them by raising up the “judges,” heroes who by his power called for joint action and who achieved victories over the enemy. After the establishment of the kingship, the conquest of Jerusalem was of decisive significance, for David made it into a royal city from which he united all the tribes, transitioned Israel toward nationhood, and built a great kingdom. Through the prophet Nathan, David received the divine promise for his descendants: “I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me” (2 Sam. 7.14)—a promise that also ensured the eternal duration of his family dynasty on the royal throne. Solomon received Yahweh’s assignment to build the temple (2 Sam. 7.12f.) and the promise, “I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel” (1 Kings 6.13). The temple in Jerusalem was distinguished from the multiplicity of other Yahweh-shrines because the holy ark was brought into it, which had previously accompanied Israel and, in the traditions of the Old Testament, was sometimes viewed as the throne of Yahweh and sometimes as a shrine for housing the tablets of the law. When the kingdom disintegrated after Solomon’s death, and the northern tribes founded an independent kingdom apart from Jerusalem, and when the conquered neighboring peoples liberated themselves once again and threatened the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and even when the northern kingdom had already been destroyed, the people in the southern kingdom of Judah still relied on the promise that had been given to the house of David and the temple. It seemed obvious that just as God had fulfilled the promise of the land’s conquest, he would also fulfill the

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promise made to Zion. The royal psalms, temple psalms, and Zion psalms are filled with this certainty. God led his people by using human beings whom he called out of the people. As members of the people, they stood before God, accountable to him just as all the others, but at the same time they stood before the people as representatives of God. As different as the concrete tasks of these appointees were during the wilderness journey, the settlement, and the rise of the state, they all had always to do with keeping the people under the leadership of Yahweh. Thus, throughout the changes of the historical situation, God’s appointees not only had the task of speaking words of judgment and protecting the people, but they also were to remind the people of God’s act of salvation and his commandments. This meant both bearing witness to the divine promise and interpreting the divine commandments in the given “present moment.” This was also about remembering the “Yes” with which Israel gave itself over to Yahweh and by which it committed itself to obey his commandments. According to all the traditions, Moses stood before people as the one uniquely called by God. Through him God had liberated the tribes from Egypt. Through him God had proclaimed to them his commandments at Sinai, and he led them through the desert. In this leadership of Moses all the aforementioned tasks were concentrated. According to the tradition, he even offered sacrifice to Yahweh. He was surrounded by the elders, the chiefs of the clans, and he also stood before them with unique authority. In the subsequent history of Israel, even before the kingship, the functions that were concentrated in the work of Moses were distributed to multiple individuals. Thus the political leaders were joined by judges and warriors, priests and prophets. That this differentiation did not imply a separation of the functions is nevertheless attested to in manifold ways from the early period of the kings: For example, after his anointing, Saul was possessed by the Spirit of Yahweh, like one of the prophets (1 Sam. 10.9ff.), David made a sacrifice and blessed the people when he brought the ark to Jerusalem (2 Sam. 6.17), as did Solomon at the dedication of the temple (1 Kings 8.5, 14). There were prophets who came from priestly families, and the experience of God’s direct address was not limited to the prophets. The most thoroughgoing change in the form of political leadership happened with the rise of the kingship. In subsequent times, the roles of king, priest, and prophet drifted further and further apart. The call to be an instrument of divine leadership in Israel was received in various ways. At times, it took place through an immediate divine address, as with Moses and later with the prophets. At times, it took place through a prophet who had received a commission for Saul and David. The call could also be ordered institutionally, e. g., through the inherited succession to the throne of David, while in the northern kingdom of Israel prophetic agency retained an influence over the appointment and deposition of kings for a much longer time. The transmission of the priestly office took place within the tribe of Levi. Institutional order became more structured in

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Israel over time, but even into the time of exile it did not replace calls that were immediate. The theological concept of office cannot be restricted to institutionally ordered offices. The divine calling is crucial for the theological concept of office. All offices were related to each other insofar as each was to serve the same God through the fulfillment of its particular task. Because they each stood in the service of Yahweh, they had to oppose one another as soon as one of them became unfaithful to its divinely given task and misled the people. Hence, among the various offices, the prophetic one became the most significant, as it was the most institutionally unmoored and the most powerless with regard to earthly power. For the prophets had been tasked with God’s unmediated instruction for the people. Not only those members of Israel working within offices but the whole nation—and therefore each of its members—was commissioned to remember the liberating act of God and his commandments, and to assess whether the way of obedience had been abandoned. Thus the preservation of the nation took place in a tension-rich set of relationships and oppositions of various groups and individual members of the people—and the downfall took place in the joint turning away from Yahweh. The ordering of these offices was changed profoundly, both in later Judaism, during and after the exile, and fully after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans in the year 70, and then in another very different way in the emerging Christian church. All the more important for the dialogue between the church and Judaism is the awareness of the relationship—through interdependence and opposition—between divine and human action in the service of the pre-exilic offices, as well as the original relationship of these offices to each other and the covenant people as a whole. 2. God’s Action through the King Kingship was the customary political order in Canaan and the Near East. In Mesopotamia the king was honored as a human being who was raised to divine dignity, and in Egypt as one who was an incarnate god, but the king in Israel was profoundly different from the kings of the region. He was neither an incarnate deity nor a deified human, nor was he of divine descent. The words “You are my son; today I have begotten you” (Ps. 2.7), which are probably from the Jerusalemite enthronement liturgy, do not declare the king’s physical descendance from Yahweh, but rather they establish the acceptance and appointment of the new king by God.

In his reign over the nation, the king was to serve God. The options for how he could exercise his power were thus limited from the start by the commandments that Yahweh had given, and by the law that had been handed down as Yahweh’s directive. It follows, then, that the Israelite king gave directives, but he did not function as a lawmaker. Ultimately, the laws were all sacred legislation. Their transmission was above all the task of the priests. For example, even the Deuteronomistic law,

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from near the end of the period of the kings, was declared by King Josiah, and he obligated the people to heed it (2 Kings 23.1–3), and yet it did not receive its authority from the king. It had been found in the temple and was encountered by the people and the king as having Yahweh’s authority and as having been handed down by Moses. The office of king had developed from the leadership of the militia of the tribes. Its task was above all to protect the people from their enemies and to unite the tribes for joint military campaigns. This task required the establishment of administrative bodies and the collection of taxes, as well as the commissioning of officers. The traditional local institutions of jurisprudence largely remained in place. Since the temple in Jerusalem had been built by the king and the local priests employed by him, the task of maintaining the temple and ensuring that Yahweh alone was worshiped in it also fell to him. But the sacrificial rites were not under his control; their traditions and implementation were the work of the priests. The power of the king was therefore a power limited by the law and by other offices. The royal law in Deuteronomy (Deut. 17.14–20) likely corresponds to the original purpose of the kingly office, insofar as it greatly reduces the king’s freedom of action and prohibits him from the kind of control of legislation that kings in the ancient Near East took for granted. In obedience to God’s commission, the king stood under the promise that through his governance it was God who would lead and protect his people. He, the king, rules but is not the ruler. God rules over the people. The king is merely the instrument of God’s action. Ultimately this means that it is not the king who is reigning but Yahweh, whom the king is to serve. Indeed, the king is not the king of the covenant people, but “your God Yahweh is your king” (1 Sam. 12.12 [S])—He is to be obeyed. The word of Gideon, who was offered the status of king by the people in the time of the judges, and who rejected it, applies also to the incumbents of the kingly office and their perception of this office: “I will not rule over you, neither will my son rule over you; Yahweh will rule over you” (Judg. 8.23 [S]). The idea that the office of the king is a divinely appointed office of a lord, and that this human lord is not the incumbent of the kingly office, but God is—this is the theme of the entire narrative-history of the kings in the Old Testament covenant people, and it is the reason for the messianic expectation. The kings in Israel were tempted from the beginning to rule on their own and to conform their responsibilities and power to those of other Near Eastern kings. The people, in turn, experienced the temptation of expecting from the king the comprehensive protection that only Yahweh could guarantee. The difference between the purpose and the distortion of the kingly office already emerges in the two distinct narratives about the installation of the first king. According to the narrative that is likely the older of the two (1 Sam. 9–10; 11), the king is commissioned by God through an anointing that Samuel performed on Saul in keeping with divine instructions. According to the more recent narrative, which probably took into

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account the actual practice of the kings (1 Sam. 8; 10.17ff.; 12), the desire of the people for a king “to govern us, like other nations” (8.5) resulted in Yahweh’s rejection of his people. According to the first narrative, the people could expect that Yahweh would lead and save his people through the king. According to the other one, the people needed to anticipate that the king might claim for himself the royal prerogatives of the surrounding cultures: “he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; … He will take your daughters … He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards … and you shall be his slaves” (1 Sam. 8.11ff.). The history of the kings in Israel and Judah was largely defined by the contradiction between the divine purpose and the human abuse of this office. The realization of this contradiction is the backdrop for the prophetic announcement of the coming king, whose rule would be identical with the rule of God. 3. God’s Action in the Cultus The cultus of Israel was much older than the office of king. The patriarchs had already made sacrifices, and the Israelite cultic sanctuaries already had priests prior to the time of the kings (cf. 1 Sam. 1.9ff.). The prehistory of the cultus until the time of the kings cannot be treated here in detail. But it should be noted that the patriarchs’ practice of sacrifice matched the sacrificial customs of their nomadic cultural environment. The same is true of the cultic sites, altars, and sacrifices of the Israelite tribes in comparison with their Canaanite environment after the possession of the land. Some extant cultic sites and feasts were also adopted. Similarly, the Jerusalem temple was constructed by Solomon after the example of other Near Eastern temples and with the employment of foreign builders and artists from Tyre (1 Kings 5.15ff.). Some furnishings in the temple, such as the bronze pillar and the stands of the basins (1 Kings 7.15ff., v. 27ff.), also followed Near Eastern models.

In contrast to the rites of all the other nations, the decisive peculiarity of the Israelite cultus consisted in the fact that it was offered to Yahweh and that Israel was prohibited from worshiping Yahweh with a cultic image. The peculiarity was not primarily in the cultic customs, sites, and instruments as such but in the one for whose worship they were employed—namely, the one who had redeemed the Hebrew tribes from Egypt and had given them his commandments at Mount Sinai—the God who fulfilled his promise by giving the tribes the land of Canaan and by making of them a great nation. For this faithfulness God was thanked and praised in the cultus, and he was implored for future support. Remembrance of his salvific acts placed the cultic participants anew under his commandments and confronted them with the question of whether they had remained obedient to them. The Psalter conveys an impression of the sheer richness of adoration and thanksgiving, prayer and supplication, confessing and witnessing, that was alive in the cultic community

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and in the individual members of the people of Israel. Not only in the church but already in the Old Testament cultus, the response of faith is voiced in all of the basic structures of theological statement. In the time of the kings, thanksgiving and petition for Zion and the king were also added, though the content of the royal psalms is not so much the king as God, who had appointed the king and was governing through him. In all this, the cultus carried out the ever-new commitment of Yahweh’s people to the one who had created, loved, and led them. This commitment took place not only in thoughts and words but also in the offering of various sacrifices, such as grain offerings, burnt offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings. Human sacrifices, however, were forbidden. In contrast to the sacrificial rites of the surrounding cultures, the decisive peculiarity of Israel’s sacrifices is that they were all offered to Yahweh, just as the peculiarity of the sacrifices in the patriarchal era consisted in their being offered to the God of the patriarchs. Likewise, the peculiarity of the Jerusalem temple consisted in the fact that the presence of Yahweh was celebrated here, and that with the ark the one who had led the people into the land of Canaan was also present. Corresponding to this orientation of the cultus toward Yahweh, and after Israel had settled in the land and had shifted to a life based on agriculture, its cultus took over Canaanite seasonal and fertility feasts and reinterpreted them in the remembrance of Yahweh’s historical acts of salvation. For example, the autumnal harvest feast was celebrated as the Feast of Booths in remembrance of Yahweh’s covenant. The cultus was the center of Israelite life, whether in the Jerusalem temple or in the local sanctuaries of the tribes. Not the king but the cultus, not the royal palace but the temple, was at the center, even though the latter had been built by the king and the king employed the priests. But the task of the priests would be misunderstood if one saw it only in connection with the offering of sacrifices. The transmission of God’s acts and commandments was just as important. Thus, not only the historical books of the Priestly source but also Deuteronomy and the two books of Chronicles emerged in priestly circles. The transmission of the law meant at the same time the interpretation of the law. Thus the legal portions of Deuteronomy and Leviticus were of priestly or Levitical origin. As teachers of the law, the priests were tasked with communicating the divine requirements emerging from the law for concrete situations, and with deciding the legality or illegality of people’s behavior and thus their membership in the people of Yahweh. For a long time, the offering of sacrifices was not exclusively done by priests. Just as in the time of the patriarchs and probably also in the early days of the tribes, sacrifices were not performed by special priests. Even when the offering of sacrifices was undertaken more and more by priests, the priestly judgment about whether the offering (regardless of who offered it) was pleasing to God and accepted by him remained decisive. This judgment was based on the assessment that the sacrifice had been offered in keeping with the ordinances of the cultic law. Yet this criterion could not be separated from the other

The Promise

commandments of God. Therefore, those who desired access to the cultus were probably presented with the Ten Commandments in the liturgy of the gate, and their affirmation was stated as a condition for participation (cf., e. g., Ps. 24). It was Israel’s conviction that Yahweh was at work among the participants in the cultus if the priest performed his service in obedience to Yahweh. The transmission of God’s historical acts of salvation was more than merely a remembrance of what had happened in history. Rather, one experienced their abiding significance and the present validity of the promises connected to them. In the priestly tradition, the people encountered the faithfulness and identity of the God who had liberated them from the nothingness of being slaves and who was even now present for his people as the very same one. In addition, in the words of the priest that he used when he accepted the sacrifice, the person experienced acceptance by God. This cultic affirmation was far more meaningful for Israelite piety than is generally assumed. Thus the almost constant pattern in the psalms of lament, of turning from lament in the first part to thanksgiving for God’s help in the second, is most convincingly understood in the context of the affirmation of divine help received in the divine worship service. So the priest was teaching and acting, and yet the active one was ultimately and actually not the priest but God, who had commissioned[iii] him and worked through him. The priest was merely an instrument of God. With the people, he stood before God and needed God’s grace just as the others did. But by God’s commission, he also stood facing the people as the one through whom God acted among the people. This becomes particularly apparent in that aspect of the priest’s work which eventually moved more and more into the foreground after the exile, namely, the cultic performance of atonement. On the one hand, the priest was the mediator who made atonement for the sin. Hence, one formula keeps recurring in the statements about atonement and sin offerings in the Book of Leviticus: “Thus (through the sacrifice) the priest shall make atonement on his (the sinner’s) behalf for his sin, and he shall be forgiven” (Lev. 4.26b, 31, 35; 5.6, 10ff. [S]). According to these Old Testament statements, the atoning action of the priests was in no way audacious or a usurpation. Rather, the office of the atoning mediator was established by Yahweh for his covenant people. Their actions were determined by God through the law in every little detail. On the other hand, it was precisely not the priest who atoned but always only God himself. The priest atoned precisely in that it was not he who atoned but God. Indeed, the priest needed sin offerings (Lev. 4.3ff.) and atoning sacrifices (16.11ff.) for himself. The priest received forgiveness and transmitted forgiveness, but he “created” forgiveness only because God himself created and bestowed it. It is similar with the sacrifice itself. On the margins of the many Old Testament statements about sacrifice are words to the effect that the sacrifice can be understood as a motivation for the divine mercy, e. g., Gen. 8.21: “And when the Lord

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smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind….’” But by the time they were reproduced in the Old Testament texts, such old, traditional phrases had probably already lost the concrete sense of the actions that had determined God’s behavior, or of the food required by him. According to the far more common understanding of sacrifice in the Old Testament Scriptures, the sacrifices were not the reason for God’s favor but rather ordinances of his favor. God had ordered them for the preservation, renewal, and assurance of the relationship between him and his people. He commanded them as an order of grace. In the post-exilic priestly understanding, all sacrifices ultimately serve the atonement. The basis for this is the conviction of divine wrath over sinners and their subjection to judgment and death. The atonement took place through the sacrifice of the animal, which was killed in the place of the sinner. Its life that was offered up, its blood, was the atonement through which the sinner was removed from the sphere of divine wrath. At the same time, however, it was also understood that it was not the sacrificed animal that brought about the atonement but Yahweh himself. Through the sacrifice of atonement, he was invoked so that he might actively carry out the atonement himself. Not Yahweh but Israel is the recipient of the atonement. Hence, the Old Testament Scriptures lack any statements about a calculable correspondence between the punishment that the sinner deserves and the life of the sacrificed animal. The fact that atonement was not only achieved with bloody but also with bloodless sacrifices also shows that it is not the dying animal but Yahweh himself who brings about atonement. A calculable correspondence between guilt and sacrificial blood is especially contradicted by the regulations for the great Day of Atonement: The ram that was burdened with the sin of the people was not killed but sent into the wilderness (Lev. 16.10). The atonement usually did not happen without blood, and yet it did not happen through the blood of the sacrificed animals but through God. In addition, one can say about all sacrifices that they are neither thanksgiving nor atonement without the obedience to God on the part of the one making the sacrifice. Thus the sacrifices were signs of God’s grace and the surrender of the human being to him, and thereby signs of the covenant of Yahweh with his people. Correspondingly, the same holds true for the Jerusalem temple. It was built by humans, but that did not yet mean it was Yahweh’s house. Thus even the beginning of the temple’s construction was not a human decision (2 Sam. 7.4ff.). Yahweh lived in the temple of his own freedom; but Israel could not contain him there. Just as the Yahweh of the Sinai revelation was no mountain god—instead, he came down upon the mountain (Exod. 19.11, 18, 20)—he was also not bound to the temple. When he was present in the temple, he did not cease being present in heaven and everywhere else. But the Israelite cultus was surrounded by the temptation to take control of God’s salvific action. The perversion of the divine worship service did not begin with the

The Promise

admixture or replacement of Yahweh-worship with the worship of other gods. It already began in the moment when cultic actions were detached from obedience to Yahweh. It already took place when the priest presumed to bring about atonement himself through the sacrifice, when the people expected to remain under God’s promises through the mere cultic observances as such, and when the kings, the priests, and the nation viewed the temple as a guarantee of God’s constant, present help. 4. God’s Speaking through the Prophets Prophets, too, were at work in Israel even before the establishment of the kingship. The tradition itself speaks of ecstatic bands of prophets (e. g., 1 Sam. 10.5ff.), though it is not clear whether their ecstasy was expressed only in rapturous noises or also in words. Such enthusiastic movements are also known in other religions. Yet in Israel they were experienced as effects of Yahweh’s Spirit. According to 1 Sam. 19.20, Samuel was the leader of such a group of ecstatic individuals, but his work was so different from theirs that he was more comparable to one of the “judges” raised up by Yahweh. Between the prophet Nathan and the ecstatic individuals of his time, however, there is no longer any apparent connection. We cannot treat the controversial questions about the origins of prophetism in Israel in greater detail here. It is unlikely that the prophet proclaiming Yahweh’s word directly emerged from the ecstatic groups. Parallels to the prophet who confronts the king have been found in Mari, located near the west bank of the Euphrates River in northern Mesopotamia. Here mantic prophets proclaimed instructions from their gods to the king. But the prophets in Israel proclaimed the word by Yahweh’s commission, and they did so in a universality that increasingly applied to all of Israel and the neighboring peoples. The ecstatic groups in Israel, by contrast, quickly receded.

The proclamation of the Old Testament prophets was founded on a divine calling. Such a calling, according to the tradition, was the origin of the official commissions of Samuel (1 Sam. 3.1ff.), Amos (Am. 7–9), Isaiah (Isa. 6), Jeremiah (Jer. 1), of the exilic prophets Ezekiel (Ezek. 1–3) and Deutero-Isaiah (Isa. 40.3–8), and of the postexilic Zechariah (Zech. 1.7ff.). The call took place through God’s address and was in many cases connected to visionary experiences. (For example, Isaiah and Ezekiel beheld the divine glory.) The call was independent of the preconditions extant among the people who were called. It was neither tied to a dynastic succession, as was the office of the Judahite king, nor to membership in a particular tribe, as was the priesthood. Apprenticeship with another prophet was also not a necessary condition (a relationship like that between Elisha and Elijah is not reported about for any of the later prophets). The call took place by God’s free decision. Thus, e. g., Amos had been a shepherd, Isaiah a citizen of Jerusalem, Micah a farmer, and Jeremiah and Ezekiel came from priestly families. By God’s call, they were taken

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out of their life circumstances and placed in front of their people. The claim of their speaking was so extraordinary that it is unimaginable apart from the certainty that these individuals had been placed into service by God. The prophets were to proclaim the word commissioned by Yahweh as the word of Yahweh: Divine assurances and demands, words of comfort and warning, promises and threats of judgment. In contrast to the priestly tradition and the interpretation of words that were once spoken by Yahweh, the prophetic word took place as God’s direct address in the present moment: “Thus says Yahweh…” Here God’s address encounters people directly and in a new way, without the distance of the centuries separating them from the revelation of Sinai, revealing the present and the future for which they were responsible in the present moment. The immediacy of the prophetic word did not mean it was unrelated to that which God had previously promised and commanded. The prophets stood in the tradition of God’s foundational acts. Yet, knowing this, they pointed ahead and called for a decision in the present moment and for the expectation of a divine response to this decision. In this sense, the prophets undertook a profound change of perspective. Acknowledging the previous salvific acts of God, they did not use them to argue for the certainty of the people’s salvation, but instead called for behavior that was determined by the expectation of the coming, saving, and judging action of God. With this forwardlooking perspective, the prophetic message received an expansion far beyond the borders of Israel. In special prophetic words, neighboring nations as well came under the scope of Yahweh’s present and future action upon them and, through them, upon Israel. The prophets were sent both to individual members of the people of Israel, as well as to the nation as a whole. The individuals they addressed were largely those who were significant for the whole nation. While the early prophets spoke mostly to the kings, the address of the later ones became more and more differentiated. They addressed all who had special responsibility to Yahweh on behalf of the people—those in government, in the cultus, in jurisprudence, and in business. Fundamentally, no member of the nation was exempt from the prophetic demand. It also crossed the boundaries running between the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. However, the prophets did not proclaim their words about other nations directly to them. From the beginning, there was no opposition between the office of the prophet and the offices of the king and the priest. As a prophet, Samuel anointed first Saul and then David as king. Another prophet, Nathan, proclaimed to David the divine promise regarding the permanence of his house in the kingly office. Through the same prophet, David received the divine counsel about the construction of the temple by his son. The same God who had called the prophets also founded the office of king and took priests into his service. Thus it is reported, even in later times, that the prophets came to the aid of the kings. In a moment of great hardship,

The Promise

Isaiah strengthened the Judahite King Ahaz with this word: “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all” (Isa. 7.9). And even the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, secretly asked the prophet Jeremiah for advice during the occupation of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army (Jer. 38.14). The prophets also confronted their kings with their sins, announced God’s judgment, and called them to repentance, e. g., as Nathan did with King David after his adultery with Bathsheba and the subsequent deadly mission he gave to her husband. The prophetic accusations against the kings were expanded to include those who shared in the king’s political power, such as princes, elders, and judges. The oppression of the poor, widows, and orphans was especially proclaimed to all as a turning away from Yahweh. In addition, the social injustice by the rich, the landowners, and those in business was threatened with divine judgment. The prophetic words were not directed at the kingly office as such, but they did expose the conflict between the divine purpose of this office and the human behavior of those who served in it. The same God who had appointed the office of king in Israel as the instrument of his divine rule used the word of the prophet to expose what among the kings of Judah and Israel contradicted that commission. The sharp words against priests, sacrifices, and the temple were also not opposed to the cultus as such, but against its being carried out in disobedience to God. The word of God opposes this: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them (Am. 5.21ff.; cf. Isa. 1.11ff.). In this sense, the prophetic word also opposed trust in the temple: “Do not trust in their lies when they say: ‘Here is the temple of the Lord…,’ but amend your lives and actions” (Jer. 7.3ff. [L]). Since the sacrifices appointed by God were signs of God’s gracious work among his people, signs of the communion between God and the people of the covenant, the threat of judgment called the cultus into question, namely, God’s rejection of the sacrifices. But if the nation, its king, and its priests had repented and turned back to God, then God would have allowed himself to be found. Just as the prophets turned against the king and the cultus when the latter aspired to be more than mere instruments of divine action, they also turned against those prophets who spoke in order to please the king and the priests. The breathtaking thing about the struggle between the true prophets and the false ones is that this struggle ultimately has no other criteria except the word dictated to the prophets. The false prophets also spoke in the name of Yahweh, and they also had visions. What outed them as false prophets was simply the fact that they announced divine salvation instead of divine judgment to the disobedient people. The truth of the prophetic message could only be recognized in subjecting oneself in repentance to God’s commandments. The prophets not only called for repentance, but they also declared that Israel was refusing to repent and that it had hardened its heart in contradiction against

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God. To those who persisted in disobedience, the prophets not only threatened God’s judgment but proclaimed it as inexorably impending. The historical salvific acts of Yahweh now ceased to be lasting promises. They became accusations and reasons for divine judgment. Because God had redeemed and led Israel, Israel’s guilt was incomparably greater than that of other peoples. By refusing to turn back to God, they had broken the covenant that Yahweh had made with them. The call for repentance and the declaration of its refusal ultimately became the declaration of the people’s inability to repent. In that a prophet spoke by God’s mandate, the word that came out of the prophet’s mouth was the word that sounded from the mouth of God. The prophet’s human word was God’s word. In that God’s word became a prophetic word, God’s word was at the same time the end of the words that human beings could have spoken to themselves. The unity of God’s word and the word of the prophet meant the crossing out of the prophet’s own desires. Indeed, it could mean the end of his own prayers, which would rise from an aching and compassionate heart toward God. Thus the word of God became for the prophet Jeremiah the prohibition against praying for his people (Jer. 14.11; cf. also God’s refusal to hear the prayers of Amos: 7.8; 8.2; 9.4). The prophet thus becomes a sufferer—suffering not only from rejection and persecution by human beings but suffering also under God. This is true about the word of God: “[I]t shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa. 55.11). His word was able to comfort, awaken, strengthen, and bring forth, “as the rain and the snow come down from heaven” (Isa. 55.10ff.). But it was also able to function like a consuming fire and “like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces” (Jer. 23.29). 5. The Broken Covenant and the New Promise When the catastrophes that had been announced broke upon the northern kingdom (722/1 BC) and then on Jerusalem (587/6 BC), the people of Israel lost that which God had promised it in the covenant and had given it in fulfilment of the promises. Dominion over the Promised Land was taken away from it, the Davidic kingdom was brought to an end, the temple destroyed, and Mount Zion became a heap of rubble. Many members of the nation perished by sword and hunger. The remainder of the upper class was carried away to Babylon, the other survivors stayed behind, unfree in a devastated land. The people had been thrown back to a condition similar to the enslaved Hebrew tribes in Egypt. In the midst of this disappearance of the old promise and its fulfillment, the prophets began to proclaim God’s promise anew. Initially, it was heard only on the margins of the prophetic proclamation of judgment, but after the catastrophe it occupied the center of the prophetic message. For instance, Hosea spoke in his

The Promise

proclamation of judgment the following word of God: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? … My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender… for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath” (Hos. 11.8f.). In the midst of the words of judgment that were spoken by other prophets, even before the catastrophe, one also finds words of divine compassion and divine lament over God’s perishing people. But after the catastrophe, the promise of divine forgiveness, salvation, and renewal of community between Yahweh and his people was proclaimed fully, as was the witness to Yahweh’s faithfulness in his love for his people. “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. … I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you” (Isa. 43.1, 5; cf. Ezek. 34.12ff.). Such new promises in no way negate that the downfall of the northern kingdom and then of the kingdom of Judah was the execution of divine judgment against Israel. These catastrophes were not merely the result of political miscalculations regarding the superior power of the Assyrians and then the Babylonians; they were God’s doing. The hostile superpowers were instruments of divine judgment. The catastrophes were God’s response to his people who broke the covenant. But, while acknowledging these just judgments, the prophets were now announcing a new salvific action of God, to which Israel had no entitlement. Even though the reason given for the comforting announcement of liberation from exile was that the people had received “double punishment” for all their sins (Isa. 40.2), the following chapters of that same prophetic book show that the people were still sinning despite these punishments. The new promise has its basis not in the behavior of the people but in God’s mercy and in his anger at the nations, which had gone beyond their task of judging Israel. The reason lies solely in God himself: “[Y]ou have wearied me with your iniquities. I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake” (Isa. 43.24–25 [S]; cf. 48.8, 11). Yahweh’s new saving commitment to Israel is announced in various concrete promises, which are scattered across the prophetic books. They are not summarized as a comprehensive picture of the future in any Old Testament text, but they exist parallel to one another in a peculiar independence, some of which albeit are found more than once in the tradition. One of the oldest ones is likely the promise of the coming ruler. It is possible that it picks up on Jacob’s blessing of Judah (Gen. 49.9–11) and Balaam’s saying about the star rising from Jacob (Num. 24.17). The promise of a new covenant and of a law written on the hearts is also pre-exilic. The widely attested expectation of Israel’s joint worship of Yahweh with the other nations probably also predates the exile. Almost all of these prophetic words refer to the salvific acts of God that defined the journey of Israel from its liberation out of Egypt to its status as a major power under David and Solomon. By removing the new promises from the temporal

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sequence in which they were stated in the prophetic Scriptures, and by placing them into the sequence of the previous salvific acts of God in Israel, there emerges an obvious complete parallel: A new exodus from captivity is promised (Isa. 40.1ff. et passim), a new covenant (Jer. 31.31ff. and Ezek. 34.25), a new conquest of the land (Ezek. 34.25 et passim), a new king from the line of David (Isa. 11.1ff. et passim), a new temple and a new cultus (Ezek. 40–47 et passim), a new eternal Jerusalem (Jer. 31.38–40 et passim). One could conclude from these parallels between God’s historical acts and the new promises that the latter are repetitions of the former and a restoration of their destroyed fulfillment. The assurance of return to the land once given to Israel and the installation of David as the future shepherd (Ezek. 34.23f.) seem to point in that direction. Apparently, these new promises were widely understood by the exilic community and by later generations as an expected restitution of what had been. Without this interpretation, there would be no way to understand the disappointment of the returnees from exile or the centuries-long struggles against occupying powers. Yet it is clear that events are promised here that go beyond what has happened in the past. Indeed, they confront the old and the past as something new, something different. Surely the new exodus on the road of triumph, leading over raised valleys and leveled mountains (Isa. 40.3f.), is different from the earlier difficult trek through the desert. The new covenant that Yahweh will make with the redeemed will be different from the old—“not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt” (Jer. 31.32 [S]). The coming ruler is announced as the bringer of an eternal reign of peace for all nations, which existed neither under David nor under Solomon—a reign of peace that will extend even to the animal kingdom (Isa. 11.6ff.; 65.25 et passim). The vision of the future new temple (Ezek. 40–47) is not merely about rebuilding the destroyed temple; the precise instructions regarding its measurements, its furniture, and the cultus do not mask the fact that a new salvific event is promised here, one that surpasses what was before. The wide and deep life-giving stream emerging from the temple (Ezek. 47) did not belong to the old temple. The future worship of Yahweh on the part of other nations is also without historical precedent. Even God’s act of creation in the beginning is surpassed by a universal promise: “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind” (Isa. 65.17). The following saying summarizes it: “I make you hear new things, hidden things that you have not known. They are created now, not long ago; before today you have never heard of them” (Isa. 48.6f.). In this way, the prophets announced a new salvific action of God for Israel, which confesses the original promises but also surpasses and replaces them. The destroyed fulfillments of the old promises are suspended [aufgehoben] by the new ones, in the dual sense of being kept in place and being replaced. They belong together. The distinction between the old and the new covenants did not, therefore, arise only

The Promise

with the schism between the church and Judaism, for it was already contained in the promises of the Old Testament. Jesus and the church picked up this distinction from here (cf. esp. 1 Cor. 11.25). These Old Testament promises of a new divine salvific action accompanied and comforted the chosen people of God on their post-exilic journey through the further course of history. These promises remained definitive for that people’s entire future. From their abundant diversity, the following will highlight those promises that would become especially significant for the message and self-understanding of early Christianity. 6. The Promise of the Coming Ruler Multiple prophets announced a coming one who would bring about the promised new salvation for Israel (cf. esp. Isa. 9.6; 11.1ff.; Mic. 5.2ff.; Jer. 23.4ff.; Ezek. 34.23ff.; Zech. 9.9f.). These promises diverge from each other in many details. Yet it is almost impossible to avoid the impression that these prophetic words, sometimes separated far apart from each other in time, are concerned with one and the same one who was to come. The differences between these prophetic words revolve around a center that transcends previous historical experiences. The prophets did not describe the one who was to come as “the Messiah,” the anointed one of God, although the earlier kings had been anointed. In a mysteriously particular and ultimate way, the one who was to come is distinguished from them in these promises. Only the post-exilic terminology speaks of him as the “Messiah.” He was announced as a descendant of David: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,” the father of David (Isa. 11.1; cf. 9.6), a branch of David (Jer. 23.5). He will come from Bethlehem, the home of David (Mic. 5.1). He was also announced as the returning David, whose dominion would immeasurably exceed that of the historical David (Ezek. 34.23ff.). Indeed, he was promised as the one “whose origin is from of old, from ancient days” (Mic. 5.2), although his future emergence from the distant past would leave behind the historical experiences of the time of the kings. He will emerge and act in the authority of Yahweh, “in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God” (Mic. 5.4). This authority is promised as a gift of the Spirit of God: “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord” (Isa. 11.2). Though the effects of the Spirit on the king were transmitted from the beginning of the period of the kings (1 Sam. 9.10f.), the one who was to come would receive all the spiritual gifts. This extraordinary authority corresponds to extraordinary names: “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9.6). The second and third names are especially noteworthy, since the one who was to come is usually distinguished from God. Like the name “Yahweh our righteousness” (Jer. 23.6 [S]), these names

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could be describing the confession of God by which Israel would praise God in view of the coming one, but it could also apply to the confession by which Israel will confess the coming one. But another interpretation is also possible, according to which the names “Mighty God” and “Everlasting Father” are given to the one who was to come by God, and the name of Yahweh is spoken of like a person who is distinct from Yahweh, as happens frequently elsewhere in the Old Testament Scriptures. This would mean that the coming one is distinguished from Yahweh, but at the same time Yahweh is present in him and active through him. The one who was to come will liberate the nation of Israel, gather the people, and feed them. Again and again his righteousness is praised: “Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins” (Isa. 11.5). He “shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land” (Jer. 23.5). Just as the expressions of Yahweh’s righteousness are not judgments but the caring commitment of his grace, the righteousness of the coming one will be defined by Yahweh’s covenantal faithfulness toward Israel. His dominion will bring peace to Israel, which shall never again be destroyed (Isa. 9.5). “Prince of Peace” shall be his name. In all this, it is remarkable that—in contrast to the many horrifying descriptions of the future destruction of Israel’s enemies—the promises of the coming one predict the overcoming of the opponents not through violent warfare but simply by his appearing. This is expressed most graphically in the promise of Zechariah: “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zech. 9.9). This reign of peace is promised not only as peace for Israel in the midst of its joy but as peace for all people. “[N]ation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Mic. 4.3). “[A]nd he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth” (Zech. 9.10). This promise does not negate the judgment that will break upon the nations on the “day of Yahweh.” Still, it will not be God’s wrath against the nations but his caring commitment that will be the final and actual future of humanity, not eternal wars but eternal peace. The coming of the promised one will bring about totally new living conditions, and it will also change the way of living together with the non-human creation (Isa. 11.6ff.; Ezek. 34.25ff. et passim). The coming one will rule by God’s commission; his reign of peace is God’s kingdom. To what extent the coming one will merely be the instrument of God is also shown by those prophetic promises of the future reign of peace in which there is no mention of a coming one distinct from God. The future salvific activity of God itself determines all statements about the coming ruler and bringer of salvation. This one is obviously juxtaposed to the historical kings in the criticism by the prophets. In none of the promises about the coming one is there even a suggestion that the divine commission and the behavior of its appointee could diverge and contradict

The Promise

one another, as happened again and again throughout the history of the Israelite and Judahite kings. If one considers that God used not only the king but also priests and prophets as instruments of his action upon Israel, and that he did so even before the rise of the kingship, it is remarkable that after the catastrophe the new promises did not announce a coming priest and a coming prophet. It is debated whether the statements in Psalm 110, which far exceed the actual power of the Judahite kings, should be considered formulations of an exaggerated Near Eastern courtly style or utterances of a messianic expectation, by means of which one encountered each new king in the hope and with the question that he might be the coming one. If this is true, then the coming one was expected not only as king but as “eternal priest.” Earlier kings had also exercised priestly functions, and these were also expected of the coming “prince,” according to Ezek. 45.16ff. In contrast to this, Zechariah described the king and the high priest as “the two anointed ones who stand by the Lord of the whole earth” (Zech. 4.14), and he announced that God would lead his people and rebuild the temple through them both (cf. Hag. 1.1ff.; 2.1ff.). But this promise was not about a future one but about two persons contemporaneous with Zechariah, the Davidic governor Zerubbabel and the high priest Joshua, appointed by the Persians. Zerubbabel, however, never attained royal status, and the promise for the future is that one day all members of the people will be called “priests of the Lord” (Isa. 61.6). The announcement of a coming prophet is only found with certainty in the book of Malachi, specifically in the announcement of the prophet Elijah who will be sent ahead of God’s final judgment (Mal. 3.2). In the older Deuteronomic promise of a future prophet like Moses (Deut. 18.15, 18f.), it is uncertain whether a single coming one or a series of ever-new prophetic leaders is being announced. In the Servant Songs of Deutero-Isaiah, there is indeed mention of a single prophet, but that one is not necessarily the one who was to come. Even though the fourth Servant Song (Isa. 52.13ff.) goes beyond similar statements of its time by strongly emphasizing the salvific significance of this suffering “for the many,” including the nations, it is clearly assumed that the suffering, death, and burial of the Servant of God have already taken place. For the future, however, there is the promise that God will pour out his Spirit on all, that they may prophesy and have visions like prophets (Joel 2.28f.).

Without doubt, Daniel 7.13f. is referring to a future figure in the announcement of the Son of Man. But this figure is not interpreted as a single human being but—like the previously announced animals—as a kingdom, namely, as the kingdom of the “holy ones of the Most High” (v. 27). This does not exclude the possibility that this is based on an older idea of an individual human being, since the Son of Man is announced as a single person in other apocalyptic writings (4 Ezra and Enoch).

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7. The Promise of the New Covenant In the midst of the judgments that followed Israel’s breaking of the covenant, God remained faithful to his people and promised them his “new covenant” (Jer. 31.31–34). The “new covenant” is so clearly distinguished from the old covenant that it is virtually set against it (“not like the covenant I made with their fathers…” Jer. 31.32 [SCH]). The same God implements it, promising it to the same people, obligating this people to the same commandments. It is not God’s law that will be different but its relationship to human beings. It will no longer stand opposite them as a demand. Instead, God promises, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (31.33). The demand of the law will then no longer encounter human beings as a foreign demand from the outside, but it will be present on the inside of a person. No member of the people will require instruction by a brother or sister any longer, but every person will know the Lord (v. 34). The demand for obedience will then no longer be repelled by hardened hearts, but it will sink into the hearts and be offered to God with the spontaneity of a new will. The promise of the new covenant closes with these words, “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31.34). At the same time, beyond forgiveness there is the promise of a thorough transformation of the human being, in which the opposition between God’s law and human behavior will come to an end. In different words, Ezekiel likewise announced that God would transform the human heart and enable it to obey the law: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (Ezek. 36.26f.). This promise, too, goes beyond a purification of past sins (v. 25). It concerns a new creation of hearts and God’s “covenant of peace” with human beings (Ezek. 34.25; 37.26). The captivity of humanity to its contradiction against God will then be ended. The outpouring of God’s Spirit and the awakening of humanity to new life and to new praise of God is also promised by other prophets (e. g., Joel 2.28f.). 8. The Promise of Yahweh’s Adoration by the Nations The victories that Israel won during its wanderings in the desert and its conquest of the land, it celebrated as Yahweh’s victories. In these victories Yahweh had shown himself stronger than the gods of the enemy peoples. On the other hand, the disappearance of Israel’s position as a great power and the complete destruction of Jerusalem had shaken belief in the superiority of Yahweh over the other gods. Nevertheless, precisely in view of the oncoming catastrophe, the prophets proclaimed once more the defeat of their enemies and the futility of their gods. But that was

The Promise

not what was actually new. What was new was the promise that Yahweh would be worshiped by the other nations. “All the Gentiles will stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say: ‘Come, let us go up the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For the law will go out from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Isa. 2.2f. [S]). To Israel it was said: “Your light is coming, and the glory of the Lord shines upon you. …Nations are flocking to your light, and kings to the splendor that shines upon you” (Isa. 60.1, 3 [S]). The participation of the nations in the Yahweh-cult on Mount Zion is announced in numerous passages. According to Isaiah 2, the peoples will look there for the words of Yahweh, his legal decisions in their disputes, and instruction in his commandments (cf. Mic. 4.1ff.). According to Isaiah 60.6f., they will bring gold and frankincense for the temple and sheep for the sacrifices. “The treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine.” The splendor of the new temple shall be greater than that of the old one (Hag. 2.7ff.). The Gentiles will thus do the same as the members of the people of Israel who go up in procession to Mount Zion to receive priestly instruction and to offer sacrifices. With the scattered Jews they will come from afar. They will confess before Israel, “God is with you alone and nowhere else” (Isa. 45.14 [S]). The communal unity of Israel with the other nations is thus promised in the adoration of Yahweh. Of course, there is no lack of triumphalist interpretations of the nations’ worship of Yahweh, in the sense of the vanquished entering into a relationship of service to Israel (cf., e. g., Isa. 61.5f.). It is not the defeat, oppression, and exploitation of others but communion in the universal worship of Yahweh that is what is new in the promise of the Spirit’s outpouring upon nations. Hearing Yahweh’s instruction together is what is expected: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and make their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isa. 2.4b [S]). These and other promises leave the earlier ones behind and are aimed toward entirely new deeds of God’s salvific action. They are thus one of the roots for the later distinction between this present age and the one to come in the future. But the prophetic promises of the new age differ from later Jewish apocalyptic in that they—apart from a few late exceptions—do not describe the coming events in a graphic way (out of respect for God’s sovereign action), nor do they place them into a systematic context through statements about their chronological sequence. In direct comparison to later apocalyptic-comprehensive conceptions, these prophetic promises remained strangely unfinished. They were open to the novelty of the incalculable divine caring commitment that surpasses all expectations.

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B. The Law 1. The Prohibition against Worshiping Other Gods As we had already established in the introduction to this chapter, the Old Testament law is grounded in God’s act of redemption for Israel. This applies not only to the Decalogue. Again and again the deliverance from Egypt is mentioned as the reason for even particular requirements in the law. In Deuteronomy, gratitude for God’s redemption is virtually the foundational motive for obedience. The presupposition for obedience therefore also includes the promise established over Israel by the act of redemption. Since the Decalogue occupies such an incomparably special status in the whole of the Old Testament law, it makes sense to begin with it in any systematic treatment of the law. As has already been mentioned, there are differences between the two texts of the Decalogue (Exod. 20.2–17 and Deut. 5.6–21). The so-called cultic Decalogue (Exod. 34.10–20) diverges significantly from both, and even more so from other series of prohibitions, such as the related series in Lev. 19 and the series of curses in the “Shechemite Decalogue” (Deut. 27.15ff.). This would seem to require an investigation into the oldest tradition and into the event of Sinai itself. The attempts at historical reconstruction vary greatly from one another. But one can assume that the first and second commandments were original components of the revelation at Sinai. It is furthermore probable that from the beginning certain obligating statutes for the common life of those liberated from Egypt were connected to these commandments. Using a partition that has been customary since Philo of Alexandria, we begin by treating the “first table” of the Decalogue.

Because Yahweh redeemed Israel, the first prohibition is this: “[Y]ou shall have no other gods before me” (Exod. 20.3). With this prohibition, Yahweh makes a claim to exclusivity, which would remain decisive for the entire subsequent history of Israel. Though it was commonplace in the region to worship multiple gods, and though the relationship of the cults of the various nations to one another was not largely understood to exclude the worship of other gods, such worship was explicitly forbidden to Israel. The rigorousness with which this commandment was again and again impressed upon Israel and grounded in the holy zeal of Yahweh, meant a radical isolation of this nation from foreign cults and from all other nations. The second commandment, “You shall not make for yourself an idol…” (Exod. 20.4), also required the separation of Israel from other cults. It prohibits both the manufacture of images depicting other gods and the manufacture of an image depicting Yahweh, for Yahweh appeared to Israel, not in a visible form but as the Wholly Other, as the one who is superior to everything visible. He has turned

The Law

toward Israel through his word. Yahweh must not be dragged down by human beings into the sphere of created things and made visible. Thus it is not the visible reality of human beings as such that can be called God’s image but their response to God’s address, their obedience to God’s commandment. In this sense, humanity was created to be in God’s image (cf. above, chap. 5). The third commandment (v. 7) also prohibits the reversal of the relationship between God and humanity. The misuse of the name of Yahweh is finally always the attempt to use Yahweh for one’s own self-chosen purposes. Throughout the Old Testament law these prohibitions of the Decalogue return again and again. There they receive their interpretation and supplementation through many concrete prohibitions against witchcraft, divination, necromancy, cultic prostitution, human sacrifice, etc. The structure of these prohibitions varies: In addition to the apodictic prohibitions (“you shall not…”), there are conditional prohibitions (“if you do …, then you will be punished by …”), including those connecting a relative and a consecutive clause (cf., e. g., Lev. 24.16: “One who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death; the whole congregation shall stone the blasphemer.”). Such prohibitions are also handed down in the form of curses (cf., e. g., Deut. 27.15: “Cursed be anyone who makes an idol or casts an image, anything abhorrent to the Lord, … and sets it up in secret”).

These prohibitions delimit the space within which Israel was to worship God. In addition to the prohibitions, there are also many commandments handed down in the Old Testament regarding the execution of the true worship of God. Here it is worth noting that the only positively phrased demand of the Decalogue’s first table, the commandment about the sabbath, requires a highly paradoxical act, namely, to refrain from all human activity. It requires the remembrance of God’s finished work of creation in the beginning (Exod. 20.11) and God’s work of redemption for Israel (Deut. 5.15) amidst the passivity of human action. Something of this paradox is also contained in the many positive regulations regarding the priestly offering of sacrifices. For in a different way, this human action also is mainly about God’s action toward human beings. The precision to which human action in the cultus is subjected by the Old Testament ritual laws shows that it is not ultimately the human beings who affect God through their sacrifices but God who acts upon them by accepting the sacrifices prescribed by him. The positively phrased ritual laws—with their regulations about the holy place, the festal seasons, the priests, the holy instruments, as well as who had access to the cultus, the examination of the sacrificial animals’ suitability, and the execution of the sacrifice—took on an increasingly expansive space in the law of the Old Testament. By being located between the Decalogue (Deut. 5.6–21) and the great legal corpus following it (Deut. 12–16), the following commandment is given a prominent place: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,

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and with all your might” (Deut. 6.5). These words can be viewed as a positive summary of the first table of the Old Testament law, and therefore also as the key for understanding the various particular prohibitions and commandments about worship life. All these prohibitions and commandments deal with the worship of God, i. e., the adoration of Yahweh, the sole Savior and Lord of Israel. The practice of this worship of God could not remain without effects on the knowledge of God. By invoking and praising Yahweh as the only God of Israel, he was more and more recognized also as the Lord of all nations and the Creator of the universe. In its early days Israel had assumed that the other gods were real—the gods of their enemies, against whom Yahweh fought and won. Only later were they subject to Yahweh like a heavenly court, and finally they were mocked as non-entities by Deutero-Isaiah. Yet this journey was not a transition on the part of Israel from an earlier polytheism to a later monotheism but rather the increasing awareness of the one who had been revealing himself from the beginning. For from the beginning, the point was the sole worship of Yahweh: He was wholly there for Israel, and to him alone they should cling. From the sole worship of the Redeemer who liberated Israel from Egyptian slavery emerged the knowledge of Yahweh as the only God, just as later the christological knowledge emerged from the proclamation and the worshipful adoration of Jesus. The worship of God has as its presupposition the acknowledgment of God’s acts. By thanking God for these acts in the context of worship, the knowledge of God himself emerges. It is no coincidence that in the monotheistic statements in Deutero-Isaiah, one finds many similarities to the Psalter.2 2. The Prohibition against Harming the Neighbor Through God’s act of redemption for the enslaved Hebrews, the members of these tribes were joined together as one nation. If the nation of Israel was “created” through God’s act of salvation, then the relationship between the members of this nation to one another is also defined by it. The prohibitions of the Decalogue’s “second table” are God’s ordinances for Israel, by which he intends to protect human life, not in the isolation of the individual possession of life but in the mutual interrelation within the national community [Volksgemeinschaft]. Dishonoring parents, murder, adultery, theft of another’s possessions, and bearing false witness in court are thus prohibited. Through all such actions, the life liberated by God would be infringed upon, impaired, or even de-

2 Cf. Claus Westermann, Das Buch Jesaja, 40–45, Das Alte Testament Deutsch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), 15f. et passim. [ET: Isaiah 40–66: A Commentary, trans. David M. G. Stalker (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 8, 23f. et passim. –Ed.]

The Law

stroyed. The essence and sometimes even the phrasing of these commandments recurs time and time again in the multitude of legal ordinances in the Old Testament. Such ordinances are handed down for all aspects of life together—not only for the relationship between parents and children, and between man and woman, but also for the relationship between rich and poor, free and slave, as well as for how to behave in legal battles, e. g., as the defendant, the witness, the judge. Such ordinances also govern the use of one’s field and one’s responsibility for livestock. Deuteronomy also contains ordinances applying beyond the legal boundaries of the kingdom. A special witness to the positive valuation of personhood are the prohibitions against lifelong slavery and discrimination against strangers. There are some not insignificant differences in the structure of these ordinances. In addition to the apodictic prohibition, which is especially characteristic for the Decalogue, even these laws include conditional prohibitions—more widely than in the demands of the first table—which are, however, expressed in different forms. In some cases, the conditional clause states the concrete situation of a person, for which a certain behavior is commanded in the main clause (e. g., Lev. 19.9f.: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not … gather the gleanings of your harvest … you shall leave them for the poor and the alien”). At other times, an offense against God’s demand is named in a “when” or “whoever” clause, followed in the main clause by the punishment to be meted out (cf., e. g., Exod. 21.12: “Whoever strikes a person mortally shall be put to death”). In the first set of structures, the prohibition is meted out directly to the possible perpetrators themselves. But in latter ones this happens only indirectly, by announcing the punishment for the offense, which then in most cases is carried out by Israel itself upon the perpetrator. Prohibitions can also be encountered in a series of curses, and though the inescapability of divine wrath against the perpetrator is assumed, it is not clearly stated who is to execute the punishment. Basically, every prohibition can also be phrased positively as a commandment. This was not infrequently done in the Old Testament. Multiple times the negative phrasing of a prohibition is followed by the positive one. But in the demands made about the common life of the nation’s members with one another and with the foreigners in their midst, prohibitions predominate, much in contrast to the laws about the cultus. There is reason to believe that the positive commandments are historically and essentially secondary when compared to the prohibitions. In the Decalogue, too, there are eight prohibitions but only two commandments. Analyzing the various structures of Old Testament legal requirements is important for the comparison with the paraenesis of the New Testament, through which the positive inferences from God’s act of redemption through Jesus predominate.

The difference between apodictic and conditional commandments is not equivalent to the differences between divine commandments and secular laws in the history of Christianity, or between ethical principles and legal regulations in modern parlance. After all, Israel understood both the “legal” ordinances and the “ethical” obligations

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as God’s commandments. The whole law of Israel, not only its cultic law, was a sacred law commanded by God. From the perspective of later Jewish-Hellenistic as well as Christian interpretations of the law, it would seem obvious to elevate the commandment of loving one’s neighbor as the center of all the obligations about human life together in Israel: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself ” (Lev. 19.18). Yet this apodictic-positive commandment is found only in this place in the Old Testament law, and only as an elaboration on a previous commandment. Of course, it receives special weight through the demand to love one’s enemies, which goes beyond love for one’s Israelite compatriots and coreligionists: “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Exod. 22.21). In particular ordinances of the Old Testament law for human life together, one finds many parallels between Israelite law and laws that were common in the Near East, especially Canaanite law. Nevertheless, there are significant differences, for it was Yahweh, the Savior, who made demands on Israel through them. This could not remain without an effect on the content of the law. Thus, in contrast to its cultural environment, Israelite law noticeably lacks the death penalty for property damage and maiming as a form of punishment, it prohibits selling one’s wife into debt slavery, and it protects the poor, widows, and orphans, as well as slaves and foreigners. One might say: “When we compare [these Israelite laws] with nonIsraelite legal statements from the ancient Near East, we are often able to establish point by point the superiority of these (Israelite) legal statements, especially in the social realm. Israel took pains to achieve the legal equality of everyone before the law. Even the foreigner, the poor person, and the slave are to enjoy the benefit of legal security.”3 Despite the embeddedness of Israelite law in the timebound and unrepeatable legal ordinances of the Near East, one can speak of a certain humanization in the law of that time, which resulted from the worship of Yahweh. The prohibition against worshiping other gods and the prohibition against harming one’s compatriot are directly connected. Both “tables” of the law are commanded by God, and one must obey both at the same time. Worshiping Yahweh while at the same time harming one’s neighbor would not be worship of Yahweh. Solidarity with one’s compatriot in joint apostasy from Yahweh would no longer be the community of the people of Israel. Even one’s behavior toward the neighbor is about one’s behavior toward God.

3 Gerhard von Rad, “Bruder und Nächster im Alten Testament,” in Gottes Wirken in Israel (Assen: Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1974), 240. [ET: “Brother and Neighbor in the Old Testament,” in God at Work in Israel, trans. John H. Marks (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), 184–185 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

The Law

In the Old Testament law Israel encountered the image of God anew, the image for which humanity was once created, and which it had lost, for the presupposition of the law was Israel’s election out of free divine love. This Lord, who had loved Israel first, was to be once more the object of their love. As his firstborn, as his bride, as his wife, Israel was to thank God with its response of love, with its exclusive dedication to him. At the same time, every Israelite was to respond to the love of God with mutual love for those loved by God, the members of the beloved people, in relation to one another. If one considers beyond this also the Old Testament ordinances about the behavior toward animals, the fields, and its harvest, then one also encounters in the law the commandment about the dominion that is the image of God. The threefold commandment to be the divine image in response, community, and dominion is perhaps concentrated in the commandment of holiness: “[B]e holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11.44). 3. God’s Commanding and God’s Law A number of Old Testament traditions tell of a kind of commanding by God in which he gave a particular person a concrete instruction intended only for that person. This is true, e. g., of the command to Abraham to leave his homeland and settle in a land that God would show him, or the command to Moses to lead the Hebrew tribes out of Egypt. It is similar with the callings of the prophets. Such commanding by God was directed at particular persons and was not transferable. It came to these people in their historical situation as a concrete divine demand and instruction, which applied only to this situation and could not be generalized. This must be differentiated from the kind of prohibitions and commandments in the Old Testament that raise a claim that applies once and for all to the entire nation of Israel. This is true, e. g., of the prohibitions and commandments of the Decalogue. It is also true of the many other prohibitions and commandments that are handed down in the four books from Exodus through Deuteronomy. Since the emergence of the Pentateuch, all these ordinances encountered the people of Israel as one demanding totality. While this totality is not well organized, lacks a consistent structure, and contains many repetitions and even some contradictions, all of these prohibitions and commandments are traced back to the revelation of Yahweh and the transmission of that revelation through Moses. All of them came with a claim to lasting validity. Such prohibitions and commandments that have an abiding claim to validity are here called law. God’s commanding and God’s law have often been juxtaposed as opposites, as a living and as a fixed word, as concrete and general instruction, as historical and supra-historical obligation, as spirit and letter, as personal guidance by God and as a subjection to a God-given yet impersonally demanding norm. But the fact that not only the law but also the living command of God was described by the

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prophets as Torah already indicates that God’s commanding and God’s law originally interpenetrated and complemented one another, just as, conversely, not only the prophetic instruction but also the commandments of the Decalogue were described as “word (dabar [‫ )] ָדָּבר‬of Yahweh” (that is, not as ten “commandments,” but as ten “words”). This follows both with the beginning of the history of the law as well as with the beginning of the concrete acts of divine commanding. (a) Thanks to source criticism and redaction criticism, it has been shown that the whole of the Old Testament law developed over the course of more than 500 years. Early on, there arose a series of prohibitions with a comprehensive claim on the various aspects of life (e. g., the Decalogue) and collections of prohibitions for a particular area of life (e. g., for the protection of life, the life together of man and woman, the protection of property, the treatment of slaves, as well as, e. g., collections of sacrificial and purity laws). By combining multiple such collections there arose legal corpora (e. g., the Book of the Covenant, Deuteronomy, the Holiness Code). These corpora, in turn, were edited and supplemented and finally worked together in the Pentateuch. To be sure, the sequential order of the laws from Exodus to Deuteronomy is different from that of their development.

A comparison of the Old Testament collections of laws in the sequence of their development gives rise to an astoundingly widespread identity of content between prohibitions and commandments, whereby the prohibition against worshiping other gods is the lasting and defining center. Widespread agreement is also found in many obligations about human life together. At the same time, it is apparent that identical prohibitions and commandments are even concretized in the historical situations of Israel, be it the transition from wandering through the wilderness to settling in Canaan (Book of the Covenant), or the crisis of older orders in the history of the kingship (Deuteronomy), or the particular challenge of the exilic and post-exilic situations (the Priestly Code). Thus the great and complex mass of Old Testament laws emerged as the result of a concretizing process of interpreting the divine prohibitions, to which Israel had felt obligated since its origin. The history of this interpretation is the history of the people’s ever-new self-subjection to Yahweh’s address at Sinai. The interpretation of the received law took place especially through the priests: through concrete priestly instructions to participants in the cultus and through the collection and basic interpretation of the received laws. Because this process of transmission originally happened at different cultic holy sites, some differences between legal interpretations likely did not become apparent until later.

If one recognizes the whole of the Old Testament law as the result of a process of interpretation that took place over centuries, one notices that Israel considered

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itself far less tied to the transmitted wording of the law in the pre-exilic period than is suggested by popular notions about laws as ordinances that are fixed in their lettering. In this connection, it is especially important to note that the law, though it claimed an enduring validity and urged one to find permanent phrasing for its formulations, was handed down over long periods of time through a rather lively process of proclaiming Yahweh’s commanding. (b) In contrast to the priestly tradition of the law, the prophetic proclamation of the divine commanding took place on the basis of God’s direct commission. Among the scriptural prophets, there is almost no reference to Yahweh’s revelation at Sinai or to Moses. These prophets did not derive their authority from a transmitted law, and they barely cited its wording. Instead, they directly received and proclaimed God’s demand and threats of judgment. Just as a direct commanding of God is reported from the time of the patriarchs, and thereby the time before the law, this continued during the time in which the law was being transmitted. In the immediacy of their commission, the prophets nevertheless concretely proclaimed the old law of Yahweh. They fought against the worship of other gods, they set forth the consequences for social behavior that had to emerge from the worship of Yahweh, and they fought against separating the worship of God from responsibility toward other human beings. They demanded the obedience of the whole person to God. They did not fight against the law. Thus one finds clear echoes of the Decalogue in them, even though its authority was not explicitly invoked (cf., e. g., Hos. 4.1f. and Jer. 7.9). They also did not fight against the priestly mission of transmitting the law, but they did criticize the shirking of this task by the priests and the abuse of the priestly office by those who downplayed the breaking of the law through a false confidence in sacrifices and the temple. (c) The difference between the teaching of the priests and the proclamation of the prophets cannot be overlooked. It consists of the different ways priests and prophets were commissioned, and in the mediation of the priestly doctrine of the law that was grounded in tradition versus the prophetic preaching that was grounded in the immediate hearing of the divine commanding. It consists also in the priests’ stronger connection to given wording versus the greater freedom that the prophets had in preaching with new words and in enacting new signs, at times with unprecedented intensity and severity. But these differences do not ultimately imply any substantive opposition. The ever-new listening to the law that has been handed down and to hearing the command of Yahweh in the present moment belong together. Through priests and prophets, the same God intended to communicate his demanding will to Israel amidst changing historical temptations and threats. This interconnectedness is also shown in that the law book of Deuteronomy is shaped by prophetic proclamation, down to the structure of its language of exhortation. Conversely, the prophetic book of Ezekiel, for instance, is largely shaped by priestly teaching.

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That said, the relationship between God’s concrete commanding and his onceand-for-all given requirements has undergone significant changes in the course of Israel’s history, even apart from any distortions of priestly or even prophetic offices, which need to be taken into account by a dogmatic discussion of the law. This is especially true of the time during and after the exile. Initially, everything was destroyed by the great catastrophe. Only the law had remained and retained great importance for the continuing existence of the nation. Laws that had developed over the course of centuries were now collected and finally unified into one legal document. Due to the manner in which this took place, knowledge about the historical situations in which the individual corpora had emerged faded, as did memory of the geographical areas to which they had originally applied. Since the present, living command of Yahweh through the prophets fell silent soon after the exile, the connection to the letter of the law was significantly strengthened. Human life and the freedom of human decision-making were severely restricted by the summation of all the transmitted ordinances for the various domains of life. Now the Torah received a more and more absolute meaning, signifying all of God’s speaking, and casuistic interpretation of the law took the place of God’s speaking in the present. However, these changes alone did not yet lead to the understanding of the law that was later criticized by Jesus and, in a different way, by Paul. 4. The Announcement of Blessing and Curse Israel encountered the law primarily in the form of prohibitions. Through them, space was left open in which Israel could live in community with Yahweh. Through the prohibitions, the living space given by God’s compassion was not narrowed but protected. The prohibitions did not suffocate life, but rather they secured the domain of life that was surrounded by Yahweh’s act of redemption and his promises, in which the partnership of man and woman, conception and birth, sowing and reaping, animal husbandry and the building of cities, could take place, in which Israel was protected by Yahweh from its enemies, and, above all, in which it could be free to praise God’s mighty deeds and to expect ever-new divine salvific action. The richness of the Psalter gives an impression of this freedom in community with God, who is the Rock and the Fortress of salvation. Thus the law was a blessing for Israel, a light upon its path, a reason for joy and thanksgiving. Even if the praise of the law in the artful Psalm 119 is from a time in which the law had become an entity largely detached from the historical act of redemption, its understanding of the law as protection, help, and blessing could be viewed as ancient. At the same time, however, the prohibitions delineate the boundaries across which Israel would leave the realm of divine salvific action and fall under God’s wrath. Just as the law announced life to the obedient, it handed the wicked over to death. Not every transgression was threatened with death. In the law there are

The Law

gradations of punishment for various offenses, and by executing these punishments the impaired community with Yahweh and with compatriots of the nation could be restored. For worshiping other gods, for blaspheming the name of Yahweh, for witchcraft as well as, e. g., for adultery, the death penalty—and thereby the exclusion of transgressors from the community—was prescribed. Even when the misdeed remained hidden and had escaped human punishment, the transgressor remained subject to the inescapability of the divine wrath. In the tradition of the law, one finds numerous statements in which blessing and curse are stated in parallel and are made dependent on the behavior of human beings. This applies, e. g., to the parallel final sentences at the beginning of Deuteronomy: “You shall fear and love Yahweh, your God, … so that the wrath of Yahweh, your God, might not be kindled against you and destroy you from the earth,” and: You shall “keep the commandments of Yahweh, your God, … so that it will be well with you …” (Deut. 6.13–15, 17ff. [S]). The same can be said about the strongly emphasized conditional statements in the recapitulation at the end of Deuteronomy: “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, … then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, … I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess” (Deut. 30.15ff.). Such sentences would be misunderstood if one were to understand blessing and curse, life and death, in the same way as God’s response to the actions of human beings. The widespread opinion that God’s blessing and destroying action is determined here by one and the same principle of retribution is incorrect. Obedience is not the cause of salvation in the same way that disobedience is the cause of the loss of salvation, for the gift of life preceded the obedience of human beings. Not the achievement of salvation but continuation in salvation is promised to those who obey the law. By contrast, the curse is grounded in human behavior. The parallelism in the announcements of blessing and curse is thus changed by the presupposition of undeserved salvation, though it cannot be ignored that the law requires obedience as a condition for remaining in salvation. The parallelism in the announcement of blessing and curse, grace and judgment, life and death, is shattered most drastically by the statements about the immeasurable superiority of divine grace over divine judgment. “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exod. 20.5f.; cf. Deut. 7.9f.). The superiority of grace over judgment is also echoed in the Psalter: “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always accuse, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does

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not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities” (Ps. 103.8ff.). Not death but life, not punishment but grace, was God’s original intention for Israel. Only after Israel began doubting the basis of its existence in God’s salvific action did the unequally grounded announcement of blessing for obedience and curse for disobedience turn into the parallelism of a retributive principle that applied equally to disobedience and obedience. 5. Israel’s Disobedience to the Law The history of Israel has been handed down as a history of flagrant violations against God’s concrete commanding and against God’s law. Although they had been rescued from Egypt, the people grumbled and rebelled against God already on their way through the desert. Although they were led and rescued by him out of ever-new impasses, the people turned to foreign gods after the possession of the land. This is not to deny that this history also contains works of faith and obedience, and yet, looking back on that history, one sees that the sum of Israel’s behavior was disobedience. Thus the post-exilic Deuteronomistic historiography characterized the lives of the majority of the kings again and again with this observation: “He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as his ancestors had done. He did not depart from the sins…” (2 Kings 15.9 et passim). Serious offenses are reported even about the most highly praised kings, David and Solomon. Israel’s history was exposed under the law as a sequence of manifold sinful deeds, committed by individuals or groups or even by the whole people (e. g., Num. 16; Josh. 7; 2 Sam. 11f.; 1 Kings 21). The history of Israel was not a history of the people’s faithfulness but the history of God’s faithfulness to his unfaithful people. There were, however, also repeated attempts to hide from God behind the law, either by boasting about obedience to particular legal requirements while forgetting the disobedience against other requirements, or by reinterpreting legal requirements and conforming them to one’s own desires. But the prophetic proclamation has brought humanity out of its hiding and has exposed it. It has destroyed the reinterpretation of the law and made it impossible for one to take comfort in the cultus while simultaneously exploiting and oppressing other human beings. It has demanded the obedience of the whole person. While Israelite historiography tended to highlight the sins of individual persons and groups, the prophets declared the entire people guilty of apostasy against God. They accused a diversity of groups, confronting each with a particular offense, the royal house, the judges, the priests, the rich, women obsessed with appearance, etc. They did this in such a concrete way that they shattered each person’s ability to hide behind a group or behind a reinterpreted law. They did this so concretely that everyone was declared guilty for the transgression of the whole people. They called each person and the whole people to repentance. The idea that not only individuals

The Law

but the whole people had turned away from God is already expressed shortly after the establishment of the covenant, by the story about the manufacture and worship of the golden calf (Exod. 32). Prophetic preaching not only exposed sinful deeds but also a deeply rooted, irresistible tendency to sin. “The sin of Judah is written with an iron pen; with a diamond point it is engraved on the tablet of their hearts…” (Jer. 17.1). The members of the people have become numb to God’s word and action. “They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to turn back” (5.3). Their eyes are blind, their ears deaf (5.21). Their will is perverted and bound. They cannot change. “Can Ethiopians change their skin or leopards their spots?” (13.23). They have “hearts of stone” (Ezek. 11.19; 36.26 [S]). In the primordial history, judgment had already been declared about all humanity: “[E]very inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Gen. 6.5; cf. 8.21). But Israel’s addiction to sin and the hardening of its heart was the particular effect of its turning away from God, its Redeemer. Israel’s sin was all the more serious and its effect on the people itself was all the more profound because God himself had shown mercy uniquely upon it and made it into his people. The act of salvation by which God had created Israel now turned against Israel and became an accusation. Because of this act of salvation and because of Israel’s thanklessness, its sin was especially great and was evaluated more severely in the prophetic proclamation than the sins of the other nations (cf., e. g., Amos 1–2). Even though the history of Israel under the law was a history of sin, the Old Testament lacks the thought proposed by Paul that the law might be impossible to fulfill, or even that sin was caused by the law. Not the inability to fulfill the law but the de facto failure to fulfill the law is what the prophetic message addressed. In addition, the perversion and bondage of the human will was understood as an effect of decisions against God’s will. It is only on the margins of prophetic preaching that the following is handed down as God’s word: “I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live… in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am the Lord” (Ezek. 20.25ff.). In the post-canonical literature of later Judaism, this thought is also quite rare (cf. 4 Ezra). 6. God’s Judgment of Israel If the law was the light for Israel on its path, then turning away from the law meant the loss of an orientation and blindness. By turning away from Yahweh, Israel entered the sphere of decay and death. This was not merely understood as an historically contingent result of renouncing him as the center of life, but as God’s own doing: He handed Israel over to decay. Whoever takes the holiness of God seriously—his hostility against sin and his faithfulness to his word, the announced

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blessing for the obedient and the announced curse upon the disobedient—should not be surprised by the judgments that God carried out against Israel. The truly surprising thing is not the judgment but the patience with which God postponed the long-overdue punishment. Time and time again, he granted Israel time to repent. Through the mouth of the prophets, he again and again reminded his people of how he had shown them his love. Frequently, he called for repentance on the part of Israel rather than demanding it. Longingly he waited for signs of contrition and was ready to halt the impending judgments. Indeed, it is reported about Yahweh that he “repented” of having administered judgment. In these ways, God wrestled in his love for Israel. Only after the call to repentance had been repeatedly rejected, the great judgment came upon the people. The judgment was not the result of divine capriciousness. If anything, it is his patience that might appear unreasonable and arbitrary, not to mention the new promise that God gave to Israel, despite the announcement of judgment in the midst of things falling apart. The history of Israel was a history of the divine ways of grace and of divine judgments. At times, the judgments were carried out by Israel itself against the transgressors, according to the law. At other times, God employed foreign nations and judged Israel through defeat and oppression. Through the judgments that Israel itself carried out against transgressors, it attempted to remove from its midst that which stood in the way of its community with Yahweh. Through the judgments that God carried out against Israel in the victories of its enemies, he confronted his people with the choice of returning to him. Such repentance is reported multiple times. As Israel’s and Judah’s unwillingness to repent became apparent, God’s judgment was announced with increasing radicality by the prophets. The manifestation of inevitability reached its utmost severity in the observation that the covenant had been broken by Israel. The judgment began with God handing the unrepentant people over into this refusal and hardening their hearts in it. Hence the commission of Isaiah: “Go and say to this people: ‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’ Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes…” (Isa. 6.9f.). With hardened hearts, leaders made decisions that led to ruin. When the great catastrophe finally came upon the Israelite northern kingdom in 722/1 and then upon the Judahite southern kingdom in 587/6, this meant far more than any of the previous judgments. With the destruction of the cities, the forced removal of the inhabitants, and the devastation of the land, the fulfillment of the promise given to Israel with the possession of the land was undone. The remnant of the people who survived the catastrophe was thrown back into the condition of the former enslavement in Egypt. With the end of the kingship and the temple, the fulfillment of those promises given to the throne of David and the temple was likewise eliminated. The prophetic assessment that the covenant with

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Yahweh had ended, the catastrophe that had befallen both kingdoms, and especially the destruction of the temple and the end of the Davidic kingship, added up to a decisive turning-point in Israel’s history, which cannot be emphasized enough, and which had lasting effects on the relationship between God and the people. To be sure, with the victory of the Persian King Cyrus over the Babylonian kingdom, the exile came to an end. As part of his general measures for restoring the rights and cultures of subjugated peoples, he issued an edict in 538 that commanded the reconstruction of the Jerusalem temple and the return of the temple’s ritual objects that had been carried away to Babylon. Permission for the deportees to return home was likely given at this same time. Several decades later, with Persian permission, Jerusalem also got new city walls. Nevertheless, the return of the exiles happened only very gradually and in small groups. In the intervening years, some had assimilated in foreign lands, and some had attained high civil offices there. The rebuilding of the temple dragged on and seems to have only made progress after the urging of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. When it was finally consecrated in 515, it was modest in comparison to the Solomonic temple, and the ark that had once stood at the center of the Yahweh cultus was missing. Restoration of the cultus after the consecration remained wanting at first. The prophet Malachi complained that the offerings for the temple were not being received in an orderly fashion and that animals were being sacrificed that had inadmissible blemishes. In addition, the knowledge and observance of other ordinances in the law were initially so insufficient that, on the occasion of the completion of the building of the city walls, Ezra had the law read aloud again to all the people and committed the nation anew to the law. Whoever had understood the new promises in the vein of a restoration of that which God had once promised and given would have been bitterly disappointed after the end of the exile. If one compares the condition of post-exilic Israel with the former fulfillment of the promises, the possession of the land, and the Davidic kingship, it is clear that this fulfillment had not been restored in essential ways now, e. g., with respect to dominion over the Promised Land and regarding the permanence of the Davidic throne. But whoever understood the new prophetic promise in its surpassing significance in relation to the old promises, and who expected God’s acts of salvation to surpass that which had happened earlier, would have been thoroughly disappointed. Where was the road of triumph promised for the return journey (Isa. 40.3)? Where was the messianic reign of peace embracing all nations and Israel’s joint worship of Yahweh with all nations? Where was the river of life flowing from the new temple? Where were the promised new hearts? The disappointment must have been all the greater, given that the proclamation of Deutero-Isaiah and Zechariah took place in the immediate expectation of what had been promised. Instead, the returnees found themselves in the midst of a provisional arrangement that was dragging on indefinitely.

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Thus, even after the exile, Israel remained in the shadow of the judgment that had come about as a result of the breaking of the covenant. Post-exilic Israel consisted mainly of the congregation of the Jerusalemite cultus, along with followers near and far. It remained under the dominion of successive foreign superpowers. The Maccabean kingship remained a brief episode, disappearing with Rome’s victory over the Seleucids. When in 40 BC Herod became king of Judea through a decree by the Roman Senate, the government passed to someone who superficially belonged to the Jewish cultic congregation but who in fact was a Hellenistic pagan ruler of unprecedented cruelty. Despite building the temple, he was hated by the people who were faithful to the law, who considered him a foreign puppet. Neither could his descendants be recognized as descendants of David. When the Jews finally attempted to regain political liberty through open revolt against Rome, they lost even the cultic center that had remained for them. The temple was destroyed in AD 70, and in its place a temple of Jupiter was erected. For about 1300 years this has been the site of the Islamic “Dome of the Rock.”

7. The Detachment of the Law After the elimination of the kingship and the temple, the law held together the Babylonian exiles and the remnant that had stayed behind in Judea. The cult of sacrifices could no longer be practiced. But the teaching of the law, the observance of the sabbath rest, and circumcision received a heightened significance for the survival of Israel. After the return from exile and the restoration of the temple, the sacrificial laws, and therefore almost the entire law, could be practiced again. The increased collection of legal traditions and their establishment in fixed writing strengthened the significance of the law all the more, especially since the prophetic word fell silent shortly after the exile and continued to be handed down only in written words. The law now encountered Israel in a manner that profoundly differed from its early days and pre-exilic history. The change consisted not only in the altered relationship between God’s concrete instructions and his requirements that had been given once and for all, but even more in the shattering of the original relationship between the law and God’s historical acts of salvation. While the original basis of the law was the liberation from Egypt, the enslavement in Babylon had taken its place. While an additional basis beyond this was the promise of the land, the fulfillment of this promise was invalidated by the exile. The covenant in which Yahweh committed himself to Israel, and Israel to Yahweh, was declared to be invalid by the prophets. But even after the return from exile, many of the things Israel expected on the basis of the old and new promises did not come to pass. The assurance of salvation that was based on the historical action of God was severely shaken. The former security with which Israel had understood itself as the people of God, and with which it had counted on God’s leadership and protection,

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had been taken from it. Thus the law was detached from its original foundation in God’s blessing, and now encountered Israel with a certain independence. “‘The law’ became an absolute entity [absoluten Größe], valid without respect to precedent, time, or history; based on itself, binding simply because it existed as law, because it was of divine origin and authority.”4 This is confirmed by the resulting “separation” of the concepts of “‘covenant’ and ‘law’ from one another,” which “had always been closely related to one another.”5 The detachment of the law from its salvation-historical basis had very serious consequences: The performance of the law took on an altered meaning. While Israel’s obedience was originally required as a response to God’s act of salvation, God’s salvific action was now expected as the response to obedience. The original relationship between God’s salvific action and the performance of the law was not forgotten, but it had become uncertain whether it was still in force, and thus it underwent a reversal. Likewise, the announcement of blessing and curse, life and death, now took on a new meaning. Originally, the linguistic parallelism of this announcement was ruptured by the presupposition of salvation. The promise given to obedience was not the achievement of salvation but the continuation in salvation, while the disobedient, by their own fault, moved from the sphere of salvation to that of non-salvation. But with the detachment of the law from God’s historical salvific action, a principle of retribution arose that applied equally to obedience and disobedience. Life was expected as reward for obedience, just as death was threatened as punishment for disobedience. Now it appeared natural to proffer one’s own obedience before God as a reason for his grace, indeed, to claim entitlement to the bestowal of divine righteousness by appealing to good works. With the assurance of salvation shattered, there also occurred an important change in how sacrifice was understood. While in former times a great variety of sacrifices were offered to Yahweh, the atonement sacrifices were emphasized so much in the post-exilic period that the others were sometimes reinterpreted to fit this meaning, and sometimes they were replaced altogether. Undoubtedly, this late understanding of the law differed significantly from the original one, less in terms of the content than in terms of the significance that it had for the relationship between Israel and its God. One might ask whether this development followed from the origins or whether it should be described as

4 Martin Noth, “Das Gesetz im Pentateuch,” in Martin Noth, Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament (Munich: Kaiser, 1957), 114. [ET: “The Laws in the Pentateuch: Their Assumptions and Meaning,” in The Laws in the Pentateuch and Other Studies, trans. D. R. Ap-Thomas (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), 86 (trans. modified). –Ed.] 5 Noth, “Das Gesetz im Pentateuch,” 119 [ET: 91. –Ed.]; cf. the legal psalms 1; 19.9ff.; 119, in which there is no mention of the covenant.

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an “inappropriate development.”6 It is appropriate insofar as the law was already connected to the announcement of blessing and curse in the early period, and God’s judgments corresponded to this announcement. If anything could be called inappropriate, it would be the repeated delays of the threatened judgment and finally the new prophetic promises. Nevertheless, the absolutizing of the law was inappropriate in that it emerged from the catastrophes of judgment but not from the new promises, for the latter had announced a sovereign new action of God’s grace, independent from Israel’s guilt. 8. The People of Expectation Foundational for the history of Israel was the divine act of salvation that brought its liberation from slavery in Egypt. That history’s further course was determined by God’s promise and law. In this history of Israel under God’s leadership and demand, the reality of humanity as a whole has been uncovered, for in contrast to the other nations, Israel has been addressed and situated by God’s word. (a) The same God who had revealed himself to all human beings through the works of his creation (cf. chap. 7.2) used his address to Israel to break through the misunderstandings with which human beings had responded to this selfwitnessing of God. He broke through the polytheistic, theistic, and atheistic notions behind which they were hiding from his claim. He declared the idols to be nothing, things that people used to deny him in his invisibility, eternal power, and divinity (Rom. 1.20ff.)—and thereby in his radical difference from creatures—and they dragged him into the materiality of this world. By his address to Israel, God destroyed the delusion of humans who thought that they could control him with their religion and force him to help them with their self-directed undertakings. The revelation of God in the old covenant, however, was not merely a repetition (through his word) of his self-witnessing as Creator. Rather, God addressed Israel as the Redeemer, and he acted upon them. Because of his act of redemption, Israel recognized him as the Creator who, in the freedom of his love, called the universe into being, and preserves it by his word. Of course, God not only refuted the idols and God-delusions of the other nations, but he also refuted Israel’s repeated attempts to make an image of Yahweh and to worship him along with other gods. (b) The same God who by the command of the Preserver placed his law in the hearts of all human beings (cf. chap. 7.3) has refuted, through the address to Israel, the attempts of human beings to evade his commandments for their common life, be it by detaching the commandments regarding the common life from the commandment to worship God, or by falsifying the content of the commandments by

6 So Noth, “Das Gesetz im Pentateuch,” 136. [ET: 103 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

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conforming it to their needs and desires, or by boasting about their individual deeds of obedience, as if by doing these they had become obedient and pleasing to God. By means of his law that was revealed to Israel, God has shattered this misunderstanding of the law that is written on all hearts. Through the Old Testament law, the commandments of the Creator and Preserver—and thereby the requirements of the law that is written on the hearts of all people—have come to light in an inescapable way. The Thomistic doctrine of natural law thus understood the Decalogue as lex naturae, and among the Reformers one finds similar statements. This understanding remains even if one views the Decalogue as an intermediate stage between the highest principles of natural law and positive law, and the Old Testament law is understood as the historical form in which natural law was applied to Israel in its concrete situation. One cannot forget, however, that the Old Testament law is not merely a repetition of the commandments of God the Preserver, and that God here addressed Israel as the Redeemer. This is apparent in the foundational beginning of the Decalogue: “I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of slavery in Egypt” [S]. This foundation applies to all the requirements of the law. This is also apparent in the cultic ordinances through which God gave his people signs of the covenant community. The cultic factor cannot even be detached from the Decalogue. In the tradition, it is not only embedded in cultic action (Exod. 24), but the demand for cultic obedience even reaches into it: “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy” (Exod. 20.8; cf. Deut. 5.12). Just as the covenant statutes and covenant sacrifices belong together in the traditions of the formation of the covenant, so throughout the entire pilgrimage of the covenant people, the ethical, legal, and cultic requirements form a unity in the Old Testament law. And yet the law of the Redeemer contains the commandments of God the Preserver. Even though the Old Testament law was only given to Israel, it nevertheless taught them what God required of the whole human race that is preserved under his patience. For this reason, the prophetic preaching of judgment was not restricted to the sins of Israel but was also directed against the sins of the other nations, not only their offenses against Israel but also the evil deeds that they had done to each other (cf., e. g., Am. 1 and 2). (c) The same God who governs world history has stepped out of his hiddenness through the word that was spoken to Israel. Through his address to Israel, human attempts to answer the question about the meaning of history on their own are dismissed (cf. chap. 9.2ff.), for through his word God has revealed those events in which he has brought deliverance and blessing upon his people, and those events in which he has handed them over to the consequences of their transgressions. By not accepting the adjustment of good and evil to the needs of human beings, it becomes clear in undisguised radicality how humankind has become guilty and fallen under God’s judgment. Whenever even the members of Israel had become unable to recognize a connection between their suffering and guilt, they knew themselves to be thrown upon God, who governs everything that happens, and they

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wrestled with the problem of his righteousness by lamenting, accusing, pleading, and praising. In the face of God’s historical address, even resignation is questioned, which would later find its expression in “the Preacher Solomon”: “All is vanity….” Through God’s word to Israel, sin was thus uncovered in all of its radicality, while it remained more or less hidden in the other nations through “natural” religions, ethics, and interpretations of history. The sinfulness of humanity is uncovered, and the judgment that every sinner deserves has been revealed to Israel. In this sense, Israel’s catastrophe, which has taken place in the downfall of the northern kingdom and also of Jerusalem, is demonstrative for humanity as a whole, having a kind of representative significance for the other nations—representative, not in the sense of atonement, since Israel suffered the consequences of its own sins, but still representative insofar as God’s deep hostility against human sin was revealed in demonstrative radicalness through the execution of his judgement of wrath upon Israel. (d) Even though Israel had broken the covenant, and even though the fulfillment of the old promises had been taken away from it by the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile, God had not abandoned his people. Already at the beginning of their slavery, he turned toward them anew in the prophetic announcement of judgment, and he promised them a reign of peace that would even include the other nations. This new thing, which surpassed the old promises and fulfillments, was announced by the prophets in manifold statements: As a new exodus, as a new covenant, as the coming of the ruler who, as commissioned by God, would bring justice and peace, as a new temple and cultus, as a new Jerusalem, even as the creation of a new earth and a new heaven. In this way, Israel’s gaze was directed forward, and it became an inquiring people: How and when would this take place? This inquiry had its basis not only in the prophetic promises of a new thing but already in the former contradictions between the old promises and Israel’s pre-exilic reality, which had been uncovered by the prophets: The contradictions between the purpose of the king as an instrument of divine rule and the reality of his self-rule, the contradiction between the sacrifices functioning as signs of divine caring commitment and their misuse uncovered by the prophets, the contradiction between the true and the false prophets, and many other contradictions. All these contradictions kept alive the question about the true king, the true sacrifice and temple, as well as the end of false prophecy. These contradictions were even harder to forget once the new salvific acts of God had been announced as taking up and surpassing the old promises. So through these promises, the nation of Israel was placed into a state of radical inquiry. Granted, there are questions about salvation in many religions. But the state of inquiry into which Israel was placed was not a mere glimmer that soon was extinguished. Rather, it had to be and remain permanent until the fulfillment would take place. It was also no blind and aimless inquiry but an inquiry that had

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received the direction and contours of the answer by means of the promises. God did not place Israel into this state of inquiry so that it might miss the coming one, but he had already granted to this inquiry the contours of the coming one. Israel’s inquiry was not just about a basic openness to God and the future that was coming from him, but about trust in the words of his promise. Through his judgments and promises, God made Israel into an expectant people. They were to keep an eye on both the old covenant that had been broken by Israel and the promised new covenant. In acknowledging God’s just judgment, they were to wait for God’s final act of redemption. Here, waiting means clinging to the promise of life while plummeting into the abyss of death and, in this sense, hovering over the abyss while praising God. Waiting means living from the promised future and obeying God’s commandment on the basis of the promised new act of salvation. Israel was to persist in this waiting, even if the fulfillment of the promise seemed as if it would never happen. If in the terminology of late Judaism and of the New Testament proclamation we summarize promise and law under the comprehensive term of the law, we can state that God prepared Israel through the law to expect the Redeemer of the world in the midst of humanity, and to walk consciously toward him. Indeed, God prepared Israel to be the place to which the promised one would come and bring salvation to all the nations. Of course, in the period after the great catastrophe, Israel lived with the constant temptation not to continue to acknowledge the judgment or to expect the promised new thing, but to withdraw from this situation. There were various options: (1) The breaking of the covenant that had been done by Israel and proclaimed by the prophets and the fatal judgment pronounced by God were trivialized. One relied on the continued validity of the old covenant, even though Israel’s subjugation continued after the return from the exile and the Davidic ruler had not come. (2) One tried to have an influence on God through obedience to the law so that he might yet fulfill the still outstanding promises. This usually meant a kind of obedience tied to the temple cult and applied to the letter of the whole Old Testament law. There also emerged efforts toward a new legal piety outside of the temple cult, such as the Essenes. (3) The promised freedom and the new Davidic kingdom were pursued through the use of armed violence, as was done, e. g., by the Maccabees in the struggle against the Hellenistic reign of the Seleucids, and by the later zealot movements in the struggle against the Romans. (4) The “how” and “when” of the fulfillment of the prophetic promises was not left up to God’s freedom but preempted in apocalyptic elaborations and calculations. The existential engagement of the prophets turned into a withdrawal into anonymity on the part of the apocalyptic authors, and waiting turned into foreknowledge.

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(5) The most extreme option for withdrawing from waiting was realized in a segment of Israelite wisdom literature, in which both the dimension of the promised future and the salvation-historical past were surrendered in view of the “vanity” of the abiding cycle of all things (Eccles. 1.2 et passim). Here, e. g., from observing the cycle of the sun, the judgment was declared: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun” (v. 9).

Only “the poor” who agreed with God’s judgments and held fast to God’s promises, only those who were aware of their unworthiness and the incomprehensibility of divine mercy, only they remained in a state of waiting and were then able to recognize Jesus as the one whom the Old Testament Scriptures had promised as the coming ruler. The radical expectation of God’s new and final act of redemption is the work of the Holy Spirit among human beings (Lk. 2.25). To this spiritual poverty Jesus declared salvation and the reign of heaven (Mt. 5.3). The “messianic predictions” alone, detached from the expectant inquiry, do not yet enable one to recognize Jesus as the Christ, for they are not divination, and they permit no calculation. The history of the people of Israel up to the encounter with Jesus shows that the Old Testament promises regarding the coming ruler of the end time were bound to be misunderstood whenever they were detached from such inquiry. Likewise, that history shows that the promise of the coming reign of God was bound to turn into an expectation of Israel’s political reign over the nations, once the promise was no longer believed in the posture of expectation on the part of those who experience themselves as totally called into question and who have been made into inquirers. Only those who encountered the human Jesus with a humble, inquiring expectation did not go astray when the promised one appeared as the lowly one, the powerless one, the one dominated by others, the one suffering injustice. Only the poor, those who are weary and heavy laden, recognized that the reign of God had dawned in Jesus.7

7 [Cf. Mt. 11.28–30. –Ed.]

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Editor’s Notes to Chapter 11 [i]

[ii]

[iii]

According to the so-called “Midianite-Kenite hypothesis,” first propounded by the German scholar F. W. Ghillany in 1862, the cult of “Yahweh” (YHWH) was introduced to Moses by his father-in-law Jethro, who was called a Kenite (descendent of Cain; see Gen. 18.1–27). While this controversial hypothesis has undergone revision since the nineteenth century, it holds that the origin of the name “Yahweh” may be traced to pre-Israelite, proto-Arabian tribes east and west of the Arabah and the Gulf of Aqaba. This hypothesis was accepted by several scholars of note, including Karl Budde, Martin Noth, Harold Rowley, and Schlink’s own Heidelberg colleague, Gerhard von Rad (see von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 1.9–14). For a recent positive assessment of the theory, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis Revisited and the Origins of Judah,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 33, no. 2 (2008): 131–153. The term h.oq is often translated as “statute” or “what is prescribed” (BDB, 349), mis.vah as “commandment” or “command” (BDB, 846), mišpat. as “judgment” or “decision” or “ordinance” (BDB, 1048), and edut as “testimony,” e. g., as “testimony of the Ten Words” (BDB, 730). Schlink here used the verb beauftragen, which can mean “commission” (as in “order” or “instruction”), as well as “authorize” or “entrust.” A related verb is auftragen, which can also be translated as “commission.” One noun form is Beauftragung and another is Auftrag. The former will normally be translated as “commissioning,” while the latter as “mission” or “commission,” depending on the context. Throughout his dogmatics Schink used the term Auftrag to refer to God’s mission, Christ’s mission, and the mission of the church. He also used the term Sendung (“sending”) in a figurative way to convey the same idea. Elsewhere Schlink designated this “commissioning” or “missioning” as a “special sending” (besondere Sendung). That later combination of words will normally be translated as “commissioning” in order to distinguish it from a more general “sending.”

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Introduction to Chapters XII and XIII: The Exaltation of Jesus as the Presupposition for the Doctrine of the Humiliation of the Son of God

1. The Honorific Titles of Jesus All churches confess the historical man Jesus of Nazareth to be the Christ, the anointed one of God, the promised bringer of salvation, and the judge who will realize God’s kingdom of justice and peace, not only for Israel but for all peoples. To be sure, in Isa. 61.1, the prophet is also designated the anointed one, and, in Zech. 4.14, the high priest is also so designated, but as an honorific title for Jesus the term Christ designates above all the honor of the promised king of the end times. Since the fullness of the Spirit had been promised to this king (Isa. 11.2), and because he was expected to be “the eternal priest according to the order of Melchizedek” (Ps. 110.4), it is nevertheless not possible to restrict the meaning of this designation to the functions of lordship. It is so central among all the statements about Jesus that Christ has not only become a title but a proper name, be it in the form of a double name, “Jesus Christ,” or in place of the name Jesus. So, although it also has as its subject matter many other honorific titles, the teaching about Jesus is called christology. That Jesus is proclaimed as the Christ is by no means self-evident, for, in contrast to Old Testament and contemporary expectations, Jesus did not announce the reign of God as an earthly restoration of the kingdom of David, nor did he proclaim himself as the Messiah, according to the oldest traditions. That Jesus was confessed as the Christ by early Christian congregations, and that this confession prevailed throughout the whole of Christendom, is probably due to his having been accused, condemned, and executed as a messiah. On the “titulus,” which, according to tradition, was attached to the cross, the name of Jesus and the messianic title the King of the Jews were connected to each other. With this superscription, Pontius Pilate gave the reason for the condemnation of Jesus and at the same time mocked the condemned and his Jewish accusers. The post-Easter community took up these mocking names as honorific titles and confessed Jesus as the one who in truth is King of the Jews. By proclaiming the crucified Jesus as Christ, it took up, ruptured, and surpassed the Old Testament expectation, for a suffering Messiah had not been expected. The church, however, confesses in all places and at all times the suffering Jesus as the promised anointed one, as the King in whom the Old Testament promise is fulfilled universally, as the “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. 19.16).

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The Exaltation of Jesus as the Presupposition for the Doctrine of the Humiliation of the Son of God

From the beginning, Jesus’ salvific significance has been attested to by numerous honorific titles which surround the name of Christ. These titles are not evenly distributed among the various New Testament writings. To be sure, individual titles, such as Son of God and Lord, are found almost everywhere as constants, but no New Testament writing contains all the honorific titles, just as Jesus is never attested to by only one such title. Vincent Taylor has identified fifty-five titles for Jesus, a number that is much larger if one takes into account the sometimes significant changes in meaning that some of them already went through before the origin of the New Testament Scriptures.1 The variety makes clear that the coming of Jesus has created such a new situation, and that the significance of Jesus for salvation has become so powerfully known among human beings, that it could not be defined by a single word but could only be attested to by numerous statements. Also, in the development of the early Christian confession, the faith did not content itself with just one honorific title. Thus, according to Mk. 8.29 [RSV], Peter’s confession reads, “You are the Christ,” but, according to Mt. 16.16 [RSV], it is: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Cf. also the formula of faith in which the intention of the Gospel of John is summarized: “…so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God” (Jn. 20.31). The setting of the honorific titles in the life of the church and their use in the manifold structures of faith statements are quite varied. If one considers the “names” of Jesus from this point of view, then they are by no means all to be understood as names in the proper sense, and even less so are all “honorific titles” [Hoheitstitel] to be understood as actual titles. Already early on, the church expressed the salvific significance of Jesus in all the structures of faith statements: confession, proclamation and invocation, doctrinal teaching, and hymn. But not every honorific title had been used to address Jesus, not even in confession. For the most part, such titles have their place in proclamation and teaching, and while they do not here have the structure of a title in the proper sense of a definite designation for Jesus’ stature, they often show only the significance of the varying interpretations of his salvific significance. These structural differences are dogmatically important. It is therefore necessary, within the general concept of the honorific title, to distinguish between names, honorific titles in the narrower sense, and christological titles of dignity in the wider sense, even if the boundaries between them are not always firm. In the course of church history, structural shifts arose, e. g., when the term Lamb of God was used in the liturgy to address Jesus and thereby took on almost the meaning of a name. No honorific title, however, has become the proper name of Jesus in the same way that the title of Christ has.

1 Vincent Taylor, The Names of Jesus (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1953).

The Honorific Titles of Jesus

In these introductory remarks on christology, we cannot broach all the honorific titles or discuss their origin, significance, and distribution in detail. We will restrict ourselves initially to the observation that they are almost all taken from the Old Testament, and we will inquire about the different areas of life in which they were situated: One very important root is the prophetic promise and the Jewish expectation of the future bringer of salvation and judge that was based on it: the Messiah, the Son of God, and the Son of David; as well as the apocalyptic expectation: the Son of Man. Important then is the widespread acceptance of Old Testament terms for the offices by which God led his people: e. g., the titles king, shepherd, lord, as well as prophet, servant of God; and terms from the institution of the cultus: high priest, sacrifice, lamb of God. At the time of Jesus, other titles were commonly used among the Jewish scribes, such as teacher, master, and the salutation lord. In addition, Jesus was also accorded such titles of dignity that could have been bestowed upon any devout Jew apart from special offices, such as, e. g., the righteous one, the holy one, beyond even those which were applied to the Jewish people as a whole, such as, e. g., seed of Abraham, son of God, servant of God, and also son of man. They had not only an individual meaning but also a collective one. The honorific titles arose mainly in the areas of personal relationships. Only occasionally were they also used as metaphors from the domain of non-human creatures, such as, e. g., cornerstone, morning-star, lion. This comprehensive use of the Old Testament Scriptures for titles of Jesus focuses on the issues of the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament, which will be systematically discussed later (chap. 13.A.4). We will only note here that all these Old Testament titles have undergone a more or less profound change of meaning by being applied to Jesus. Neither the Old Testament expectation of the king nor even the apocalyptic expectation of the Son of Man was originally connected to the notion of suffering or even to that of vicarious, representative penal suffering. With the advance of the message of Christ, from the region of Aramaic-speaking Judaism into the surrounding world, further honorific titles were added. Some, such as, e. g., Son of Man, disappeared, while others, such as Son of God, Lord, and Savior, came to the fore. In the context of the Septuagint, and in dealing with the expectations of the Redeemer and of notions of lordship in the oriental-Hellenistic and Roman world, these titles in turn acquired a new meaning. In these discussions and debates, other words that were rooted in the Old Testament, but which did not appear to have been used in the earliest Christian community to refer to Jesus, were given a christological meaning, such as, e. g., the image of God, Word of God, and the last Adam. Also, Jesus was proclaimed with honorific titles that were not given in the Old Testament, such as, e. g., head of the body (the church). With the change in meaning that took place with the older honorific titles, and with the emergence of new ones, the universality of Jesus’ salvific significance has been expressed

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more and more. This unfolding has continued further when paramount concepts from Greek philosophy were later used to serve christology.

Just as the honorific titles are different, so each of them also bears witness in its own way: (a) A unique relationship of Jesus to God, a unique and definitive sending and empowerment of Jesus through God, a complete correspondence between Jesus’ action and God’s mission—means that in Jesus’ speech and action God addressed human beings and dealt with them, yes, that in Jesus God encountered people. This unique being-from-God [Von-Gott-her] is also borne witness to where Jesus was described with words that were normally used also for other members of the Old Testament covenant people, as well as for the covenant people as a whole, and for humanity, for he is proclaimed as the one anointed one, as the one king, priest, and prophet who stands over all other kings, prophets, and priests, as the one Son of God and servant of God, as the one righteous one, as the new human being, the one who is different from everyone else. Being in the succession of kings, prophets, and priests, as well as of the generations of Israel, and thus of humanity, he is not only lifted up from them but faces them all as the one who is wholly other. Jesus’ being from God is unmistakably expressed by the honorific title kyrios, which in the Septuagint is the translation of the Old Testament name of God. (b) Since titles were used that were characteristic of the members of the people of Israel, as well as of the people as a whole and of humanity, they also bear witness that this one has entered into interpersonal relationships that are completely different from those belonging to God, and has completely become a member of the Old Testament covenant people and thus a member of the human race. So he is proclaimed not only as the one who faces all other human beings but as the one who, together with them, is subordinate to God. (c) Some honorific titles express more the uniqueness of his being from God, while others stress more his membership with human beings. But when viewed as a whole, both types are always expressed: dissimilarity and equality, difference and unity. In this togetherness the gift of salvation is attested to. This becomes most clear when the same titles are spoken of for the members of the Christian church: through him they are children of God, righteous ones, saints; through him and with him there are apostles, pastors, and prophets, and all together they are the royal and priestly people. Amid all the statements of faith, confession is of central significance. Even if the New Testament Scriptures sometimes emphasize confessing toward people (e. g., when being interrogated by opponents) and at other times emphasize the acclamation of Christ in the worship service, all statements of faith are still basically and actually concentrated in confession: prayer and adoration, proclamation and teaching. It is therefore no coincidence that in early Christian confessions Jesus

The History of Jesus as the Basis for His Honorific Titles

was confessed with those honorific titles with which he was both called and proclaimed—above all, as Christ, as the Son of God, and as the Lord. These confessions were the root of church dogma. If Jesus was first confessed with one or two of these names, they were soon linked in confessional formulas in the ancient church. In this way, the Western churches confess with the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,” and all churches confess with the words of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed: “We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”2 Throughout the centuries, the three names and honorific titles have remained at the center of all churches in the dynamic multiplicity of witnessing to Christ, which is advancing into ever-new domains of humanity.

2. The History of Jesus as the Basis for His Honorific Titles The honorific titles are grounded in the history [Geschichte] of Jesus: in his proclamation, his mighty deeds, his suffering and dying, as well as in his appearances after death and in the working of the exalted one through the Holy Spirit.[i] The traditions about the working of the earthly Jesus and the experiences of the living presence of the exalted one in the church belong inseparably together in this foundation. To be sure, some honorific titles have their beginning with various events in the history of Jesus and therefore bear witness to his salvific significance with different perspectives. So, e. g., the titles Lamb of God and high priest point in a special way to the salvific significance of Jesus’ death; the titles Lord and Savior point especially to his work in the present and at the end of history; and the titles only-begotten Son and Logos point to his eternal relationship with God, which preceded his earthly work. And yet these titles have not been limited to individual moments in history. For example, in the letter to the Hebrews the exalted Jesus is described as high priest, and in Revelation as the Lamb of God; conversely, the earthly Jesus was already called Savior and Lord. Again, the honorific titles only-begotten Son and Logos are less interested in pre-existence as such and are focused more on the sending of the eternal Son into the world, on the incarnation of the Logos. The title Word of God has also been handed down as a name for Jesus who is coming at the end of history (Rev. 19.13). Even if individual honorific titles attest to the salvific significance of certain events in his history, their witness is not restricted merely to these specific events. Each title—albeit from different starting points—presupposes the whole history of Jesus that has already taken place and is still to come. By not limiting

2 [For the Apostles’ Creed, see BSELK, 42–43 (BC, 21–22); and Denzinger, 19–26. For the Constantinopolitan Creed, see Denzinger, 150; Tanner, 1.24; BSELK, 50 (cf. BC, 22–23). Cf. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 3d ed. (New York: Longman, 1972), 296–434. –Ed.]

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the meaning of the titles to individual historical moments, faith bears witness that the history of the earthly Jesus is preserved and safe-guarded in the presence of the exalted one and that the exalted one does not cease to be the very one who—as the earthly Jesus—preached, healed, and gave his life for the world. The history of Jesus is thereby not only the history of the earthly Jesus up to his death on the cross; despite being taken out of the history of this world, he is also working further in the history of the world as the exalted one, and he will continue to work further in the world until its end. Within the stream of the oral transmission of Jesus’ words, actions, sufferings, and appearances, the whole of his history was summarized early on in formulas that emphasized what is utterly decisive about him. These formulas are older than the Gospels and the earliest New Testament letters. They are usually referred to as kerygmatic formulas, but they often appear within the proclamation more as doctrinal arguments, namely, as pre-determined, firmly established, fundamental sentences of tradition in which the concrete assurance and claim of the kerygma are grounded. They are the focus of the tradition and, in turn, they have had a formative influence on the arrangement and interpretation of the traditions in the Gospels. Given this focus, they have been used in preaching as well as in confession and in hymns about Christ. Paul thus reminded the Corinthian congregation of the formulaic wording of the message of salvation, which he himself received and which he passed on to them: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and was buried, and was also raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and he appeared to Cephas, and then to the twelve” (1 Cor. 15.3–5 [S]). By referring to Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, this tradition may also be behind the Pauline statements about our death and burial with Christ in baptism (Rom. 6.3–11). Another formula that Paul may also have incorporated from the tradition is this one: “He (Jesus, our Lord) was handed over by God for our trespasses and was raised for our justification” (Rom. 4.25 [S]). Jesus’ history is also often found in Paul’s statements about his death and his resurrection, or his being raised. This is true, e. g., of the possibly pre-Pauline formula: “[W]e believe that Jesus died and rose again” (1 Thess. 4.14), and of the numerous variations formulated by Paul himself (such as, e. g., Rom. 14.9 and 2 Cor. 5.15c). Also, in the speeches in the Book of Acts, the history of Jesus is often summarized by his death and his resurrection. Even if these formulas reveal influences from Lukan theology, they are probably based on older formulas. In contrast to the Pauline letters, here statements about the atoning significance of the death of Jesus (“for our sins,” 1. Cor. 15.3) are missing. Instead, the death and resurrection of Jesus are consistently set forth as the crime of the Jewish leaders and as God’s salvific act (Acts 2.23f.; 2.36; 3.13; 3.15; 5.30; 10.39f.; 13.28ff.). The emphasis in these formulas rests so much on the divine act of resurrection that it sometimes is mentioned first, while the death of Jesus is only mentioned in an appended relative clause (2.36; 3.13; 5.30). Nevertheless, two passages add that the atrocity of the Jewish leaders

The History of Jesus as the Basis for His Honorific Titles

against the innocent one happened “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (2.23) and to fulfill “everything that was written about him” (13.29). These passages do not express “the how” [“das Wie”] of the salvific significance of Jesus, but they do indeed bring to expression “the thatness” [“das Daß”] of the necessity of Jesus’ death for salvation. This corresponds to the “must” [“Muß”] by which the sequence of Jesus’ death and resurrection, as willed by God, is justified in the first Synoptic prophecy of the passion (Mk. 8.31 par.) and in the Lukan Easter accounts (Lk. 24.7, 24, and 46). In other New Testament letters, too, the history of Jesus is again and again given its focus through statements about his death and resurrection. An older formula of early Christian tradition, e. g., in 1 Pet. 3.18–22, may also have been used.

In their basic structure, with very few exceptions, all these formulas are consistent in that the sequence of their statements is shaped by the historical sequence of the death and resurrection of Jesus. With respect to their wording there are manifold differences. For example, the death of Jesus is described with different verbs, such as, e. g., “to hand over,” “to crucify,” “to hang on wood.” Occasionally, individual details will also be mentioned, such as his rejection by the Jews and his extradition to Pilate, as well as the burial of Jesus’ body, which is mentioned several times. On the other hand, Jesus’ resurrection is described also as his being raised, as an exaltation “to the right hand of God,” as being made “Christ and Lord,” and as a glorification. In addition to the repeated statement “on the third day,” reference to the witnesses who saw the appearances of the risen one is also added in several places (1 Cor. 15.5–8; Acts 3.15; 10.41; 13.30 et passim). Such differences are not unimportant for the formation of dogmatic concepts.

Within the witnesses to the death of Jesus, however, there are also expansions that look backward, e. g., statements about Jesus’ mighty acts and healings (Acts 2.22), about his beginning after the preaching of John, about the anointing of Jesus with the Holy Spirit, and about his saving works (10.37f.). It is striking that Jesus’ own proclamation is not mentioned in these summaries. In addition, the statements about Jesus’ death have also been expanded by returning to his birth or to the sending of the pre-existent one by God (e. g., Rom. 8.3)—yes, even by returning to the action of the pre-existing Christ as the mediator of creation (Col. 1.16f.). The statements about Jesus’ resurrection have been expanded beyond the act of his exaltation: they bear witness to his working “at the right hand of God” and his intercession for believers before God (e. g., Rom. 8.34), and they extend to the announcement of his future appearance as “God’s appointed judge of the living and the dead” (e. g., Acts 10.42 [L]), and to his glorification by all creaturely powers (Phil. 2.10f.).

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In connection with these expansions, it is to be understood that in early Christianity the history of Jesus could also be summarized in formulas in which both events, that of his birth and of his resurrection, were linked together in their contrasting sequence: “Born from the seed of David according to the flesh, established with power to be the Son of God according to the Holy Spirit by his resurrection from the dead” (so apparently the wording of the traditional formula that Paul has received and expanded in Rom. 1.3f. [S]). From the perspective of these expansions, one can also understand, e. g., concentrating the way of Jesus in the pre-temporal decree of God and the end-time revelation by God: “[Christ] was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages” (1 Pet. 1.20). The most comprehensive witness to the path of Christ from his pre-existent being “in the divine nature” to his future universal glorification can be found in the Christ-hymn (Phil. 2.6–11), which Paul quotes and supplements. He begins with the self-emptying of the pre-existent one in the incarnation, and praises the self-humiliation of the incarnate one and his obedience unto death on the cross. In the second part, Paul then praises Jesus’ exaltation by God, his being awarded the name to which all powers will bow, and the ultimate acceptance of the confession, “Jesus Christ (is) Lord.” In all these summary statements, two different, indeed opposite, events or sequences of events are mentioned, which are separated from one another in time, and which happened in an irreversible sequence: Jesus’ death and resurrection. Neither of these two events can be reduced to the other. The cross cannot be interpreted merely as a passage to the resurrection, nor can the resurrection be interpreted merely as the significance of the cross. Each of the two events has its irreducible special weight. Both the unfathomability of Jesus’ death and his resurrection that breaks all analogies must be taken seriously and completely as a special act of God. In the unity of both events, God has accomplished the turning point in humanity’s history. The honorific titles of Jesus have their basis in his history, and only from this history are they correctly interpreted. So it was obvious from the beginning to combine the confession about Jesus with statements about his history: “[I]f you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10.9). Such connections between the honorific titles and statements about Jesus’ history had to take on a higher priority the greater the temporal distance from his earthly history became and the greater the interpretation of his names and honorific titles was in danger of being detached from this history and becoming independent in gnostic speculations. Now formulas emerged in which the whole of his history was expressed not only in a piecemeal manner but in an orderly fashion, from Jesus’ death back to his birth, and from his resurrection up to his return at the end of history. Thus the Old Roman Creed [Romanum], on which the Apostles’ Creed was based, summarizes the history of

The Reversed Sequence of the History and the Recognition of Jesus Christ

Jesus in these words: “. . . who was born from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried, on the third day rose again from the dead, ascended to heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, whence he will come to judge the living and the dead.”3 The most important addition in the Apostles’ Creed comes then between the burial and the resurrection: “he descended into hell.” The much greater multiplicity of Eastern Church confessions has the same basic structure in their statements about the history of Jesus. In contrast to the Old Roman Creed and the Apostles’ Creed, however, the Nicene Creed began with the pre-existent one as the mediator of creation: “. . . through whom all things were made, those in heaven and those on earth.”4 Despite all their diversity, what is common to the ancient church’s confessions of faith is their fundamental structure, namely, that Jesus Christ was first confessed with honorific titles and then there were added to them statements about his history—or, as some said later, that statements about the person of Jesus came first and then statements about his work.

3. The Reversed Sequence of the History and the Recognition of Jesus Christ The sequence of statements in the confessions is different from the sequence in recognizing Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord. Thus, e. g., the Apostles’ Creed begins with the confession, “I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only-begotten Son, our Lord,” and only then proceeds to the statements about his history from his birth to his parousia. The same holds true for the NicenoConstantinopolitan Creed, but the sequence in recognizing him is reversed: because of his history, Jesus was recognized and confessed as the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord. His history also does not follow the sequence of events as they were attested to by the creed, which is the basis for recognizing Jesus’ salvific significance. Rather, the salvific significance of his birth and his historical way to the cross were only recognized with certainty because of the appearances of the risen one and his working through the Holy Spirit, and thus on the basis of the working of the exalted one. The resurrection followed the work and suffering of the earthly Jesus. But

3 Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 102. Cf. Denzinger, 30. Schlink always referred to the Old Roman Creed by its traditional Latin title Romanum. The Old Roman Creed, which is first mentioned in the West in the early third century, was used by the Western Church as its baptismal creed. As Schlink noted here, it served as the basis for the later development of the Apostles’ Creed, which reached its present form in the eighth century. –Ed.] 4 [Denzinger, 125; Tanner, 1.5; BSELK, 49 (cf. BC, 23). Cf. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 216. –Ed.]

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the appearances of the risen one and the working of the exalted one were and are the basis for recognizing the salvific significance of the earthly Jesus. Because of the appearances of the risen one, his troubled followers were able to recognize that God had declared his allegiance to Jesus. Through the resurrection of Jesus, God confirmed Jesus’ authority and the truth of his message. Now his death also appeared in a new light. It was understood not only as the failure of Jesus, as a monstrous crime by his opponents, and as an incomprehensible permitting by God, but as God’s salvific will and as a death for the sins of the world. It was now also finally certain that Jesus is the promised one from the old covenant, the Christ, the Son of God, the Lord, and the Son of Man who was expected in Jewish apocalyptic literature. With a variety of other honorific titles his salvific significance was now attested to, and he was recognized as the one who was already always with God. His birth was now understood as the incarnation of the Son of God, as the incarnation of the Logos, as the self-emptying of the one who was “in the nature of God” (Phil. 2.6 [NIV]). This unfolding recognition of Jesus did not happen suddenly as a result of being faced with the appearances of the risen one, but on the basis of these appearances it unfolded in the conviction that the exalted one is present in his church through the Holy Spirit. Still, that unfolding happened very quickly. Understanding the coming of Jesus as the mission of the pre-existent Son of God had already developed before Paul. The post-Easter recognition of Jesus as the Christ, God’s Son, and the Lord could not continue without affecting the tradition of Jesus’ words, actions, and suffering, for this tradition was not about historical reports in today’s sense of rendering the past, but about the tradition of the past as being valid in the present, namely, about the history of the earthly Jesus who, as the exalted one, is present in the church, and about the words of the earthly Jesus through which he, as the exalted one, speaks to his church and to the world. In his present working, the exalted one stands by the words that he spoke as the earthly Jesus, and he unfolds and concretizes them through the Holy Spirit in the historical situation in which the church finds itself at any given time and in which it has to accomplish its Lord’s mission in the world. In this way, he also makes his unique passion present in the word of the cross and in the Lord’s Supper. This presence of the one who died on the cross, which the church experiences, had an influence on the original traditions, and Jesus’ glory was now already beheld in the time of his humility. Such influences can be found in all the Gospels, but they have been operative to quite varying degrees. In the Synoptic Gospels there is a stark difference between the statements of the earthly Jesus about himself and the statements of the church about him. Although words of the earthly Jesus were handed down, collected, and written down in the post-Easter community that confessed Jesus as the Christ, as God’s Son, and as the Lord, the Synoptic Gospels do not teach that the earthly Jesus had already publicly proclaimed himself as the Christ, God’s Son,

Historical Investigation into the Earthly Jesus

and the Lord. Rather, according to the Synoptic tradition, the earthly Jesus is characterized by a peculiar way of moving from his person to the coming reign of God and to the Son of Man, about whom he spoke as if he was someone else. Thus, by being completely oriented toward the proclamation of the Christ, God’s Son who was revealed at Easter, these Gospels have, to a large extent, the character of a tradition that wanted to maintain the words and deeds of the earthly Jesus as he had spoken and accomplished them. In the Gospel of John, the history of the earthly Jesus is viewed with incomparably greater intensity in light of the appearances of the risen one and the presence of the exalted one. It is now understood as a history of the public self-revelation of the earthly Jesus as God’s Son. While in the Synoptic Gospels Jesus’ special Son-relationship with God was only implicitly contained in his proclamation of the heavenly Father, it is explicit in the Gospel of John. Here Jesus spoke expressly about the special relationship between God the Father and himself, the Son. In contrast to the Synoptic Gospels, here Jesus made himself the content of the proclamation in his numerous “I am…” statements. Here his glory is beheld not only on the basis of his resurrection but also on the basis of his incarnation (Jn. 1.14). The glory of the risen one is here—across the abyss of his death on the cross—already present in the words and deeds of the earthly Jesus. Because of this blending of his humility with his exaltation, one can understand that in the Gospel of John, in contrast to all the other Gospels, the tradition of the temptation and that of Gethsemane are missing, and, in contrast to the Gospel of Mark and that of Matthew, so is the death cry, “My God, my God , why have you forsaken me?” The crucifixion of Jesus is here already interpreted as his exaltation. To be sure, the structure of this Gospel maintains the sequence of death and resurrection. The unseemliness of Jesus’ earthly humility is also unmistakably brought to bear: “The Word became flesh” (Jn. 1.14). The quite drastic statements about the emotions of Jesus, such as, e. g., his “anger,” “agitation,” and “crying” (Jn. 11.33ff.), exclude the presupposition of a docetic understanding of the Son of God in the Gospel of John. But the contrast between the sequence of death and resurrection, between humiliation and exaltation, is indeed weakened under the impression of the presence of the exalted one and his gift of eternal life.

The process of blending the history of earthly Jesus with the presence of the risen one has continued in church history. By no means does this take place merely in docetic aberrations. It also occurs in the struggle against them. With the weakening of the contrast between his death on the cross and his resurrection, and also between his humiliation and exaltation, the confession of the incarnation took on the importance of providing a focus to all the statements about the way of Jesus.

4. Historical Investigation into the Earthly Jesus Although faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord is based on the message about his resurrection and on the experience of his living presence in the

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church, it remains tied to the words and deeds of the earthly Jesus and to his death on the cross. After all, is not the risen one the same one who previously worked and suffered as the earthly Jesus, and has not God confirmed the words and deeds and the suffering of the earthly Jesus by means of his resurrection from death, and revealed them as his salvific action? For this reason, there is an abiding interest of all churches in the history of the earthly Jesus. If the faith only referred to the exalted Christ, it would soon dissolve into an idea. Because of this interest of faith, the post-Easter community, from the beginning, passed on the words and deeds of Jesus and his death on the cross. These traditions were then later summarized in the Gospels. Even if there are only a few express references to Jesus’ words in the Pauline and other New Testament letters, the reference to the earthly Jesus in them is of central importance. This is especially true of the proclamation of his death and, in this connection, also of the tradition of the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples. But beyond that, the proclamation and demand of Jesus have been maintained to a much greater extent in the message about Christ and in the exhortations of the New Testament letters, and they have been developed further in new, specific applications beyond what the few quotations indicate at first glance. As the danger of dissolving the earthly Jesus into doceticgnostic speculations became ever greater with the increasing temporal distance from Jesus’ death, it was of crucial importance for the preservation of the church that it should not only focus on the relevant proclamation of Christ by the post-Easter generations but also refer to the concrete traditions of the words and deeds of Jesus and to his suffering, as the basis for their proclaiming, teaching, and confessing. In this way, the Gospels received the highest status within the worship lectionary. Consequently, in the history of church teaching, little attention was paid to the existing differences between the Gospels. The Gospels were largely harmonized when they were interpreted. Their statements and those of the New Testament letters and church dogma were understood as a unity. That changed with the rise of modern historical thinking. If humanism in the sixteenth century was primarily concerned with returning to the original scriptural texts and to their exact philological interpretation, one could not avoid becoming more and more conscious of the differences between the Gospels, the New Testament letters, and church dogma—and of the fact that historical-critical investigation into the history of Jesus, on which those texts were based, began to take place. So arose in the eighteenth century the numerous and varied representations of the life of Jesus, of the development of his personality and his messianic consciousness, of the attempts to reconstruct the authentic content of his proclamation and the historical core of the New Testament miracle reports, as well as the emergence of his conflict with the Jewish and Roman authorities, up to his trial, sentencing, and execution. At the same time, the motives of the researchers were very different. For some, it was sheer curiosity, for others animosity toward Paul, for others hostility

Historical Investigation into the Earthly Jesus

to church dogma, for still others joy in the disintegration of biblical authority. But within Christian faith itself there was an interest in historical investigation, for faith is based on the work and death of the earthly Jesus, whom God exalted as Lord. That is why the investigation into the earthly Jesus himself, behind the different New Testament traditions, is a legitimate concern of faith. It goes without saying that theological scholarship uses the best methods for this investigation, which are used at any given time in historical research, and further refines them for its special task. In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the issues and methods became increasingly differentiated. Historical investigation into the earthly Jesus appears relatively simple, as long as the disciples of Jesus, i. e., the eyewitnesses or immediate students of the same, are considered to be the authors of the Gospels, and one merely inquires about the oldest Gospel in order to get the most reliable information about the earthly Jesus. The issue became more difficult when people recognized that the primary material was not one of the Gospels themselves but various individual records, from which the first aggregate sketches and finally the overall representations of the Gospels emerged (Schleiermacher’s Diegesentheorie).[ii] When the view prevailed—based primarily on the work of Christian Hermann Weisse—that the Synoptic Gospels originated from the Gospel of Mark and from a sayings-source used by Matthew and Luke, as well as from unique material available only to Matthew or only to Luke, and that the Gospel of John had a special position that was historically later, the question arose about the oral traditions of Jesus’ words, actions, and sufferings, which then had to lead to the emergence of oral and written sources on which the Gospels were based.[iii] Through more precise historical investigation, the path of tradition between the earthly Jesus and the Gospels became longer and more complicated than had originally been thought, and there developed more and more differentiated issues and methods in order to illuminate this process historically and to obtain reliable statements about the earthly Jesus, which were not already shaped by the worship, theology, and life of the post-Easter community. The task thus arose to illuminate through historical investigation the course of the tradition that led from the history of the earthly Jesus to the Gospels, proceeding backwards from the Gospels to the original words and deeds of Jesus. Today, the following stages of inquiry are usually distinguished: (1) Such inquiry begins with the comparative interpretation of the Gospels, research into their christological peculiarity, the situation of their origin, the delineations carried out in them (e. g., against Judaistic and Gnostic currents), and the church order authorized by them (e. g., church discipline and ministerial offices). (2) There follows the investigation into the written sources that were used and edited in the composition of the Gospels, whereby again not only the linguistic differences are to be considered but also the differences in christology, in the understanding of the church, and in how the encounter with the surrounding world was undertaken.

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(3) From here it is necessary to search for the oral traditions that preceded the Gospels, namely, both the aggregate tradition that existed before fixed written forms (e. g., parable collections, combinations of miracle stories, passion narratives) as well as individual traditions that were partly transmitted orally even after the earliest written, fixed forms. Taking into account their linguistic peculiarity (e. g., their proximity to Aramaic, the Greek of the Septuagint, or to the Koine-Greek that was widely used at the time), it is necessary to research the medium within the Hellenistic or Jewish-Hellenistic or Jewish-Christian milieu by which these traditions were handed down, as well as the christological and ecclesiological peculiarity of these traditions. (4) Since these oral traditions were in existence for many years before they were fixed in writing, and since they reflect various christological and ecclesiological perspectives, it is necessary to inquire about the most important stages of this history of transmission [Überlieferungsgeschichte] and about the internal and external influences that were involved. Of particular importance is the investigation about the oldest tradition that was closest to the speaking, acting, and suffering of Jesus, whereby, e. g., the investigation into the translatability of the words back into Aramaic is important. (5) From the oldest tradition, conclusions can then be drawn about the historically original words and deeds of Jesus, as well as his fate. Today the concept of historical authenticity is no longer restricted to the original wording of Jesus’ words but is also used to designate an authentic content that results from the historical inquiries mentioned above. At this point it is not possible to expand on the full range of questions that historicalphilological research brings to the biblical writings (cf. chap. 21.A.3). Nor can the many methods developed for this research be mentioned and discussed critically, some of which, especially when they were first deployed, often appeared with a one-sided claim to dominance. We will restrict ourselves here to the most important results of such historical-critical investigation so far:

Looking back on the time from the Enlightenment to his own day, Albert Schweitzer offered this judgment at the end of his book, Von Reimarus zu Wrede: “Those who are fond of talking about negative theology do not have a hard time doing so in view of the results of the life-of-Jesus research. It is negative.”5 This saying has been 5 Albert Schweitzer, Von Reimarus zu Wrede: Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, 2d ed. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1913), 631. [ET: The Quest of the Historical Jesus, ed. John Bowden, trans. W. Montgomery et al. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2001), 478 (trans. modified). According to Schweitzer, the critical investigation of the life of Jesus runs from H. S. Reimarus (1694–1768) through the work of William Wrede (1859–1907) to Schweitzer’s own work. Through a combination of historical and literary methods, Reimarus argued that Jesus was thoroughly oriented to the eschatological expectations of his contemporaries and should be understood completely in these terms. Wrede, on the other hand, held that Jesus did not think or act eschatologically at all, and that we can actually know very little about the historical Jesus. Schweitzer’s own position, which is similar to Wrede’s anti-Liberal view but closer still to that of Reimarus, was built upon the thesis of Johannes

Historical Investigation into the Earthly Jesus

quoted often, but with a meaning that is different from what Schweitzer meant, for despite the considerable contradictions between the portraits of Jesus that he examined, he did not deny that Jesus could be understood historically. He himself even wrote a further account of the life of Jesus, which is taken up in the twenty-first chapter of his history of research on the life of Jesus.6 His result was negative only insofar as he “had erred about the historical Jesus, as modern theology had depicted him” (see his introduction to the first edition),7 and in turn recognized a Jesus who was so alien to this theology “that, with all its pedantic interpretations and acts of violence, it could not keep him in our time, but had to let him go.”8 But Schweitzer’s life of Jesus, especially his assumption that Jesus went to Jerusalem in order to bring about the kingdom of God, and that he thereby failed in this, was also unsustainable. Moreover, in the meantime, it has been recognized that a biography of Jesus that includes a portrayal of his inner development, especially of the emergence of his messianic consciousness, is impossible, since the traditions about Jesus that were processed by the Gospel writers were not interested in this but were aimed rather at the realization of the words, acts, and sufferings of Jesus in the present moment of the post-Easter community. Through the historical discovery that the individual traditions were only linked together retrospectively through summaries, outlines, and finally through the redacting of the evangelists, numerous questions that had stood at the center of previous research on the life of Jesus have proved to be unanswerable. The expectations of an historical reconstruction of the earthly Jesus had to become much more modest. But this meant an increasing precision in historical knowledge. On the one hand, the means by which the path of the original traditions led to the form we have in the Gospels became clearer. So, e. g., the post-Easter confession of Christ, the post-Easter interpretation of Jesus’ passion by means of Old Testament psalms, the apocalyptic supplement to Jesus’ proclamation, and the church’s discussions about the problem of the delay of the parousia, were all discovered in the Gospels, as were elements of early Christian church order.

Weiss (1863–1914), who held that the central element in Jesus’ ministry was his proclamation of the imminence of the end of the world and the coming kingdom of God. Schweitzer labeled his position “consistent eschatology.” –Ed.] 6 Albert Schweitzer, Das Abendmahl—Das Messianitäts und Leidengeheimnis: Ein Skizze des Lebens Jesu (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1901). [Only the second part of this treatise has been translated into English as The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus’ Messiahship and Passion, trans. Walter Lowrie (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985); cf. the twenty-first chapter of Von Reimarus zu Wrede, where Schweitzer set forth his own account of Jesus’ life. –Ed.] 7 Cf. Schweitzer, “Introduction,” Von Reimarus zu Wrede, 1st ed. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1906), 8. [Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, xxxiii (trans. modified). –Ed.] 8 Schweitzer, Von Reimarus zu Wrede, 2d ed., 632. [Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 478–79 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

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On the other hand, the peculiarity of Jesus was now recognized more clearly and with greater consensus in the research than was the case in the older life-ofJesus research. Without prejudging the presentation of christology itself, only the following points should be pointed out here in the introduction: the peculiarity of Jesus in comparison to the other Jewish movements of his time, the peculiarity of his proclamation of the reign of God and his statements about the Son of Man, his critical relationship to the law despite his acknowledgment of the Old Testament Scriptures. As a result of modern research, it should also be emphasized that today, in contrast to the time of Schweitzer, the historical facticity of Jesus’ life and death on the cross is no longer denied. All these findings are of great dogmatic significance. They have made it impossible, e. g., to identify the kingdom of God with the church or a Christian empire, or to understand the title “Son of Man” as merely a designation for the human nature of Jesus Christ, as has been done almost consistently in the history of christology until recently. At the same time, however, one cannot overlook that, despite such commonly held insights, there are differences that are all the more striking, since they have resulted in part from using the same historical methods and even the same methods of redaction criticism. In many cases, what is disputed is not only the age of the individual traditions, the extent of their transformation in their transmission through the communities, and the conclusions about the underlying facts, but also the particularity of the early Christian process of transmission in general: To what extent is one reckoning here from the outset with a connection to the very words of Jesus that corresponds to a praxis of Jewish tradition, or with a pneumatic productivity of the community that has transformed, supplemented, or omitted the original words of Jesus? This lack of clarity in turn leads to contradictory answers, even in those areas in which there is a broad consensus. These differences are not surprising when one considers the peculiarity of the tradition here. There are only a very few non-Christian reports that are known about Jesus, and, as important as they are, they are limited to the mere fact of his activity and his death. All the concrete evidence about his activity is found within the community’s tradition, which is contained in the canonical Gospels. The non-canonical Gospels, fragments, and words of the Lord contain hardly any reliable traditions. On the basis of these same texts, the historical reconstruction of the community’s means by which the original traditions came to the Evangelists, as well as the reconstruction of the words and deeds of Jesus, must be undertaken. This interrelationship presents an extraordinary challenge for historical research. If one looks back on the history of research about Jesus from the past two centuries, one may certainly expect further progress in the future, for one can reckon on a further differentiation of the issues and methods. Also, the possible discovery of further sources cannot be ruled out.

Historical Investigation into the Earthly Jesus

(a) So we should thus hope for greater precision in knowing about the situations in which the tradition was transmitted. If the communities that passed on the traditions are described as Palestinian-Jewish, Jewish-Hellenistic, Hellenistic, or Gnostic, such labels are often more of an ideal type than ones based on detailed historical analysis. Despite the language barrier, it is possible that Palestinian Judaism may have already been influenced more by Hellenistic factors than has generally been assumed. Furthermore, greater precision in the results can be expected if research into the peculiarity of the Galilean-Aramaic dialect that Jesus spoke is successful. (b) Alongside such research projects on the historical material, it is particularly important to clarify the criteria that are used to distinguish the original material from the later. Here the concept of criterion is not used in opposition to that of principle and of pre-understanding, but rather the critical standard denoted by it is consciously or unconsciously contained in the principles and pre-understandings of historical research. Unfortunately, there is still no comprehensive criteriology and aporia of historical research into Jesus.9 There is no doubt that further progress in the historical investigation of Jesus can also be expected from more precise clarification of the criteria. Within the framework of these basic features of a dogmatics, reference should only be made to the prior decisions in christology that are de facto contained in numerous criteria. There are four types of criteria: (1) The following two criteria are frequently used as special ones in historical research about Jesus: The authenticity of Jesus’ words should be sought in the domain of those traditions that cannot be derived from the Hellenistic community but are rooted in Old Testament and Jewish traditions. This criterion is used, e. g., by Joachim Jeremias in the reconstruction of the Last Supper.[iv] But there is a danger here that the new element that Jesus brought will be reduced from the outset and limited to what was understandable in the Judaism of that time. Dogmatically, this criterion portends the danger of an Ebionite and adoptionistic christology. Authenticity can be expected only where a tradition can be derived neither from Judaism nor from early Christianity. This criterion has been especially asserted by Rudolf Bultmann, Ernst Käsemann, and others.[v] But there is a danger here that Jesus’ connection to Old Testament tradition and the early church’s connection to Jesus will be underestimated from

9 Cf. the anthology, Rückfrage nach Jesus: zur Methodik und Bedeutung der Frage nach dem historischen Jesus [Investigation into Jesus: On the Method and Significance of the Inquiry into the Historical Jesus], 2d ed., ed. Karl Kertelgeher, Quaestiones Disputate 63 (Freiburg: Herder, 1974), especially the further contributions in it by Ferdinand Hahn, Fritzleo Lentzen-Deis, and Franz Mußner. [The contribution by Hahn (pp. 11–77) has been translated into English as “Methodological Reflections on the Historical Investigation of Jesus,” in Ferdinand Hahn, Historical Investigation and New Testament Faith: Two Essays, ed. Edgar Krentz, trans. Robert Maddox (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 35–105. –Ed.]

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the outset. Dogmatically speaking, this criterion presents the danger that the historical human nature of Jesus Christ and the identity between the earthly Jesus and the exalted Jesus Christ who is working in the church will no longer be seen. Both criteria have their relative legitimacy and must be used together, but they are no longer criteria in the strict sense, only perspectives to be used methodically. They are more descriptive of the problem than solutions to it, namely, that Jesus lived entirely in the history of Israel and that he faced Israel as the other. Also, the criterion of the coherence between language and content in what can be considered authentic within the traditions is in fact more of an important heuristic perspective than a criterion in the strict sense, for despite its basic legitimacy, this criterion is more difficult to use than it initially seems, and not only because of the Greek/Aramaic language barrier but also because of the great paradoxes and antitheses in Jesus’ proclamation. (2) As a criterion for historical research into Jesus, further principles that are contained in the historical-critical method and that are therefore obviously used in every historical investigation also have an impact. In his essay on “Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology,” which is still important today, Ernst Troeltsch once taught “analogy” as a principle of historical research, namely, “the similarity (in principle) of all historical events” and thus the correspondence between the history that is to be investigated and our present experiences, and, beyond that, the principle of a consistently historical interaction, namely, the explicability of individual historical events and processes by an encompassing “great web of correlated effects and changes.”10 According to Troeltsch, these two principles have not only a heuristic character, in the sense that they can be confirmed or refuted by experience, but they also have a quasi-dogmatic, irrefutable validity. In addition, they contain a prior decision for historical research into Jesus. If researchers use these principles as criteria, then, e. g., only those miracles of Jesus can be acknowledged as historical for which analogies can be demonstrable in our area of experience. The prophecies of Jesus that have been handed down must appear as retrospective statements from the community, and the traditions of the empty tomb and of the appearances of the risen one, from the outset, as historically untrustworthy. These principles, however, make one blind by and large to what is extraordinary in the events and fate of Jesus. (3) Beyond such general criteria, historical research also often uses special timeconditioned ideas as criteria. They are not always defined programmatically but rather are often unconsciously held as valid because they seem to be self-evident in a given intellectual epoch. That was true, e. g., of the rational ideas about God and morals in the Enlightenment period, of the transcendent understanding of history in German Idealism, of

10 See Ernst Troeltsch, “Historische und dogmatische Methode in der Theologie,” Gesammelte Schriften, 4 vols., ed. Hans Baron (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1912–25), 2.729–753, here 732 and 734. [ET: “Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology,” in Ernst Troeltsch, Religion in History, ed. James Luther Adams, trans. Ephraim Fischoff and Walter F. Bense (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1991), 11–32, here 14–15 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

The Apostolic Message as the Basis of Faith

the understanding of myth in Romanticism, of the understanding of reality in positivism, and of the evolutionistic conception of historical thinking.[vi] Viewing what is of existential significance has also been used as a criterion.[vii] In the history of historical research into Jesus, such basic positions have also had a considerable impact and have played the role of criteria in decisions concerning what is authentic in the traditions about Jesus. (4) Everyone pursues the question of the historical Jesus with a pre-understanding about Jesus. Because there continues to be an intense fascination with Jesus, also on the part of those who are far removed from the church, hardly anyone begins to inquire about him historically without having a pre-understanding about him, even if only in the form of certain expectations. At the same time, an aversion to christological dogma and the church is often tied to an affection for Jesus. The history of research into the life of Jesus shows how individual affections and aversions, often un-reflected upon, as well as feelings of longing and of hopelessness, have in fact acted as criteria in this research.

It is particularly important to be aware of the various criteria, and to take them into account in the historical investigation of the earthly Jesus. Such consideration leads to more precise research and, in that way, to more careful judgments than is widely the case regarding the historical impossibility or possibility, the probability or facticity, of the words and deeds of Jesus that have been handed down; for such consideration leads to a relativization of one’s own pre-understanding and to the knowledge of the variety of possible heuristic principles and presuppositions by means of which the gospel tradition is approached. The christological understanding contained in the criteria is opened up to the Jesus who is attested to in the tradition. Becoming aware of the criteria that are actually used is of fundamental ecumenical significance, for the differences between the churches are only partially explained in dogmatic statements. Rather, such differences consist largely of unconsidered and unquestioned assumptions of being different, which, precisely because people are not fully aware of them, have a tremendous effect. But even with further advances in historical research about the Gospels, the boundary between the words and deeds of the earthly Jesus, on the one hand, and the traditions of the church, on the other, can never be determined in all the details, not even if one refuses to limit one’s acknowledgment of authenticity to the wording of the sentences spoken by Jesus but, beyond that, also include the genuineness of the content.

5. The Apostolic Message as the Basis of Faith This outcome would be catastrophic for the certainty of faith if the latter were to be based on historical reconstructions of the earthly Jesus. But as basic as the interest of faith is in being directed toward the history of the earthly Jesus, there can never

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be any isolated interest in it, for the history of Jesus did not end with his death on the cross, but it continues. He is risen, he lives, he is the Lord who is present in the church, and who will come in glory. The earthly and the exalted Jesus cannot be separated from one another. Isolated interest in the earthly Jesus would be an anachronism that would put us back into the situation of the disciples before the appearances of the risen one—into a situation where faith alternated with a lack of understanding and finally was shattered in the face of the cross. But as the one who was taken from this world and was transferred into the new way of existing as the glorified one, Jesus does not cease working in the history of this world, not only in the sense of secondary effects, as other important personalities in history do, but as one and the same, who, as the earthly Jesus, once proclaimed, healed, and suffered among the people of Israel, and who, as the exalted one, now turns toward all people, addresses them through the gospel, advances his saving and directing action into ever-new domains of this world, and establishes his liberating rule. The question of the earthly Jesus cannot be separated from its connection to the Old Testament promise, nor from its connection to the message of his exaltation. The latter has largely happened in historical research about Jesus. However important for faith the difference between Jesus’ cross and resurrection is—the difference between his earthly work and his work as the exalted one, and thus the difference between the proclamation of the earthly Jesus and the church’s message about Christ—it is crucial for faith that the crucified one lives, and that, in the proclamation of the church, the earthly Jesus and the exalted Jesus are presently acting in one person. So the foundation for the certainty of faith is not one of the many historical reconstructions of the earthly Jesus, but rather the proclamation of Jesus Christ by those who were eyewitnesses of his earthly work, his suffering, and his appearances after his death. What is therefore fundamental is the apostolic message, in which the earthly Jesus and the exalted Jesus belong inseparably together, and the salvific significance of Jesus is proclaimed on the basis of his resurrection. This connection between the cross and the resurrection is so tight that Paul, despite his having been encountered only by the risen one, understood himself as an apostle to whom the word of the cross had been given. This engagement with the apostolic message about Christ is to be distinguished from the kerygma christology of Rudolf Bultmann, which excluded the words and deeds of the earthly Jesus from New Testament theology and grounded christology solely on the Christian message.11 The interest of early Christians, however, was not in the mere fact that Jesus lived and died on the cross, but in the totality of his proclamation, of his mighty deeds and conflicts, and in the course of his passion. While in his kerygma theology Bultmann did cite

11 Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 1.1f. [ET: 1.3ff. –Ed.]

The Apostolic Message as the Basis of Faith

Martin Kähler,12 Kähler’s interest was not limited to the “historicity” [“Geschichtlichkeit”] of the kerygma, i. e., to God’s working through the post-Easter message about Christ. Instead, he was also interested in the knowledge of the earthly Jesus. He did not expect the certainty of this knowledge to come from reconstructions of the earthly history of Jesus that are undertaken by means of historical methods and that thus remain hypothetical. Instead, he thought such certainty came from the preaching of the apostles that is grounded in the church. In this sense, he contrasted the historic [geschichtlichen] Jesus—who is proclaimed in the apostolic message as the earthly Jesus and the risen Jesus, and who demonstrates himself through the further proclamation of this message by the church to be the one who is acting presently in all times—from the historical [historischen] Jesus, i. e., Jesus, insofar as he is known by means of the methods of historical research. In justifying this distinction, Kähler anticipated the essential insights of later research on the history of traditions, in particular the knowledge of the Gospels as traditions that were determined by the task of proclamation. But he did not follow these important insights through more precise historical investigation behind the discrepancies among the Gospels and the christologies of the New Testament. These investigations, however, should not be neglected, and the more sophisticated methods that have developed in the meantime should not remain unused, precisely because the Christian faith has a fundamental interest in the most precise knowledge about the earthly Jesus.

If the investigation of the earthly Jesus takes place in recognizing the identity of the earthly and the risen Jesus, the same historical tasks present themselves here that were indicated above. And yet, by beginning with the identity of the crucified one and risen one, and thus by refusing to isolate the earthly Jesus, there arise perspectives that are not without consequences for the historical inquiry about Jesus: (a) If historical research about Jesus keeps an unwavering eye on the identity of the earthly and the exalted Jesus, then faith in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead takes on the importance of a presupposition for this research. This means that the difficulty of the historical investigation does not seem to be diminished but rather increased, for the message about the resurrection proclaims a new act of God that breaks through the unquestioned assumptions about this world. But this message has a very broad foundation in the New Testament Scriptures, far beyond the accounts of the appearances of the risen one. It is in this faith that the transmission of Jesus’ words, actions, and sufferings took place. Therefore, it

12 Martin Kähler, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1892). [2d ed., 1896; ET: The So-called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, ed. and trans. Carl E. Braaten (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964). –Ed.]

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seems obvious that the historical investigation of Jesus may proceed from this pre-understanding also today. The decision to start here leads to awareness and criticism of many other preunderstandings from which historical research into Jesus has begun. Through the certainty of God’s action in Jesus that creates anew, the viewpoint that is bound by the unquestioned assumptions of this world is freed for the new thing that has dawned already in the speaking and acting of the earthly Jesus. Faith in the resurrection is the pre-understanding that does not curtail historical research about Jesus, but rather opens it up for Jesus. (b) Although this pre-understanding reveals and eliminates some of the consequences of foreign, inadequate pre-understandings, the historical inquiry about the earthly Jesus—and with it also the question about the boundaries between his authentic words and the tradition of the post-Easter community—will continue to be answered in many different ways. But the topics in the historical research about Jesus are now changing in importance: (1) The proclamation of the early Christian community is now no longer primarily the obstacle that one must get past to inquire about the earthly Jesus. Rather, in this proclamation the earthly Jesus encounters us as the one who is present in the community. The differences among the early Christian traditions about Jesus are now no longer primarily an embarrassment that complicates the knowledge of Jesus. Rather, precisely in these differences the treasure of the salvation disclosed in Jesus, which transcends all human understanding, encounters us. Even in the contradictions among the Gospels, and in the discussions and debates between the apostles regarding the relationship to the law, we encounter the earthly Jesus’ continuing dynamic of caring commitment to human beings. (2) Such historical investigation and its results are thereby not without significance. But their importance is that of a commentary on the New Testament texts. As important and, in many respects, as illuminating as the investigations behind the four Gospels are regarding the history of the earthly Jesus, it is impossible to replace the Gospels with an historical reconstruction of the history of the earthly Jesus. Granted, there are also differences between the Gospels, and they too can be described as commentary on the history of Jesus, since their traditions are at the same time interpretations of this history, but they retain an abiding, decisive priority due to their temporal proximity to the earthly Jesus and his eyewitnesses. Although historical research inquires behind the Gospels about their temporal origins, its reconstructions in relation to the Gospels are of secondary importance. (3) One of the most important contributions that historical research about Jesus has made is to uncover the unfathomability of his self-sacrifice to God and humankind. The peculiar fact that the earthly Jesus, according to the oldest traditions, did not proclaim himself as the Christ, the Son of God, and the Son of Man has been largely overlooked in the history of christology. But Jesus’ renunciation of his

The History of Jesus and Christological Dogma

messianic self-proclamation is of the greatest importance for understanding his humiliation and the caring commitment of God to human beings that took place in it. Faith in Jesus’ resurrection recognizes that this renunciation has taken place in a single encompassing movement of self-emptying and self-surrender that began in the incarnation and was completed on the cross. With respect to ecumenical investigation, it should be noted that historicalcritical research is a novum in church history and is also by no means widespread today, but its use is particularly widespread in the Western churches. Even the remembrance of the church fathers and the Reformers, who did not know this method, does not allow its use to be made into a condition for the unity of faith. Its use can indeed, however, be an important aid in reaching unification because it shows more precisely than was the case earlier the great multiplicity of traditions about Jesus and of witnesses to Christ that are common to the churches in the New Testament Scriptures and that contain more possibilities for unity in diversity than have been realized in church history.

6. The History of Jesus and Christological Dogma The root of christological dogma are the early Christian confessions: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Lord. They were combined with formulas that summarized the history of Jesus and centered on Jesus’ death and resurrection. Consequently, the designations Christ, Son of God, and Lord not only signified the honorific titles by which the salvific significance of Jesus was proclaimed to the surrounding world, but they also signified the names by which he was called. The historical path from the early Christian confessions to christological dogma can only be hinted at in this introduction, whereby particular attention should be drawn to the changes in the structure of the statements that have taken place in connection with the progressive settling of their established content. The actual content of christological dogma will be dealt with later. The Nicene Creed is formulated in the traditional sequence of christological credal statements, both in its original text and in the different text that is found in the acts of the Council of Constantinople (AD 381), which was confirmed by the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) and which replaced the original Nicene Creed: first Jesus’ honorific titles and then his history. But in both creeds the statements about the person of Jesus Christ have expanded considerably, while the statements about his history contain relatively minor additions, including brief references to the salvific significance of the incarnation and crucifixion. The Nicene Creed emerged in the tough struggles against philosophical-cosmological teachings about the Logos, above all, the OrigenisticArian understanding of Jesus Christ as a creature, albeit as the first creature who is superior to all other creatures and who is distinguished by a pre-existent middle

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position between God and the rest of creation. If from its beginning, the creed contains an element of doxology, this is evident in the statements of both texts about the person of Jesus. They have a plerophoric-hymnic character:[viii] “. . . who is begotten of the Father, that is from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father, through whom all things came to be, both those in heaven and those in earth.”13 This doxological character of the Nicene Creed is also preserved in the shorter, later wording of the Constantinopolitan Creed.14 Corresponding to this is the fact that this creed has not only continued to be a dogmatic statement of doctrine, but it soon also became firmly established in the Eastern Church as a baptismal creed. (In the West the baptismal creed continues to be the Apostles’ Creed.) Gradually, the Constantinopolitan Creed has also been used in the eucharistic worship services in the East and in the West. By contrast, the structure of the Definition about the two natures of Christ, which was adopted at Chalcedon in 451, is different. A change had taken place. If the Nicene Creed was about the essential unity of Jesus Christ with God, now it was a question of whether he is at the same time one in being with God and one in being with us humans. The Chalcedonian Definition was not adopted as an independent, additional creed, but as an interpretation of the Constantinopolitan Creed. Then, too, it does not begin as a creed would, namely, with the words, “We believe….” Instead, it begins: “With one voice we all teach that….”15 But it is still so clearly tied to the Nicene Creed and the Constantinopolitan Creed that the statements about Jesus as “truly God and truly a human being” relate to the doxological structure of these creeds and must be interpreted by them.16 The period that followed was determined by the rejection of the Chalcedonian Definition by the Monophysites and the Nestorians and by the efforts of Byzantine emperors to bring these opponents back into the unity of the church, whether through formulas of unification or through violence. In the structure of its statements, the Exposition of the Faith, which was decreed by the sixth ecumenical council in Constantinople (AD 681), completely deviated from the structure of the Nicene Creed.[ix] Instead, it has the structure of an article of doctrine that is separated from the worship life of the church and that contains—with the exception of the historical figure of Jesus Christ encountered in the Gospels—abstract logical conclusions that have been drawn from the Chalcedonian “doctrine of the two natures.” While the history of christology did not stop here, the history of 13 [Cf. Denzinger, 125; Tanner, 1.5. –Ed.] 14 [Cf. Denzinger, 150; Tanner, 1.24; cf. BSELK, 49–50 (BC, 22–23). –Ed.] 15 [For the original text of the Chalcedonian Definition, see Denzinger, 301–302 (trans. modified); cf. Tanner 1.86. –Ed.] 16 [Tanner, 1.86 (trans. modified); cf. Denzinger 301. –Ed.]

The History of Jesus and Christological Dogma

christological dogma essentially ended with this council in AD 681. It is of great importance for the ecumenical situation that the Roman Church and the Orthodox Church, as well as the churches of the Reformation and the Roman Church, have not separated because of differences regarding christological dogma, and that they all have maintained the Chalcedonian Definition as dogma. If one church occasionally accused another of Nestorian or Monophysite tendencies, that was a matter of accent within the joint recognition of the Chalcedonian Definition. In the eighteenth century, a crisis arose regarding the authority of christological dogma, which continues to be an issue today. That crisis was triggered by the profound change in the way people viewed life and in the way they thought, a change that had begun in the Renaissance and which has had a tremendous impact since the time of the Enlightenment. With the emergence of the modern natural and historical sciences, the metaphysics that had been inherited from antiquity was perceived to be an obstacle that needed to be pushed aside. In the christological dogma of the ancient church, metaphysical terms were indeed used in the service of confessing Christ, and thereby their meanings underwent considerable change. But when metaphysics lost its fundamental meaning for modern thinking and when, e. g., the words substance, person, and nature were now used in a completely different sense, understanding the dogma of the ancient church was also impacted. For contrary to its original meaning, the ancient church’s concept of person was now interpreted in the modern sense of “personality” and “self-consciousness,” and the ancient church’s concept of nature was now understood in the sense of natural science. But in the Chalcedonian Definition, nature refers to the whole human being, including the human will, and thus to what people today call the human personality. Understanding the historical Jesus seems to have been made completely impossible by the new Chalcedonian interpretation of dogma. In addition, with the rise of modern science and technology there arose an optimism that displaced the Christian consciousness of guilt and the longing for redemption. It was precisely the soteriological concern, however, that was at the root of the doctrine of the two natures. In this changed situation, the dogma of the ancient church seemed to be hostile to the newly awakened interest in the historical Jesus. In the midst of this crisis, the churches have maintained their formal ties to the christological dogma of the ancient church. But in actuality, its authority was particularly shaken in Western Christendom, including the Roman Catholic Church. At times, theology has championed dogma. At other times, theology has endeavored to put forth interpretations that were intended to do justice to new issues and contexts, which were, however, far removed from the original statements of dogma. But at other times, theology has also openly rejected dogma. These discussions and debates have been carried out with great acuity, especially within German Protestant theology. Of particularly fundamental importance, given also that they have had an

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impact beyond German borders, are the interpretations by Schleiermacher, Hegel, and the kenotic theologians. Schleiermacher interpreted the divine nature of Jesus Christ as Jesus’ own consciousness of God that was unique to him.[x] Starting in Jesus’ childhood, this had been a germinating seed in Jesus and then, in the course of his growing up, it unfolded to full awareness and strength. In the power of this consciousness, God is in him. Jesus’ person is thus the human person in whom the power of God dwells. The incarnation of the eternal Son of God in the birth of Jesus disappears in this interpretation, and with it goes the vicarious assumption of our guilt by Jesus, the Son of God, and his vicarious assumption of the judgment into which we have fallen. Everything is focused on the unique strength of his consciousness of God, by which Jesus is the redeeming archetype of humankind. This basic conception has been furthered in various other ways. So, e. g., instead of the “feeling of absolute dependence” (Schleiermacher), the perfect “obedience to his vocation” (A. Ritschl) has been claimed to be Jesus’ uniqueness.17 The decisive factor for both is beginning with the man Jesus, whereby then, in the Ritschlian school, instead of simply reinterpreting the doctrine of the two natures, it is rejected (cf., e. g., Adolf von Harnack).[xi] Schleiermacher’s anthropological starting point is also at work in both existentialist and transcendental christology.[xii] In contrast to Schleiermacher, Hegel (in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion) taught the incarnation of God and “the unity of divine and human nature” in Christ.18 Christ is the “God-man,” “God in human form,” “the God who also had a human nature.”19 In Christ “God appeared as a human being.”20 In Christ’s death “God died,” and this very death is “the death of death.”21 Hegel sharply criticized the theologians who “did everything [they could] to dissolve the determinate character of religion by (1) thrusting dogmas into the background or declaring them to be unimportant—or by (2) considering the same… to be mere phenomena from a history that is long gone.”22 But while christological dogma is based on the historical revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the idea of the unity of the divine and human nature already arises in Hegel’s speculative thinking about the self-distinction

17 [Cf. Schleiermacher, CG, §§ 62–64 (ET: 2.381–395); Cf. Albrecht Ritschl, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, 6th ed. (Bonn: A. Marcus and Weber, 1903), §§50–54 (ET of the 4th ed.: “Instruction in the Christian Religion,” in The Theology of Albrecht Ritschl together with Instruction in the Christian Religion, ed. Albert Temple Swing, trans. Alice Mead Swing [New York: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1901], 232–239); and especially Albrecht Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung: Der biblische Stoff der Lehre, 3 vols. (Bonn: A. Marcus, 1874), 3.339ff. (ET of the 3d ed.: The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation: The Positive Development of Doctrine, trans. H. R. Mackintosch and A. B. Macaulay [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1902], 446ff.). –Ed.] 18 [See Hegel, V, 3.44 et passim (LPR, 3.109 et passim). –Ed.] 19 [Hegel, V, 3.45–47, 58, 143–48, 238–40 (LPR, 3.109–110, 123, 212–216, 313–316). –Ed.] 20 [Hegel, V, 3.146 (LPR, 3.214–215). –Ed.] 21 [Hegel, V, 3.60, 62, 150, 249 (LPR, 3.125, 127, 219, 326). –Ed.] 22 [Hegel, V, 1.66 (footnote 13) (LPR, 1.155 [trans. modified]). –Ed.]

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between the absolute spirit and finite spirit and of their unity, which is grounded in their origin and which is attained by becoming aware of their reconciliation. Here Jesus Christ is not the reason for reconciliation. Rather, the meaning of reconciliation consists in the fact that in Jesus the idea of the unity of the divine and human nature “obtains the form of immediate sensible intuition and external existence for humankind, so that it appears as something that has been seen in the world, something that has been experienced.”23 The kenotic theologians of the nineteenth century (Sartorius, Gess, Thomasius, Frank, and others) tried to combine their acknowledgment of ancient Christian dogma with the understanding of the human person Jesus and of his historical development, by taking the statement “he emptied himself ” (Phil. 2.7) as their starting point.[xiii] From here they sought to exclude the danger of the idea of a twofold consciousness, will, and action in Jesus Christ, which was implied by the doctrine of the two natures. The teachings of the kenotic theologians varied in their details. According to their most extreme statements, in the incarnation, the Son of God, through his self-determination, first ceased to be the Son of God, and then, in the course of Jesus’ history, he again became the Son of God. In general, however, while the identity of the eternal and incarnate Son of God was maintained, these theologians taught that some of the divine attributes (such as omnipotence, omnipresence, eternity, and immutability) were renounced during the incarnation, which were then bestowed upon Jesus only when he was exalted. This means, of course, that the earthly Jesus was not acknowledged as having the same nature in the full sense as God the Father. The kenotic theory failed because it was unable to make clear how the renunciation of certain divine attributes would not imply a change to the essential unity of the Trinity.

Contrary to these three important conceptions from the nineteenth century, which, despite their reliance on christological dogma, deviate considerably from it, original statements from the Chalcedonian Definition have been brought to the fore again in the field of Protestant theology—in a new and by no means merely repristinating manner—by the early Emil Brunner and then especially by Karl Barth and Heinrich Vogel.[xiv] And in the Roman Catholic Church, especially through Karl Rahner, a new way of interpreting dogma has begun that takes modern issues seriously.[xv] Connected to this modern development are two issues that are working their way through many churches today and which are therefore of particular ecumenical significance: (a) The issue of a christology “from above” or “from below” Should christology begin with the incarnation of the pre-existent Son of God or with the work of the earthly Jesus as it comes to light through historical research? Widespread today is a preference for starting “from below.” Some fear that by starting with the pre-existence, Jesus will not be revealed as the man who struggled

23 [Hegel, V, 3.237 (LPR, 3.313 [trans. modified]). –Ed.]

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and suffered as one of us. There is the expectation that by starting with the earthly Jesus, contemporary humans will come closer to him than by starting with the divine mission of the eternal Son of God in the world. Others fear that by starting with the earthly Jesus, the acknowledgment of him as the eternal Son of God who has become human dissolves into a mere post-Easter title of honor that has no constitutive importance for understanding the earthly Jesus. It is doubtful, however, whether this is a real alternative, since the common point of reference for the knowledge from “above” and from “below” is the resurrection of Jesus. On the basis of the appearances of the risen one, the “height” to which God placed the crucified one “at his right hand,” where he has always been with God, has been recognized. It is only when this height is recognized, however, that one can see the depth to which the Son of God went in the incarnation and in which Jesus was obedient to God unto death on the cross. The “below” of Jesus is not yet truly recognized through historical investigation of his words, acts, and suffering. Precisely by acknowledging that the Son of God who became human did not proclaim himself to be the Son of God but rather called upon God like one of us, and was obedient to God—precisely by acknowledging that the Son of God suffered our God-forsakenness—allows us to see the “below” in which the earthly Jesus lived and died. Along with the modern starting point of the “historical Jesus,” some have often referred to Luther’s call for a “theology from below.” But by calling for theological thinking to begin with the infant in the manger, Luther was presupposing the Son of God who humbled himself in the incarnation. Luther was not opposed to starting with the incarnation. What he opposed were metaphysical speculations about God apart from the God who became human in Jesus. No christology can go behind the knowledge of Jesus as the eternal Son of God who is disclosed through his resurrection. The height enters the depth, and only then is the unfathomableness of this depth revealed. Whether christology begins with the incarnation or with Jesus’ earthly work, in each case it starts “from above” and “from below” at the same time. (b) The issue of an ontological or an historical christology This issue is closely related to the previous one. Here the question is whether christology should primarily take place through statements about Jesus’ eternal being and essence, especially regarding his essential unity with God, as well as his essential unity with us humans, or should it take place through statements about his history? Today there is a preference for beginning with historical statements in contrast to “metaphysical” ones. Some fear that if one presupposes his essential unity with God, the historical Jesus can no longer be recognized as one of us. On the other hand, there is the concern that if one focuses so one-sidedly on Jesus’ historical work, one will no longer be able to state with the necessary clarity that God came to us in Jesus.

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One has to ask, however, whether such an alternative, between ontology and history, is given too much emphasis and is ultimately false. It should be borne in mind that neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament Scriptures merely bear witness to the acts of God. They also bear witness to God himself, who accomplished those acts. On the basis of his acts, he is praised as the one who not only acted graciously and mercifully but is gracious and merciful—who not only loves but is love.[xvi] The acknowledgment of God’s steadfastness is expressed in statements about his being and essence. This also applies to the adoration of the acts and fate of Jesus Christ. If Jesus is confessed as the one who acted and suffered by God’s authority, indeed, in whom God came to us, then statements about his being and essence are also present in the adoration of Jesus Christ. He is brought into the adoration of God: Before all time he was like God, he is light like God, he is called “my Lord and my God” (Jn. 20.28). Statements about his being and essence soon were evident in early Christian doxologies and hymns. Here was the ancient church’s starting point for making use of Greek metaphysical terms and concepts to interpret the confession of Christ. One may thus say that historical and ontological statements belong together in christology, such as the proclamation of the mighty deeds of God and the adoration of God. Indeed, ontological statements are based on historical revelation. A conflict between historical and ontological statements must, of course, arise when the metaphysical terms and concepts are no longer ruptured and transformed by the witness to Christ but have a negative influence and obscure it, or when metaphysical terms and concepts that once served dogma, and had received a new meaning in dogma, underwent such a change of meaning over time that the dogma is no longer understood. This is especially true if one ignores the structural root of ontological statements, which is in the form of adoration, and the sequence in which Christ’s acts of salvation underlie the adoration of Christ. To be sure, the statements about God’s eternal being are based on God’s historical acts of salvation, and they thus correspond to his historical action, but the historical act of salvation cannot be convincingly derived from God’s eternal being, for it is an act of divine freedom. Doxological statements are ultimate statements.

7. The Organization of Christology The creed begins with the confession of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Lord, and only then does it proceed to the history of Jesus, from his birth to his return. But the basis for the knowledge of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord is his history, particularly his resurrection from the dead. The same problem arises for the structure of christology as for the doctrine of God. The creed first confesses God the Father, then his act of creation, and then his work of redemption, and

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then the new creation through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. But the basis for knowing God as Father is his mighty deeds, especially Jesus’ proclamation of “the Father in heaven.” What has been called dogmatics in the modern period has its origins in the catechesis of the early church, which led to the creed being transmitted to the baptized (traditio symboli) and to their baptism. Dogmatics is thus appointed to serve confession; it has to interpret it and, at the same time, carefully consider new issues and problems. Its wording is therefore more variable than that of confession. Even though, in the course of church history, the sequence of doctrinal articles about the person and work of Christ, as well as about his two states, has been widely established to provide the structure for christology, no church has dogmatized a particular structure for christology. Considering that in Christendom today, the ancient church’s doctrine of the two natures—even where it is maintained as a dogmatic formula—is no longer understood by many, and is even rejected by some, it makes sense not to use this formula in the structure of christology, but to provide an understanding of these confessional statements from the ancient church. This is to be done here by starting with the history of Jesus and then, on the basis of this history, developing the doctrine of the person of Jesus Christ. To be sure, teaching about Jesus’ history already presupposes that he is the eternal Son of God, but what this means and how this is stated in the dogma of the ancient church is only to be explained on the basis of his history. Indeed, this is also the case in this dogmatics regarding how, from the first chapter, God is presupposed to be triune, and yet the mystery of the Trinity is only unfolded on the basis of the doctrine of his acts. The following changes arise from this starting point, in contrast to what has become the common arrangement: (a) Christology begins with the doctrine of the two states of Jesus Christ: humiliation and exaltation. Beyond the conceptuality of the New Testament, the concept of humiliation summarizes his entire way from his incarnation to his death on the cross. This chapter also deals with the speaking and actions of the earthly Jesus between the events of his birth and death, which are only mentioned in the ancient church’s creed. The concept of exaltation also extends beyond the New Testament’s conceptuality in that it summarizes not only the resurrection and his being established “at the right hand of God” but also the fulfillment of his reign and his ultimate return as Redeemer and Judge. Just as the statements about the eschatological purpose of creation, and about the judgment into which creation has fallen, were not left in this dogmatics to a special concluding chapter on eschatology but were dealt with in the doctrine of creation itself, so also the expectation of Christ’s return should already be expressed within christology itself. After all, each of God’s mighty deeds is aimed toward the future consummation. One difficulty in the sequence of these two chapters on the humiliation and the exaltation is that both the doctrine of the incarnation of the Son of God and that of

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the salvific significance of his death presuppose Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, for it is the basis for knowing Jesus’ death on the cross as a death for the world and as a victory over the world—and for knowing his birth as the incarnation of the eternal Son of God. If the sequence in these two chapters about the humiliation of the Son of God and the exaltation of Jesus Christ is determined by historical factors and not by noetic consequences, it can be pointed out that the significance of Jesus’ resurrection for the knowledge of his humiliation was already mentioned in this introduction. Moreover, all readers are free to begin their reading with the doctrine of the resurrection, and then allow the doctrinal articles about the incarnation and the work and suffering of the incarnate one to come next. (b) The salvific significance of the history of Jesus Christ is stated in the Constantinopolitan Creed in connection with the incarnation (“for us humans and for our salvation”) and the crucifixion (“for us”), while the Apostles’ Creed is limited only to the enumeration of the bare facts of the way of Jesus Christ. In what follows, his salvific significance will be raised within each section of the chapters about his humiliation and exaltation, for at no point in the history of Jesus is the issue a matter of mere facts, but it is always about his work on behalf of God for human beings and about his work on behalf of human beings in relation to God. The riches of the salvific significance of Jesus Christ are greater, and their connection to the various stages of his way more nuanced, than what can be set forth through the doctrine of the threefold office of Jesus Christ, which has spread to all churches since the sixteenth century. That doctrine can only allude to those riches. For this reason, after the chapters on his humiliation and exaltation, the doctrine of the threefold office of Jesus Christ should be honored as a dogmatic formula that both protects the doctrine of the salvific significance of Jesus Christ from being truncated and guides it to its unfolding. (c) The doctrine of the person of Jesus Christ should then be unfolded on the basis of his history and his salvific significance. To be sure, it is assumed from the beginning that he is the Son of God, but what this means arises only from his humiliation and exaltation. The same is also true of the other names and honorific titles. Although they were already mentioned in the introduction in a preliminary way, they have basically remained encrypted until now. What they say about Jesus’ behavior toward God and human beings should be unfolded in two steps: First, his behavior should be unfolded in connection to the doctrine of the resurrection, for here God himself brought an end to pre-Easter questions about who Jesus was by acknowledging him as his own. Jesus is now recognized as the one whom God established as the Christ, the Son, and the Lord through the resurrection—but not only that, for, on the basis of the resurrection, one now recognizes that the earthly Jesus was already the Christ and the Son of God, indeed, that already before his earthly birth, yes, even before the creation of the world, he was with God as the eternal Son.

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Second, the unfolding of the confession of Christ should take place in the final chapter on the doctrine of redemption, that is, after the chapters on humiliation, exaltation, and the threefold office, and after the doctrine of the gospel and the sacraments. In other words, on the basis of the entire work of Jesus Christ in the world, the unfolding of the confession of Christ should be understood and followed as it was done in the dogmatic decisions of the ancient church. This unfolding takes place at the end because access to it is given in thanksgiving for God’s act of redemption and in adoration of the Redeemer sent by him. It will thereby become clear that the true and decisive turning point in the history of confessing Christ was not between early Christian confessions and those of the ancient church but between wavering pre-Easter confessions that ultimately broke apart, on the one hand, and post-Easter confessions, on the other. Editor’s Notes to the Introduction to Chapters 12 and 13 [i]

The German word Geschichte, which Schlink used here and throughout his dogmatics to refer to the significant events in Jesus’ life, means both history (as in “interpreted history” and “significant history”) and story (as in “historical narrative”). The term has both an “historical” and a “narrative” quality to it. Thus the phrase “die Geschichte Jesu” can mean both “the history of Jesus” and “the story of Jesus.” Normally, the word Geschichte will be rendered as “history” unless the context indicates “story” to be more fitting. The adjectival form, geschichtlich, is a little trickier to render into English, since it needs to be distinguished from a related adjective, historisch. The German word “Historie” refers to “mere history,” in contrast to “Geschichte,” which refers to “significant history.” Following an important distinction that Martin Kähler (1835–1912) helped to develop (and which Schlink followed here), “der geschichtliche Jesus” refers to “the historic Jesus,” that is, to Jesus in his existential significance for Christian faith. “Der historische Jesus” refers to “the historical Jesus,” that is, to Jesus insofar as he can be made into an object of historical-critical research. By translating “historisch” as “historical” and “geschichtlich” as “historic,” I am following the practice of Reginald H. Fuller in Kerygma und Myth, ed. Hans-Werner Bartsch, trans. Reginald H. Fuller (London: SPCK, 1954), xi–xii. See also Carl Braaten’s “Introduction” to his translation of Kähler’s book, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 20–22. (For full bibliographic details, see footnote 12 in this chapter.)

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[ii]

[iii]

[iv]

[v]

According to Schleiermacher’s Diegesentheorie, the primary material about the earthly Jesus is not in one of the canonical Gospels, but in unconnected notes. From these disconnected records, collections of narrative passages formed, which were later shaped into narrative descriptions of Jesus’ life, as in the Synoptic Gospels. Schleiermacher formed the name of his theory from the Greek word διήγησις (“an orderly account”; “narrative”) which is found in Luke 1.1 (BDAG, 24). Cf. Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 84. (For the full bibliographic details of this classic work, see footnote 5 in this chap.) Christian Hermann Weisse (1801–1866), a professor of religious philosophy, argued that the Gospel of Mark was the oldest of the Gospels, that Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of their sources, and that Matthew and Luke also used a source of Jesus’ sayings that are not found in Mark. Weisse was thus the first to propose this two-source theory about the origins of the Synoptic Gospels. See Werner Georg Kümmel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of its Problems, trans. S. MacLean and Howard Clark Kee (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), 149–151. Joachim Jeremias (1900–1979), Die Abendmahlsworte Jesu, 3d ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966; ET: The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, trans. Norman Perrin [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977]). Rudolf Bultmann used form criticism to distinguish Synoptic material that can be traced back to the historical Jesus from material that is either earlier (late Judaism) or later (primitive Christianity) than Jesus. See, for example, Bultmann’s judgments regarding the authenticity of the various “I-Sayings” attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels: Die Geschichte der Synoptischen Tradition, 5th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), 161ff.; ET: History of the Synoptic Tradition, trans. John Marsh (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 150ff. Cf. also Bultmann’s little book, Jesus (Berlin: Deutsche Bibliothek, 1926); ET: Jesus and the Word, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith and Erminie Huntress Lantero (New York: Scribner’s, 1934), especially 12–14. In a famous essay that was delivered to “the old Marburgers” (i. e., former students of Bultmann), Ernst Käsemann (1906–1998) suggested basic criteria for discerning the authentic words of Jesus from pre-Jesus Judaism and post-Easter Christianity: “Das Problem des historischen Jesus,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 51, 2 (1954): 125–153. ET: “The Problem of the Historical Jesus,” in Ernst Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, ed. and trans. W. J. Montague (London: SCM, 1964), 15–47, esp. 36ff. For amplification of such criteria, see Norman Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 15–53. Schlink might have been alluding to Perrin’s book here since it had been translated into German as Was Lehrt Jesu Wirklich? [What did Jesus Really Teach?] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974). Perrin noted both the influence of Bultmann and Käsemann upon his own work, as well as the important essay by Joachim Jeremias, “Kennzeichen der ipsissima vox Jesu” [Signs of the Authentic Voice of Jesus] Synoptische Studien (Munich: Karl Zink, 1953), 86–93. See also Jeremias’ book that was translated by Perrin and is cited in editor’s note 4 above.

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[vi]

[vii] [viii]

[ix] [x] [xi]

For the application of “rationalist” criteria in the quest for the historical Jesus, see Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 14–64. These chapters include analysis of such figures as Reimarus, Heinrich E. G. Paulus (1761–1851), and Kant, who each attempted to describe the moral religion of Jesus within the limits of human reason alone. Schweitzer could have included reference to Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), who also sought to discern what is acceptable to reason and human morals in the canonical reports about Jesus. For Hegel’s and Schelling’s understandings of history, see Becker, The Self-Giving God and Salvation History, 89–119. The influence of Hegel’s and Schelling’s Idealism was particularly influential on the New Testament work of F. C. Baur (1792–1860) and the Tübingen School. The so-called “Mythic School” (“mythische Schule”) in the late period of German Romantism (ca. 1820s–1860s) included such figures as Georg F. Creuzer (1771–1858), Baur, and David F. Strauss (1808–1874). While Creuzer studied symbols and myths from ancient cultures, as did Baur, the latter and Strauss also applied the concept of “myth” to the biblical writings. Strauss, who had been a student of Baur’s, had been influenced by the earlier work of G. L. Bauer (1755–1806), who likewise sought to examine biblical myths in light of their factual basis. Cf. the central chapters in Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 65–109. See also Matthew Becker, “Schweitzer’s Quests for Jesus and Paul,” Concordia Journal 28 (October 2002): 409–430. Positivists, such as Auguste Comte (1798–1857), stressed that reality is only that which can be empirically verifiable. An example of a movement that included scholars who adopted one form or another of an evolutionary conception of history is the History-of-Religions school in biblical studies. For this scholarly movement, see Kümmel, The New Testament, 206–308. Cf. Bultmann’s existential approach to understanding the message of the New Testament. “Plerophoric” here refers to a rhetorical style that emphasizes the use of synonyms, cognates, and genitive attributes. Scholars have noted a connection between this plerophoric style and the genre of prayer. Cf. Michael Theobald, “Der Epheserbrief,” in Einleitung in das Neue Testament, ed. Martin Ebner and Stefan Schreiber (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008), 415. Schlink was thus noting how these two texts of the Nicene Creed (the original text from 325 and text of the NicenoConstantinopolitan Creed from 381) have a prayerlike, hymnic character that is doxological. See Tanner, 1.124–130. See Schleiermacher, CG, 2.26, 43ff. (2.556, 574ff.). Cf. Adolf von Harnack, What Is Christianity?, trans. Thomas Bailey Saunders (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1978), 236ff.

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[xiii]

[xiv]

[xv]

[xvi]

The principal kenotic theologians in Germany were Ernst Sartorius (1797–1859), Wolfgang F. Gess (1819–91), Gottfried Thomasius, Johannes von Hofmann, Johannes H. A. Ebrard (1818–88), and Franz von Frank. Thomasius became a professor at Erlangen University in 1842 and spent the rest of his teaching career there. He and Hofmann formed the core of the theological faculty during its zenith. Ebrard joined that faculty in 1847, and Frank a decade later. A similar kind of kenotic christology was also articulated outside of German-Lutheran circles, especially in the work of Charles Gore (1853–1932), Peter Taylor Forsyth (1848–1921), and several nineteenth-century Russian theologians. For Thomasius’ kenotic christology, see Claude Welch, God and Incarnation in Mid-Nineteenth Century German Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965). For Hofmann’s distinctive approach to kenosis, which differs from Thomasius’ view, see Becker, The Self-Giving God and Salvation History, 173–203. Cf. Emil Brunner, Der Mittler (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1927); ET of the 3d ed.: The Mediator, trans. Olive Wyon (London: Lutterworth, 1934), esp. 234–48, 343–354. For Barth, see esp. CD, I/2.122–202; IV/1.3–128; IV/2.3–377; and IV/3.1.3–274. For Heinrich Vogel (1902–89), see esp. Christ und das Schone [Christ and the Beautiful] (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1947) and Nicaenische Glaubensbekenntnis: eine Doxologie [The Nicene Confession of Faith: A Doxology] (Berlin: Lettner, 1963). Cf. Karl Rahner, “Chalkedon—Ende oder Anfang,” in Das Konzil von Chalkedon, 3 vols., ed. Aloys Grillmeier and Heinrich Bacht (Würzburg: Echter, 1954), 3.3–49; ET: “Current Problems in Christology,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 1, trans. Cornelius Ernst (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961), 149–200; “Dogmatic Reflections on the Knowledge and Self-Knowledge of Christ” and “Christology within an Evolutionary View of the World,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 5, 157–215. Cf. Schlink’s treatment of doxology in SÖB, 1/1.26–29 (ESW, 1.69–72), which is largely repeated in chap. 3.1 above.

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A. The Incarnation 1. The Sending of the Son The birth of Jesus is an historical fact. That he lived is also documented by nonChristian sources. The year one of our calendar has been calculated as the probable date of his birth.[i] The name of his mother Mary as well as the name and occupation of his father Joseph have been reliably handed down, as are the location of Nazareth and the linguistic, religious, and political circumstances in which he grew up. All churches confess this birth of Jesus of Nazareth as the birth of the Christ, as the incarnation of the Son of God.[ii] The New Testament confessional formulas focus on Jesus’ death and resurrection. Although Jesus’ birth is obviously presupposed, it was only seldom explicitly mentioned in the early confessions (e. g., Rom. 1.3 and 1 Jn. 4.2). Yet Jesus’ birth is attested to in New Testament statements of proclamation, doctrine, and hymns, and indeed in manifold ways: as the divine sending of the Son (e. g., Rom. 8.3; Gal. 4.4), as the divine gift of the Son (e. g., Jn. 3.16), as the incarnation of the Word (Jn. 1.14), as the self-emptying of him who, being in very nature God, took on the very nature of a human being (Phil. 2.6), as one who, though he was rich, became poor (2 Cor. 8.9), as a revelation in the flesh (1 Tim. 3.16). Most of these statements refer not just to the event of his birth; they also bear witness to the purpose under which the entire earthly life of Jesus was lived. This applies, e. g., to the statements about the sending and gift of the Son by God. Even from the witness to the Word’s becoming human, our gaze is immediately directed to the later “beholding of his glory” (Jn. 1.14), and from the self-emptying we are led to the subsequent self-humiliation and obedience unto death. On the other hand, one could ask to what extent the statements about his becoming poor and about the revelation in the flesh focus at all on Jesus’ birth. In fact, the statements about the incarnation are about the whole history of Jesus up to his death. The acknowledgment of the salvific significance of Jesus’ birth has its basis in the recognition of the salvific significance of his death and his resurrection. Only later, but not yet in the New Testament confessional formulas, did the name of the mother of Jesus, Mary, retain a permanent place in the confessions of the church. This corresponds to the story of Christmas. The earliest festival in Christianity was Easter, in connection with the remembrance of Jesus’ death. Later, the festival of Epiphany was introduced, which initially had been rejected as gnostic but then was

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celebrated in a joint commemoration of Jesus’ birth, his adoration by the magi, his baptism, the marriage in Cana, and the feeding of the five thousand. Only later, and indeed initially only in the Western Church, was the remembrance of Jesus’ birth separated from the festival of Epiphany and given its own festival on December 25th (since the middle of the fourth century). When such an extraordinary claim is made about a person’s speaking, his deeds of power, and particularly his bodily appearances after his death, as is the case in the tradition about Jesus, then it is natural, in an enlightened, skeptical, or atheistic milieu, to deny the claim about the miracles and especially about the resurrection of this human being, and to dismiss them as legends and myths that have been created. If these traditions are considered in the context in which supernatural powers and appearances of divine beings were taken into account, then obviously one could also dispute that this Jesus was even a real human being. One will then assume that he appeared only in the mode of a supernatural being. That Jesus’ birth and the name of his mother are explicitly stated in the church’s confessions is grounded in the defense against such a gnostic-docetic denial of the real incarnation of the Son of God: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God” (1 Jn. 4.2ff.; cf. Jn. 1.14). This defense was furthered by Ignatius of Antioch, and it remained a central theme of the church fathers. By confessing the birth of Jesus to be the incarnation of the Son of God, what was also rejected was understanding Jesus as a man who became the Son of God solely by receiving God’s mission and Spirit, as the Old Testament prophets did. Instead, he was proclaimed to be God in a unique way from the beginning, as the one who came from God. Consequently, in the following period there arose New Testament statements about the eternal “Word” (Jn. 1.1ff.), about the divine mode of being that was not retained (Phil. 2.6), about the archetypal “image” of God (Col. 1.15; cf. Heb. 1.3), and about the pre-existent Christ, which were all embraced in the name of the Son of God, without all these and similar statements being able to be replaced by this single term. The explicit inclusion of Jesus’ birth in the creed was all about the middle of the creed, namely, the confession of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Without his becoming human, the message of the appearance of the Son of God and his return to God would be a myth. If, however, Jesus had been nothing but a mere human being, then he would have only been another among the uncounted cases of human failure. The word of the cross would not be a message of salvation if the Son of God had not become human. Because the statements in the creed are about both Jesus’ birth and the message of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the theology of the incarnation cannot be isolated from the history of Jesus. It belongs to the entirety of the doctrine of his humiliation and exaltation and is inseparable from it.

The Incarnation

It is proper that Jesus’ birth was given a permanent place in the creed of all churches. After all, the kind of criticism that was leveled by Docetism and Ebionitism against the Christian faith in earliest Christianity has, in different forms, continued to accompany the history of the church. For example, it took place in a sublimated way with regard to the complete humanity of Jesus Christ in the arguments with Apollinaris of Laodicea, who readily acknowledged that Jesus had a human body and also a human soul but not human reason (it was replaced by the divine Logos), and with regard to the eternal relationship of the Son to God in the struggle against Arius, who readily acknowledged that Jesus had a pre-existence, but merely a pre-existent creatureliness. In turn, that kind of criticism took place in a different way in the nineteenth century, in the conflict with idealistic-speculative christologies regarding the historical human Jesus, and in defense of the Son of God being made like us, over against various attempts to make a reconstruction of the “historical Jesus” the norm of Christian faith. In the witness of the New Testament, Jesus’ birth is traced back to both the decision of God and the decision of the Son. With a very ancient formula it is attested to especially by Paul and in the Johannine writings: God has sent his Son. This corresponds to the fact that the incarnation was an act of obedience by the Son in relation to this sending by God the Father. But the coming of the Son “from above” is attested to in the Gospel of John also as the Son’s own decision. The element of the freedom of the coming one is particularly evident at the beginning of the Christ-hymn in Phil. 2.6f.: “…he did not take advantage of being equal to God, but emptied himself by assuming the mode of being a servant” [S]. Only after his becoming human is there talk of his obedience. But the decision of the Father and that of the Son are not to be understood as the togetherness of two decisions, nor solely as the correspondence between sending and obedience. Rather, it is to be understood as one decision, which has its origin in the unity of God the Father and the Son. In this sense, all churches confess the incarnation of the Son of God as the incarnation of God. It is to be praised as the act of the sovereign freedom of God. There is nothing on the part of human beings that had deserved this coming of God, for they all had fallen under God’s judgment, both the Gentiles and the Jews. The world into which God sent his Son was not the creation in its original openness to God but the creation that had closed itself off to God and had fallen into the powers of corruption. The incarnation is God’s free decision, despite the rebellion of the people, despite Israel’s breaking of the covenant, despite the judgment that is deserved by all. Therefore, the point in time when the incarnation took place cannot be inferred from the behavior of human beings: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Gal. 4.4). Not by humans has the time been fulfilled, but by God. By the sending of his Son, by his liberating action, God has fulfilled the time of his patience, in which he had preserved the human race despite its having

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fallen into judgment, and he has fulfilled the time of the old covenant, in which he had prepared Israel despite all unfaithfulness to the coming one. The incarnation has its basis solely in God. It is the free act of his unfathomable love for the world. This act surpasses all that God had previously bestowed on creation in terms of his love. The act of creation in the beginning was also the free act of his love. In the sending of his Son, however, he loves human beings who have refused to be his Thou and to love him in return as their Thou. This act of love surpasses all that God has done for the sinful world as the Preserver and for recalcitrant Israel as the Savior. For in the incarnation, he encountered humans not only as providing and commanding, judging and forgiving, but he became one of them. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (Jn. 3.16). It was already a paradox that God let sinners live despite his announcement: “on the day you eat of it, you will die.” It was already a paradox that he had mercy again and again despite the threats of judgment by prophets. So the sending of the Son is the quintessential paradox—“the absolute paradox.”1 2. Becoming Flesh What does the “incarnation” [“Menschwerdung”] of the Son of God mean? In the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God became an individual human being, who lived among a particular people, at a particular time, in a particular place. He became a member of the human race. Having become an individual historical human being, he has assumed the “nature” [“Natur”] of a human being. This concept cannot be restricted to the physical and psychological nature of humans, but also includes their history. In his incarnation, the Son of God entered humanity’s history. One cannot thereby presuppose as self-evident what it means to be a human being. Even if anthropological and historical knowledge are constantly growing, the knowledge of the purpose of the human being and of the meaning of human history are ultimately beyond empirical observation. The purpose of the human being is only recognized on the basis of the divine address. Since the Son of God became a human being, this means that he has become subject to the purpose that God has given to human beings. From this point of view, the dimensions in which the incarnation is to be viewed can be shown more precisely in the following points: (a) The Son, through whom God created the universe in the beginning, has become a creature in the midst of all other creatures. He, through whom God

1 Søren Kierkegaard, Einübung ins Christentum (1850). [ET: Practice in Christianity, Kierkegaard’s Writings, vol. 20, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 80 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

The Incarnation

preserves the universe, has entered into the context of creatures, who, in their own self-functioning and development, depend on God to preserve them. He has become subject to the purpose given to all inanimate and living creatures to glorify God, together with every other creature, as a member of the universe. (b) The Son of God has become one of the creatures within the universe that God has not only created through the word but has also addressed. He has become subject to the purpose of praising God, not only in his wordless, self-functioning and self-development but also in serving as the mouthpiece of voiceless creatures. The Son of God became a human being, indeed, a complete human being. Whatever components anthropology may also differentiate, whether it presupposes a dichotomous, a trichotomous, or even a more differentiated structure of the human being, the Son of God has assumed the entirety of the human being. In whatever way the functions of human knowing, feeling, willing, and acting are also differentiated, he has entered into all of them. Nothing has remained foreign to him: neither the limits of human knowing, nor the risk of human self-determination, nor the feelings of joy, of anger, and of despondency. In the incarnation, the Son of God, who is one with the Father in love from all eternity, has become subject to the purpose that has been given to human beings, namely, as God’s image, to love in return the one who created human beings out of love, to love in the community of human beings that is the image of God, and, as God’s representative, to rule over the non-human creation in a caring way. The Son has thereby become subject to the promise of eternal life, which belongs to the obedience that is the image of God. (c) The Son of God became a human being under the conditions of the dominion of sin and death. “The Word became flesh” (Jn. 1.14); “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” (1 Jn. 4.2). Flesh refers to the entirety of human existence, including its transience and futility, in contrast to life in the efficacious realm of the Holy Spirit (Jn. 3.6). Statements about the incarnation can by no means be weakened by accepting the notion that “flesh and blood” are mere constituent parts of the human being. Even more offensive than the Johannine statement is Paul’s assertion that God “sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8.3 [S]), for here flesh signifies the entirety of human beings in their rebellion against God and their being subject to the dominion of sin and death. To be sure, Paul uses the word ὁμοίωμα ([homoiōma] form, image, likeness, shape) to indicate a difference between Jesus Christ and the flesh of sinners, that is, the difference between the one who did not sin and all others. But despite this implied difference, he nevertheless definitely attested at the same time that the Son of God had become one of us, we who, with our will and action, are subject to the dominion of sin. (d) At the same time, the Son of God became subject to the political powers that are arranged by God to protect life and to restrain by force the excesses of the struggle of everyone against everyone else. The Son of God became subject to the order of secular justice, which sets boundaries for sins by means of threat and

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punishment, even when political power is incapable of eliminating the roots of sin and is itself again and again abused by sinners. Thus the Son of God became a human being in order to serve God in the midst of a humanity that has turned away from God, has fallen to pieces, and is disturbed in its relationship to the non-human creation, and to serve God in the midst of a world that is not open to God but is ruled by opposition to God and by the powers of corruption. 3. Subjection to the Law God sent his Son, “born of a woman, and placed under the law” (Gal. 4.4 [L]). This means that the Son of God became a human being as a Jew, as a member of the people whom God had called out of all the peoples, had liberated from bondage, and had made his people through his covenant. Israel broke this covenant again and again, the Davidic kingship had come to ruin, and the voice of the prophets had fallen silent for centuries. After ultimately unsuccessful battles had been fought against various foreign rulers, only the law and the temple remained—the Herodian temple, which was offensive to many devout people. It was into this historical situation that Jesus was born. According to several New Testament traditions, he belonged to the descendants of David, which had become politically insignificant (cf., e. g., Rom. 1.3 and the differing genealogies in Mt. 1.1–17 and Lk. 3.23–28). Incarnation under the law means: (a) The Son of God became subject to the promise that God had given Israel, that he would be its God and Israel would be his people—that he would make a new covenant with Israel, renew their hardened hearts, make Israel a light to the Gentiles, and establish the kingdom of peace and justice. Thus the Son of God became subject also to the promise of the coming one, through whom God would bring about the new creation. He thus became a person who was waiting, a person who, together with the faithful of his people, called upon God, and who yearned for the fulfilment of God’s promises. He became one of the “poor,” one who was dependent on the grace of God, one who wanted to be accepted by God and to be saved. (b) At the same time, he became subject to the demands of the law, which God had given to his people for the sake of their life, and which had become the judgment against them because of their transgressions. He was subject to the law in the form it had become as a result of ever more precise interpretations and additions through the centuries. The Son of God became subject to the law in order to fulfill it. He also became subject to the institutional guardians of the sacral-legal order, the high priests and the Sanhedrin, in order to obey God under them. He became subject to the law by means of which God unveils, unsettles, and reorients sinners, and, at the same time, drives them toward waiting and hoping for the one who is promised.

The Incarnation

(c) With the incarnation, the Son of God became subject to the law in the realm of temptations. There is temptation everywhere in human history since a distinction between good and evil is everywhere. But temptation in the true sense only occurs where the word of God has been heard and has ruptured the notions with which human beings adjust and accommodate the good to fit their own desires. The opposition between the sinner and God only becomes fully visible when God has reached out to the human being in a promising and commanding manner, for the flesh defends itself against God’s assurance and claim. Through God’s word, the opposition between God and the powers of corruption is ruptured, these powers that dominate human beings and fraudulently claim God’s promises and demands in order to seduce human beings. Jesus’ temptations have been handed down in several stories in the Synoptic Gospels. Peter himself was rejected by Jesus as a satanic tempter when he sought to prevent Jesus from the path of suffering (Mk. 8.32ff.; Mt. 16.23). But even if no specific temptation stories had been handed down in the Gospels, the incarnation under the law means, by its very nature, entrance into the realm of temptation, through which sins and the powers of corruption intend to assert their dominion. Thus Heb. 4.15 fundamentally states—without referring to specific events—that Jesus, the Son of God, “has been tempted in every way, just as we are” [NIV]. The Son of God has been subjected to temptations in order to stand in the same place where we failed to resist, struggle, and be victorious. Thus, in Jesus’ birth, the Son of God became entirely one of us. Nothing human has remained foreign to him, and precisely because he has become a human being in the historical place of God’s action toward Israel, he has become entirely one of us all, for nowhere is the reality of all human beings so revealed, as through God’s speaking and acting toward Israel. 4. Free from the Law of Sin All statements about the Son of God becoming a human being would be misunderstood if one would deduce from them that the Son of God has been transformed into a human being and, by becoming human, has ceased to be the Son of God. In every church the Christian faith confesses that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. In the incarnation, “the Word” (Jn. 1.1ff.) has not ceased to be the divine Word. Rather, Jesus Christ is the Word that has become flesh. The Christ-hymn in Phil. 2.6ff. would also be misinterpreted if one did not acknowledge that it is one and the same human who was in the form of God and who emptied himself and was obedient unto death. The origin of Christ, which the Gospel of John contrasts with the origin of all other human beings—they come “from below,” but he comes “from above” (8.23; cf. 3.31ff.)—is not in the past, but became present in the person and speaking of the human Jesus.

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For this reason, whoever encountered the human Jesus of Nazareth also encountered the Son of God. Whomever Jesus addressed was always also addressed by the Son of God. If Jesus the man was hungry and thirsty, the Son of God also hungered and thirsted. When he cried out to God in anguish and fear, the Son of God suffered this same anguish and fear, and in them cried out to God. The confession of the complete identity of the human Jesus and the Son of God is such an enormous statement, which ruptures every notion about God and human beings, that no single term is fully adequate to bear witness to the mystery of the incarnation, as is already evident in the New Testament Scriptures as well as in later dogmatic christology. Each concept, treated in isolation, is subject to misunderstanding: e. g., the “incarnation” can be misunderstood if one understands it in the sense of a transformation, “taking on flesh” can be misunderstood by treating it as if the Son of God had donned on flesh like clothing, and “indwelling” can be misunderstood if one thinks of it in the sense of dwelling in a tent or a house. The issue here, however, is the unity of the Son of God and the human Jesus. By keeping these concepts closely related to each other, each one protects the others from being misunderstood. As they correct and protect each other in a complementary way, they jointly point to the mystery of the one whose death is the great salvific turning point in human history. While the concept of “becoming human” [“Menschwerdung”] is used here as a comprehensive, foundational dogmatic concept, the other New Testament and dogmatic concepts should also be considered. The confession that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God does not weaken the statements about the purpose for which the Son of God became flesh. Instead, it radicalizes them. By being subject to the law and the political powers by which God suppresses evil, he became subject to a purpose that is fitting for us but not for him. So, too, his trials and tribulations are not only the same as ours, but, as the trials and tribulations of the Son of God, they take on a dimension of incongruity and unfathomability that we lack. Ultimately, however, his dying has the dimension of an inexplicable enormity. An abyss has opened up here, whose depth can never be reached in the death of the sinner, for death comes to sinners but not to the Son of God. Because trials and sufferings do not come upon him, they surpass our trials and sufferings in an unprecedented way. It would be a complete misunderstanding of Jesus’ obedience if one were to minimize his struggle to remain obedient by pointing out that he was the Son of God. It seems obvious to concentrate the preceding remarks into christological formulas, in which two opposing statements are coordinated in paradoxical simultaneity: Jesus of Nazareth is at the same time the Son of God and the son of a woman; as the mediator of creation, he is different from all creatures, and yet at the same time he is a creature; as “the Word” of God, he is the promise and demand encountering human beings, and yet at the same time he is subject to the law. Even if such paradoxes are present in the early Christian honorific titles for Jesus, the New Testa-

The Incarnation

ment christological formulas are less characterized by the paradoxical simultaneity than by the witness to the succession of opposing modes of being and events in his history. For example, Paul bore witness to Jesus as the Son of God by using a more ancient confessional formula: “who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1.3ff.; cf. also, e. g., the structure of the Christ-hymn in Phil. 2.6–11). However, the paradoxical simultaneity of the opposites was expressed quite meaningfully by Ignatius of Antioch in the struggle against Docetism, e. g., in his Letter to the Ephesians (7.2): “There is one physician, both fleshly and spiritual, begotten and unbegotten, entering into the flesh, God, in death, true life, both of Mary and of God.”2 Such paradoxes have played a major role in the further history of christology. They found a formulaic expression in the statements about the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ that were further developed in manifold antithetical statements about his attributes: He is at the same time both eternal and temporal, unchanging and changeable, incapable of suffering and capable of suffering, etc. From this perspective, reflections also led to conclusions about Jesus’ willing as being both a divine and a human willing at the same time. With such conclusions, a structural shift from confession to theoretical consideration has taken place. The more consistently these paradoxes were theoretically reflected upon, the more difficult it became to determine the relationship between these opposites within the unity of Jesus Christ. If, however, we consider the basic paradoxes that become visible here, not with an attitude that is concerned about theoretical considerations but with one that is concerned about being affected by the divine address, then the statements do not fall apart, but, precisely in the interconnection of the opposites, they bear witness to God’s coming to us. This is true, e. g., of the words of the earthly Jesus: “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me” (Mt. 10.40), and “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Lk. 10.16). So also in the following assurance, namely, that God became a human being in Jesus for you, the statements about Jesus as God and as a human being do not diverge, but rather they proclaim the salvation that has come to us through the togetherness of the opposites: the Son of God became one of us in order to give God the honor we owed him. The mediator of creation became flesh in order to break the dominion of sin that we cannot break. He became subject to the law that we have not fulfilled in order to fulfill it in our stead. The center of the paradoxes

2 Ignatius of Antioch, The Letter to the Ephesians, 7.2. [Holmes, 188–189; cf. William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, Hermeneia, ed. Helmut Koester (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 59). –Ed.]

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of the incarnation is a vicarious representation and thus this exchange: the Son of God became a human being so that we humans could become God’s children. The one who is free became a slave so that we slaves might become free. The paradoxes of the doctrine of the incarnation are thus the witness to the caring commitment of the divine love toward us, which surpasses all our understanding. 5. The Mystery of Becoming Human If the Christian faith confesses Jesus’ birth as the Son of God becoming human [Menschwerdung], the verb to become [werden] here means, on the one hand, the sovereign divine act (e. g., Jn. 1.14) and at the same time, on the other, a becoming that is conditioned by what has already been created (e. g., Gal. 4.4). The togetherness and intertwining of the becoming, as a divine act and as a creation, is the mystery of God becoming human. It is clear that the flesh cannot bring forth the Son of God, for the human being who is culpably blocked off from God and has fallen into corruption is called flesh. The incarnation can only have happened the other way around: God made the flesh ready to receive his Son; the Son of God took on the flesh. It is not the flesh that lets the Son of God come forth, but the Son of God has entered the flesh. Thus Jesus’ birth is a coming down “from above” and a going forth on earth at the same time. Jesus is the “dawn from on high” (Lk. 1.78). This mystery of the becoming [Werdens] of Jesus is attested to at the beginning of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke as Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit and his birth by the Virgin Mary. No man fathered him. God prepared the virgin womb of Mary through his Spirit that she should give birth to Jesus. Both Gospels report nothing extraordinary about the birth process as such. The miracle is the conception by the Holy Spirit. According to Luke, it was announced to Mary by the angel: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God” (1.35). In Matthew, this event is presupposed in the statement that Mary, before Joseph brought her home, was “found to be with child from the Holy Spirit” (1.18; cf. 1.20). Both texts attest that Jesus not only received God’s Spirit in the course of his life but had his origin in God’s Spirit. The process of begetting by the Holy Spirit remains hidden in a similar way to the resurrection. Just as the latter only became visible in the appearances of the risen Lord, so Jesus’ origin from the Holy Spirit only became visible by the authenticating power of his redemptive work. This origin is consistent with the (differing) family trees in the two Gospels, which identify Jesus as the son of Joseph and thus as a descendant of David, and also with the other information about Joseph as the father of Jesus. They are not in contradiction since, according to Jewish law at the time, the engagement was a legally binding beginning of a marriage. The marriage was valid, and, by the declaration of the man, a child was given the full rights of a son and thus became a member of his family tree.

The Incarnation

Ignatius of Antioch already attested to the miraculous birth of Jesus from the Virgin in formulaic phrases, and he placed it at the center of his christology.[iii] The virgin birth was asserted as proof of the full human reality of Jesus Christ in the defense against Docetism. In the further struggle against Gnosticism, this argument became more widespread. Redemption would be challenged if the Son of God had not been born a human being, or if Jesus had not encountered sinners and died for them as truly God and truly a human being. Thus Irenaeus saw the unity of the Son of God and the human Jesus as grounded in the connection between Jesus’ procreation by the Holy Spirit and his birth by the Virgin.[iv] On the anti-Gnostic front, the statements in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke about Jesus’ birth were then also included in the confessions of the church: “conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary” (the Apostles’ Creed); “became flesh through the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary” (the Constantinopolitan Creed).3 A statement asserting this content is missing in the Nicene Creed of 325. On the other hand, it was asserted early on that such a process does not occur in human experience. The more precisely the biological connections between procreation and birth were recognized in modern times, the stranger these words of the confession sounded, and they seemed to call into question precisely that which the ancient church had wanted to bear witness to, namely, that the Son of God was truly a human being, entirely one of us. In addition, sexist and ascetic motives were suspected of lying behind the statements about the virgin birth. In the course of church history, such motives have not infrequently been associated with those statements, but they are completely absent from the birth narratives in the Gospels. Luke quite impartially described Jesus’ birth as that of Mary’s “firstborn son” (2.7), and in several places the Gospels speak of Jesus’ brothers. Moreover, historical-critical concerns have arisen. The particular folksy narrative style, which distinguishes the pre-history of Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel from most other traditions found in those same Gospels, has often attracted attention. In addition, there is the observation that in their present form these reports about Jesus’ conception and birth were apparently first coined in the Jewish-Hellenistic sphere. This is supported by the fact that the Septuagint translation of Isa. 7.14 is quoted (Mt. 1.23), which, unlike the Hebrew text, does not speak of a woman but of a virgin who will give birth to the promised son, “Immanuel.” Also significant are the echoes of Hellenistic explanations of the miraculous conception by Sarah and other women of the old covenant through God’s intervention. In order to explain the story of Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit, reference has also been made to ancient myths about the miraculous emergence of important men through the “sacred marriage” of a deity and a woman. But the notion of a sexual union between God and a human being is entirely unthinkable in Judaism, and furthermore, there is no indication of

3 [BSELK, 42, 49 (BC, 21, 23). –Ed.]

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this in the pre-history of these two Gospels. It is not possible here to go into detail about the various disputed arguments in history-of-religions and history-of-traditions scholarship. But it is already clear from these references that through historical-critical inquiry into the historical event that serves as the basis for the pre-history of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the assumption arose that this is not about the tradition of an historical event but about a theologumenon, i. e., about statements regarding the salvific significance of Jesus’ birth told in the form of a narrative history. A well-known reconstruction of the genesis of these texts reads: “as a theologumenon, not as a narrative (legend or myth), Jesus’ miraculous birth will first have appeared in the preaching of Christians.”4 This theologumenon was turned into a narrative by connecting the Greek translation of Isa. 7.14 and the motif of the earthly father. The understanding of the narrative of Jesus’ conception by the Spirit and his virgin birth, as a witness to Christ in the form of an historical report, is widespread today in a variety of ways, especially in Western Christianity, and indeed also in the Roman Catholic Church. This corresponds to the fact that the virgin birth is not mentioned in many contemporary “abridged summaries” of the creed. However, it is undeniable that from the beginning the church has understood the words “became incarnate by the Holy Spirit through the Virgin Mary” as a witness to an historical event. If we agree with the creed in this sense, then we are confronted with an event that stands out in a unique way from anything analogous in this world. It is attested to in the Gospels in connection with Judeo-Hellenistic ideas, and yet this event is distinct from the Jewish traditions of other miraculous births: as a birth from the Virgin. It is a human birth like any other birth in the midst of the ongoing becoming of the new generations of humanity, and yet that becoming in the womb is awakened by the Holy Spirit. The event is embedded in the analogies of this world, and yet at the same time it is a new beginning in human history that is without any analogy. The more one considers the mystery attested to by these confessional statements, the less surprising one will find that this event eludes biological and historical verification. The difficulty of historical research into these texts corresponds to the uniqueness of the event to which they bear witness. As long as the presuppositions and limitations of the empirical sciences are kept in mind, this can be called into question by biological and historical considerations, but not refuted. Of course, where the principle of analogy is not used heuristically but dogmatically, the virgin birth can only be rejected—as is also done with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

All churches maintain the wording of the ancient church’s confessions. It is, of course, necessary to pay attention to the christological weight and ecclesiological significance of these statements. Although their content ultimately eludes historical

4 Martin Dibelius, “Jungfrauensohn und Krippenkind” [Son of the Virgin and Child in the Manger], in Botschaft und Geschichte [Message and History], Gesammelte Aufsätze, vol. 1, ed. Günther Bornkamm (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1953), 35f.

The Incarnation

examination, their weight in the whole of the early Christian message and their ecclesiological significance can be reliably established historically: (a) Statements about the conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit and his birth from the Virgin Mary can only be found in the New Testament Scriptures at the beginning of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Paul did not speak of the virgin birth in any of his letters. Instead, he only stressed that the Son of God, like all people, “was born of a woman” (Gal. 4.4). The other New Testament Scriptures are also silent about the virgin birth. When the Gospel of John speaks of those “who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (Jn. 1.13), it is not speaking of Jesus Christ, but of those “who believe in his name” (1.12 [S]). Incidentally, it is noticeable that the virgin birth plays no role in the writings of the “Apostolic Fathers,” apart from Ignatius. It was not a part of the general content of the early Christian message about Jesus Christ. In particular, it was by no means the center of this message in the same way as Jesus’ cross and resurrection. The gospel has never been preached without the message of the resurrection of the crucified one, but there was apostolic and early Christian preaching that did not mention the virgin birth. In any case, in earliest Christianity the incarnation of the Son of God was not everywhere proclaimed together with the virgin birth. One could say that this particular witness to the message of the incarnation is like the proclamation of the “how” [“Wie”] for the sake of proclaiming the “that” [“Daß”]. The “that” of the incarnation is incomparably more broadly attested to in the New Testament than the miraculous “how” that is attested to in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The message of the “that-ness” [vom “Daß”] of the coming of the Son of God is so closely tied to the message about Jesus’ death and resurrection that the latter would be empty without the former. Obviously, however, in early Christianity there was no such close connection between the statements about the virgin birth and the center of the message about Christ. (b) The limited witness in the New Testament to this special “how” means at the same time that in earliest Christianity there was church unity between those who proclaimed Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit and his birth from the Virgin and those who—for whatever reason—did not do so, and also unity between those church communities that had heard this message and those that did not know it. There is no evidence in the New Testament Scriptures that there would have been divisions over this difference. Such differences must have existed in the ancient church for some time until the tradition of the virgin birth became generally accepted. Hans von Campenhausen has pointed out that Justin, in his dialogue with

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Tryphon the Jew,5 had not yet denied the appellation of the name of Christian to those Christians who rejected the virgin birth.6 It does not follow from these statements that Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit and his birth from the Virgin Mary should be excluded as historical events. The extent of the New Testament’s witness is not a solid criterion for or against discerning historical facticity. However, out of the previous findings there arose systematic consequences that are not unimportant for the present discussion. To be sure, there is a distinction between the early period of the church, in which the virgin birth was not yet part of the general content of the witness to Christ, and the later era, in which this statement was included in the confession of all churches. Since, however, the apostolic witnesses and the earliest Christian witnesses to Christ that are based on them have had an abiding normative significance for the church of every era, whatever weight individual faith-statements in the apostolic message have cannot be unimportant for the issue of the unity of the church. If the particularity of the message about Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit and his birth from the Virgin Mary consists in the fact that it bears witness not only to the miraculous “that” but also to the miraculous “how” of God’s coming in the flesh, then it is interpretively related to the message of the incarnation. In doing so, it does not explain this mystery, but rather, precisely through the offensive vividness of its statements, it bears witness to the incomprehensibility of that mystery. In this sense, the virgin birth can be understood as a sign of the incarnation. Here the weight rests on what is signified, namely, on the coming of the Son of God, “Immanuel,” and thus on the coming of God in the flesh. Many misunderstandings have undoubtedly arisen because people have not rightly related the statements about the virgin birth to those about the incarnation, and thus they have misjudged the relationship of the “that” to the “how,” as well as of the “mystery” to the “sign.” For those who are certain in faith of the mystery of God’s incarnation, which surpasses our understanding, the reports of Jesus’ conception by the Spirit and his birth by the Virgin are not an additional impertinence, but rather, precisely in their offensiveness, those reports are an impressive concretizing of this mystery—a concretizing that does not deprive the mystery of its mysterious character, but instead places it before us as a mystery. In any case, however, it is true that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is an inseparable part of the message of the coming of the Son of God into the world. At no time

5 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Tryphon, 48.2ff. [PG, 6.580–581; FOTC, 6.220–221. –Ed.] 6 Hans von Campenhausen, “Jungfrauengeburt in der Theologie der alten Kirche,” Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (Heidelberg: Karl Winter, 1962); reprinted in Urchristliches und Altkirchliches [Early Christian and Ancient Christian] (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck]), 1979), 63–161 (here 80f.). [ET: The Virgin Birth in the Early Church, trans. Frank Clarke (London: SCM, 1964), 20f. –Ed.]

The Incarnation

can the church remain silent about, or even forget, the earthly mother of its Lord. Otherwise, it would dissolve the reality of the incarnation in a docetic manner. The church has rightly included the name of Mary in the creed, and it remembers her at all times as one who was chosen and taken into unique service by God. Because she is the earthly mother of the Son, who is one with God the Father from eternity, the church rightly awarded her the designation Theotokos (Mother of God) at the Council of Ephesus (AD 431), and thus it confesses the human being Jesus who was born from her to be the Son of God who became a human being.[v] The Reformers also maintained this title for Mary.[vi] By remembering the earthly mother of its Lord, the church will of course have to remember not only the birth-story and Mary’s willing “Yes” to her destiny (Lk. 1.38) but also the tradition that Jesus’ mother and his brothers were calling for Jesus, and yet he left them standing outside and said of his listeners: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mk. 3.34f. par.). It is even reported that his relatives tried “to take him home by force, since they were saying that he had gone out of his mind” (3.21 [S]). That Mary did not understand her son, which is reported in a Lukan story about an incident in Jesus’ childhood (2.50), and that Jesus rejected his mother also express this hard saying: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?” (Jn. 2.4). Thus the Gospels also present the blessed mother of Jesus to us as a woman whose faith is challenged, whose pain was not only due to her compassion for her suffering son but also to her failure to understand his way. This corresponds to the fact that Mary’s sinlessness was not taught by the Eastern church fathers. For example, Chrysostom repeatedly and emphatically pointed out Mary’s deficiencies and weaknesses.[vii] Her sinlessness was first emphasized by Ambrose and then more broadly in the wake of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin.7 When, despite her afflictions and pains, the mother of Jesus remained united in prayer and faith with the apostles after Jesus’ resurrection (Acts 1.14), together with the other women, this unity, like the faith of the apostles, was in turn nothing but the result of divine grace. The New Testament does not record that she held a special position in the early Christian community. This also corresponds to the silence of the older church tradition about her earthly end. It is precisely the fact that the New Testament Scriptures attest to both facets—namely, that Mary was the physical mother of the eternal Son of God and the humble member of the early Christian community, that she was the one who was taken into unique service and the one who was rebuked—that makes 7 For the details of this development, cf. v. Campenhausen, “Jungfrauengeburt in der Theologie der alten Kirche,” 63–161. [The Virgin Birth in the Theology of the Early Church. Cf. Ambrose, Concerning Virgins, II.2–3 (NPNF 2 , 10.374–376); and Augustine, De natura et gratia, 42 (CSEL, 60.263–264; Nature and Grace, WSA, I/23.245–246). –Ed.]

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her memory in the church of all times precious and comforting. In view of both her election to be the earthly mother of the Son of God and her tribulations as a suffering mother, her life is a song of praise to divine grace that the church can never forget. Mary has thus been understood as the figure of a new mother who, unlike Eve, surrendered herself to God’s will.8 In this way she has also become the type for the people of God from whence Jesus came and that is led and glorified by God through the trials and temptations of this world. Whenever the earthly church remembers the glorified saints, it also remembers the mother of its Lord. The church militant knows that it is united with her and all the glorified saints in singing praise to Jesus Christ as the sole Redeemer. Within this agreement to commemorate Mary, there are considerable differences between the churches in their statements of piety and doctrine about her. They were less the cause of church divisions than a factor in intensifying the opposition between the separated churches. This has been true, e. g., with the increase in Marian piety in the Roman Catholic Church since the Counter-Reformation and with the subsequent defensive weakening of Reformation statements about Mary in the minds of many later Protestant Christians. Escalating opposition also took place between the Eastern Church and the Roman Church insofar as in the latter, in contrast to the East, the Assumption of Mary (1950) did not remain a statement of piety but was proclaimed as dogma, with the result that all those who do not profess this dogma are excluded from this Church.[viii] Today there should be agreement that ecumenical dialogue cannot clarify the mariological differences by isolating them, but that agreement on the substantive meaning and the ecclesiological status of these differences can be expected from christology.

B. The Message 1. The Public Appearance of Jesus After growing up in Nazareth, Jesus came to be baptized by John the Baptist.[ix] This was his first historically ascertainable decision. In the proclamation of John, the prophets’ preaching of judgment, which had lain silent for centuries, had once again become explicit with unheard of sharpness: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Mt. 3.10 par. Lk. 3.9). Not being a member of any established group, John announced to all his people the imminent, inescapable divine judgment, and he called for repentance and reception of a baptism for repentance. In contrast to the

8 So Irenaeus. [See Against Heresies, V.19 (ANF, 1.547). –Ed.]

The Message

other ritual baths of purification and washings that were prevalent in Judaism at the time, this baptism was not a self-baptism, but was carried out by John, and it did not take place several times, but in a single, final, unique act. Whether and in what sense this baptism was proclaimed by John himself as “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mk. 1.4; Lk. 3.3), or whether there is a Christian interpretation here, is disputed. It would be more natural to regard the original significance of this baptism not as a forgiveness that was brought about by it but as an acknowledgement and seal of repentance for the future forgiveness in the coming judgment. In any case, the assertion over against John (in contrast to Jesus), namely, that he forgave sins, has not been handed down. By allowing himself to be baptized, Jesus accepted John’s sermon of judgment, placed himself under it, and showed solidarity with those who heeded the call to repentance. All the Gospels report that a revelation occurred at Jesus’ baptism, by which he was set apart from all the others who received John’s baptism: the Holy Spirit came upon him and a voice from heaven said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mk. 1.10ff.). These words echo the divine promise that had been given in the old covenant to the prophetic Servant of God (Isa. 41.8) and to the king (Ps. 2.7). It is noteworthy that, unlike the callings of the prophets, there is no mention of a commissioning of Jesus, and that the quote from Psalm 2, unlike the coronation ritual, lacks the words, “today I have chosen you” (apart from Lk.). The voice of God declares that Jesus is God’s Son, without saying that he is established as Son in that moment. His baptism was obviously an event for Jesus that went beyond what John had announced in his preaching about repentance. After his baptism, Jesus did not return to his family in Nazareth, nor did he remain with John, but according to tradition, he withdrew into the solitude of the wilderness and then began to wander the villages of his Galilean homeland and to proclaim the kingdom of God. Like John, he addressed all the people. Like John, he also called people to repentance. But his message was very different from that of the Baptizer: While John had proclaimed the nearness of divine judgment, Jesus proclaimed the nearness of the inbreaking of the kingdom of God as salvation. John had shown the forsakenness and the hopeless judgment into which the people had fallen: “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath of God?” (Mt. 3.7 [S]). Jesus, however, led people out of the hopelessness of their guilt and sickness, and opened up to them community with the God who loved them. Although it is questionable whether Jesus himself called his message gospel, this is still the appropriate term, for he announced the joyous good news. John announced the coming one, who would execute God’s judgment of wrath: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Mt. 3.12). The announcement of the coming judge was front and center. Jesus,

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however, announced the coming one, the Son of Man, above all as the one bringing salvation, as the one who embraces sinners, the burdened, and the hopeless, and whose judgment will bring them salvation. The Baptizer based his call for repentance on the nearness of divine judgment. In the fear of God’s wrath, repentance should take place and baptism be received. Jesus’ call for repentance, however, had its basis in the good news of God’s caring commitment to sinners. God’s mercy, his forgiveness, came prior to repentance. Because a treasure, a rare pearl, was discovered, it was necessary to sell everything to acquire it (Mt. 13.44–46). Repentance became joyful, a joy in which the heavenly joy over the sinner who repents unites with the joy of the one whose sin is forgiven (Lk. 15.7, 10). Jesus, too, saw the sinful condition of his people and the judgment into which they had fallen. When he spoke of “this generation,” he referred to his contemporaries as evil, unrepentant, and unfaithful. He also refused to consider those who had died catastrophically at that time to be particularly serious sinners. Rather, the following applied to everyone: “If you do not repent, you will all perish equally” (Lk. 13.3, 5). Jesus also left no doubt that the harvest of the divine judgment was imminent. In his proclamation there is no trace of any optimism about the possibilities of human beings to evade this judgment. But in view of the judgment into which they had fallen, Jesus proclaimed salvation to his people. He brought redemption to those enslaved in guilt and misery. Regardless of their past, he opened a new future to all. To those deserving God’s wrath, he proclaimed—without any preparatory efforts on their part—a loving, caring heavenly Father, and he encouraged them to trust God as Father and to call upon him as Father. His words of judgment were then directed primarily against those who had encountered salvation in him but who refused to repent. “For if the deeds of power done in you (Capernaum) had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you” (Mt. 11.23ff.; cf. Lk. 10.12). The differences between the message of Jesus and that of John were profound. The rejection of Jesus’ message and the rejection of John’s could be likened to the contrasting cries of children: “‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.’ For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard’” (Lk. 7.32–34 par. Mt. 11.17–19). These differences were also reflected in the behavior of their followers. For example, Jesus was asked, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” To which Jesus replied, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they?” (Mk. 2.18–19). It is understandable that John, from his prison cell, directed to Jesus

The Message

this question full of doubt: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Mt. 11.2f. par. Lk. 7.18f.). If one considers that the Christian community, in retrospect, had an interest in emphasizing the difference between John and Jesus and subordinating the Baptizer to Jesus, then it is all the more striking that Jesus did not turn away from John or break with him. According to all traditions, he spoke of him with the greatest respect. When, e. g., he responded to his opponents’ questions about his authority by asking about the authority of the Baptizer, this contained the acknowledgment that John was authorized by the same one as himself (Mk. 11.27–33). He acknowledged John to be a prophet—indeed, “he is more than a prophet! He is the one about whom it is written in Scripture, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John” (Lk. 7.26ff. [S] par. Mt. 11.9ff.). However, Jesus knew that he had been sent by the same God, but with a mission that was different from that of John. The nearness of the same God, whose coming John had proclaimed as judgment, Jesus proclaimed as salvation. In this sense, he had spoken of “the new thing” that broke out with his work. Despite acknowledging the greatness of the Baptizer, Jesus held that “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Mt. 11.11 par. Lk. 7.28). So the boundary between the old and the new is not between the Old Testament prophets and John but between John and Jesus. “The law and the prophets were in effect until (and including) John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed” (Lk. 16.16 [S]; cf. Mt. 11.12, which is different). In early Christian communities, John was understood by some more as the forerunner who was connected with Jesus, and by others more as the forerunner who was different from him. The contents of their respective proclamation stand in opposition to one another in a similar way, like the law and the gospel in Pauline theology. With the message of the nearness of the kingdom of God, Jesus pursued the people. He did not stay in one and the same place as John did, but he hurried from place to place. He bypassed the Hellenistic cities. He knew that he “was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 15.24). He understood his message as God’s last offer, the acceptance or rejection of which would decide Israel’s future. Within his people he turned toward all in loving care: the righteous and the sinners, the rich and the poor, the learned and the ordinary person, the healthy and the sick. So he let himself be invited by both Pharisees and tax collectors, the exploiters of his people, and he accepted the service of having his feet washed by a prostitute. He gave everyone a fresh start. But he especially committed himself to the sinners and the sick. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Mk. 2.17 par.). He even found nice words to say about the Samaritans, who in fact invoked the Mosaic law but were separated from Israel and were to be strictly avoided. According to the

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testimony of Luke, Jesus even presented the Jews with a merciful and a grateful Samaritan as a role model (Lk. 10.33ff.; 17.16). Jesus proclaimed God’s kingdom in many different ways: in parables, in beatitudes, in promises and invitations, in conversations with those who were interested, with followers, and with opponents. He proclaimed the kingdom by addressing individuals, by proclaiming to crowds, and by teaching groups. In this way, he was not concerned with describing the kingdom of God but with announcing it. He wanted it to be recognized as the most precious thing, and everything else left behind for its sake. That announcement was about the assurance and claim of God’s reign for human beings in their concrete present moment. Even if Jesus’ words were heard, passed on, and written down in a different situation within the post-Easter community, historical inquiry makes it quite clear with what incredible directness Jesus addressed his contemporaries and unveiled their present moment, with what sharpness he uncovered the pride of self-righteousness, and with what gentleness he covered the sins of those who had failed. Without having received a rabbinical education or been ordained as a rabbi, he spoke as one who lived from the Scriptures, and he declared as present events the fulfillment of what was promised in them. Human beings encountered Jesus’ message not only in his words but also in his deeds. It is true that his words were already deeds themselves, namely, an intervention in the lives of his listeners, a healing embrace of the wholeness of their existence. But his words were also carried and interpreted by his actions, by his caring commitment, by his servant ministry, by his solidarity with those who were shunned as enemies of God. In addition, many healings that Jesus carried out on the sick and that accompanied his proclamation as “signs” have been handed down in the tradition. Even a critical examination of this tradition shows with certainty that Jesus healed sick people who were considered incurable. Jesus is described in the Gospels as the herald of the kingdom of God, who was surrounded by sick people of all kinds, and who could only withdraw with difficulty to pray. As the reports of the healings of the servant of the centurion at Capernaum (Mt. 8.5–13; Lk. 7.1–10; cf. Jn. 4.46–54) and the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman (Mk. 7.24–30; cf. Mt. 15.21–28) attest, Jesus did not shy away from the pleas of non-Jews. Jesus did not attack the political powers of his time. The tradition that has been handed down contains no words against the foreign rule of the Romans, nor against the remnants of the theocratic political power of the Jews, i. e., against the high priest and the Sanhedrin. Unlike the Zealots and other liberation movements, Jesus did not resort to political violence. The kingdom he proclaimed was not to be expected as coming from the possession and use of political power. He also differed from the various Jewish groups of his day, who, in setting themselves apart from sinners through their fidelity to the law, claimed to be the true Israel to whom liberation and dominion would be conferred by the coming Messiah. He differed

The Message

from the Pharisees and the Essenes not only in the content of his message but also in that he proclaimed salvation to all and did not gather into a “holy remnant” those who accepted his message. Nor was the calling of the disciples who accompanied him so important, for Jesus had called them out of their previous activity in order to include them as witnesses and messengers in his dynamic action toward the whole people. All Jewish groups had appealed to Moses and the prophets. But in interpreting the Scriptures, he said something incredibly new. His speech and actions could not be classified with any of the existing groups. When Jesus appeared in public, he caused quite a stir. The Gospels report about “astonishment,” “terror,” and “bewilderment” in those who heard his words and saw his deeds. The astonishment found its expression in the praise of God, but also in questions. His contemporaries found themselves confronted with a power beyond human ability. Was this authority from God? Was it the authority of the Spirit of God? It was not only John who raised the following question; so too did others: Are you the one who is to come? Apparently, many of those seeking help and following him saw Jesus as the coming one, and they greeted and called upon him with messianic titles. According to the oldest traditions, however, Jesus proclaimed himself neither as the Christ, nor as the Son of God, nor as the messianic Son of David, nor as the expected prophet of the end times. He did not give a direct answer to the question of the origin of his authority. To be sure, according to the witness of all the Gospels, he spoke frequently of the Son of Man. But according to the Synoptic tradition, he spoke of him only in the third person, as if speaking of someone else. 2. The Coming of the Kingdom of God This is the center of Jesus’ proclamation: “The kingdom of God has come near” (Mk. 1.15). Jesus thus announced the coming of God. God will come to reveal himself as Lord and to assert his lordship. Whether this coming is announced in the Gospels as “the kingdom of God” (βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ [basileia tou theou]) or (as especially in the Gospel of Matthew) as “the kingdom of heaven” (βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν [basileia tōn ouranōn]) makes no difference in content. In the Judaism of that time, heaven was a widespread euphemism for the name of God, which was not mentioned, out of reverence for God. Of course, God does not first become Lord through the coming of this kingdom. He is the Lord from eternity. No creature could rebel against him unless God would preserve him and give room to his rebellion. But the announcement of God’s kingdom is about something else—not only about the preservation and government of the world, not only about God’s patience with sinners, also not about the end of this patience and the destruction of his enemies, but about the act of his love, by which God liberates his enemies from the judgment into which they have fallen, and

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gives them life. Jesus announced the coming of God’s kingdom as the establishment of a new community between God and humankind, as the beginning of a new correspondence between God and human beings, characterized by love and human love in return. Thus, in the Lord’s Prayer, the petition for the kingdom is connected with the petition about hallowing the divine name and (according to Mt. 6.10b) also with the petition: “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus used the phrase βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ to refer both to the act of reigning, by which God’s love accepts sinners, and the realm of his kingdom into which human beings are united to God and to one another. In the message of the coming kingdom, God’s reign and the community bestowed by his reign are so inextricably linked that basileia is to be translated not only as reign but also as kingdom, and indeed especially the latter, for that is what is special about this message, in contrast to the acknowledgment of God’s governing the world, namely, that it opens up a sphere of influence of mercy and love into which God invites and accepts sinners. In this sense, Jesus could speak of the basileia as of a space to be entered. Jesus proclaimed the coming of the kingdom as God’s sovereign act. Humans cannot bring about this coming—neither by their obedience to the requirements of God’s law (as the Pharisees believed), nor by violent removal of political oppression (as was the intent of the Zealots). Nor can people calculate the timing of God’s coming from omens (as some apocalyptists try to do). God’s kingdom will come suddenly. That is why it is important to be ready at all times; the coming of the kingdom of God can only be prayed for. According to the parable of the self-growing seed (Mk. 4.26–29), it will come about by itself, without human intervention. According to Jesus’ message, the kingdom of God will encounter all the kingdoms of this world as something completely different. This applies to both pagan and Christian empires. It would also contradict the message of Jesus to equate the coming of the kingdom of God with an immanent process of the historical progress of humankind—an interpretation that has been widely held since Kant, in various modifications by German idealism, by Albrecht Ritschl and his school, and up to today in various conceptions of a new universal human order. The coming of the kingdom of God is to be expected independently of advances in science, technology, the social sphere, and global politics. According to Jesus’ message, God’s kingdom will encounter and impact all these developments as a completely different kingdom. It will not further them but will rather thwart them. God will bring out and gather from among these developments the poor, those who are not spoken of in the midst of the self-glorification of progress and power. Jesus’ message, however, would also be misunderstood if one were to understand the kingdom of God as a timeless idea that fascinates people again and again and gives impulses to their thoughts and actions, but which remains timeless. Such an idea can lead to great deeds and the building of mighty earthly empires, but, in this interpretation of the kingdom of God, the kingdom would remain merely a

The Message

utopia. Jesus, on the other hand, announced the coming of the kingdom of God as an inbreaking into world history, as its end, and as a profound renewal of humanity. The term kingdom of God (malkut yahwe [‫ )]ַמְלכוּת ְיה ָוה‬was not very common in Judaism at the time of Jesus, but the ancient expectations of Yahweh’s victory over Israel’s enemies, the assertion of his dominion over the world, and the homage to be offered him by all the peoples were still alive in many ways.[x] Even if the expression kingdom of God was not in the forefront, the whole history of Israel can be described as God’s struggle to establish his reign, a reign that consists not only in his steering of history but also in the community of God with human beings, namely, in the covenant of love between Yahweh and his people, to which the other peoples will also approach one day. The expectations in the Old Testament and the expectations in Jewish apocalyptic differed considerably in their details. Jesus accepted only part of it. But it was within those expectations that he preached the kingdom of God. What was decisively new about Jesus’ message, in contrast to the Old Testament prophets and to Jewish apocalyptic, was the proclaimed nearness, i. e., the pressing nearness of the kingdom of God that was breaking through in the now of his speaking and acting. The newness of his proclamation is summed up in the saying: “The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mk. 1.15 [L]). “The time is fulfilled” means that the hour is here when the promises of the prophets will be fulfilled. The kingdom of God has come so close that nothing can stop it. Jesus did not leave the people any remaining period of time in which they could have withdrawn from his message. Instead, he called for their immediate decision. Given the pressing nearness of the reign of God, it is understandable that Jesus’ proclamation, in contrast to apocalyptic, contains no depictions of future events. Because it was totally focused on the nearness of the kingdom of God, it did not brook anyone maintaining an attitude of watching, calculating, and describing. Instead, it called for the obedience of the people in the present moment—i. e., for repentance. In his parables about the coming of the kingdom and the event of repentance, Jesus also was not concerned with describing the coming final state. But in his proclamation there was nothing indefinite about the kingdom of God. It became quite clear what God will do to human beings when he comes. In the overwhelming majority of his statements, Jesus spoke of the future kingdom of God. What follows below in section “a” is therefore based on these statements. Then follows section “b,” which examines the witness to the kingdom of God that is already present in Jesus’ words and deeds. The special nature of the nearness announced by Jesus results from the relationship between the statements about the future and those about the present (dealt with in section “c” below). (a) “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Lk. 6.20). In both the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus begins the series of beatitudes with the promise of the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven.

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Here (in Mt. 5.10), toward the end of the series, the kingdom of heaven is again promised to those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, so that the other beatitudes are encompassed by this promise. The promises made in the other beatitudes can therefore be understood as concrete developments of what will come to the person through God’s reign: the hungry will be fed, those weeping will laugh, the hated, excluded, and reviled will rejoice (Lk. 6.21f.). These beatitudes are given to people who are in dire straits. To them is announced the future liberation from these straits. In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel—which goes beyond the likely older tradition in Luke—the “poor in spirit,” the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers are all blessed. The kingdom of heaven is promised to the poor who are waiting upon God. But here, too, the beatitudes apply to people who, as the meek, merciful, and peaceful in this world, are powerless and outsiders. Jesus promised this future liberation from poverty, hunger, persecution, and grief as the ultimate removal from these straits. He has thus announced the event that will radically change the present situation. The kingdom of God was promised by Jesus not only as salvation for individuals but as a new community: “Many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 8.11; cf. Lk. 13.29). In this future community, the temporal distances between the patriarchs and later generations will disappear, and the limits of death will be removed. Community in the kingdom of God was also announced by Jesus in parables, as a wedding celebration (Mt. 22.2ff.), to which the invitation has already gone out and for which it is important to be ready (Mt. 25.1ff.). The expectation of shared meals in the kingdom of God is also expressed in Jesus’ parting words at his Last Supper with his disciples (Mk. 14.25 par.). In these pictures of the meal and the wedding, a lasting, indestructible community of joy and full satisfaction is promised, which will be followed by no more separation, no more dying or mourning. The center of this announcement is the future elimination of what separates human beings from God. This is particularly stated in the beatitudes, which promise to those who are pure in heart: you will see God (Mt. 5.8). If one considers the rarity and extreme reluctance of the Old Testament accounts to report about God making himself visible only to a chosen few like Moses, Isaiah and Ezekiel, and if one also considers the conviction, which is widespread in many religions, including Israel, namely, that the one who sees God dies, then it becomes clear that Jesus promised that the kingdom of God would bring about a community between God and people that does not exist in the present age. This community marks the end of the alienation from God, which is the root of all human misery. So Jesus did not announce the kingdom of God merely as the liberation of human inwardness from guilt, worry, and fear, but as an event that happens to the whole human being, body and soul, and that changes the elementary presuppositions of the person’s present existence—right down to the person’s relationship to the earth:

The Message

then the meek will inherit the land (Mt. 5.5). The kingdom of God will bring life, joy, and peace to humankind in a comprehensive and definitive way. In the Gospel of John, the promise of eternal life has well-nigh taken the place of the message about the kingdom of God. In all of this it is striking that the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed lacks the Jewishnationalistic features. He did not announce it as a restoration of the kingdom of David, nor as the liberation of the Jews from Roman rule, nor as the establishment of the Jews as rulers over the other peoples. Although he addressed his message only to Israel, the dire straits and longing that he promised to remove and quench are common to all humankind, including the longing to see God. It is true that the kingdom of God will be a community with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but this community is wide open: “Many from the east and the west will come…, but the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness” (Mt. 8.11f.; cf. Lk. 13.28f.). Although it was proclaimed only to Israel, God’s kingdom will be universal. Jesus also announced God’s coming judgment. It is not only his beatitudes about the poor, the hungering, and the mourning that have been handed down, but also his woes about the rich, the satiated, those who laugh, and the well-liked (Lk. 6.24–26). In his judgment God will bring about a separation that will cut right through families and every earthly togetherness and even, according to Mt. 7.21–23, right through Jesus’ followers.[xi] Then some will be accepted and others rejected, the haughty will be humbled and the low will be exalted. In Jesus’ threat of judgment, too, the nationalistic features are missing, such as, e. g., the announcement of God’s vengeance on Israel’s enemies. Instead, he proclaimed God’s judgment with particular severity against members of the Jewish people who rejected his message. For example, he leveled woes against the Galilean places where he worked, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum (Mt. 11.21–24; cf. Lk. 10.13–15). Moreover, a universal judgment will fall upon all humankind and upon the world’s powers of corruption, to which humans are enslaved. God will remove the dominion of these powers and overthrow Satan. If “world” means humankind ruled by sin and the world’s powers of corruption, then this judgment will break in as the end of world history. But even though Jesus announced salvation and judgment, his message is entirely geared toward the salvation of the coming kingdom of God. The announced judgment removes the forces that oppose the realization of the promised salvation. Not damnation but salvation, not death but life is the real subject of his message. (b) Jesus has already granted participation in the future kingdom of God. His beatitude, which is handed down first, says to the poor: “yours is the kingdom of heaven.” In contrast to the subsequent beatitudes, it is not formulated in a futuristic way. Although one should not overestimate this linguistic difference between the future and present tense, given the special problems in reconstructing the original Aramaic text, it is also clear from other traditions of Jesus’ words and deeds that

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his promise of the kingdom of God was not given to the poor, the hungry, and the mourning merely as an announcement of a future event of salvation, but was already the promise of salvation and a participation in salvation now. By forgiving sins, Jesus was already removing what stood between God and humankind. Here we should not merely point out the few accounts in which Jesus expressly promised people the forgiveness of sins (Mt. 9.2–8 par.; and Lk. 7.36–50). We must consider his whole behavior toward sinners, his caring commitment to them, his acceptance of their invitations, his transgressing of the line between the righteous and the sinners. His reputation as “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” is based on a forgiving that was unconditional, one that did not presuppose the reformation of the sinner, but instead made repentance possible and marked the beginning of a new life. This is also shown by the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and above all the parable of the prodigal son (Lk. 15). In the reports about Jesus’ behavior toward sinners, it is noticeable that he not only pointed out the possibility of divine forgiveness but, through his caring commitment and his words, he himself also carried out the forgiving that is a matter for God to do. While Jesus shared meals with his disciples, with tax collectors, prostitutes, and various other people, he did not leave them in the isolation of those who were waiting for the future shared meals in the kingdom of God. Rather, he already gave them a share in this community. In community with him, the marriage joy of the future wedding feast was already present. That was his response to John’s disciples: “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they?” (Mt. 9.15 par.). By no means was Jesus devoted solely to the inward condition of the poor, the grieving, and those suffering in all sorts of ways, but rather he cared for the whole human being, including the person’s physical ailments, and he broke the chains of misery and the powers of corruption by which other human beings were mentally and physically enslaved. Numerous reports are handed down in the Gospels about the fact that Jesus performed wonderful healings and deliverances, and yes, even raised the dead and proved himself to be the Lord over the non-human forces of nature. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have salvation proclaimed to them” (Mt. 11.5 [S]; Lk. 7.22). Even if Jesus’ response to John the Baptizer is probably less intended to enumerate individual miracles than to bear witness to the fulfillment of the prophetic promise (Isa. 29.18f.; 35.5f.; 61.1), these words indicate, in connection with the many individual reports, that there was no misery out of which Jesus did not call people or from which he was unable to save them. These deeds of Jesus are called “mighty deeds” (δυνάμεις [dunameis]) in the Synoptic Gospels, and “signs” (σημεῖα [semeia]) in the Gospel of John. The accounts of Jesus’ mighty deeds, like those of Jesus’ proclamation, had a longer oral tradition behind them before they were

The Message

recorded in the New Testament texts. Even if aspects of miracle stories from the Old Testament, and especially from Jewish-Hellenistic literature, are included in these traditions—and even if, as Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Dibelius have shown in particular,[xii] the structure (the topic) of the Hellenistic miracle stories had an influence on the New Testament reports (despite Bultmann’s and Dibelius’ differing assessments of the individual New Testament narratives)—it is undeniable that Jesus performed healings and exorcisms and that they were of great importance within the whole of Jesus’ ministry. The following characteristics stand out in the oldest traditions:

The mighty deeds of Jesus were done for people who were in dire straits, who knew no way out of their predicament. In the Gospels, this is often emphasized by statements about the long duration of the illness and the futility of the previous efforts to cure it. The only prerequisite for Jesus’ healings was the misery of the people and their trust in his help. Jesus did not require any advance preparations on the part of those seeking his help, no confession of sins, no vows, not even monetary payment, which often played a role in healing in ancient times. He turned to people who were at the end of their abilities, some of whom could not even turn to him themselves but had to be carried to him by others. Some even remained well apart from him while others asked for healing on their behalf. Even for those not belonging to Israel, their status as an outsider was not an insurmountable barrier to calling out for healing, nor was it a barrier to Jesus’ healing action. Jesus did not heal through secret formulas or magic practices but through his word, which promised healing to the sick and called on them to continue living anew as healthy people. This word of his is also handed down as a command to the demons, by means of which he unveiled them, disempowered them, and forced them to leave the possessed. According to some reports, Jesus’ words of power were accompanied by a touch from his hand. It is striking that nowhere is it recorded that Jesus brought about these mighty deeds through his prayer to God. Instead, he healed suffering people directly through his word. The mighty deeds of Jesus were without exception deeds for the benefit of people—healing, saving deeds, deeds of lovingkindness. This also applies to the socalled nature miracle of the calming of the storm. There is not a single miracle recorded in the canonical Gospels (in contrast to the later Gnostic childhood stories) by which Jesus carried out punishments on people. On the contrary, he expressly rejected such a request from his disciples and “threatened” them (Lk. 9.55). This is not contradicted by the story of the curse that was put upon the barren fig tree (Mk. 11.13; v. 20f. par.), for what is at stake here is an action-parable that points to the future judgment of God on Israel. Jesus’ healings pointed to the reign of God he proclaimed. They were clarifications and actualizations of the salvation promised with the kingdom of God. In this sense, they accompanied his proclamation as a “sign.” Even if Jesus’ mighty deeds are only

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described this way in the Gospel of John, this description already applies to the reports in the Synoptic Gospels. The term sign means more than just a “parable.” Rather, what happened here were saving deeds done by Jesus. But it is not only about the deeds as such, no matter how important they were for each of the healed. They also served as signs of the promised, final elimination of the misery of this world, as signs of the new life promised in the beatitudes. As closely as Jesus’ mighty deeds are associated with the coming kingdom of God, it is striking that Jesus refused to legitimize himself through signs (Mt. 12.38–42; 16.1–4). This is all the more striking since he is the one whom the afflicted invoke and the one who carries out the healing. This rejection of signs on his part corresponds to the fact that according to the oldest layers of tradition Jesus did not make himself the subject of his preaching. His person was absorbed in the proclamation of the reign of God. So Jesus not only announced the future kingdom of God but also let others share in the future kingdom through his forgiveness, through his healing, and in the meals he shared with others. In his preaching and acting, the future kingdom of God was already breaking into this world. “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Mt. 12.28; cf. Lk. 11.20). In Jesus, the stronger has entered Satan’s sphere of influence (Mk. 3.24–27 par.). If the reign of God has already become present in Jesus’ words and deeds, then in the decision for or against him the division of the future judgment has already begun. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three” (Lk. 12.51f.; cf. v. 53 par.). In these divisions the future judgment is already indicated. Yes, according to the witness of the Gospel of John, judgment already takes place in the encounter with the earthly Jesus, namely, through the refusal to believe in him (3.18). But in this Gospel, too, the real subject and goal of Jesus’ actions is not judgment but salvation. “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (3.17). (c) What is the relationship between the statements that have been handed down concerning the kingdom as a present reality now and those concerning the futurity of the kingdom of God? Historical inquiry into Jesus’ original preaching about the kingdom of God has, in modern research, led to quite varied conclusions. Johannes Weiss, Albert Schweizer, and the so-called school of consistent eschatology have only recognized the announcement of the future kingdom of God as authentic.[xiii] They thus made an important correction to the misunderstanding of the coming of the kingdom, i. e., in the sense of history’s imminent progress, as has been particularly widespread since the Enlightenment. It is true that futuristic statements predominate in the Gospels. But the

The Message

special novelty in Jesus’ proclamation, in contrast to apocalypticism, namely, the nowness of the coming salvation, was misjudged by an interpretation that one-sidedly emphasized the future. In contrast to this, the presence of the kingdom of God was one-sidedly emphasized by others as the authentic content of Jesus’ proclamation, and the futuristic statements were either attributed to Jesus’ improper use of apocalyptic rhetoric or to a subsequent distortion of his message by the Jewish-Christian community. The present coming of the kingdom of God has been interpreted by the early Karl Barth, by Rudolf Bultmann, and the adherents of the so-called dialectical theology merely as the concrete, ever-new inbreaking of the word of God into the world.[xiv] C. H. Dodd has interpreted the kingdom as the new creation that is sunk into the world and that is experienced in the church through word and sacraments.[xv] Today both statements of Jesus, both the ones that focus on the future and those that focus on the present moment, are accepted as authentic by most New Testament scholars. Both types of statement are found in the same layers of tradition. It is also not possible to determine fluctuations between future-oriented and present-oriented statements in the course of Jesus’ life. Moreover, C. H. Dodd, as well as Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and other representatives of dialectical theology, at a later stage in their teaching, overcame the narrowness of their present-oriented eschatology and expressly recognized the eschatological dimension of Jesus’ proclamation. It is characteristic of this connection between the two types of statement—those focused on the future and those focused on the present—that there is also the possibility of interpreting the last sentence in the logion of Lk. 17.20f. in two different ways: “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’” Then follows a sentence that could be translated either as “For behold, the kingdom of God will (suddenly) be in your midst” or as “the kingdom of God is in your midst” (not, as Luther put it, “within you”). Both translations are possible from the assumed Aramaic original text. But even if the connection between the statements that focus on the future and those that focus on the present is recognized, this can be done by emphasizing the aspects differently. So today, even in ecumenical pronouncements, there is a weakening of the eschatological dimension of God’s coming and of the distinct difference of his kingdom from the world. The futurity is not disputed, but it fades to a distant horizon within which one’s gaze is focused one-sidedly on what is happening in the present. But the nowness in Jesus’ message is about the dawn of the future.

The differences between the future announced by Jesus and the presence of the kingdom of God that dawned in him are considerable. The forgiveness of sins was not yet the gift of the beatific vision of God, and earthly community was not yet the future community beyond the dividing line of death. Jesus’ mighty deeds liberated individuals from their misery, but they were not the end of human misery altogether. The mighty deeds were signs in the world. There was still ambiguity

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about whether Jesus was acting under divine or demonic authority. Only by faith were his deeds recognizable as a sign of the reign of God. And yet God’s kingdom has already dawned, for the center of the announced event of salvation has already become present in Jesus’ words and deeds. God removed what stood between him and humankind. He accepted sinners through Jesus. His fatherly love appeared in Jesus. Thus, in Jesus’ words and deeds, what is to come is already present—indeed, hidden in particularity, provisionality, and ambiguity, and yet it is nevertheless present in reality. Thus, just as the announcement of the future kingdom of God may not be weakened in favor of his present coming in Jesus’ work, so the statements about the present events may not be weakened in favor of the future of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is still hidden—hidden under the contrast of its present smallness and its future greatness (the parable of the mustard seed, Mk. 4.31–32 par.), as well as the present insignificance and the future universal establishment (the parable of the yeast, Mt. 13.33; cf. Lk. 13.20f.), hidden also under the present distortions (cf. the parable of the weeds and the wheat, Mt. 13.24–30). But the inbreaking that is hidden in Jesus’ work will be followed unstoppably by its visible consummation. When will the kingdom of God that has begun in secret be unveiled and fulfilled? When will the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come!,” be fulfilled? Jesus strongly emphasized the unpredictability and suddenness of the coming of the kingdom of God. In response to the question of the Pharisees about when the kingdom of God would come, his answer has been handed down: “The kingdom of God will not come in such a way that one could observe it” (Lk. 17.20 [L]). In response to the question of the disciples about the “when” of the coming judgment, he gave this answer: “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mk. 13.32). Even if the authenticity of this saying is disputed, it is certain that Jesus’ proclamation, in contrast to apocalypticism, contains no calculations about that future point in time. The onset of the Last Judgment and the establishment of the universal reign of God is attested to in ever-new images as an unexpected, surprising event. Like a bolt from the blue, like the deluge, like the rain of fire and sulfur on Sodom, like a burglar or a swooping vulture, or like death—it will be sudden. Because the timing of the coming is unknown, this exhortation is fitting: Watch! Be ready! The unexpected suddenness of the coming of the kingdom of God is also attested to in many parables. Jesus’ statements about the unpredictability and the nearness of the eschatological establishment of the kingdom of God have often been thought to be contradictory. Crucially important is the standpoint from which the question of the “when” of the revelation of the kingdom of God is discussed. The statements of Jesus must become contradictory if we think we can take a standpoint from which time can be surveyed from the side, as it were, and represented as a line on which we can plot the nowness, the nearness, and the distance of the kingdom of God as points

The Message

in time, and determine their relationship to each other. Such a location apart from time is in any case only possible to a limited extent for the imagination of people living historically in time. But it is completely impossible for someone who is affected by Jesus’ message, for his announcement of the coming of God was not only the announcement of an indefinitely distant event but the promise of this future breaking into the present moment and the call for an immediate decision. Between the present moment and the future, Jesus left no room for hesitation or reflection. He did not even leave time to bury one’s parent and say goodbye to the family (Lk. 9.59–61; cf. Mt. 8.21f.). In accepting or rejecting his message, in carrying out repentance and discipleship, or refusing to do so, the decision about membership in the future kingdom was already made. In hearing Jesus’ message, the distance between the nowness and the future lost its significance. The differences in time were not eliminated, for Jesus’ address met people in time, and the revelation of the kingdom of God was still to be expected as the end of time. But when one was struck by Jesus’ message concerning God’s kingdom, that was about something ultimate and conclusive. Even though the inbreaking and the fulfillment are separated in time, when looking ahead they are viewed as one urgent event. The chronological sequence of events was encompassed in Jesus’ speaking and acting, and the temporal distance between his public appearance and the future consummation was made insignificant. The apocalyptic schema of two aeons was thus ruptured in Jesus’ proclamation. Even if this aeon and the coming one are mentioned in individual logia of Jesus that have been handed down, the importance of the present aeon has already been taken away. Because the future kingdom was encountered in Jesus’ coming, one would be stepping aside from being affected by his call if one were to make the interval between his earthly work and the future revelation, as in apocalyptic, a topic for independent consideration or calculation. The response that corresponds to Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom of God does not consist in thinking about the time still to come, but in repentance, discipleship, and vigilance. Within the broad tradition of his announcement of the coming kingdom of God that is unpredictable, two sayings stand out in which the date of this event did not remain indefinite: “This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place” (Mk. 13.30); and “There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power” (Mk. 9.1). If one tries to relate the first saying to the race of the Jews or to the human race as a whole, the second saying unequivocally means the generation living at the same time as Jesus. The authenticity of both sayings is disputed. On the one hand, some have denied that Jesus spoke them, given that here, in contrast to numerous other statements, the future date has not remained uncertain. The origin of both sayings was sought in the early Christian community, which wanted to resist a slackening of the expectation of the parousia. On the other hand, some have argued for the

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authenticity of the sayings, given that similar words about the coming of the Son of Man have also been handed down, and it is precisely the non-fulfilment of these sayings, which was soon experienced, that speaks against the fact that they first arose in the post-Easter community. Be that as it may, Jesus certainly not only proclaimed the coming reign of God to those around him, but he also expected it for himself. If the sparsely attested words about the coming of the kingdom were still held to be authentic during the lifetime of some of Jesus’ contemporaries, this means first of all that Jesus—like the Old Testament prophets—saw what was coming for him in a foreshortened perspective. Whether one regards these words as an error on the part of Jesus depends on what importance one ascribes to the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus for the fulfillment of the kingdom of God. Karl Barth’s remarks on Mk. 9.1 and 13.30 fit with interpretations from the early church: If we find in the coming of the risen one, his coming in the Holy Spirit, and his coming at the end of the age three forms of his one new coming, for all their significant differences there need be no artificiality in explaining that these passages refer to the first and immediate form in which his coming did really begin in that generation as the Easter event and in which the two remaining forms are plainly delineated and intimated.9

The “nearness” of the kingdom of God is thus determined both by its future revelation and by its inbreaking presence in Jesus. It is therefore not simply a temporal concept but the urgent pressing forward of the fulfillment of God’s reign that is overcoming time. The unpredictability and the nearness of the future do not contradict each other, even if one recognizes each of the two without reservation and refuses to limit the unpredictability of the end by subordinating it to the temporal nearness. If one holds fast, at the same time, to the ignorance (which humans cannot overcome) about the temporal moment of the fulfillment and to Jesus’ present promise of this future event, then the expectation of the nearness of this event arises as an essential aspect of hastening toward this future. Precisely because the kingdom was announced by Jesus as a sudden, unpredictable event, expecting its nearness was the consistent attitude of those who accepted this message. Wherever the expectation of the kingdom of God has been alive in the history of Christianity, the expectation of its nearness has remained alive in recognizing the freedom of God who determines the day on which he will unveil and fulfill his kingdom. It belongs necessarily to the expectation of God’s reign in every age.

9 Barth, KD, IV/3.1.340. [CD, IV/3.1.295 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

The Message

3. The Coming Son of Man Jesus not only announced the coming kingdom of God but also the coming Son of Man, who will carry out the final judgment with divine authority and bring redemption. Many sayings of Jesus about the Son of Man have been handed down in all four Gospels and can be found within the Synoptic Gospels, both in Mark and in the Sayings Source “Q,” as well as in the unique material that is particular to Matthew and Luke. It is very striking that in all the Gospels the Son of Man is only mentioned in the words of Jesus, but not in the words of the disciples or the people. Outside of the Gospels, too, Jesus is not referred to as the Son of Man, with the exception of the Lukan account of the vision of the dying Stephen (Acts 7.55) and the two quotations from Daniel 7.13 in Revelation 1.13 and 14.14. In any case, no confessions, acclamations, or prayers of the post-Easter community that have been handed down in the New Testament Scriptures have glorified or called upon Jesus with the name of the Son of Man. The proclamation of the kingdom of God and the announcement of the Son of Man are not directly linked in Jesus’ words. For example, the parables of the kingdom of God do not speak of the Son of Man. But it is obvious that both announcements correspond to a high degree: the judgment that will dawn with the reign of God is the same that the Son of Man will carry out. The new community of salvation in the kingdom of God is the same into which the Son of Man will gather those who are scattered throughout the world. The appearance of the Son of Man is to be expected as a universal event, as is the revelation of the kingdom. As in Jesus’ preaching about the kingdom of God, the Jewish-nationalistic features are also missing in his words about the Son of Man. He spoke of the appearing of the Son of Man not as the restoration of the Davidic kingdom but as the dawning of an entirely different community. If Jesus promised that the kingdom of God was at hand, so too was the appearing of the Son of Man. In addition, individual words regarding the very imminent expectation of the Son of Man have also been handed down: “You will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (Mt. 10.23). “There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (Mt. 16.28). At the same time, however, Jesus also announced that the appearing of the Son of Man would be unpredictable and sudden, like the coming of the reign of God. “For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day” (Lk. 17.24). Apocalyptic calculations are also missing here. The warning applies here too: “Be alert at all times” (Lk. 21.36). The reason why Jesus’ words about the kingdom of God and about the Son of Man are so loosely and indirectly connected in the Gospels may be due to the fact that each of these two announcements is about one and the same eschatological salvific action by

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God. The Son of Man will come as the instrument used by God to establish the reign of God. The expectation of a coming one sent by God, who would liberate Israel, who would establish justice and peace, was widespread in Jesus’ cultural environment. Above all, there was the hope of a descendant of David whom God would accept as his son and appoint as king to judge Israel’s enemies and to establish Israel’s rule. Compared to the expectation of this messianic king, the idea of the messianic high priest, which had played a major role in the two centuries before Jesus’ birth, receded into the background. A coming prophet at the end of time was also expected, especially the return of Elijah. In addition, in special apocalyptic circles there was the expectation of the “Son of Man.” The difference in the conceptions about the coming one cannot be overlooked, even if they were connected with each other in detail, perhaps through an ordering of over and under (e. g., Elijah as the forerunner of the Messiah).

In the midst of these expectations, it was natural for the question to arise as to whether Jesus was the coming one, and the traditions according to which he has been invoked by some with messianic titles, such as the son of David, may be reliable. But Jesus did not proclaim himself the Messiah. In the Synoptic Gospels, the title of Christ is found in Jesus’ own words only in Mk. 9.41 and Mt. 23.10, and is probably secondary here. To be sure, according to the Synoptic tradition, Jesus did not reject Peter’s confession of him as the Christ (according to Mt. 16.17, he even blessed Peter with praise for this confession), but he forbade the disciples to pass on this knowledge (Mk. 8.30 par.). Even in the Gospel of John, the title of Christ is very rarely found in Jesus’ own words (Jn. 4.25f.; 17.3). It is even more striking that there are only two passages in the Synoptic Gospels (Mt. 11.27 par. Lk. 10.22 and Mk. 13.32 par. Mt. 24.36)—in contrast to the later Gospel of John—in which Jesus speaks of himself as the “Son”—and these are all the more striking because the account of the heavenly voice speaking of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son” (Mk. 1.11 [S] par. and 9.7 par.), has been handed down in all three Gospels at the beginning and at the center of Jesus’ working, namely, in connection with his baptism and his transfiguration. Nowhere did Jesus describe himself as the expected “son of David,” nor even as the messianic high priest. Yes, in the Synoptic tradition of Jesus’ words there are several appeals to Isaiah’s statements about the Servant of God, which can hardly be attributable to a post-Easter interpretation. But Jesus also did not proclaim himself to be the expected prophet. The expectation of the coming Elijah he viewed as having already been fulfilled in the coming of John the Baptizer (according to Mt. 11.14; cf. Mk. 9.13).

Jesus only announced the coming Son of Man, and this may have been done less in public than within the circle of the disciples. What did this term mean in Jesus’ cultural context?

The Message

First, the term son of man simply meant “human being,” both the human race and an individual human being in that person’s creaturely distinction from God, that person’s creaturely dependence on God, and that person’s creaturely responsibility to God. If an individual human is called a son of man, it does not indicate that person’s individual peculiarity, but only the fact that the person belongs to the human race: one among many. There are indications in the Gospels that some of Jesus’ words about the Son of Man have been understood in this most basic sense. In Jesus’ context, the designation Son of Man was also known from God’s address to the prophet Ezekiel. Here Son of Man denotes the person who is specially called by God and taken into service. However, in the Gospels there are no references to this designation from Ezekiel either in the words of Jesus or in statements about him. “One like a son of man” (Dan. 7.13f.) was then proclaimed in the book of Daniel, and this passage is referred to several times in the Gospels. The image-laden speeches in the Ethiopian book of 1 Enoch (37–71) and that of 4 Ezra (13), two Jewish apocalypses, dealt with the future Son of Man. The former may have been written in the century before the birth of Jesus, and the latter in the century after. The notion of the Son of Man is thus only narrowly attested to within the Jewish literature of that time. In addition, it is by no means uniform. Daniel 7.27 thus points to “the people of the holy ones of the Most High,” to whom the reign of the “Ancient One” is bestowed and which replaces the world empires that are beheld in the form of animals. In 1 Enoch, the focus is on the final judgment executed by the person of the Son of Man, and in 4 Ezra it is on the coming conqueror of the cosmic and hostile earthly powers and the redeemer of his own. First Enoch speaks of a heavenly pre-existence, and in 4 Ezra we find the language of the Son of Man rising out of the sea, while in the book of Daniel there is no reflection on his existence before his heavenly enthronement. In any case, it is about the expectation of one who is distinct from God, but who, in his created form, is elevated by God in a special way. In contrast to the expectation of a this-worldly national messiah, here the universal eschatological significance of the coming one stands in the foreground. It is likely that the expectation of the Son of Man was alive only within limited circles of Judaism at the time of Jesus. The fact that the Gospels nowhere report that Jesus was greeted or called upon by the people as the Son of Man also speaks for its limited dissemination. Despite numerous history-of-religion hypotheses, the origin of the apocalyptic expectation of the Son of Man remains unclear. Jesus adopted the designation of the coming Son of Man, but there are many differences between his announcement of the Son of Man and Jewish-apocalyptic notions. For example, in contrast to the book of Daniel, Jesus spoke of the Son of Man as a person. However, one must consider the possibility that the collective understanding of the Son of Man in the book of Daniel might have been preceded by a personal understanding, but in any case that is what soon followed. Conversely, individual statements of Jesus have been handed down which speak of the Son of Man so generally that they do not rule out the collective understanding. The most profound difference, however, is that, according to the tradition of all the Gospels,

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Jesus not only spoke of the future Son of Man but also of the Son of Man as present on this earth. There is no known occurrence in Jewish apocalyptic literature for these statements. It is true that the book of Enoch speaks of a pre-existence of the appearing of the Son of Man at the end of history, but here it is a question of a heavenly pre-existence, not of an earthly existence before his appearing in glory. Finally, the notion that suffering would precede the public appearance of the Son of Man is completely alien to the apocalyptic expectation of the Son of Man, even where the Son of Man is described as the Servant of God.

Just as in Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God, the words about the present Son of Man are the decisive new element in his proclamation of the Son of Man. His statements about the present Son of Man are even less traceable to Jewish expectations of that time than his present promise of the kingdom of God. Since the designation Son of Man could also simply mean “human,” and since the apocalyptic expectation of the Son of Man was not generally widespread in Jesus’ cultural context, nor uniformly understood, and since Jesus’ statements about the Son of Man also differed in important respects from Jewish-apocalyptic expectations, one must assume that his words about the Son of Man sounded enigmatic to those around him and were not easily understandable. They were so radically different from apocalyptic expectations that ultimately they could not be understood from this history but only from Jesus’ own history. But Jesus did not proclaim himself the Son of Man. He only spoke of him in the third person, as if he was referring to someone else, and we must keep in mind that at that time it was not normal to speak of oneself in the third person. The tradition of the Gospels regarding Jesus’ words about the Son of Man thus poses a multitude of problems for historical inquiry: the relationship between the apocalyptic and general meaning of the designation Son of Man, the relationship between the statements about the future and the statements about the present, and the relationship between the Son of Man and Jesus himself. There is also the question of the reasons why Jesus avoided other designations for the coming one and only announced the coming of the Son of Man. The most radical attempt to solve this set of problems was the assumption by Julius Wellhausen and Wilhelm Bousset that the sayings of the Son of Man in the Gospels do not go back to Jesus, but rather had their origin in the Jewish-Christian community, since the designation of Jesus as the representative of the heavenly kingdom announced in the book of Daniel presupposes his resurrection and the expectation of his parousia.[xvi] What speaks against this hypothesis, which is occasionally put forth again today, is that the Gospels speak exclusively of the Son of Man in the words of Jesus and that, in contrast to the confessions of Jesus as Christ, Son of God, and Lord, there is not a single confession of Jesus as the Son of Man that has been handed down from the early Christian community. When considering this hypothesis, it remains incomprehensible why, in some of the Gospels’ sayings about the

The Message

Son of Man, a distinction is made between Jesus who is speaking and the Son of Man who is announced by him, if these sayings have their origin in the post-Easter recognition of Jesus as the Son of Man. The assumption of a post-Easter doctrine of the Son of Man leads to such great difficulties that the most obvious thing to do is to assume that the historical roots of the words about the Son of Man in the Gospels are in the words of Jesus, without thereby declaring that every single word is authentic, and thus to presuppose that Jesus announced not only the kingdom of God but also the coming Son of Man.

Here, too, the starting point is (a) the announcement of the future Son of Man in order then (b) to take up the present statements, and finally (c) to ask about the relationship between the two groups of statements. (a) Jesus announced the future Son of Man as a supernatural appearance by which humanity will be encountered by God. The weight that this announcement has within Jesus’ message becomes clear when one considers that the expectation of the time of salvation, both in the Old Testament prophetic preaching and in Jesus’ cultural context, was by no means always connected with the expectation of a savior sent by God. In Jesus’ preaching, however, his coming was of crucial importance. When the Son of Man appears, God’s judgment will come upon humanity. “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mk. 8.38; cf. Lk. 12.8f.). It is disputed whether the Son of Man is announced here only as a witness in the divine court, or as a judge himself. Given the other words about his coming judgment, the latter seems more likely. The fact that Jesus announced the Son of Man as a judge has been widely handed down, e. g., in the comparisons between his future revelation and the judgment that came upon the people in Noah’s time and upon Sodom (Lk. 17.26ff.; cf. Mt. 24.37–39). The separation within humankind that is brought about by the judgment of the Son of Man is particularly emphasized in the Gospel of Matthew: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats” (Mt. 25.31f.) Then some will go “into eternal punishment,” but others will go “into eternal life” (v. 46). But judgment and divorce are not ends in themselves in the work of the coming one. His judgment is about redemption; his separation is about a new community. The Son of Man will “gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven” (Mk. 13.27). A new community is also promised in the special assurance given to the disciples: “When the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Mt. 19.28; cf. Lk. 22.30). The ultimate salvation, liberation unto life, is the real aim of the judgment. With the appearance of the Son of Man, the end of human history, which has been dominated by sin, misery, and

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death, is announced. In the Synoptic apocalypse, the words of Jesus are also placed in the context of the cosmos, in response to Old Testament expectations. “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory” (Mk. 13.24, 26 par.). As in Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God, his proclamation of the Son of Man lacks illustrative explanations that were characteristic of Jewish apocalyptic. Even in the Synoptic apocalypse (Mk. 13 par.), a peculiar reticence in the depiction of the final event is striking. The statements are aimed entirely at the expectation of the coming Son of Man, but not at his vivid description, nor toward an illustration of the new human situation to be expected from him. Jesus spoke of the coming Son of Man as of someone else, someone different from himself. According to the Synoptic Gospels, he did not announce that he himself was the coming Son of Man (although his confession to the Jewish high council, which is handed down in the accounts of the passion, is initially disregarded here). But even if he spoke of the future Son of Man as someone who was other than himself, he still closely related the behavior of the people toward himself and the future judgment of the Son of Man upon these people. Whoever confesses Jesus, the coming Son of Man will confess that person, and whoever denies Jesus, the coming Son of Man will deny that one (cf. Lk. 12.8f. par; if instead of “Son of Man,” the “I” of Jesus has been handed down in Mt. 10.32f., this tradition could be secondary). According to Mt. 25.31–36 as well, the coming Son of Man will carry out the judgment, based on the behavior of the people toward Jesus, who is present to them in the least of his brothers and sisters. (b) But numerous words of Jesus have also been handed down in which there is talk of the Son of Man who is present on earth. In these statements about his earthly work, the aspects of power and glory, with which the future coming one will confront the history of humanity, are missing. The Son of Man who is present on the earth is not an overpowering but a lowly figure. Most of the words about the Son of Man working on earth have been handed down in arguments between Jesus’ opponents and himself—arguments with the one who comes in glory will be impossible. In contrast to the coming Son of Man, the following is true of the Son of Man who is present on the earth: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Lk. 9.58; cf. Mt. 8.20). He also does not stick to the well-regarded and powerful. Instead, this is true of him: “the Son of Man came eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners” (Mt. 11.19 par. Lk. 7.34). He is defenseless in his environment. This is expressed most clearly in the words about the suffering of the Son of Man. It is true that the statements about the present Son of Man not only speak of his earthly powerlessness and homelessness but also of his authority: “The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mk. 2.10 par.). “The Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath” (Mk. 2.28 par.). And yet, the exercise of this authority does not take place as a judgment upon the people, nor as the end of world history. Rather, there

The Message

is constant talk of the helping care given by the earthly Son of Man. The statements about the authority of the present Son of Man are concentrated in the words: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” (Mk. 10.45 par. Mt. 20.28). “The Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” (Lk. 19.10). While Jesus spoke of the coming Son of Man as of another, the statements about the present Son of Man contain an indirect identification of Jesus with him. It is true that in these statements Jesus also spoke of the Son of Man in the third person. The fact that he meant himself by that, however, does not generally result from the individual word about the Son of Man as such, but from the context in which he spoke it, especially from the connection with his actions. This is true, e. g., with respect to the passage: “The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mk. 2.10 par.). The fact that Jesus speaks here of himself is obvious, since he himself had just forgiven the sins of the paralytic man. This is also true for the passage: “The Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath” (Mk. 2.28 par.). This statement was preceded by the report that Jesus had allowed his disciples to pluck the ears of corn on the sabbath. However, the identification of himself with the Son of Man named by him remains indirect because the designation son of man also simply meant a human being, and such sentences could be understood as general statements about human beings. Perhaps the reaction of the bystanders to the healing of the paralytic is to be understood in this sense, as it is handed down in the Gospel of Matthew (but differently in the parallels): “They were filled with awe, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to human beings” (Mt. 9.8). (c) How do the statements about the future and the present Son of Man relate to each other? The differences are similar to those between the statements of Jesus about the future and present reign of God. Just as the future revelation of God’s reign “in power” is juxtaposed to the hidden inbreaking of the reign of God now, so the future appearing of the Son of Man in glory is juxtaposed to the Son of Man who is hidden now. But the differences here are even more profound and puzzling because of the ambiguity in the concept of the Son of Man, and because of the peculiar indirectness of the connection between Jesus who proclaimed and the Son of Man who was proclaimed. These differences have often been thought to be contradictions, which some have attempted to resolve, as with those in Jesus’ preaching about the kingdom of God, by one-sidedly emphasizing either the future element in the statements or the present element. Early on in the ancient church, the original eschatological-apocalyptic meaning of the title Son of Man was no longer taken into account, and for many centuries the designation Son of Man was understood to refer to Jesus according to his human nature, in contrast to the divine Person and nature that were referred to by the title Son of God. In the dogma of the ancient church, the concept of human nature was primarily determined by the incarnation, not by the difference between the earthly and the future Jesus. But when the apocalyptic origin of the notion of

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the Son of Man was rediscovered in modern times and brought to the fore in consistent eschatology, the statements about the future Son of Man in the Gospels were emphasized one-sidedly, and those that mention the present Son of Man were thought to be dubious. In contrast to Wellhausen and Bousset, Rudolf Bultmann and some in his school (e. g., Günther Bornkamm, Heinz Eduard Tödt, Ferdinand Hahn) did not deny that Jesus spoke of the Son of Man, but they only recognized as authentic those statements that speak of the future Son of Man.[xvii] The present-oriented statements, together with the announcements of suffering, were either traced back to the post-Easter community, or interpreted as Jesus’ statements about human beings in general, but not about the eschatological Son of Man. Now it is obvious that the words of Jesus about the Son of Man have undergone changes in the tradition handed down by the post-Easter community. In the Synoptic Gospels, for example, it is noticeable that the phrase the Son of Man is repeatedly replaced by the word I in the parallel tradition of the same saying, or conversely, the I is replaced by the Son of Man (cf., e. g., Lk. 12.8 with Mt. 10.32). Which formulation is the older one or even the original? In the context of these basic features of dogmatics, it is not possible to go into the highly nuanced, hardly surveyable, and by no means closed discussion about Jesus’ words about the Son of Man. It should only be pointed out that the coexistence of statements about the future and statements about the present can be found in both the Gospel of Mark and the tradition of the sayings source Q, and they must therefore be regarded as at least a very old tradition. A more-detailed analysis of the arguments for the one-sided recognition of the originality of only the futuristic statements shows that this assumption is disproportionately determined by an unconvincing handling of the postulate of consistency, to which the individual analyses of the texts are subordinated. However, if one only recognized as authentic the statements about the future Son of Man, then an even greater difficulty arises, namely, that Jesus—similar to John the Baptizer—understood himself merely as a forerunner of the coming one. But this would contradict his claim that through his speaking and acting people receive God’s forgiveness, and that through his beatitudes the ultimate divine salvation takes place. In contrast to Bultmann and his school, other researchers, such as Julius Schniewind, Oscar Cullmann, Joachim Jeremias, and Leonhard Goppelt, as well as nearly all the AngloSaxon New Testament researchers, have come to the conclusion that the words about the Son of Man in the Gospels are based on Jesus’ words about both the future and the present, although the question of their authenticity remains to be further clarified with respect to the details.[xviii] Linguistic and redaction-historical considerations support the assumption of the original coexistence of Jesus’ future-oriented and present-oriented statements about the Son of Man, and also the original coexistence of his statements about the future-oriented and present-oriented reign of God. Since the announcement of the coming kingdom of God and the coming Son of Man is about the same eschatological act of God, it is improbable that only the present-oriented reign of God, but not that of the Son of Man, would have been attested to in Jesus’ proclamation.

The Message

What is the relationship between the future-oriented and the present-oriented statements about the Son of Man? With the reference to the parallel in Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom of God (cf. 481), this question has not yet been fully answered, for the relationship between what is to come in the future and what is now present is not in every respect the same in the proclamation of the kingdom of God and in that of the Son of Man. The directions of movement are different in the two announcements. Even though it is clear that one and the same divine working is announced in the statements about the coming reign of God and about the coming Son of Man, the following difference still remains to be observed: The announcement of the kingdom of God is about the coming reign of him who is Lord from eternity. Even if the world revolts against him, his reign has not been overthrown. When, by redeeming and judging, he ends the rebellion and misery of human beings and realizes his kingdom, he does not first become the Lord, but, as he who is the Lord, he establishes his reign and renews the broken community between humans and himself by giving them forgiveness and new life. By contrast, the power of the Son of Man is not eternal. Instead, it is bestowed on him by God in an act at the end of history, and he is established in it by God. According to Dan. 7.12f., the Son of Man does not assume power for himself, but rather he is brought before the “Ancient of Days” and receives his power from him. In the other apocalyptic texts, too, the power of the Son of Man is a power bestowed by God. In Jesus’ words about the earthly Son of Man there are no indications that he himself would end his lowliness and reach after the glory of the coming one. Thus the coming of the kingdom of God and the coming of the Son of Man take place from different starting points. The reign of God breaks forth from eternity into this world. But the Son of Man will be transferred from this world into the future glory. The movement of the coming of the reign of God and that of the coming of the Son of Man encounter each other in their different directions, and it is precisely in this way that God’s salvific commitment to humanity takes place. Through the divine lifting of the Son of Man out of lowliness into glory, and through his appearing at the Last Judgment, the kingdom of God—which is now hidden and yet is breaking into the world—is revealed and fulfilled. From all this it follows that Jesus spoke both of the future and of the present Son of Man, and in the present-oriented statements not only of human beings in general but also—despite all the ambiguity of the word—of the same Son of Man, whose coming appearance in glory he announced. We further presuppose that Jesus taught a close connection between people’s behavior toward him and the future behavior of the Son of Man to people, and that he indirectly identified himself with the earthly Son of Man. Then it seems reasonable to assume that Jesus lived in anticipation of a divine act by which he would be established in the future glory of the Son of Man.

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The relationship of the earthly Jesus to the coming Son of Man has been interpreted very differently in modern theology. Although he spoke of the Son of Man as of another person, he was not merely his forerunner. But it is also questionable whether the description as “one who will be designated Son of Man” (Johannes Weiss, Albert Schweizer, and Rudolf Otto) corresponds to the use of the same concept of the Son of Man in Jesus’ future-oriented and present-oriented statements.[xix] The work of the Son of Man in earthly humility and his future appearance in glory belong so inseparably together in their sequence that Jesus can be acknowledged as the Son of Man not only after his humiliation but in the whole course of his path, that is, in his humiliation and in the glory of the exalted one.

4. The Call to Repentance Jesus called for repentance on the part of those to whom he proclaimed the kingdom of God. Even if this word (μετάνοια [metanoia]) and the associated verb (μετανοέω [metanoeō]) are not found very often in the words of Jesus that have been handed down,[xx] they nevertheless describe in a central way the claim with which Jesus encountered people, for he called for not only the recognition of sin but a turning away from it, and for not only a change of mind but to leave one’s former path and to follow a new one, namely the “narrow way” of obedience to God (Mt. 7.14). In doing so, he required not only good works but the whole person. He commanded this repentance with an urgency that allowed for no excuse or delay. Of first importance was seeking the kingdom of God. With his call to repentance, Jesus intervened deeply in people’s lives. He called them out of their unquestioned assumptions about family, work, and possessions, and even out of the customary duties of piety. This is how he responded to the person who said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father”: “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God” (Lk. 9.59–60; cf. Mt. 8.21f.). These are indeed answers that Jesus gave to those whom he had called to accompany him as his disciples, students, and witnesses on his way of proclaiming and healing. Not everyone to whom he spoke was called to follow him in this sense. Handed down in the tradition are also warm interactions between Jesus and others whom he left in their place and in their vocation. However, if one considers the demands Jesus placed on everyone, then it becomes clear that those who heeded Jesus’ call could not remain in the same relationship to their family, to their property, nor to custom and law as before. The half-measures in their relationship to God were revealed to everyone. All were required to separate themselves from what prevented them from obeying God. The radical saying applied to everyone: “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell” (Mk. 9.43–47 par.). In this sense, this saying is also applicable: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, cannot be my disciple”

The Message

(Lk. 14.26; cf. Mt. 10.37). “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Mt. 16.25). With his call to repentance, Jesus thus called into question people’s former way of life in an unprecedented way. He unveiled it in its opposition to God and called for its surrender. But in contrast to John the Baptizer, the foundation for this preaching of repentance was not God’s judgment but the kingdom of God, the salvation that had already begun to break through in Jesus’ work. According to Mark, Jesus’ proclamation began with the words: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news” (1.15; cf. Mt. 4.17). According to Luke, Jesus’ public work begins with the proclamation of the fulfillment of the prophetic promise (Lk. 4.17–21). This foundation corresponds to the fact that in both Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain Jesus’ beatitudes precede his commands. In the beatitudes, however, he not only announced the kingdom of God but promised it. All this means that with his caring commitment to sinners, Jesus preempted their repentance. According to the witness of the Gospel of John as well, the presupposition for all his commands is the love of God that has appeared in him. Because salvation is the presupposition of Jesus’ preaching of repentance, it is less a demand than an invitation, and its radicality is the encouragement to accept salvation without reservation. Jesus’ call to the narrow way opens up the vastness of the kingdom of heaven. Because the kingdom of God that has dawned in Jesus is the foundation, repentance is joy. Characteristic of it is a spontaneous exuberance, as expressed, e. g., according to the witness of Luke, when the great female sinner, who was overcome by Jesus’ mercy, kissed his feet and anointed them with costly oil (7.37–50), and when the tax collector Zacchaeus, overcome when Jesus stopped to talk with him, came to him, confessed his guilt, and announced more-than-sufficient reparations (19.8). The striking naturalness with which most of those whom Jesus called as disciples immediately left their own, without question or objection, and followed him, should therefore be understood in the sense that in Jesus they encountered not only a claim but a blessing that overshadowed everything else. Joy was characteristic of Jesus’ community with his disciples. This joy of repentance and discipleship participated in the “joy in heaven” (Lk. 15.7 et passim), just as Jesus’ meals with his own participated in the rejoicing of the future banquet in the kingdom of God. Above all, it was the sinners and the poor who shared in this joy. However, the rich man “became sorrowful” and did not follow Jesus (Mk. 10.17–22), and many of the pious, in their enmity and hatred, closed themselves off to joy. Jesus called individual people to repentance in a thoroughly concrete way of address that struck them at the center of their life. But his general parables and teaching statements, in which he spoke about repentance and the required new behavior, also struck people with an immediacy and a power that is still effective today. That is why Jesus’ commands evade systematization in a peculiar way. Again

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and again he breaks through what one thinks one has understood and leads one down paths that one does not foresee. Of course, this does not mean that his calling was arbitrary. It was always about obedience to God in the dual orientation of behavior toward God and toward people. So it makes sense to start from the double commandment of love to gain a more precise understanding of his commands: “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and will all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself ’” (Mk. 12.29–31 par.). Jesus was not the first to unite into a double command the two Old Testament commandments about loving God and loving the neighbor. This combination had already taken place in Hellenistic Judaism. According to these two commandments, love is to be directed toward a completely different Thou: toward God and toward the neighbor. But both commandments are given by God. Loving one’s neighbor is also about obedience to God. Both commandments of love therefore belong together so inseparably that the refusal to love one’s neighbor is also the refusal to love God. The double commandment of love is handed down in the Gospels in various contexts. But in each case the passage bears witness that Jesus proclaimed this double commandment as the sum and center of all God’s commandments. What did he require as love of God (a), and as love of neighbor (b), and how do these requirements relate to the Old Testament law (c)? (a) Jesus’ call to repentance was the call to accept his message about the kingdom of God and thus to have faith. The whole of Jesus’ command could be concentrated in the call: “Do not fear; only believe” (Mk. 5.36 par. Lk. 8.50). In the tradition there are not only numerous words of encouragement for people to have faith, words of acknowledgment where Jesus found faith, and words of rebuke in view of little faith, but beyond this, in all of Jesus’ requirements is found the commandment to have faith, namely, the commandment to acknowledge the divine salvation and claim that are contained in his words. The fact that the words about faith that have been handed down in the first three Gospels are essentially original and were not first inserted by the Christian community, is indicated above all by the fact that Jesus—in contrast to the post-Easter faith of the church and also in contrast to the Gospel of John—did not call people to believe in him (the exceptions of Mt. 18.6 and Mk. 9.42 are probably secondary). He called people to accept his message of the kingdom of God and of God’s fatherly goodness. It was not just a matter of agreeing with his teaching, but of trusting that God acts and will act toward people as Jesus proclaimed—that God will realize the kingdom that was promised and conveyed by Jesus. Jesus’ words about faith can be found above all in his call to prayer and in his responses to the cry for help from those who were suffering.

The Message

Jesus taught how one ought to pray: For those who have accepted his message, the response that Jesus commanded is concentrated in the Lord’s Prayer. They may call upon the Father proclaimed by Jesus as their Father with the familiarity contained in the Aramaic form of address, Abba. The primary petitions for the sanctification of the divine name and for the coming of his kingdom had been used in the piety of earlier Judaism, but now they have taken on a new meaning. God’s kingdom has dawned in Jesus’ words and deeds. The prayer is for the revelation and consummation of what has begun in secret. Then also the dishonoring of the divine name will be ended, and the glorification of God, for which the universe was created, will be fully realized. Then his will will be done, not only in heaven but also on earth. All subsequent petitions are determined by this coming consummation. They are about the protection of those waiting on the way to the consummation: about daily bread, the forgiveness of sins, and God’s help in the trials that precede the coming of the kingdom. Beyond the third petition in the shorter and probably original version in the Gospel of Luke (11.2–4), the Gospel of Matthew (Mt. 6.9–13) has added: “But deliver us from evil” [RSV]. In this prayer Jesus provided guidance for all prayer and at the same time showed the limits beyond which prayer becomes a selfish desire and an abusive entitlement. The breadth in which Jesus gave prayer the promise of being answered is allencompassing: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you….If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Mt. 7.7–11 par. Lk. 11.9–13). “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mk. 11.24 [S]; cf. Mt. 21.22). How faith prays and gains what is prayed for is made very concrete in the reports of the cries for help with which the sufferers and those close to them importuned Jesus. There were people whose previous attempts to rid themselves of their sickness had failed, whose hopes had been dashed, and who found themselves utterly without recourse. The precondition for their faith was their encounter with Jesus, whether with him personally or with rumors about him, on which basis they sought him. Their faith leaps over the visible power of the sickness, the futility of their previous attempts at healing, and the experience of being at their limit. Faith also is not offended by either Jesus’ ordinariness or the controversial nature of his words and deeds. Faith, too, will not allow itself to be rejected by Jesus’ “No.” Instead, the Canaanite woman pushed through Jesus’ “No” to arrive at his “Yes” by affirming his “No” and yet not letting go of him (Mt. 15.21–28; cf. Lk. 18.1–8). By overcoming everything that visibly speaks against it, faith clings to Jesus and expects help from him. In this way, faith is a decision by which believers expect the whole of their existence from Jesus. A grasping takes place here in which the one who is grasping is nothing, and the one who is grasped is everything. Faith is an action in which

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God becomes the actor, and the believer becomes the recipient—an activity of the human being that is at the same time the ultimate passivity. Hence, Jesus’ statement to the blind man, “Your faith has saved you” (Mk. 10.52 par.), does not contradict the fact that only God is able to bring the help, for faith is the reception of God’s action. In this sense, the following statement also applies: “All things can be done for the one who believes” (Mk. 9.23). Faith’s dependence on the divine is made most acute in the cry: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mk. 9.24). All reports agree that faith receives what it asks of Jesus: healing of sickness and deliverance from the powers of corruption. It was not only about the healing of this earthly life but about signs of the dawn of the reign of God, the caring commitment of God, who, through Jesus, ends the powers that overcome people. It is peculiar that Jesus explicitly cites the Old Testament commandment to love God with all one’s heart, and yet, according to the Synoptics, he himself, in his own words, did not call upon people to love God. The response to God’s salvific action that Jesus called for was faith and praying in faith. If one understands this requirement as Jesus’ interpretation of the Old Testament commandment, then it means that we love God when we trust him as children trust their own father, always expect new gifts of his love from him, and praise him for them. (b) In contrast to the love of God, Jesus called for love of the neighbor, not only by quoting the Old Testament commandment but also in his own words. This requirement is also contained in Jesus’ instructions where there is no explicit mention of love for the neighbor, e. g., in his command to forgive. The commandment to love guides all his instructions for behaving toward other human beings. The special character of this commandment becomes clear when one begins with the question: Toward which people did he call for this loving commitment? “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same…” (Lk. 6.32–34; cf. Mt. 5.46). It is not the relative or the friend or the social equal who is the neighbor. Others are closer, and caring commitment to them often means a break with family and previous friends. Jesus calls for us to care for the poor, the wretched, those who have fallen among thieves, in other words, those from whom nothing in return can be expected. You need to help, to lend, to give. To give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, to shelter strangers, to dress the naked, to care for the sick, and to visit prisoners—these are the required deeds of love. Jesus describes the least of these as his brothers, with whom he identifies himself. The decision in the final judgment will be made with respect to the behavior toward them (Mt. 25.31–46). Jesus calls for us to care for our opponents: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Lk. 6.27ff.; cf. Mt. 5.44). He forbids hatred, castigation, judgment. He calls for self-examination: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your

The Message

own eye? …[F]irst take the log out of your own eye” (Lk. 6.41f. par. Mt. 7.3–5). He calls for reconciliation with the opponent (Mt. 5.23–26). At the center of all these requirements stands the command to forgive enemies and to ask them for forgiveness. If the same person “sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive” (Lk. 17.4). Jesus’ commandment to love one’s enemy applies regardless of whether or not this love is reciprocated by the enemy. Even if the opponent does not ask for forgiveness and refuses the promise of forgiveness, the command to forgive that person remains in force. Thus, in another tradition, Jesus’ instruction to forgive one’s neighbor seven times, even seventy times, presupposes no repentance and no request for forgiveness on the part of the one who has offended the person (Mt. 18.21f.). The enemy is to be loved by renouncing the retaliatory use of similarly hostile measures. Jesus sets no limits or conditions for the love of the neighbor. “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt” (Lk. 6.29 par. Mt. 5.39bf.). The issue here is always a matter of outrageous aggression, followed by the requirement to love. The behavior called for by Jesus is not merely accepting and yielding to the aggression. Rather, the enemy is, as it were, overtaken by this reaction of love. The object of the opponent’s enmity is taken away; it is to be drowned in love, as it were. The commandment to love one’s enemies reaches its greatest intensification in Jesus’ requirement not to resist evil (Mt. 5.39a). Such non-resistance is not about approving evil, nor about accepting its requirements, but about opening up a space in which it is to be destroyed as a result of the lack of resistance. All of this makes it clear that in Jesus’ commandment the neighbor is not just the other. Rather, it is about becoming a neighbor oneself, caring for others as a neighbor, and acting toward them as a neighbor. In this sense, when Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?,” he answered it in the parable of the Good Samaritan, not by referring to the man who was mistreated by the robbers but rather by asking the counter-question, “Who became a neighbor to the one who was attacked by the robbers?” (Lk. 10.36 [S]). The commandment to love the neighbor bids one to overcome on one’s own initiative the distance separating oneself from other human beings and to take them seriously as neighbors, that one becomes a neighbor, even if the other persists in being hostile, refuses to accept one’s love, and seems to remain most distant. Recognizing one’s neighbor and caring for one’s neighbor are inseparable in Jesus’ commandment. In this way, Jesus broke through the moral standards by which alienation, neglect, and enmity are justified in one way or another in any society. He also rejected the matter of course by which the legal system and the courts are used in disputes with opponents. Jesus did not oppose the existing legal order, but he did in fact oppose the action of those to whom the reign of God is proclaimed to fight in court instead of being reconciled with their opponent.

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There is an element of excess in Jesus’ commandment to love one’s neighbor. This excessiveness in Jesus’ commandment to love has its basis in the excessiveness of God’s caring commitment to human beings. In Jesus’ message of the kingdom of God, salvation is bestowed upon people apart from any grounds on their part. The commandment to love one’s neighbor is grounded on God’s deeds of lovingkindness: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk. 6.36). Love your enemies, for God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt. 5.45). “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5.48). In these and similar words, behavior is called for that is intended to be an image of divine mercy, patience, forgiveness, and perfection. Since Jesus’ caring commitment to sinners and those in misery was God’s caring commitment to them, the commandment to love is at the same time the commandment to follow Jesus. Because the love of God appeared in Jesus, the commandment to love is also true for the same reason: “Just as I (Jesus) have loved you, you also should love one another” (Jn. 13.34 [S]). God’s caring commitment to sinners thus wants to have a further effect on other people through the caring commitment of those who have received God’s salvation. In this way, obedience to the commandment to love takes on the meaning of bearing witness to the love of God for the world. Jesus linked obedience to the commandment to love one’s neighbor so closely with receiving the salvation of the reign of God that he announced the divine refusal of salvation to those who refused to love. He did this with particular emphasis toward those who shut themselves off to forgiveness. “If you do not forgive others (for their trespasses), neither will your Father (in heaven) forgive your trespasses” (Mt. 6.15; cf. 18.23–35). The warning that disobedience to the commandment to love one’s neighbor would result in the loss of divine mercy is also contained in the numerous corollary clauses that are added to his commandments: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you” (Lk. 6.37). The urgency of the commandment to love one’s neighbor is incredibly increased by such corollary passages. In obedience to the commandment to love, the whole of salvation is at stake. (c) Jesus acknowledged the authority of Moses and the prophets. He presupposed the validity of the Decalogue’s commandments. At the same time, however, his requirements went far beyond the Old Testament commandments. This contradiction is most evident in the Sermon on the Mount. The explanation comes first: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill” (Mt. 5.17). But then the antitheses follow: “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times… But I say to you…” (5.21, 27, 33, 38, 43). This raises the question of the original relationship between Jesus’ requirements and the law of the Old Testament.

The Message

Answering this question is fraught with difficulties. After all, at the time of Jesus there were considerable differences between Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism with respect to understanding the law, and it cannot be determined with certainty whether and to what extent the Jewish communities in Galilee, in whose area Jesus grew up and began to work, were influenced by the Hellenistic-Jewish understanding of the law. Above all, however, the difficulty of this historical inquiry consists in the fact that the tradition of Jesus’ words passed through very different stages of the relationship between the church and Judaism until they were fixed in writing in the Gospels. At first the Christian community lived as a group within the Jewish cult-community and made a point of maintaining unity with it and being recognized by it. With the rejection of the witness to Christ by the leading Jewish authorities, and finally with the emergence of Gentile-Christian congregations, there arose a conflict-ridden process of detachment from the law, such as, e. g., from the commandment about circumcision. The difference between the Old Testament law and the New Testament requirements came more and more to the fore. The possibility must therefore be reckoned with that the increasing distance between church and synagogue has had an impact on the tradition of Jesus’ words about the law. In view of the various attempts to reconstruct the authentic words of Jesus, it makes sense to start with the fact that the scribes, whose influence also reached as far as Galilee, understood the concept of the law to include both the Mosaic law, as handed down in Scripture, and the later oral tradition of the interpretation of the law, the Halakah, and they taught that both of them together are an obligatory divine demand.

Jesus firmly rejected equating the authority of the Halakah with that of Moses.[xxi] In words and deeds, he opposed the rabbinic casuistic interpretation of the sabbath commandment and justified the breaking of the same, e. g., in order to overcome hunger (Mk. 2.23–28) and sickness (Mk. 3.1–6 et passim). He gave priority to the commandment of love, “to do good” and “to save a life” (Mk. 3.4), over against the sabbath commandment. Jesus and his disciples also did not keep to the Halakah’s commandments for cleansing (Mk. 7.1–9 par. Mt. 15.1–9). His criticism was not merely directed against individual provisions of the Halakah, but rather it took on a fundamental character. He rejected the “human statutes” that had been added to the divine command: “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition” (Mk. 7.8f.). For example, on the basis of the Fourth Commandment, he rejected the possibility that is provided in the Halakah of evading the duty of caring for one’s parents by promising to bequeath property to the temple (Mk. 7.9–13). Contrary to the distinction between clean and unclean food, Jesus asserted that nothing that goes into a person from outside can defile that person, but that what comes out of person is what defiles, for from within come evil thoughts and transgressions of the divine commandments, such as murder, adultery, theft, and slander (Mk. 7.18–23). In this way, Jesus set the Old Testament commandment to love and the commandments of the Decalogue against the Halakah, and he made it impossible for people to hide behind the casuistry of rabbinic legal teaching and to

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evade the claim of the divine commandment. Hellenistic Judaism also had given the Decalogue and the commandment to love outstanding importance in the midst of the other provisions of the law. But it was primarily not a matter of the law’s abrogation but of a spiritualizing interpretation of the traditional interpretation of the law that was obvious in the dialogue with the Hellenistic cultural environment. In the Greek diaspora, too, Judaism kept the sabbath and dietary laws. Jesus, however, turned against the Halakah in a fundamental way that was offensive not only to Palestinian Judaism but also to Hellenistic Judaism. Jesus asserted the Old Testament law against the Halakah. But in his proclamation of God’s commandments, he also opposed provisions in the Old Testament law. It can already be asked whether Jesus’ breaking of the sabbath commandments and of the commandments of cleansing was only a breaking of the Halakah or, beyond that, a fundamental questioning of the Old Testament law. The answer to this question is disputed. But the fact that his criticism was not only directed against scriptural interpretation but also against the wording and meaning of Old Testament legal provisions, is quite obvious in his rejection of divorce. The law of Moses prohibited adultery and regulated the process of divorce. But Jesus forbade all divorce and called it adultery (Mk. 10.11f. par.—the phrase “except for adultery,” mentioned in Mt. 5.32 and 19.9, is secondary). Jesus also opposed other provisions and principles of the Old Testament law. Despite manifold modifications with respect to details in these provisions, retaliation was of fundamental importance: “eye for an eye” and “tooth for a tooth” (Exod. 21.24 et passim). In place of these, Jesus calls for relinquishing revenge (Mt. 5.38–42 par. Lk. 6.29f.). To be sure, the double commandment, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy” (Mt. 5.43), is not found in the Old Testament law. But the commandment to love one’s neighbor is essentially limited there to one’s co-citizens, and hatred of the enemy, whether it be another people or members of one’s own people who have fallen away from the Yahweh cult, is understood in several Old Testament passages to be obedience to God. However, with his commandment to love one’s enemy, Jesus went beyond the previous limits. Beyond the antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ phrase, “But I say to you…,” is characteristic of his attitude toward the law in general. Jesus based his prohibition against divorce on the original will of the Creator. God created man and woman to become “one flesh.” “What God has joined together, let no one separate” (Mt. 19.6). It was only “because of your hardness of heart” that Moses permitted divorce (v. 8 [S]). “From the beginning it was not so” (Mt. 19.3–9; cf. Mk. 10.2–12). As the basis for his commandment to love one’s enemies, Jesus referred to the patience of God the Creator and Preserver (Mt. 5.45). He also based other requirements on references to God’s creative activity, such as, e. g., the exhortation “not to worry” on a reference to the birds and flowers that are preserved by God (Mt. 6.25ff. par. Lk. 12.22ff.). Perhaps, too, Jesus’ attitude toward women, which contradicted their low valuation in Judaism, and his acceptance of their

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discipleship, is based on the fact that God created woman as a companion of man and only put her under man’s dominion because of sin (Gen. 2.18; 3.16). As important as these foundations are, which were established through the will of the Creator, Jesus’ commands are not understandable on their basis alone. The crucial reason for his call to repentance was the coming of the kingdom of God. His requirements were not only based on a reference backwards to the origin of creation; his requirements were also aimed in a forward direction, toward the consummation. In the orientation toward the coming kingdom, God’s original will emerges again, and the limits of the Old Testament law become visible—the limits that have their basis in the hardness of human hearts and in God’s patience with them. The kingdom of God, whose coming uncovers again the will of the Creator, was announced by Jesus, not as a restoration of the original creation but as a new act of God. Pointing toward the different nature of life in the kingdom of God is also, e. g., this passage: “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven” (Mk. 12.25 par.). The following is also true regarding the replacement of the order given at the beginning of creation: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1.28). In this context, the controversial statement that has been handed down only in Matthew’s Gospel, regarding the “eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 19.12), would mean that renunciation of marriage can be a sign of the entirely new community in the kingdom of God. So with unprecedented sovereignty, Jesus called for something new in relation to the Jewish law, not only in relation to the Halakah but in relation to the provisions of the Mosaic law itself. He broke through the letter of its commandments and the casuistry of interpretation that already had begun in the pre-exilic tradition. He did not accept the Mosaic law and its tradition as something that stood between the commanding God and human beings, and behind which humans could hide themselves from God. He did not allow them to boast in their almsgiving, praying and fasting, and in the other works required by the law in relation to God and humankind (Mt. 6.1–18). He encountered people with the claim that they encountered God’s commanding in his commanding. And yet Jesus’ demand was not new insofar as he proclaimed the original will of God and thus the purpose that had been given to human beings from the beginning. God has not ceased to make his will known through the law written in the hearts of all humans, and although they have adapted this law to their desires and distorted it in their deeds, customs, and legal systems, he has broken through the distortions by means of his promising and commanding address. Thus, in Jesus’ commands, the new element and the purpose that God gave to humankind from the beginning are interrelated. The new thing is the inbreaking of God’s will that is aimed at the consummation and that breaks through the previous historical limitations and misjudgments. The following passage could be understood

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in this comprehensive sense: “I have not come to abolish (the law and the prophets) but to fulfill” (Mt. 5.17 [S]). In the biblical witnesses, fulfillment is always something new that surpasses what had been previously announced and the expectation based on it. At the same time, however, this new thing is the confirmation and realization of what was previously announced. The post-Easter community understood the fulfillment of the law by Jesus above all as his obedience and death. In the Sermon on the Mount, however, the definitive presentation of God’s commanding will could be described as such. Jesus thus proclaimed something new vis-à-vis Moses and the prophets, but he did not dispute that they had spoken on God’s behalf, and he did not set aside their authority. The same is true about Jesus’ attitude toward the cultus and the temple. Even though he promised God’s forgiveness to sinners without a sacrifice of atonement, he did not call for the abolition or even omission of cultic sacrifice. Although with the kingdom of God he announced a completely new community with God, as well as the destruction of the temple as God’s judgment (Mk. 13.2 par.), he did not call for that destruction nor even the avoidance of the temple. He left the revelation of the kingdom and the execution of the judgment to God. Jesus’ cleansing of the temple courtyard, by driving out vendors and money changers, has been handed down in the Gospels as a remedy for abuse and not as an attempt to destroy the temple. It is debatable whether this was also a prophetic action-sign by which Jesus wanted to announce the opening of the temple courtyard for the Gentiles or the future termination of the temple cult. The radicalization of the Old Testament law has often been described as a special feature of Jesus’ requirements. In fact, it was an unprecedented radicalization when Jesus—in surpassing the Old Testament commandments and also surpassing the radicalizations that had already taken place in the proclamation of the Old Testament prophets—declared that even anger is tantamount to murder and that a lustful gaze is tantamount to adultery (Mt. 5.21f. and 27f.). Even the Old Testament command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” was radicalized in Jesus’ interpretation. His commandment to love one’s enemy is not only about equality between neighbor and self but also about self-sacrifice for one’s neighbor, even for the enemy. But the real novelty in the proclamation of Jesus is not the radicalization of the Old Testament law but the opening up of human beings to God through the promise of the inbreaking of the kingdom of God and thus the creation of entirely new conditions for their behavior. That is why the command of Jesus is accepted: “My yoke is gentle and my burden is light” (Mt. 11.30). The presupposition for the radicality of his commandment to love is the liberation of the sinner by means of God’s love that leads to the love of God and of the neighbor. That is why Jesus’ commandment to love is “a new commandment” (Jn. 13.34), for it is grounded in the servant ministry of Jesus, who washed the feet of his disciples.

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Jesus announced God’s reward for obedience to his requirments and God’s punishment for disobedience. “For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Mt. 7.2 par.). So many words attributed to Jesus have come down to us about the future retribution of human decisions by God’s reward and punishment that it is impossible to dismiss them all as later Judeo-Christian overlays on Jesus’ original words. At their core, they go back to Jesus himself. With the radicalization of the Old Testament demand of the law, the announcement of divine retribution has also become radicalized. According to the Sermon on the Mount, anyone who lashes out at a brother or sister is to be liable to judgment, and anyone who says, “You fool,” is to be liable to “heavenly fire” (Mt. 5.21f.). And yet what is really new is not the radicalization of retribution, but rather that Jesus abolished the principle of retribution by his caring commitment to sinners, for Jesus promised the kingdom of God to those who had no claim to community with God. To those who could not free themselves from guilt, he proclaimed the forgiveness of God. If Jesus required those who heard this message to forgive their debtors in order to receive God’s forgiveness, then God’s forgiveness was already the presupposition of this requirement. In a very paradoxical way, God’s forgiveness is the reward for people forgiving each other, for this is the fruit of God’s forgiveness. The requirement that people should forgive each other is about abiding in divine forgiveness until the final judgment, and in this sense, it is about God’s reward. The reward announced by Jesus is not based on human deeds but on God’s lovingkindness, which liberates people to do deeds of lovingkindness for the neighbor. That is also why the reward with which God will acknowledge such behavior in the future judgment is divine mercy. Just as the correspondence between achievement and reward is fundamentally eliminated in the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Mt. 20.1–16), that is also the case in the other statements of Jesus about the reward for obedience. Human beings cannot sue for God’s reward on the basis of their achievements. Rather, the following applies: “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty’” (Lk. 17.10). The promised reward is therefore quite a strange reward. The “treasure in heaven” that Jesus requires effort to obtain is already there in him. However, those who refuse to live on the basis of God’s mercy by failing to show mercy toward other human beings, exclude themselves from the kingdom of mercy. They then fall under God’s judgment, even if they think they have accepted Jesus’ message of salvation. 5. The Servant Ministry of the Son Jesus confronted people with the outrageous claim that God’s salvation encounters them in his words and deeds. In his beatitudes he promised them the kingdom of

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God and, by their eating at table with him, he lets them participate in the future meal in the kingdom of God. He forgave sins that only God can forgive. He healed the sick and possessed, thereby manifesting God’s victory over the forces of corruption. He came forward with the claim that through his words and deeds God saves from sin and misery. Likewise, Jesus proclaimed his commandment as God’s commandment, and he required obedience to his demand as obedience to God. In doing so, he required this obedience in sovereignty, even in opposition to the provisions of the Mosaic law. His call, “Follow me,” was not just about community with him but about entering the kingdom of God. The requirement to confess him and his words was not only about taking a position about him but about the decision to be made in the coming judgment. Jesus stepped forth with the claim that in his caring commitment and in his call God commits himself to people and calls them to himself. But this means that the kingdom of God has come not only in his speaking and working but in himself. In Jesus’ claim, his speech and work cannot be separated from his speaking and acting as a person. This is true regardless of the debatable question about whether and to what extent the sentences that emphasize his authority—by beginning with words like, “I have come…,” “But I say to you…,” “Truly, I say to you…”—can be traced back to Jesus himself, or were accentuated by the post-Easter community, which bore witness to his authority. But although Jesus encountered people with this unprecedented claim, he did not make himself the subject of his public proclamation, according to the Synoptic tradition. He did not proclaim himself as the Messiah or as the Son of God or the Son of David. He promised the Son of Man who is coming in power and glory as someone other, as someone distinct from himself, and thus he also spoke only in the third person about the Son of Man who is working on the earth. In Jesus’ proclamation, Jesus’ own person receded completely into the background. This corresponds to the fact that in the Synoptic tradition many of Jesus’ parables begin with the words, “The kingdom of God (or the kingdom of heaven) is like…,” but none begins with the words, “I am like…,” or even with the words, “The Son of Man is like….” To be sure, in the parables there is talk of, e. g., the sower, the fisherman, the bridegroom, and the son, but Jesus did not identify himself with any of these people, neither in the introduction nor in the content of these parables. Most of the parables speak in a strikingly timeless manner about what usually happens with every sowing, with every harvest, or with other chores. But both the nowness of the inbreaking of God’s reign and the present person of Jesus, in whose work it begins, are peculiarly hidden. A further way in which he pointed away from himself can also be found in Jesus’ call to faith and in his behavior toward believers. Again and again he was surrounded by people who called to him in their deep needs and who expected him to heal

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them or their relatives. Wherever he found such faith, he praised it and answered the request through his healing action. But according to the Synoptic Gospels (apart from Mt. 18.6 par.), Jesus did not demand that people have faith in him. He called for faith in God, who answers prayer. Although Jesus was the one who accomplished the mighty deeds, he pointed away from himself to Almighty God. He also often spoke of faith in absolute terms, without naming the person to whom faith is directed. This receding in importance on his part is also expressed in the fact that Jesus accomplished mighty deeds as a sign of the dawning kingdom of God, but he refused to demonstrate his own authority through signs (Mk. 8.11–13 par.). Many mighty deeds that Jesus did for others have been handed down, but he did none of them for his own benefit, either to demonstrate his authority or to save himself from his adversaries. This contradiction between Jesus’ de facto claim and his silence about himself finds its strongest expression in the tradition of his prohibitions about telling others who he was and what mighty deeds he had done. These prohibitions are found primarily in the Gospel of Mark, but they are also found in Matthew and Luke. For example, Jesus specifically forbade the disciples to pass on Simon Peter’s confession of Christ (Mk. 8.30 par.). In the context of the Gospels, this prohibition does not imply a denial of the content of the confession, “You are the Messiah” (Mk. 8.29 par.). According to Matthew, because of this confession, Jesus even expressly praised Simon as blessed; “for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven” (Mt. 16.17). Admittedly, the subsequently reported attempt by Peter to hold Jesus back from the way of suffering, and the extremely sharp rejection he received (Mk. 8.31–33 par. Mt. 16.21–23), indicates that Peter had a different understanding of the Messiah than Jesus did. The prohibition on repeating the confession of Christ is all the more striking since the Gospels report that Jesus sent out the disciples to publicly proclaim the kingdom of God throughout the land (Mt. 10.5ff. par.). Similarly, at the end of the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, in which he was revealed through God’s voice to the disciples “as my beloved Son,” Jesus prohibits his disciples from passing on what they had experienced (Mk. 9.9 par. Mt. 17.9). Especially in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus repeatedly forbade people to tell others about his mighty deeds of healing (Mk. 1.44 par.; 5.43; 7.36; 8.26). Finally, in the healing of demoniacs, he forbade the possessing powers, who were crying out, to identify him as “the Holy One of God” (Mk. 1.24), “the Son of God” (3.11), “the Christ” (Lk. 4.41). These prohibitions have received hardly any attention by the churches for centuries, for on the basis of the appearances of the risen Lord and his living presence in the worship gatherings, it had become a matter of course to acknowledge already the earthly Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, and the Lord, and to presuppose that the earthly Jesus had already spoken of himself as the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord. Thus, unlike the Synoptics, the Gospel of John presented the ministry

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of Jesus as the self-revelation of the Son of God, and this understanding became dominant in the history of christology. However, when attention was drawn to the above-mentioned prohibitions, they caused embarrassment, and an abyss seemed to open up between the church’s christology and the historical Jesus. William Wrede interpreted these prohibitions as an attempt by the Christian church to reconcile the memory of an un-messianic, earthly Jesus with the post-Easter faith in Christ.10 Wrede consistently denied the authenticity of these prohibitions. The notion of the “messianic secret,” namely, of Jesus’ earthly self-disclosure as the Messiah, is only understandable to him if one knew nothing of a messianic claim on the part of Jesus. This thesis was also adopted, e. g., by Rudolf Bultmann.[xxii] According to this view, through the theory of the messianic secret, Jesus was seen through the lens of the post-Easter faith in Christ. Even if he announced the coming of the Son of Man, he did not see himself as the Son of Man but only as his forerunner. This hypothesis also has consequences for questions about the authenticity of other words attributed to Jesus. Thus, if Jesus did not consider himself to be the Messiah, he could not affirm Peter’s confession either. An older tradition has therefore been suspected behind the Gospel text, according to which Jesus’ harsh saying, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Mk. 8.33), also turned against Peter’s confession of the Messiah. Now it is of course clear that in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ veiling of his messiahship is the basic christological concept from which the evangelist assembled and shaped the material that had been handed down: Jesus was the Messiah, but he kept his messiahship a secret until his resurrection (Mk. 9.9). Based on this conception, Mark also interpreted Jesus’ parables as a veiling, in the sense of an intention to harden those who do not perceive or understand (Mk. 4.11ff. par.). It is also clear that Mark used the commandment to remain silent—beyond the tradition available to him—as a fixed scheme of presentation by which he clarified, from his overall conception, the self-disclosure of the earthly Messiah. But this observation does not eliminate the contradiction between Jesus’ outrageous claim and his strange silence about himself. This contradiction still remains even if one were to dispute that the historical basis for all these prohibitions, including the affirmation in the confession by Peter, is the authentic words of the earthly Jesus. The contradiction between Jesus’ claim and his silence about himself is not only a contradiction between the behavior of the earthly Jesus and the image that the post-Easter community had of him, but rather it has its roots in the behavior of the earthly Jesus himself. With good reason Julius Schiewind asserted against Wrede that the messianic secret [Messiasgehemnis] is not a schema introduced by the church, but rather behind all the words and deeds stands this

10 William Wrede, Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901). [ET: The Messianic Secret, trans. J. C. G. Greig (London: James Clarke & Co., 1971). –Ed.]

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mystery [Geheimnis], namely, that precisely in Jesus’ inconspicuousness, lowliness, and offensiveness, the reign of God has dawned.11 In addition, most paradoxically, it can be said that “the messianic secret” results from historical inquiry about the earthly Jesus, even if he did not call himself the Messiah.

We thus stand before the question of Jesus’ self-understanding. This question arose above already through our inquiry into Jesus’ words about the Son of Man. It now presents itself within the overall context of his speaking and acting. The question is burdened by the efforts of those “life-of-Jesus” researchers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to reconstruct the psychological development of Jesus, and by the attempt of Schleiermacher and his successors to derive the whole of christology from the consciousness of Jesus. A reliable historical reconstruction of his psychological development and religious consciousness is impossible, however, if only because the Gospels were not written out of an interest in Jesus’ biography and psychology but rather to focus on Jesus as the one who came to us humans, as the one addressing us and dealing with us, as the Proclaimer and Savior. In contrast, the kerygma theology of the twentieth century turned away from the previous depictions of the inner life of Jesus and largely refrained from inquiring about his consciousness, in acknowledgment of the form- and redaction-historical peculiarity of the Gospels. Of course, the opposite danger arose from this, namely, that Jesus was only understood as God’s promise and claim on us, but not as the human being who stood opposite God. In the Gospels, however, Jesus’ proclamation and mighty deeds for human beings are inseparably connected with his commitment to God in prayer and obedience. No historical inquiry into the earthly Jesus can avoid the question about the consciousness of Jesus. Of course, the answer to this question will have to be given much more cautiously than was done in the classic life-of-Jesus research. In the historical-critical inquiry into Jesus’ self-understanding, the messianic titles of honor that were predicated of him play a special role. It has already been established that, according to the Synoptic traditions, Jesus did not publicly proclaim himself to be the Messiah, the Son of God, the Son of David, or the expected prophet of the last days, and that he usually only spoke of the Son of Man in the third person. But that does not settle the question of whether he considered himself to be the promised coming one, for in addition to the words in which he indirectly identified himself with the Son of Man, there are the traditions of his reactions to people around him who called on him or confessed him with messianic titles. He healed the sick in response to such calls, and he accepted the confession

11 Julius Schniewind, Das Evangelium nach Markus, vol. 1 of Das Neue Testament Deutsch, 3d ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1939). [6th ed. (1952), 41, 55, 115–118. –Ed.]

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of Simon Peter, even though he forbade its dissemination. Now the post-Easter community’s faith in Christ has certainly influenced the process by which the words of Jesus have been handed down, and in many details it is impossible to distinguish clearly between the words of the earthly Jesus and the church’s tradition embedded in the Gospels. So it is no coincidence that the historical inquiry into the authenticity of the self-designations and reactions of Jesus mentioned above has come to completely opposite conclusions. For example, in the question of whether Jesus spoke of himself as “the Son” and affirmed the title “Son of God,” the historical reconstructions are diametrically opposed to each other. If when inquiring into Jesus’ self-understanding, one begins with the messianic titles of honor, one will have to consider that already in the Old Testament Scriptures and in Jewish apocalyptic such titles refer to a certain action of the coming one upon humans on the basis of God’s action upon him. The substantives of the honorific titles focus on bearing witness to the deeds of the coming one in various ways. Manifold relationships between the coming one and God and human beings are encompassed in each of these titles. Therefore, in the inquiry about Jesus’ self-understanding, it seems correct first to observe his actions, not his use of the honorific titles. Here, however, the following matters of fact arise indisputably: (a) Without a doubt, Jesus’ claim—that in his proclamation and healing, people encountered the kingdom of God, and in his call to repentance, people encountered God’s demand—was a conscious claim. His speaking and acting presuppose being conscious of what God wanted him to say to people and to do for them. It is striking that Jesus did not introduce divine salvation, judgment, and the divine demand as the Old Testament prophets did, namely, with the words, “Thus says the Lord…,” but instead he proclaims, using his own words, “I say to you….” It is also striking that he did not pray to God for healing on behalf of the sick who came to him, but he healed them himself, namely, according to most reports, through his commanding word. The sovereignty of his speaking and acting correspond to the fact that in the Gospels, despite Jesus’ numerous calls to faith, his own relationship to God is nowhere referred to as faith. If the claim with which Jesus encountered his contemporaries was a conscious claim, then it was also his conscious decision that he did not make himself the content of his proclamation, did not proclaim himself, did not carry out any mighty deeds for his own benefit, and refused to demonstrate his divine authority through “signs.” Then it was also a deliberate decision that, according to the oldest traditions, he did not call upon people to believe in him. (b) If on the basis of this twofold observation one inquires further about the consciousness of Jesus, the question about whether Jesus used several or few or no messianic titles to refer to himself, or whether he tolerated or welcomed them in the mouths of others, is placed in a completely different context than if one

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proceeds from these honorific titles. If one takes the strangely contradictory pairing of Jesus’ claim and his refusal to make himself the object of his proclamation as an historically reliable basis, then the following twofold assumption suggests itself: in view of Jesus’ familiar relationship with the Old Testament Scriptures, in particular with the book of Isaiah, it is quite improbable that Jesus did not see himself in the context of the prophetic promises and the apocalyptic expectations based on them. If he asserted the Old Testament promise and demand as God’s word in his proclamation, then it is quite improbable that he did not subject himself to this divine promise and demand and did not understand his speaking and acting on that basis. If he stepped forward with this claim to fulfill the Old Testament promise and demand, then it is hardly imaginable that he would not understand himself as the promised coming one, as the Messiah, the Son of God, and the Son of Man. But he announced the kingdom of God—which went beyond Jewish expectations of a restoration of the national kingdom of David—as God’s universal and new act of salvation, and in his commanding—which went beyond the law of the Old Testament—he called for a new obedience. So it must also be assumed that, beyond the Old Testament promises, he knew himself in a new way as the promised coming one—as the one sent by God, in whose words and deeds God comes to people in an act of salvation that surpasses and corrects previous expectations. The Old Testament’s honorific titles for the coming one must therefore have undergone a change in Jesus’ self-understanding. This is supported by the fact that he did not take part in the zealous efforts to restore national-political independence for the Jewish people, and that his statements about the Son of Man working on earth differ from apocalyptic expectations. If one keeps in mind the combination of Jesus’ claim and his refusal to assert this claim for himself as the framework within which to ask about his self-understanding, then the obvious conclusion is this, namely, the fact that Jesus’ messianic selfunderstanding is rarely mentioned in the Synoptic tradition is because he did not want to make himself known as the Messiah, God’s Son, the Son of David. It is unlikely that he avoided these messianic titles merely because they were associated with nationalistic-political expectations in his setting. After all, he could have corrected these expectations just as he had corrected the nationalistic expectation of a renewed Davidic kingdom by means of the content of his message about the kingdom of God. What is actually vexing about the historical inquiry into Jesus’ self-understanding are not the quite varied hypotheses about whether and to what extent messianic titles were used by Jesus to refer to himself and as titles that were affirmed by others regarding his person, but the fact that, even though the Synoptic Gospels presuppose the post-Easter faith in Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God, they contain so few statements of this kind by Jesus about himself. If on the other hand, numerous sayings from the Son of Man are handed down in the same Gospels, this must have been based on a conscious decision by Jesus himself to

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prefer precisely this little-known and ambiguous title for the coming one. After all, “the Son of Man” could also simply mean “human being.” (c) This twofold assumption regarding the question of Jesus’ self-understanding is particularly confirmed by his witness to the “Father in heaven.” If he proclaimed God as the Father in a unique way, which was unparalleled in Jewish history and its environment, given that term’s familial intimacy, and if he called for his followers to invoke God as “Abba” with such childlike trust, then this presupposes that Jesus was conscious of his particularly trusting relationship with God as his Father. What speaks for the special nature of this consciousness is that according to the Synoptic Gospels there is a difference in Jesus’ words about the heavenly Father, albeit one that is not emphasized: “My Father” and “your Father,” a distinction which is then expressly stated in the Gospel of John: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (Jn. 20.17). Even if these different ways of speaking about the Father and the few self-designations of Jesus as “the Son” that are handed down in the Synoptic Gospels had their roots in the faith of the post-Easter community, even if one were to disregard the words of revelation in the story of his baptism and the story of the transfiguration, through which he was acknowledged as the Son beloved by God, it must be presupposed that Jesus knew about his very special relationship with God the Father. After all, this was the only way he could open up a new relationship with his Father for others. His invitation to follow him in trusting the heavenly Father must have been based on his own intimate connection with the Father. Jesus’ unique consciousness as Son has also been the least disputed by critical research. It is all the more striking that according to the oldest layers of the Gospel tradition, Jesus very rarely spoke of himself as “the Son” and did not further explain his particular Son-relationship. He promised that others could be special children of God, but he did not proclaim himself to be the Son of God. When it comes to the historical inquiry into Jesus’ consciousness, the decisive factor is not whether Jesus called himself the Son or whether he let others call him the Son of God, but that despite his special relationship with the heavenly Father, he only rarely, if ever, spoke of himself as the Son. How is Jesus’ strange silence about himself to be understood? His behavior would be superficially understood if one viewed it as merely a matter of concealing and cloaking himself, for Jesus was concerned with the fulfillment of what was promised, with the revelation of what was hidden, with the coming of God, not with God remaining in the distance. He was concerned with proclaiming the mysteries of the kingdom of God. According to Mk. 4.11f. and parallels, Jesus spoke in parables to harden those who are “outside.” It could correspond more to Jesus’ proclamation if his speaking in parables would be understood, as in Mt. 13.35, as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise: “I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.” The impression of self-concealment could be understood as the consequence of a

The Message

deeper decision by Jesus, namely, as the consequence of a basic attitude toward God and toward people that he repeatedly carried out, which is clearly attested to, both in the oldest traditions of the Synoptic Gospels and in the Gospel of John. Without violating the mystery of Jesus’ consciousness through psychological descriptions, the following three relations in his behavior should be emphasized: (1) Jesus was not focused on himself but on God, on the coming of God’s reign. Because he was focused on God’s reign, he did not make himself a topic in his proclamation but again and again pointed away from himself to God. This pointing away from himself and toward God is also attested to in some specific traditions, which are all the more remarkable since they do not correspond to the christological ideas of the later churches. For example, Jesus responded to the appellation “Good Teacher” by saying, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” (Mk. 10.18). In response to the disciples’ pressing for places of honor in future glory, Jesus replied, “To sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared (by God)” (Mk. 10.40 [S]). In this context, the controversial answer to the question of the time of the end should also be noted: “About that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mk. 13.32). Whether Jesus withdrew for prayer, or whether he spoke to people or acted for them, it was about Jesus’ self-surrender to God, that God would be glorified on earth (Jn. 17.4). Because he was focused only on the reign of God, Jesus did not proclaim his own future, but spoke of the Son of Man as of another. He left it to God when and how he would reveal the Son of Man. (2) In this pointing away from himself toward God’s lordship, Jesus fully joined the ranks of other human beings. He who encountered them with the claim that God’s salvation and demand had encountered them in his words, did not do so by asserting this claim for himself but by placing himself with the others, under the same promise and demand of God that he proclaimed to them. Since he did not claim any messianic titles for himself in his preaching, and since he spoke of the coming Son of Man as of another, and of himself only as the earthly, homeless human being, he was entirely a human being among other human beings. He not only preached to others that they should serve others, humble themselves, and not be first but last (cf., e. g., Lk. 14.7–11), but he himself also served them and became the last. He used his authority not for himself but for others. He knew he was sent not to rule, but to serve. (3) In Jesus’ surrender to God and in his servant ministry to humankind, the reign of God has dawned. Precisely when Jesus pointed away from himself to God and placed himself completely in the ranks of human beings, God drew close to human beings. Precisely when he proclaimed the coming Son of Man as another, and when he himself awaited the coming day as a human being among other human beings, the new humanity began with him. After all, the kingdom of heaven announced by

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him is the reign of God over people and the community of humans with God and with one another. In the Gospel of John, the words and deeds of Jesus are reflected upon with incomparably greater intensity in the light of his resurrection and in the certainty of the presence of the exalted Lord in the church than is the case in the Synoptic Gospels. According to John’s Gospel, the earthly Jesus spoke openly of himself as the Son of God and the Son of Man. In contrast to the parables of the kingdom of God in the Synoptic Gospels, here Jesus makes himself the content of word-images and metaphors, and in this way revealed himself. Sayings, such as, e. g., “I am the good shepherd…” (10.11ff.) or “I am the true vine…” (15.1ff.), have no parallel in the oldest tradition. Nevertheless, the basic structure of Jesus’ attitude can also be found in the Gospel of John: (1) Here, too, we find again and again in Jesus’ words a negation of himself: “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me” (7.16 [E]). “I was not talking about myself, but the Father who has sent me has given me the commission…” (12.49 [S]; cf. 14.10). “…not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me” (6.38 [SCH]). For Jesus it is a matter of glorifying the Father (17.1–4). (2) At the same time, Jesus also speaks and acts here as the one who is entirely committed to other human beings, the one who serves them, the one who washes his disciples’ feet (13.3ff.). (3) Precisely in this surrender of Jesus to God and in Jesus’ servant ministry to human beings, God the Father comes to human beings. He becomes so close to them that Jesus can say, “Whoever sees me sees the Father” (14.9 [L]). Precisely in this twofold surrender is the one sent by God the bringer of life for the world. The same structure thus comes to light in the speaking and working of the earthly Jesus that is characteristic of the New Testament statements about the incarnation of the Son of God and of the church’s confession of the incarnation: the obedience of the Son to the mission given him by the Father, his caring commitment to humankind, and therein the coming of God for the salvation of human beings. It is true that the appearances of the risen Lord are the presupposition for the knowledge of Jesus as the Son of God who became a human being. But by faith in the risen Lord, the incarnation of the Son of God is recognized as the presupposition and basis for Jesus’ earthly speaking and work. We thereby recognize the incarnation and the work of the incarnate one as one movement of God’s coming into the world. In this sense, it can be said that the humiliation of the Son of God that took place in the incarnation found its continuation in the servant ministry of the incarnate one.

The Death on the Cross

C. The Death on the Cross 1. The Condemnation by the People The Jews’ response to Jesus’ proclamation was at first twofold. In the midst of everyone’s astonishment, shock, and horror, some said, “Yes,” and others said, “No.” While it was especially sinners and the sick who approved of his proclamation, it was especially the righteous, the scribes, and the Pharisees who rejected it. If the former acknowledged Jesus’ divine authority, the latter judged that “by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons” (Mk. 3.22 par.). Even his relatives judged that “he is out of his mind” (v. 21 [L]). The Gospels record that soon after Jesus’ public appearance, his opponents intended to do away with him. On the other hand, no conflicts between Jesus and the Roman occupying powers are reported in any of the Gospels. In his proclamation he had not taken a position against Roman foreign rule. He had even expressly commanded that the imposed tax should be paid to the emperor, even though it was felt by the Jews to be harsh and humiliating. With his message of the kingdom of God, Jesus made no political claims. Jesus’ conflict with the Jews came to a head with his entry into Jerusalem, the seat of the supreme Jewish authority, namely, the high priest and the high council (Hebrew: Sanhedrin; Greek: synedrion), in which the relevant groups, above all the Sadducees and the Pharisees, were represented. Jesus entered Jerusalem accompanied by his followers, who praised him as the one coming in the name of God. He taught in the temple and cleansed its forecourt from those trading money there. The Synoptic Gospels have emphasized that the opposition came to a head in Jerusalem when they summarize it in their reports regarding Jesus’ work there, his arguments with the opponents, his lamentations about the scribes and Pharisees, as well as his announcement of the destruction of the temple and the catastrophes that will accompany the end-time judgment. To bring an end to his public ministry, the high priest and council had Jesus arrested, and the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate sentenced him to death on the cross. If the Jews considered someone who hung on the cross as cursed by God, the Romans judged such a person according to a well-known saying of Cicero: “The very mention of the cross should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears.”12 If the response to Jesus’ message was at first the “Yes” of the one and the “No” of the other, in the end

12 [Cicero, Pro Rabirio Perduellionis Reo, 5.16. ET: In Defense of Rabirius, in Cicero: Pro Lege Manilia, Pro Caecina, Pro Cluentio, Pro Rabirio Perduellionis, trans. H. Grose Hodge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927), 467. –Ed.]

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it was only expressed in a “No.” The “No” of his Jewish opponents spread and also became the “No” of the Romans. Jesus was put on the cross by the jointly stated “No” of Jews and Gentiles. All four Gospels are in agreement regarding the sequence of the decisive events that led to Jesus’ condemnation: After his Last Supper with the disciples, Jesus was arrested at night in a secluded garden beyond the Kidron and brought before the high priest or, as the case may be, the Sanhedrin. There he was questioned and found guilty. He was then handed over by the high priest to the Roman governor, accused of political insurrection with the demand for his execution. Although Pontius Pilate considered Jesus non-dangerous, he was afraid to pronounce the death sentence and left the decision to the Jewish crowd. Faced with the choice between Jesus and Barabbas, who had probably become a murderer in the resistance against the Romans, the agitated crowd demanded the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus. Then the Roman governor sentenced Jesus to be executed on the cross. All of the Gospels also agree that one of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, betrayed Jesus, and that despite following Jesus to the high priest’s palace, Peter denied him there three times. None of the Gospels report that at the time of the decision between Jesus and Barabbas there were any voices that were heard that called for the release of Jesus. According to the Gospel of Mark (14.50 par. Mt. 26.56), after Jesus’ arrest “all” his disciples fled. The agreement of the Gospels about the sequence of the most important events in the trial against Jesus is all the more remarkable since the Gospel of John very probably knew neither the passion story of the Gospel of Mark nor that of any of the other Synoptic Gospels. Rather, it may have been based on a coherent tradition of the passion that was not identical with the originals of the Synoptic Gospels. Within this agreement there are many differences, especially between the Synoptics and the Gospel of John, and also some differences in the details among the Synoptics themselves. According to the Synoptics, Jesus was arrested on Nisan 15, on the evening of the Passover meal, while, according to the Gospel of John, that happened on the evening before. According to the Synoptics, it was carried out by an armed group of the Sanhedrin, while, according to the Gospel of John, Roman soldiers were also involved (Jn. 18.3). According to the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, witnesses were interrogated and testified against Jesus, but the latter was silent. Those witnesses are missing in Luke and John. According to the Synoptic Gospels, the high priest put the question to Jesus: “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One”? (Mk. 14.61; cf. par.). Jesus answered this question in the affirmative: “I am,” and then he added the announcement of the appearing of the Son of Man (v. 62 par.). This announcement implies a confirmation of the confession of Christ and at the same time the implicit correction of a nationalistic-political understanding of the Messiah. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus, long before his arrest, had revealed himself as the Son of God and as the Christ. The most important difference between the passion accounts of the Synoptics and the Gospel

The Death on the Cross

of John consists in the fact that in John the focus is much more on the role of the Roman governor. According to the Synoptics, Jesus answered Pontius Pilate’s question (“Are you the king of the Jews?”) in the affirmative (it is unlikely that the response, “You say so,” should be interpreted as a rejection of the question), but then remained silent. By contrast, the Gospel of John records two conversations between Pilate and Jesus. In the first, Jesus affirmed Pilate’s question (“Are you the king to the Jews?”) in such a way that he corrected it and rejected the misunderstanding of a claim to political power: “My kingdom is not from this world” (18.36f.). He encountered the Roman governor as a witness to the truth, claiming to be heard by him as that witness. In the second conversation, Jesus was silent at first and then explained to Pilate that his power over life and death was “given” to him “from above” (19.11). Also characteristic of the Johannine passion account are the more numerous and intensive efforts of the Roman governor to assist in justifying Jesus’ innocence. A special feature of the Gospel of Luke, in comparison to all the other Gospels, is the report about Pilate sending Jesus to King Herod Antipas, his ruler of Galilee, with the result that Herod also did not agree with the accusation of the high priest and the scribes (Lk. 23.6–12; cf. v. 15).

These observations about the passion accounts in the Gospels show that the postEaster community not only had a basic interest in Jesus’ death on the cross but also an interest in the trial that preceded it. This is also supported by the kerygmatic formulas in the Acts of the Apostles (e. g., 3.13f.; 13.28). The passion story was probably the oldest, larger, cohesive tradition in the later Gospels. Further individual traditions (such as, e. g., the scene with Herod, Lk. 23.6–12) and also interpretive additions (such as, e. g., the conversations between Pilate and Jesus, Jn. 18.33–38; 19.8–11) were later added to it. The interest of the Christian community in the trial of Jesus arose from the outset out of the horror that he had been rejected by the people to whom the Messiah was promised and had been sentenced to death as a criminal. Since Jesus was brought to the cross jointly by Jews and Romans—and yet Jews and Gentiles had always been separate from each other—people must have sensed a burning question from the outset about how this joint action had taken place and how the responsibility for the condemnation of Jesus had been divided between both Jews and Gentiles. The events leading up to Jesus’ execution were of great existential importance, for the course of the apostles and the early congregations was also marked by persecution on the part of Jewish authorities and by the position that the Roman state authorities took in response to Jewish accusations (cf. esp. Acts 21.27; 26.32). In these disputes, the fate and behavior of Jesus in relation to the Jewish and Roman authorities gained paradigmatic importance for the behavior of his followers and for the fundamental determination of the relationship of Christians to Jews and Gentiles. Of course, the existential interest of the Christian congregations could also lead to a different view of Jesus’ trial and to different assessments of the guilt of the Jewish leaders and the Roman officials. For example, in the Synoptic Gospels a differentiation between the various Jewish authorities and groups can

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still be seen, while in the Gospel of John the Jews are portrayed as the world that is hostile to Christ, and Pontius Pilate—beyond the accounts in the Synoptics—as the defender of the innocence of Jesus. The agreements and differences among the Gospel accounts of the passion bear witness at the same time to the efforts of the post-Easter community to overcome the shock of this horrible event, in which the expectations placed on Jesus had collapsed, and to understand the meaning of this event. This happened in all the Gospels, especially by including Old Testament references and quotations by which the passion event was interpreted as the realization of the divine decree. In this sense, there are citations from and appeals to the psalms (e. g., Ps. 31.14 in the report about the verdict of the death penalty that was handed down by the high council, and Ps. 22 in multiple places), but references to prophetic words (e. g., Zech. 11.12 in the account of the betrayal by Judas; Zech. 13.7 in the report about the flight of the disciples; Isa. 50.6 in the report about the scourging of Jesus; and occasionally Isa. 53) were also included in the passion story. The fact that the Old Testament promises were fulfilled in Jesus’ passion was obviously hidden to the disciples prior to Jesus’ resurrection, and thus it is to be expected that based on the knowledge gained after Easter, the original tradition of the passion was not only interpreted through Old Testament words and references but has also been expanded.

In the theological interpretation of Jesus’ trial, the Gospel of John went beyond the Old Testament scriptural evidence by showing that some of the words of Jesus’ opponents, contrary to their own intention and in a peculiar double meaning of which they were not aware, bore witness to the will of God in Jesus’ trial. This applies, for example, to the word of the high priest: “It is better for us if one man dies for the people than to have the whole nation perish” (Jn. 11.50 [S])—and finally to the manner in which Pilate presented Jesus to the Jews as their king, and to the reasoning for why the chief priests demanded the crucifixion of Jesus: “We have no king but the emperor” (19.15f.). With this reason they denied the messianic promise given to the Jews. The opponents of Jesus thus become witnesses of the divine plan of salvation, contrary to their intention. They become transparent in the Gospel of John as instruments of God. Beyond such interpretations, the christology of the evangelists and of the traditions they redacted affected their portrayal of Jesus’ trial. But as different as, e. g., the christology of the Gospel of Mark is from that of the Gospel of John—since the former emphasizes the abandonment of the dying Jesus, while the latter understands Jesus’ death as an exaltation—the inexhaustible salvific significance of the cross comes to light precisely in these differences. Since the Christian faith has a lasting interest in the passion story of Jesus, it is correct to look back through the post-Easter interpretations and additions to the oldest traditions, and from them to the course of the trial of Jesus himself. We will

The Death on the Cross

restrict ourselves to the question about the extent to which the trial corresponded to the provisions in Jewish and Roman law that were valid at the time. The difficulty with this question is that there are gaps in today’s knowledge of the Jewish legal system of that time and of the demarcation between the legal jurisdictions of the Jewish and Roman authorities, which up to now could not be determined either from the New Testament Scriptures themselves or from extra-biblical literary sources.13 It is not certain whether the Jewish Sanhedrin at the time of Jesus still had the right to impose and carry out death sentences (by stoning blasphemers), or whether this right was suspended by the Romans, and capital jurisdiction was theirs alone. In the first case, for which the stoning of Stephen could be cited (Acts 7.56–59), the question of course remains why the high council did not execute Jesus itself but demanded that the Roman procurator do so (out of timidity about such a public responsibility? from fear of Jesus’ followers?). In the second case, the death sentence, in the true legal sense, imposed by the Sanhedrin would only have entailed the establishment of his guilt, the decision to hand Jesus over to the Roman procurator, and the demand that Jesus be condemned and executed by him. The stoning of Stephen, on the other hand, would have been the spontaneous execution of a blasphemer by a lynch mob. It is unlikely that the high council handed Jesus over to the Roman governor because its members could not agree. The most probable and also the most widespread assumption is that the Jews no longer had capital jurisdiction at that time. It is also unclear which procedural rules existed at the time of Jesus for determining blasphemy and for deciding on the punishment. Could the accused be interrogated at night? How many witnesses had to be heard, and by how many witnesses did the guilt have to be confirmed? What was the prescribed time interval between arrest and conviction? More precise provisions for the implementation of such legal procedures by the high council have come down to us from a much later time. Measured against them, the conduct of the Jewish trial against Jesus was unlawful in several respects. But it cannot be determined with certainty whether the detailed provisions for the implementation of capital punishment, as set down in the Mishnah tractate Sanhedrin, which was codified only in the second century AD, were already in force at the time of Jesus.[xxiii] In between Jesus and that tractate lay the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the codification of new doctrinal and legal material within the Jewish diaspora. It is therefore possible that the high council, despite the obvious haste of its nocturnal procedure, did not violate the procedural rules that were applicable at the time when it interrogated Jesus and the witnesses in a first session and then made a decision in a second session.

13 For the details about these issues, cf. Josef Blinzler, Der Prozeß Jesu, 4th ed. (Regensburg: Pustet, 1969). [ET of the shorter 2d ed.: The Trial of Jesus, trans. Isabel and Florence McHugh (Cork: Mercier, 1959). –Ed.]

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It is also disputed whether, according to the law in force at the time, a Jew’s claim to be the Messiah was reason for his being condemned as a blasphemer. In any case, Bar Kochba, who in AD 132 made such a claim during his rebellion against the Romans, was not accused of blasphemy by the relevant Jewish authorities. Most likely, however, at the time of Jesus there was no general legal rule for the treatment of messianic pretenders. Rather, the decisive factor may have been who made this claim. If, according to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus’ messianic statement, “I am he,” and his announcement of the Son of Man were the conclusive grounds for the guilty verdict of the high priest and the high council, then the decisive factor may have been the fact that the one who was making the claim here was not a law-abiding champion of the political liberation of the Jews and of the restoration of the Davidic kingdom but one who was known to be a transgressor of the law, someone surrounded by sinners, and a herald of a completely different kingdom. After Jesus had most likely been greeted and praised by the people with messianic titles several times, it was quite obvious that the high priest addressed the questions about the Messiah to Jesus. But in that moment it was impossible for Jesus to have evaded answering the question and to have denied his prior announcement of the Son of Man. This does not rule out that the high priest’s question and Jesus’ answer have undergone expansion in the post-Easter tradition, e. g., through the words “seated at the right hand of the power of God” (Lk. 22.69 par.).

This gap in our knowledge of the legal situation at that time imposes a certain reluctance when answering the question of whether the trial of Jesus was conducted in accordance with the legal provisions that were valid at the time, and one should not simply accept some very general judgments of the New Testament regarding the hatred and guilt of the Jews and about the lesser guilt of the Roman procurator. Rather, the behavior of the Jews and the Romans must be measured against different standards: (a) It is quite likely that the Sanhedrin complied with applicable Jewish law when it declared Jesus guilty of blasphemy. Jesus’ criticism of the Mosaic law, especially his many transgressions against the Sabbath commandment and his disobedience to the highest Jewish teaching authorities, were offenses for which the death penalty was imposed, not only according to the later Mishnah tractate Sanhedrin but already according to the Old Testament provision in Deut. 17.12: “As for anyone who presumes to disobey the priest appointed to minister there to the Lord your God, or the judge, that person shall die.” Because of his contradiction against the prevailing teaching, Jesus was condemned as a false prophet (cf. esp., Deut. 13.1–5), as a blasphemer, and as a seducer of the people, especially since it was clear that he had acted deliberately and did not heed the objections and warnings of the Jewish teachers of the law. His trespass of the boundary between righteous and sinful, and his claim to forgive sins, contradicted the valid understanding of the law. Even if the statements by the witnesses regarding Jesus’ words about the destruction and rebuilding of the temple contradicted each other, he was repeatedly found to

The Death on the Cross

have violated the law. The question of whether the high council complied with the valid procedural rules when it interrogated witnesses at night and determined Jesus’ guilt, must be left open. But as far as the reason for the condemnation of Jesus is concerned, those Jewish researchers in our time could also be right who claim that Jesus was condemned by the Sanhedrin according to the law. This would also apply if the question about the Messiah by the high priest and its affirmation by Jesus had not taken place during the interrogation but would be held to be an expansion by the post-Easter community. The guilt of the high priest and the other members of the high council was not primarily in breaking the valid law but in not accepting Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God and heeding his call to repentance. Their guilt was that they did not recognize Jesus as the Lord of the Halakah and of the Mosaic law, i. e., they did not recognize him as the herald of the requirements of God, which, being based on the commandment of the Creator and in the nearness of the kingdom of God, made visible the limits of the Mosaic law and of its later Jewish interpretation. Because they rejected the new salvific action of God that was proclaimed by Jesus and was dawning in his work, the newness of Jesus’ demand was unacceptable to them. However, it is likely that the Sanhedrin violated basic rules of the law by presenting, in its indictment to Pontius Pilate, the sacred offense that Jesus had been charged with as a political crime that was directed against Roman rule. After all, even if the members of the high council had rejected Jesus’ proclamation and behavior, what could not have remained hidden to them was the fact that his message of the kingdom of God was not directed against Roman rule and contained no political messianic claims. However, one cannot rule out the possibility that the high priest and the Sanhedrin also made their decision out of concern about the political action of those followers of Jesus who expected him to deliver messianic liberation from Roman foreign rule. In any case, the political accusation of Jesus was the only possible way to get the death sentence from Pontius Pilate. (b) Based on the accounts of the trial in the Gospels, it must be assumed that the Roman procurator investigated the charges of the high council with an impartial eye. Apparently nothing had previously been reported to him about violations of the Roman legal order by Jesus. According to the principles of the Roman administration of foreign territories, Pilate did not want to get involved in the internal religious disputes of the Jews, and he saw no legal reason for imposing the death penalty in the sacred offenses accused of Jesus. Obviously, he saw through the political denunciation of Jesus and found nothing dangerous in this “king of the Jews.” Based on this finding, Pilate should have released Jesus. But in his subsequent course of action, he abandoned the principles of Roman legal procedure. Instead of using the power bestowed on him to enforce the law, he shied away from his judicial responsibility out of fear of the high council and of being found suspect by the

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emperor. His question to the people, “What shall I do, then, with him?” (Mk. 15.12), and the alternative release of one of the two prisoners was not provided for in Roman procedural law. The condemnation of Jesus did not correspond to the result of the previous investigation. It went against the law and was done for tactical reasons. The Roman legal principle “no punishment without guilt” was abandoned by the Roman procurator. Thus Jesus was not secretly eliminated, nor was he condemned to death in a tumultuous manner, but he was condemned by the competent authorities and through a legal process that was initiated by the highest authority of the Jews and concluded by the highest local representative of the Roman emperor. It is of lasting importance that both the Sanhedrin, “the spiritual office” of the Jews, and the procurator, “the secular office” of the Romans, acted contrary to the commission given to them by God. In this joint action, their responsibilities were not the same, for Roman law had its authority from God’s commandment to preserve, whether the holder of the judicial office recognized this or not. To Israel, however, God had acted as the Redeemer. He had made his promise to it, and he had fulfilled it in Jesus’ coming. The decisive difference between the guilt of the high council and that of Pontius Pilate is not that the latter accused Jesus and had him executed, but that Pilate violated the Roman law that was binding on him, while the high council violated the Old Testament law against God’s new act of salvation that had dawned in Jesus’ message of the kingdom of God. The later history of assessing the question of guilt in the trial of Jesus cannot be discussed here. But two positions that are of great importance for the dialogue between Christians and Jews must not be ignored here: In remembering the persecution of the early Christian community carried out by the high council (cf. the accounts handed down in the book of Acts, about the arrest of Peter, the stoning of Stephen, the execution of the Lord’s brother, James, the murder plans against Paul, etc.), and in thinking for centuries that Jewish prayers regularly included a curse against Jesus and Christians, Jews were especially regarded as the murderers of Jesus. This resulted in severe, deeply deplorable persecutions of Jews by Christians. Although only Pontius Pilate is mentioned in the creed in connection with the statements about Jesus’ passion (the Apostles’ Creed: “suffered under Pontius Pilate…”; similar in the Nicene Creed), much less attention was paid to the fact that Pilate sentenced Jesus to death and had him executed than that he stood up for Jesus’ innocence over against the Jews. He is even venerated as a saint in the Ethiopian Church. Even if certain shifts in emphasis took place, which have already been pointed out, between the Synoptic portrayals and the Johannine portrayal of the passion, this widely held later view contradicts all the Gospels, including John, which unequivocally attests to Pilate’s grave guilt. Likewise, the later indiscriminate designation of the Jews “as murderers of God” is contradicted by the reports contained in all the Gospels about Pharisees and scribes,

The Death on the Cross

as well as the members of the council who were favorably inclined toward Jesus. The Gospel of John also reports that “many, even among the authorities, believed in him” (12.42), as well as that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, a member of the high council (3.1), carried out an honorable burial of Jesus (19.38–42). Anyone who concludes that all later Jews are still guilty of the alleged sole guilt of the Jews in Jesus’ death must allow themselves to be asked by the Jewish side whether they consider the traditional self-curse of the Jews, “his blood be on us and on our children” (Mt. 27.25), to be more effective than the intercession of the dying Jesus: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Lk. 23.34). A contrasting assessment of the trial against Jesus is advocated by several recent Jewish scholars. Here the blame for Jesus’ execution is seen as lying solely or nearly so with Pontius Pilate, who caused him to be crucified because of his rebellious messianic claim against the emperor. The most consistent implementation of this conception was published by the historian and lawyer Paul Winter.14 He denied that Jesus had ever been tried by a Jewish court. A more nuanced presentation of the thesis of the innocence of the Jews in Jesus’ execution is advocated by Schalom BenChorin.15 It was not the Pharisees and scribes, but only the high priest and a noble clique of Sadducees who demanded that Pilate execute Jesus for political reasons in order to prevent an uprising against the Romans, whereas Jesus had not been condemned by the Jews for blasphemy and had been close to the Pharisees. Even with his criticism of pious legalism, he remained within the range of varieties of the Pharisaism of that time. The papers of the Jerusalem Symposium, which were edited by the Jewish New Testament scholar David Flusser, point in a similar direction but in a different way.16 The references by these Jewish scholars to diverse Jewish traditions, customs, and symbols (which are little known to Christian research but often only attested to later), as well as to new archaeological discoveries—all in an effort to support their view of the trial of Jesus—must be carefully considered, and no Christian should close his or her heart to the stirring efforts of these Jews who seek to restore the crucified Jesus to the Judaism that had rejected him for so long. One cannot, however, overlook the fact that in the Gospels, already in the oldest layers of the Jesus-tradition, there are reports about the enmity of the Pharisees and scribes against Jesus, not only in connection with the last events in Jerusalem but already in the reports about his public appearances in Galilee. The reports about Jesus’ violations of Jewish law are also anchored too firmly in the oldest traditions for the thesis that Jesus’ words and deeds remained essentially 14 Paul Winter, On the Trial of Jesus (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1961). 15 Schalom Ben-Chorin, Bruder Jesus (Munich: List Paul, 1967). [ET: Brother Jesus, trans. Jared S. Klein and Max Reinhart (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2001). –Ed.] 16 David Flusser, ed., The Letzten Tage Jesu in Jerusalem [The Last Days of Jesus in Jerusalem] (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1982).

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within the framework of Pharisaic piety to be convincing. The outrageous claim that accompanied his appearing, according to all the traditions, must have given the legal scholars of his time, and precisely them, the impression of false teaching. Even if some details of the trial of Jesus can no longer be clearly ascertained, the shared guilt of both Jews and Gentiles for Jesus’ crucifixion cannot be denied, nor can the share of the blame on the part of Jesus’ disciples be overlooked. More pressing than the dispute about the historical question of guilt in detail is the realization of the fact that the Jews, Gentiles, and followers of Jesus who were involved at the time represented the whole of humankind, and that every member of the human family today has reason to join their voice to the words of the passion chorale: “What is the cause of such plagues? Oh, my sins have beaten you! Oh, my Lord Jesus, I have caused what you are suffering.”17 2. The Self-Sacrifice of the Son The danger of death threatening him could not have been hidden from Jesus when he set out for Jerusalem. He knew the enmity of the scribes and the Pharisees and the concentration of their power in Jerusalem. He knew that King Herod Antipas was out to kill him (Lk. 13.31). He also knew of the inconsistency of his disciples and of the contradiction between his message and the very different messianic expectations of the people cheering him on. The fact that Jesus reckoned with the possibility of a violent death, even before entering Jerusalem, has been handed down through numerous statements that cannot only be explained as post-Easter interpretations of his death. Jesus had the fate of John the Baptizer in mind (cf. Mk. 9.13 par.). He also saw before him the fate of previous prophets: “Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem” (Lk. 13.33). He did not expect the nuptial joy of his community with the disciples to last: “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them” (Mk. 2.20 par.). Jesus answered the request of the sons of Zebedee for places on his right and left in glory: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” (Mk. 10.38 par. Mt. 20.22). The fact that Jesus called the disciples to follow him, in a willingness to suffer and die, presupposed that he expected his own suffering and death. If one considers the three so-called “passion predictions” in the Synoptic Gospels in connection with this and similar traditions, then there is no compelling argument against the authenticity of their core, at least of the words: “The Son of Man is to be handed over into the hands of men” (Mk. 9.31 [S] par.). Even if Jesus’

17 Johann Heermann, “Herzliebster Jesu” (1630). [ET: “Ah, Holy Jesus,” ELW 349 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

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announcements of suffering were supplemented in the course of their transmission by the events of his passion and resurrection that have taken place in the meantime (cf. esp. Mk. 10.33f. par.), the connection between “Son of Man” and “being handed over” is firmly anchored in the Synoptic tradition. Despite the increasing enmity around him, Jesus’ situation had not been hopeless. With the division of Palestine into different political dominions at that time, he could have easily evaded the enemy’s grip. He could have escaped from Galilee, the dominion of the hostile King Herod Antipas, to the region of Tyre and Sidon, or to the area of the Decapolis beyond the Sea of Galilee, for which the Roman military administration alone was responsible. In both cases he would have been beyond the reach of the Sanhedrin. He did not have to go to Jerusalem. If, despite everything, Jesus went to Jerusalem, presented his message there, and even intervened in the operations of the temple courtyard, this was a conscious decision. He did not want to avoid the enemy, and so he knowingly took the risk of being arrested and executed. This freedom of decision is expressed in all the Gospels, including in the accounts of Jesus’ behavior during the trial. It is true that he had lost his freedom as a result of his capture and had become the object of display, interrogation, and abuse. And yet his freedom was manifested both in his repeatedly reported silence and in his confessions before the Sanhedrin and before Pontius Pilate. If, according to the Synoptic tradition, he had not publicly proclaimed himself as the Messiah during his previous ministry, he now did so for the first time before the judicial authorities, who used his confession as the decisive argument for his conviction. How is this decision of Jesus to be understood? There is nothing to suggest that he expected that by appearing in Jerusalem he would gain the acceptance of his message and overcome opposition. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that by appearing there he wanted to force the coming of the kingdom vis-à-vis God, or even wanted to seize power in Jerusalem himself and set up the messianic kingdom.[xxiv] But there are also no indications that he was disappointed by his failures and tired of fighting and thus sought death in Jerusalem and longed for it as a way out of the conflict. There is no sign of an inclination to death in Jesus’ words. However, also missing are the elements of cheerfulness that characterize the death of Socrates according to Plato. Jesus understood death as a “cup” filled with suffering, and in his fear of death, which was witnessed by the disciples—who struggled to stay awake and then succumbed to sleep—he asked God to spare him this cup. How did Jesus interpret the death that was threatening him? Did he speak of a salvific significance of his death? A saying has been handed down in which he described the death of the Son of Man as “a ransom for many” (Mk. 10.45 par. Mt. 20.28). According to the accounts of the Last Supper, Jesus described his death as a “new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11.25; cf. Lk. 22.19ff.) or as “my blood

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of the covenant” (Mk. 14.24 par. Mt. 26.28) and thus as a covenant sacrifice. It is disputed to what extent this understanding of his death as a ransom and a sacrifice has its historical basis in the words of the earthly Jesus or only in the revelation of the exalted Lord, for a comparison of the different New Testament accounts of Jesus’ Last Supper shows that their form is influenced by the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper of the post-Easter community. The parting word, on the other hand, is not disputed: “From now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God” (Mk. 14.25 [S]; cf. the parallels, which vary in their details). When inquiring about Jesus’ interpretation of his imminent death, historical research faces similar methodological problems as when inquiring about his messianic self-understanding. The clarification does not yet come through the analysis of the individual words that have been handed down. The question of whether the earthly Jesus already spoke of his death as a ransom and a covenant sacrifice must be discussed in the broader context of the more widely attested and lessdisputed statements and actions of Jesus. If the all-encompassing framework for the question of Jesus’ self-understanding consisted in the peculiar, continuous contradiction between his claim and his pointing away from himself to God, then the all-encompassing framework for the question of how Jesus understood his approaching death is determined by the following three lines of inquiry that follow from his speech and actions: (a) The numerous words of Jesus about his imminent death do not have the character of diagnoses of his situation and predictions about the possible consequences of his actions. They are not merely about the possibility and danger of death. Rather, they speak of an impending violent death as if it were a self-evident necessity. If the prophets were persecuted, he too will be persecuted. “It is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem” (Lk. 13.33). This necessity is not an inner-worldly inevitability. Behind the announcements of his death is the recognition of a divine “must,” a divinely decreed necessity. Thus the passive voice of the verb in the announcement, “the Son of Man will be handed over into the hands of men” (Mk. 9.31 par.), bears witness to God as the agent who will hand him over to humans. Jesus met death in obedience to God’s will. Only from this point of view is the extreme sharpness with which he rejected Simon Peter understandable, when Peter tried to dissuade him from this path, and Jesus called him “Satan” (Mk. 8.33. par. Mt. 16.23). This obedience is expressed not only in the tradition of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane: “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want” (Mk. 14.36 par.). (b) Jesus served human beings to the end. When he went to Jerusalem, the site of the temple and the center of Jewish power, his speaking and actions there were unmistakably directed toward the whole of his people. He was there not only for his disciples and followers but also for his opponents, answering their questions. Even

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in his cries of woe, his last and utmost call to repentance went out to the scribes and Pharisees. Although he had faced the rejection of his message, he carried it out without a concern for himself, even unto its violent end. In obedience to God, his ministry to humankind became a self-sacrifice. (c) Jesus went to his death in expectation of the kingdom of God. His parting word at the Last Supper was at the same time the word of this expectation, namely, the final, undisguised realization of the kingdom of God. According to Mk. 14.25, Jesus’ expectation was that he would partake of the meal in the kingdom of God. But this expectation was not about him alone. He had announced the kingdom of God as a new community. According to Mt. 26.29, his parting word promises the disciples that he would drink anew “with you” in the kingdom of God. Through his death, Jesus expected to be transferred into the kingdom of God, in which his own would then also participate. Then God would universally and once and for all establish his reign (cf. the announcement of the kingdom of God in Jesus’ parting words in Lk. 22.16, 18). With this threefold orientation, Jesus approached his death. More important than the separate historical inquiry into whether Jesus spoke of his death as a ransom and as a covenant sacrifice is the finding that such words that have been handed down remain within this reliably attested threefold orientation of his speaking and acting about his death, and they interpret his self-sacrifice in this threefold direction. These three relationships in which Jesus understood and affirmed his death are expressed in a concentrated way in the tradition of the Lord’s Supper: the obedient surrender of Jesus to God in his eucharistic praise in the face of death, and his self-surrender to his disciples in the words offered at the distribution of the bread and cup. In this twofold surrender he announced the consummation of the community in the kingdom of God. It is inconceivable that Jesus knowingly approached his death without considering it in the light of the Old Testament Scriptures. He was familiar with the psalms of suffering and the sufferings of the prophets. Thus, given his special closeness to the book of Isaiah, it must be assumed that he was not ignorant of the figure of the Suffering Servant of God and the atoning, salvific significance of his suffering. Also, the later Jewish notions about the atoning effect of the suffering of the righteous could not have remained alien to him. Consequently, there is no compelling reason to dispute the substance of the words of Jesus handed down in the Gospels about the salvific significance of his death and to explain them as a post-Easter interpretation. The interpretation of his death as a ransom and a covenant sacrifice should not come as a surprise, nor should the universal orientation: “a ransom for many” (Mk. 10.45 par. Mt. 20.28) and “poured out for many” (Mk. 14.24). After all, this corresponds both to Jesus’ proclamation of the universal reign of God and to the Old Testament statements about the salvific significance of the Servant of God “for many.”

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If one keeps in mind the threefold orientation of Jesus’ path to death, then it is less the traditional words of Jesus about the salvific significance of his death that are so surprising than the fact that in the Synoptic tradition there are only very few words of Jesus about the salvific significance of his death. As often as he spoke of his impending death, and as clearly as it is that he approached it in obedience to God and in the service of humankind, he did not explicitly express the salvific significance of his death. Jesus’ reluctance to do so could be explained here in a way that is similar to the reason for his silence about himself and for why he turned away from himself during his public preaching, for in all this he was concerned with the coming of God. He expected God to fulfill his kingdom and to reveal the Son of Man. 3. The Sacrificial Offering by God After being condemned by Pontius Pilate, Jesus was whipped and taunted by the Roman soldiers. According to the accounts of all the Gospels, they dressed him in a purple robe, put a crown of thorns on his head, and saluted him as “King of the Jews.” Then he was led outside the city to the place of execution, the hill of Golgotha. At the place of execution, according to custom, Jesus was tied and nailed to the beam of the cross. This was then attached to the trunk of the cross standing there. A plaque was placed at the top stating the reason for the execution: “The King of the Jews” (Mk. 15.26 par.). It is probable that this plaque was already carried before Jesus on the way to Golgatha, or it hung around his neck. Jesus was crucified by Jews and Romans, and he hung on the cross surrounded by Roman soldiers, priests, and scribes who mocked him. Those who were crucified with him also mocked him. Truth and mockery were mixed in the caption above his head, for neither Pontius Pilate nor the Jews believed Jesus to be the king of the Jews. The relatives of Jesus were far away. According to the Synoptic Gospels, no male disciple was present, and only women who had followed him from Galilee watched the events on the cross “from afar” (Mk. 15.40–41 par., where the mother of Jesus is not named among the three Mary’s). According to the Gospel of John (Jn. 19.25–27), “the disciple whom Jesus loved” and Jesus’ mother stood under the cross with other women. But it is questionable whether this young man indicates an actual historical figure or simply an image of the true, faithful church. Jesus was arrested, condemned, and crucified by people. But it would contradict both the witness of the Old Testament and Jesus’ own proclamation if one looked only at what the people here did to him, for this event would not have been possible without God. Faith in God Almighty is certain that nothing—from the greatest thing to the least—can take place without him. He is the Lord of history. The fact that nothing can happen without God does not only mean that nothing can happen without God’s knowledge but also that nothing can happen without God’s permis-

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sion, in the sense of God letting things happen. Because no creaturely existence and activity is possible without God’s creative action, God’s letting things happen is also a divine activity. That means that God handed Jesus over to his enemies through the betrayal of Judas. God acted in the trial of Jesus through the offices of the Jewish theocratic authorities and the Roman secular authorities. Not that the betrayal of Judas and the abuse of those offices by Jews and Romans thereby ceased to be betrayal and abuse. But none of this would have been possible without God. In the trial and execution, God placed Jesus under the curse of the law. God let him die a criminal’s death. This is how God acted toward him who had called on and proclaimed God as the Father, and whose only concern in his speaking and working was the reign of God. Jesus was spared no experience of unfaithfulness, dishonor, and physical suffering on the part of the people. But the deepest torment was caused by God, who offered him up. There is also other evidence that those hanging on the cross still spoke, cried out, and even cursed before they died. The oldest Gospel has handed down the report that Jesus cried out while hanging on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk. 15.34 par. Mt. 27.46). In contrast to the saying from the cross in Luke and John, this saying has been handed down not only in Greek but also in Hebrew. Further supporting the great age of this tradition is the fact that this saying was increasingly felt to be offensive, was reinterpreted, or even eliminated by the post-Easter community. In a number of manuscripts, Mk. 15.34 is toned down (e. g., Codex D reads: “Why have you shamed me?”). Luke omitted this saying in his passion story, although he had the Gospel of Mark before him. Like Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, this saying is missing from the Gospel of John. It seems to contradict the unity of God the Father with the Son. Attempts to weaken it and to reinterpret it continue to be found throughout church history. The incapacity of God and of his Son to suffer was also asserted against the wording of this saying from the cross. For this reason, in this saying there can be no talk of the God-forsakenness of the Son of God, but only of his human nature. Athanasius, for example, did not understand the suffering of Jesus to be the suffering of the Logos, but only the suffering of the body assumed by the Logos.[xxv] But even if the later concept of human nature included not only the body but also the human soul, which the Logos assumed in the incarnation, the adherence to the incapacity of the Logos to suffer resulted in a weakening of this saying from the cross, namely, a distancing of its content from the person who proclaimed it while hanging on the cross. The interpretation that Jesus spoke this saying to God solely according to his human nature was widely accepted. It can also be found, for example, in Thomas Aquinas, and its impact can also be seen in old-Protestant scholasticism.[xxvi] Another common interpretation has claimed that Jesus was not crying out to God in his own name but in the name of the overall nature of humanity—not for himself, but for the Jews and Gentiles, for it was not he himself who had fallen, but the rest of humanity who had fallen into corruption and

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had been abandoned by God. Finally, there is an almost embarrassing trivialization when Schleiermacher said in a passion sermon that he was entitled to conclude “with certainty” from this saying of Jesus that Jesus on the cross painfully felt the hostility of the people, but “thought and felt just as brightly and cheerfully about his death as we find it everywhere in those final discourses of his, in which he tried to prepare his disciples for his death.”18 For those scholastics who assumed that the earthly Jesus retained an everlasting vision of God, and for Schleiermacher, who asserted the constant strength of Jesus’ consciousness of God, the idea of his being forsaken by God on the cross must have been incomprehensible and intolerable. In fact, this saying from the cross is so offensive that it is more likely to be assumed that the eyewitnesses heard it from under the cross than that the post-Easter community put it into the mouth of the dying Jesus.

Again and again the wording of this question about God broke through later reinterpretations and proved to be the greatest consolation for those who thought they had been abandoned by God. The first word of one of the numerous Old Testament lament psalms is included in this saying from the cross. Here a man laments, surrounded by enemies who encircle him like wild beasts, and who is despised by his own people. He is “poured out like water,” his vital forces are “dried up,” his “bones are out of joint,” he lies “in the dust of death” (Ps. 22.13–16). He is already in the realm of death, where the connection between humankind and God is ended and God is not glorified. Already in the jaws of death, he reproaches God: “You lay me in the dust of death” (v. 16), you treat me like a dead person, for “I cry, but my help is so far away… I call, but you do not answer” (v. 2ff. [S]). In this context comes the question: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (v. 1a). This psalm ends, like almost all psalms of lament, with thanksgiving for God’s help. But the help had not yet come to the person praying, while he was lamenting. That person was still experiencing how God was “far away,” how fear was “near,” and “no helper” was there (v. 11). That is why one should not weaken Jesus’ saying from the cross by referring to the conclusion of the psalm. With this saying, Jesus joined the ranks of those who had experienced God-forsakenness. At the same time, this statement from the psalm received an unprecedented radicalization when it was cried out by one who had spoken intimately of God as the Father, like no one else had done, and in whose speaking and acting the salvation of God was bestowed on sinners and the sick. Therein lies the unfathomable abyss of this saying from the cross, that here the Son of God lamented that he was forsaken by God. Contrary to interpretations that weaken the saying from the cross, Luther pointed out with great emphasis that 18 [Friedrich Schleiermacher, Predigten von Friedrich Schleiermacher [Sermons of Friedrich Schleiermacher], in Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Sämmtliche Werke, 2.2, new ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1843), 403. This sermon, whose text was Mt. 27.46, was preached on 1 April 1821. For Schleiermacher’s mature understanding of Jesus’ cry of dereliction, see CG, §104 (ET: 2.652–670). –Ed.]

The Death on the Cross

God’s Son, through whom everything was created, namely God’s Son in person, not only according to his human nature, uttered “such a cry of murder” [“einen solchen Mordsschrei”] that goes beyond all comprehension.19 The outrageousness of God’s action upon Jesus on the cross is concentrated in this death cry. At the same time, however, this saying from the cross says that even though he was forsaken by God, Jesus did not forsake God. Even less did he curse God, as others on the cross did. He cried out to the one who had withdrawn from him: “My God, my God, why…?” He complained to him, he questioned him. He clung to the one who had offered him up and who was far removed from him. The intertwining of his being offered up by humans and by God and his selfsacrifice to God and humans is the mystery of Jesus’ death. After he had died, his body was taken down from the cross and laid in a tomb. According to the accounts in all the Gospels, the tomb was sealed. In the Apostles’ Creed, the words “descended into the realm of the dead” are added to the words, “was crucified, died, and was buried.” This addition, which is missing in the Nicene Creed and the Constantinopolitan Creed, makes it impossible to misunderstand that the statements about Jesus’ death were only about the process of dying. Death is not merely the end of earthly life. Rather, with death, the existence of the deceased enters into the sphere of the power of death—they are delivered into an abiding nothingness, out of which no further praise of God is possible. The statements in the New Testament about Jesus’ death are not just about Jesus’ death but also about “the bonds of death” [Acts 2.24 (SCH)] that bind the deceased in the realm of the dead. With this, the humiliation of the Son of God was brought to completion in its deepest depths after it had begun in the incarnation. God “sent” (Jn. 3.17) his Son means at the same time that he “gave” him (v. 17). This divine giving, however, includes the incarnation, the public ministry, and the crucifixion of the Son. The incarnation, the delivery of the message of the kingdom of God, and the suffering of death on the cross are one movement of self-humiliation. 4. The Death for the World All churches proclaim Jesus’ death on the cross as a death for the world—as the salvation of the world. They proclaim the crucified Jesus as salvation, not only for his disciples and followers but also for his enemies.

19 [For variations on this German phrase (but not the exact wording that Schlink gave here), cf. Martin Luther, Predigt über die Passionsgeschichte am Montag nach Invokavit (Sermon on the Passion Story for the Monday after Invocavit, i. e., the Monday after the First Sunday in Lent [6 March 1525]), WA, 17/1.68–71. The text on which Luther preached that day was Mt. 27.45f. –Ed.]

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This witness is older than the earliest New Testament writings. Paul had already received the soteriological formula through the tradition of the church: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures and was buried” (1 Cor. 15.3f. [S]). In other places, too, Paul may have used such older soteriological formulas (e. g., Rom. 3.25; 4.25; 8.32). This is also the case in other New Testament Scriptures (so, e. g., 1 Pet. 2.21f.). The certainty that Jesus died for the salvation of all people was soon universally established in early Christianity. It is expressed in confessional statements: “for me” (e. g., Gal. 2.20), “for us” (e. g., Rom. 5.8; 2 Cor. 5.21; 1 Jn. 3.16), in assuring others “for you” (e. g., 1 Cor. 11.24; 1 Pet. 2.21), and also in comprehensive statements: “for all” (e. g., 2 Cor. 5.14f.; 1 Tim. 2.6), “for everyone” (Heb. 2.9), “for the life of the world” (Jn. 6.51). The universality of salvation is also expressed with precision: he died “for our sins,” “for the unrighteous” (1 Pet. 3.18). This is not contradicted by the statement that Jesus died for his friends (Jn. 15.12–15), for through his word and through his death he made the impure pure and turned servants into friends. The statements of teaching about Jesus’ death were handed down further as the basis for the ever-new promise of the proclamation: “for you.” As a promise of Jesus’ death on the cross, this “for you” rushes from country to country to the end of the world, it reaches out to sinners, and it bestows salvation on those who believe. This “for” is expressed in the New Testament Scriptures primarily with the preposition ὑπέρ [huper] and more rarely with the words διά [dia] and ἀντί [anti].[xxvii] In addition, however, it is contained in the entire New Testament message about the death of Jesus, even where these prepositions are missing. Since their meanings have become more overlapped in koine Greek and not as clearly distinguished from one another as in classical Greek, the more precise definition of their meaning can only be derived from the context of the New Testament message of the cross.

The early Christian message about the death of Jesus was not limited to proclaiming the horrible fact of this death and the incomprehensible intertwining of Jesus’ being offered up by humans and by God and of Jesus’ self-sacrifice to God and to humans. On the contrary, it interpreted and assured the salvific significance of this intertwining of human and divine action in Jesus’ suffering, using a wide variety of ideas and concepts. It is striking that the monstrous deeds of the people who took Jesus to the cross are a prerequisite for these interpretations, but those deeds hardly play a role in them. These interpretations focus on God’s act of salvation in Jesus’ death for the benefit of humankind. The ideas and concepts used here all have a history in the old covenant. In addition, however, they deal with elementary processes in the life of humankind in general. The diversity of early Christian interpretations of the salvific significance of Jesus’ death is of great importance for the ecumenical discussion of this issue, since some

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of these interpretations have been preferred by churches in different ways and have been further developed and consolidated in the formation of systematic theories. That is why the most important New Testament interpretations should be identified here: Jesus’ death as a judgment against the sin of the world. “God made him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us” (2 Cor. 5.21 [L]). God gave to him the treatment due to sinners. He executed upon him the judgment under which sinners have fallen. “God condemned sin in the flesh,” namely, in the condemnation of Jesus, the Son of God “sent in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8.3). God passed judgment on him and executed it against him, which befits the “flesh,” i. e., humanity in its rebellion against God. Paul taught this condemnation in the fullness of its radical judgment against the transgressors of the Old Testament law, as announced by God, but Paul extended that judgment beyond them to include all people. The same curse that the law speaks upon those who break the law came upon Jesus. In that sense he became “a curse for us” (Gal. 3.13)—he was placed under the curse under which rebellious humanity found itself. Not only did God let Jesus suffer under the curse of those who condemned him, but he placed him under his curse. God thus concentrated his “No” against sin on Jesus, the innocent one. In his death the judgment against the sin of the world was executed. Therefore, his death is for humanity the deliverance from judgment, the acquittal of sinners, the justification of the ungodly. God made Jesus sin, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5.21). God condemned sin in him, “so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Rom. 8.4). This interpretation of the death of Jesus in the conceptuality of criminal law is closest to the historical event, insofar as Jesus was executed as a result of a criminal trial. But this trial is now interpreted quite differently than was the case in the decisions of the judges at the time: he was not executed as the guilty one but as the innocent one. His death is not the end of his message of salvation for Israel, but rather it is the realization of salvation for Israel and all peoples. This understanding of Jesus’ death as a suffering of judgment for the sins of the world not only contradicts the verdicts in the trial against him at the time, but it also breaks through the basic principles of the Old Testament law and of secular law in general. After all, it goes without saying that the wrongdoer should be punished for his wrongdoing. But here, however, the judgment perpetrated by wrongdoers was executed on the innocent one. Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world. According to the tradition of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus described his death as a covenant sacrifice: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11.25; cf. Lk. 22.20); “This is my blood of the covenant” (Mk. 14.24 par. Mt. 26.28). Paul spoke of Jesus as the “Passover lamb” (1 Cor. 5.7), an idea that also stands behind the Synoptic tradition of the Last Supper as a Passover meal and behind the Johannine timing of Jesus’ death, the date of Nisan 13, on which the Passover lambs were slaughtered in the temple. In a different way, Jesus is referred to in the Gospel of John as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (Jn. 1.29, 36), and again differently in the Revelation of John. Paul also adopted the formula that had been handed down that

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described Jesus’ death as a “sacrifice of atonement by his blood” (Rom. 3.25), and the letter to the Hebrews extensively interpreted it as an atoning sacrifice. Even without specifying the particular type of sacrifice, the atoning effect of his death is attested to in numerous New Testament statements about the effect of Jesus’ blood and about the “sprinkling” of it: the forgiveness of sins, cleansing from sins. In numerous New Testament statements, Jesus is the one acting to offer himself as a sacrifice to God for sins. As a high priest, he came before God to take away the sins of the people through his atoning sacrifice (Heb. 2.17). Jesus is also attested to as the one who acted in such a way that his death is compared to a whole burnt-offering pleasing to God: “He gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5.2). The sacrifice of Jesus ruptures the obvious assumptions that were true for the Old Testament atonement: for Jesus did not sacrifice an animal or anything but himself. He did not sacrifice on account of his own sin, but he sacrificed himself as the innocent one for the sins of the world. He did not offer to God a sacrifice that would have to be repeated, but rather he sacrificed himself once and for all. He is the end of all atoning sacrifices of blood. Jesus’ death as the reconciliation of the world with God. “While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (Rom. 5.10). Through the death of Jesus, the enmity that existed between humans and God has been removed. It was not only the enmity of the sinner against God but also the enmity of God against sinner, namely, the wrath of God against sin. At the beginning of his letter to the Romans, Paul referred to God’s wrath “against all ungodliness and wickedness of human beings” (1.18), about which he also spoke in connection with the atonement through the death of Jesus (5.9). This reconciliation applies not only to the Christian community (“we,” 5.10; cf. 2 Cor. 5.18: “us”) but to all of humanity, the world: “God was in Christ, who reconciled the world to himself ” (2 Cor. 5.19 [E]). The “through Christ” (v. 18) and “in Christ” (v. 19) also cannot be separated from his death in this context (v. 21). Jesus’ death is interpreted as the reconciliation of the world only in the Pauline writings. Paul did not connect his statements about the atonement through Christ’s death with cultic ideas. In this respect, he distinguished atonement and reconciliation. Reconciliation is about restoring peace between God and the world. So also does the hymn in Col. 1.15ff. extol the fact that it was the will of God to dwell in Christ and that “through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things by making peace through his death on the cross” (v. 19f. [S]). Humans could not bring about reconciliation with God. They were imprisoned in their enmity against God. They were only able to be exhorted to be reconciled to God—to be reconciled with God by God through Christ. This reconciliation, however, was also not the result of God changing his mind through Jesus. There is no mention of Jesus having reconciled God with the world. Reconciliation is an act of God through Jesus’ death. God let go of his mortal enmity against sin by offering up Jesus to that enmity. The reconciliation on the cross is obviously different in essential respects from what is usually understood by reconciliation. If reconciliation means the end of an enmity existing between persons or groups by means of a compromise, in which both hitherto hostile parties

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consent, then the reconciliation of the world on the cross does not mean that God and humankind are reconciled with one another, but rather that God reconciles humankind with himself. In Jesus’ death, he made peace effective even before people accepted it. And yet this peace is not a dictate of power but the act of God’s self-giving to humankind in the offering up of his Son. The death of Jesus as the ransom of humanity from slavery to sin and corruption. A further realm of ideas for thinking about the death of Jesus include interpreting it as a ransom payment or as a redemption payment. In common parlance, these terms were used to describe the ransom payment that was paid to release an enslaved person, a prisoner of war, or someone imprisoned for a debt. The concept of redemption also has its original meaning in these contexts. The passage that speaks of the Son of Man who came “to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mk. 10.45 par. Mt. 20.28) does not expressly state by whom “the many” are enslaved. One has to think here of the end of the enslavement that Jesus announced through his message of the imminent kingdom of God, an enslavement from which he had already begun to liberate people through his beatitudes, through his forgiveness and healing, namely, the dominion of sin, of diseases, and of the world’s powers of corruption. An echo of this passage is found in the later confession of the one mediator, Jesus Christ, “who gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2.6). Statements voiced by Paul come from the same realm of ideas: “You were bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6.20; 7.23). Here, too, everything that Paul taught about the dominion of sin and death and of the inability of human beings to free themselves from this bondage must be presupposed. He could also say that “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law” (Gal. 3.13; cf. 4.5), for the law condemns transgressors and hands them over to the dominion of sin and death. By this ransom the sinner becomes “a free person belonging to the Lord” (1 Cor. 7.22). In that such people now belong to Christ, their freedom that was attained through that ransom is “the right of a free child” who calls upon God as Father (Gal. 4.5f.). First Peter 1.18f. also bears witness to the ransom from the “futility” of sinful life, “not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.”20 The notion of ransom is less conspicuous in numerous New Testament statements about salvation. But even where it is clearly present, it is striking that—contrary to the custom of ransoming slaves and captives—nowhere is it said to whom Christ’s life was paid as a ransom. Nowhere are the powers under which the people were enslaved named as its recipients.

In these New Testament interpretations of the salvific significance of Jesus’ death, very different concepts are employed. Even if they can all be described as legal concepts in a very broad sense, the regulations and processes to which they refer—in criminal law, cultic law, contract law, and property law—by no means coincide with

20 [Cf. Luther’s explanation to the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed (BSELK, 872–873 [BC, 355]). –Ed.]

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one another. It is true that in the New Testament witness to the salvific significance of Jesus’ death, all these legal frameworks have been changed in one way or another. None of them has been preserved in its previous structure. The terms have received a different meaning. However, since the above-mentioned concepts and frameworks that were employed were all changed by the same event of Jesus’ death on the cross, there are also similarities in the New Testament interpretations that have been cited. This is already indicated, e. g., by the fact that the terms used occasionally merge into one another. For example, atonement and transfer of punishment (2 Cor. 5.18–21), transfer of judgment and ransom (1 Pet. 1.18), and, in other ways, ransom and sacrifice (Rev. 5.9), are all linked in statements about Jesus’ death. In addition, however, a common basic structure can be shown in the above interpretations of the salvific significance of that death. (a) All people have sinned and are under the dominion of sin, death, and the powers of corruption. Although they think they can escape the judgment of God, they have remained under the verdict of his judgment. No one can free oneself from this dominion of sin, death, and the powers of corruption. None can escape the judgment of God. None can restore the community that they have broken with God himself—neither through good works nor through sacrifice. (b) What was impossible for sinners, God accomplished in the sending and giving of his Son. He cast upon him the sins of humankind and executed upon him the judgment under which humankind had fallen. He placed him under his enmity against sin. The following event is also attested to as Jesus’ deed: what was impossible for sinners, he accomplished in his death. He suffered the divine judgment. He offered himself as a sacrifice to God. He gave his life as a ransom. But nowhere does it say that Jesus changed God’s mind through his sacrifice and turned him from an angry God into a gracious God. Nor is it said anywhere that by giving himself as a ransom he caused God to deliver sinners from captivity. The idea that Jesus reconciled God with the world, as well as the opinion that through his death he made it possible for God to forgive sins, is alien to the statements in the New Testament. The later—and especially in the West—widespread view that Jesus stilled God’s wrath through his death and wrested the salvation of the world from the rejecting, judging God, has no basis in the New Testament witnesses. Rather, God presented Jesus as “a sacrifice of atonement by his blood” (Rom. 3.25). God reconciled the world to himself through Jesus’ death. Even where Jesus’ actions are discussed, God’s mission is the presupposition, and God’s action takes place through him. On the other hand, in these New Testament interpretations of his death, Jesus is never just the object on which God acts and the instrument that God uses for salvation. That God cast the sin of the world upon him means that Jesus bore the

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sins of the world. The fact that God executed the judgment of the world on Jesus means at the same time that Jesus took this judgment upon himself. In the offering by God, the self-sacrifice of Jesus takes place at the same time. This vis-à-vis between God and Jesus is about one and the same act of salvation. The unity of this action is based not only on the agreement between God’s will and Jesus’ obedience but on the unity of God the Father and the Son who, in one and the same spontaneity, turn in love toward the world in order to save it. In this act of salvation, the world’s having fallen into judgment is in no way played down or even ignored, but rather it is taken completely seriously. It is acknowledged and done away with at the same time, in that God offered up Jesus to die on the cross, and Jesus has taken this death on the cross upon himself. (c) At the center of the above-cited New Testament interpretations of the cross stands the vicarious representative action [Stellvertretung] of Jesus: He died in our place, indeed, in the place of all sinners. There are no calculations as to how far the deed of the individual can offset the misdeeds of all humankind and erase their consequences. In view of the immensity of what happened—that God offered up his Son to die and that the Son took this death upon himself—there was no need to reckon how this vicarious representative suffering of an individual can offset the guilt of humankind. (d) If Jesus died for everyone, it is God’s will that everyone hears this message and, by faith in this message, is saved. So the word of the unique reconciliation of the world exhorts people to accept this reconciliation: “Be reconciled to God” (2. Cor. 5.20). Thus the doctrine of the judgment carried out on the cross urges acceptance of the message of the justification of the sinner. The message of Jesus’ ransom calls for recognizing oneself as belonging to Christ, and the doctrine of the unique sacrifice on the cross invites us to partake of the Lord’s Supper. The death of Jesus as the vicarious representative suffering of the Son of God for the world is assured to everyone quite concretely: he died for you! The connection between vicarious representative action and assurance, between “in our stead” and “for our benefit,” is also expressed in prepositions that the New Testament Scriptures use. Thus ὑπέρ [huper] can mean both “instead of ” and “on behalf of.”[xxviii] This is often indistinguishable in individual instances. The notion of vicarious representative action is most clearly expressed with ἀντί [anti], but in koine Greek this preposition can also have the meaning of “for the benefit of.”[xxix] The double meaning of these Greek prepositions can also be found in our word for.

The multiplicity of statements with which the gospel speaks of God’s salvific action for believers will be dealt with later (chap. 14.A). First of all, only one basic structure of this promise, which is closely related to that of vicarious representative action, should be pointed out. In it the vicarious representative action achieves its

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goal, namely, in the assurance of the exchange that is grounded on the vicarious representative action. The understanding of vicarious representative suffering as an exchange can already be found in the song about the Suffering Servant of God: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed” (Isa. 53.5). Paul also carried out the promise of the vicarious representative action in the structure of an exchange: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5.21 [NIV]). In the same statement-structure he reminded people of the grace of Jesus Christ: “…that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8.9 [NIV]). The entire history of the humiliation of the Son of God can be proclaimed and assured in the structure of an exchange: The Son of God became a human being so that we humans could become children of God. He, the innocent one, was sentenced so that we, the guilty ones, might be acquitted. He was forsaken by God so that our God-forsakenness would end. He who is life died so that we who have fallen into death might have life. In the structure of exchange, the assurance of salvation is particularly attested to in the theology of the Eastern fathers and in the liturgy of the Eastern Church, and then again by Luther.[xxx] The gospel proclaims God’s “No” to Jesus and Jesus’ “Yes” to God’s “No” as God’s final “Yes” to humanity, which does not require any supplementation. Through the promise of the exchange, believers are granted what has taken place once and for all in the vicarious suffering and dying of Jesus. If we look back at this line of thought, it is obvious that the various legal concepts and frameworks by means of which the New Testament Scriptures attest to the salvific significance of the death of Jesus have been ruptured. In view of the trial and the execution of Jesus, it is true that the description of his death as a penal suffering comes closest to the events. But since the innocent one has been sentenced and executed here, the principles of secular criminal law have been violated. In that the legal concepts have become ruptured when they are employed by the message of the cross, the provisional nature of secular law becomes apparent. But the legal provisions of the Old Testament law, including its cultic provisions, are also ruptured. Contained in Jesus’ vicarious death and in the underlying exchange there is an overabundant, overriding element of grace, so that this death is the end of the law (Rom. 10.4). The rupture of the legal frameworks in the New Testament interpretations of the salvific significance of Jesus’ death has not only a linguistic but also a salvation-historical significance. The fact that a common basic structure can be demonstrated in the New Testament interpretations of the death of Jesus “for the world” does not mean, of course, that the variety of interpretations given is superfluous, for their differences did not result merely from the fact that different legal concepts were put into service. Rather, different concepts were used because the witness to the unfathomable mys-

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tery of the death of the Son of God on the cross is at issue here. One conceptuality alone could not express the salvific significance, since in the event of the cross God’s action on Jesus and Jesus’ action in relation to God and, in turn, God’s action through Jesus for the world and Jesus’ action for the world encompass a variety of relationships that cannot be reduced to just one. It is true that not every New Testament interpretation given above can be found in every author of the New Testament Scriptures (thus, e. g., the interpretation of the event of the cross as a sacrifice plays a minor role in Paul, while the interpretation of it as a reconciliation is missing outside of the Pauline writings). But in no New Testament writing is the death of Jesus “for the world” presented merely in one conceptuality. This fact is to be taken seriously as of fundamental importance in all talk about Jesus’ death. This fact cannot be dismissed as if this variety simply reflected a primitive stage of imprecise pre-theological language. The fact that the salvific significance of Jesus’ death exceeds our comprehension is made evident by the juxtaposition of several interpretations and the use of several concepts and frameworks that cannot be completely harmonized. All this means that the witness to the salvific significance of the cross remains unfinished and open to further interpretation because of the overwhelming uniqueness of this event. In contrast to the New Testament witnesses and their continuation in the proclamation of the church, the development of church doctrine shows again and again the tendency to summarize the variety of New Testament statements in a few concepts or even in just one concept, which serves as the overarching concept, and to which then the other statements on the same topic are coordinated. Such an overarching concept can be selected from concepts in the New Testament, but it can also have an extra-biblical origin. Such ways in which concepts are focused often go hand in hand with attempts to make the mystery of the divine act of salvation explicable, or even to prove it necessary, whether for apologetic or speculative reasons. One of the most consistent attempts of this kind was Anselm of Canterbury’s work, Cur Deus homo (AD 1098). Anselm did not begin with the historical fact of Jesus’ death but with the reality of human guilt, and he asked about the possibility of redeeming it. Disregarding the historical Christ (“remoto Christo, quasi numquam aliquid fuerit in illo”),21 he presupposed general anthropological and theological premises, such as, e. g., sinners cannot remove their guilt themselves, God’s justice cannot dispense with satisfaction, God’s goodness cannot destroy human beings. The overarching concept of satisfaction (satisfactio) had its origin not in New Testament statements but in the concepts of the Latin penitential practice and the right of honor. In his argument, Anselm distinguished between the incarnation of the Logos,

21 Anselm, “Praefatio,” Cur Deus homo. [PL, 158.361; “…leaving Christ out of view (as if nothing had ever been known of him),” Cur Deus homo, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, 191. –Ed.]

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which was merely the presupposition for the possibility of satisfaction, and the obedience of the incarnate one—which he, as a human, owed God as a matter of course and which therefore did not have the significance of a sufficient satisfaction—and of his free decision to sacrifice his life in death, which he, being innocent and obedient to God, did not deserve. Only through this death could there be satisfaction for the sins of human beings and the acquisition of the merit that benefits sinners. All the emphasis rests on the satisfactory influence of the incarnate one toward God. Through the death of Jesus, God was moved to forgive sinners. On the other hand, Anselm pushed other New Testament interpretations of the death of Jesus Christ into the background and even expressly rejected some of them, e. g., the interpretations of his death as a ransom and as a penal suffering. From the very beginning, Anselm’s teaching met with a variety of objections. For example, Abelard rejected it by arguing that Jesus’ satisfactory influence on God was not the only influence that triggered God’s love for the world. Rather, God’s love is the origin of the salvation-event on the cross.[xxxi] Abelard taught the death of Jesus as the supreme revelation of divine love, through which people are aroused to love and their sin is overcome. Abelard also understood Jesus’ life as a vicarious obedience to God’s law, and his death as an innocent enduring of the divine punishment for sin. However, this obedience and suffering of Jesus did not first awaken God’s love. Rather, it was the way in which God’s love for the world was revealed. Above all, however, medieval criticism was directed against Anselm’s claim that his proof was conclusive. For example, Thomas Aquinas did not recognize the necessity but only the appropriateness of the death of Jesus, and he explained the salvific significance of this death not only as a satisfaction but also as a punishment and a sacrifice.[xxxii] Duns Scotus even more strongly disputed the provability of the salvific significance of the death of Jesus and instead referred to God’s freedom, which is not bound by any fixed norm, to grant this death the effect of blotting out sin.[xxxiii] But the widespread criticism of the logical consistency of Anselm’s work did not mean at the same time that the concept of satisfaction as such would have been rejected. It was also further used by critics of Anselm, alongside other well-known interpretations of the death of Jesus, and it even played the role of the overarching concept, albeit with diminished significance. A diminished significance is also present in the Reformation confessions. A much more drastic critique was asserted in the sixteenth century by the Socinians, whose anti-trinitarian position already led them to reject the teaching of the incarnation and, accordingly, the vicarious representative suffering of the Son of God, and thus they dismissed the presuppositions that Anselm and his medieval critics held in common.[xxxiv] Here it was not only about a necessary correction of a one-sidedness that had been widespread for centuries, namely, the emphasis on the appeasement of the divine wrath that took place through Jesus’ death, but also about denying God’s vicarious representative action on the cross. It is not the task here to depict the history of these changes, from Hugo Grotius’ timid weakening of the statements about Jesus’ vicarious suffering to the rejection of those statements in modern times.[xxxv] The more the incarnation of God, and thus the vicariousrepresentative significance of Jesus’ dying, was called into question, the more the focus tended

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to shift away from his death and toward proofs of the divine love that had already become visible in Jesus’ earlier ministry: whether people pointed especially to his active obedience to God’s commandment about love, or to his proclamation of God’s fatherly love, or to his solidarity with sinners, or to the example of the incomparable strength of his consciousness of God. This dissolution of the salvific significance of the cross was carried out in different ways by the Enlightenment, Schleiermacher, Albrecht Ritschl, and their students. While this dissolution has always taken place by denying the logical coherence of Anselm’s theory of satisfaction, people were often unaware that they themselves had undertaken a much more extensive rationalization about God’s love instead. This rationalization about God’s love, which largely disregards his judgment against sin, has found supporters especially in the sphere of modern Protestantism. But such an understanding of the cross was again and again rejected in the churches of the Reformation on the basis of Reformation teaching, and it has never received the validity of a church confession.

5. The Victory of the Cross over the World The churches proclaim Jesus’ death on the cross not only as salvation for the world but also as a victory over the world. Jesus had spoken of his work as a battle: “I came not to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt. 10.34; cf. Lk. 12.51). He compared his coming to breaking into a strong man’s house, binding the strong man, and robbing his house (Mk. 3.27 par.). In a similar way, Jesus’ death was then proclaimed as a victory over the world. Jesus’ death as his victory—that is especially the witness of the Gospel of John. In his farewell discourses, Jesus gave this assurance to his disciples: “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (Jn. 16.33 [RSV]). About Jesus’ anxiety over death, as expressed in the Garden of Eden, this Gospel is silent. But it does depict how Jesus, as a victor, meets those who want to arrest him: “When he said to them, ‘I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground” (18.6 [RSV]). He is not only interrogated by the Roman governor, but Jesus puts him in the position of making the decision (18.37; 19.11). The trial of Jesus becomes transparent: although they do not want to do so, his opponents have to serve him, namely, to serve him as the king, and bear witness to his death as the salvation for the people. Here the crucifixion is already described as an exaltation, and the last word of the dying Jesus is a triumphal word: “It is finished” (19.30). How did Jesus triumph over the world on the cross? Quite paradoxically: by surrendering himself to the enmity of the world and letting the world triumph over him. He overcame the world by placing himself under the command not to resist evil (Mt. 5.39). Thus he did not flee when he was about to be arrested, and he forbade his disciples to resist with the sword. In letting the world’s enmity against God rage against him, he has faced the world as the victor who has overcome it.

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The understanding of Jesus’ death as a victory is not expressed as frequently in the New Testament Scriptures as it is as a sacrifice. But it has had a powerful impact throughout church history—in doctrine, in the liturgy, and in Christian art. Both the crucified one and God can be proclaimed as the victor: God has “nailed” the bond that enslaves us “to the cross; and having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them” (Col. 2.14f. [S]). “In him,” the crucified one, the powers are conquered. At the same time, this means that Christ has conquered the powers. Cross and victory are also connected in that the song of victory that is sung by the church triumphant is the song of the Lamb who was slain (Rev. 15.3ff.; cf. 5.11). Believers share in Christ’s victory. In view of Jesus Christ, “who died, yes, who was raised,” the following is true: in all the afflictions of this world, “we are more than conquerors” (Rom. 8.34, 37). Because Christ is the victor, this too is true: “Our faith is the victor that has overcome the world” (1 Jn. 5.4 [L]). Also, in the interpretation of the cross as a victory over the world, the message of Jesus’ victory, won once and for all, belongs together with the assurance of this victory that is hastening ever further to all people. Alongside the interpretation of Jesus’ death as salvation for the world is this other interpretation, which views his death as a victory over the world. The difference between the two interpretations cannot be overlooked, for the message of the victory over the world does not reflect the opposition between God and Jesus in the event of the cross, but rather it bears witness to the mighty deed of him who is one with God and in whom God conquers. In this other interpretation, the message is not primarily about the vicarious representative action by which the incarnate Son of God offered himself up to die in our place and was treated and judged by God as a sinner, but about the victory that he, in unity with God, achieved on the cross. This message is not primarily about the forgiveness of sins, but about the annihilation of the powers that have gained power over human beings through sin. This difference in understanding the salvific significance of Jesus’ death has also had an impact on the understanding of Christ’s “descent into hell.” If Jesus’ death is understood primarily as a vicarious representative action, then the phrase “he descended into the realm of the dead” means the extreme consequence of his humiliation, namely, his being delivered into the realm of existing in nothingness, where God is not praised and the connection with God is cut off. But if one understands these words of the Apostles’ Creed from the point of view of the victory on the cross, then the “descent into hell” becomes the triumph of the crucified one, who frees the faithful who have died from the prison of death. Both statements about the salvific significance of Jesus’ death are about the liberation of people enslaved by sin, death, and corruption. The two seemingly opposite interpretations of Christ’s descent into hell, as extreme humiliation and

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victory over hell, are not mutually exclusive. Even as humbled to the deepest depths, Jesus is the victor and liberator. Both interpretations of Jesus’ death, as salvation for the world and as overcoming the world, cannot be separated from one another. However, they also cannot be dissolved into one another or reduced to one sole interpretation. Here, too, the following is true: precisely in their diversity, these two interpretations point to the mystery of the cross, the meaning of which is inexhaustible. Like the statements about Jesus’ vicarious suffering for the world, those about Jesus’ victory over the world on the cross have also been supplemented with elucidations in the history of theology, which were intended to serve as an explanation of the mystery. In this connection, especially the New Testament interpretation of the death of Jesus as a ransom has undergone further development. For example, Origen tried to explain the paradox of Jesus’ victory over the world on the cross by saying that the powers of corruption were deceived by his surrender to death.[xxxvi] They had a right to sinners. That is why Jesus was given to them as a ransom. But by not being able to capture his sinless soul, they were overcome. Similarly, Gregory of Nyssa explained Jesus’ victory over the powers of corruption on the cross in this way: Because the divine nature of Jesus Christ was veiled by the human nature, it became the baited fishhook that Satan bit to his undoing.[xxxvii] Here we see attempts to explain the mystery of the cross through supplementary mythological illustrations—not, as Anselm did later, by developing a legal-logical system. Origen did not claim to be able to prove that this was the only way God could have conquered the powers of corruption and liberated the enslaved creatures. But both conceptions attempt to offer a rationalization of the mystery in very different ways. The Origenist interpretation not only became widespread in the Eastern Church but also in the Western. Such ideas can be found, e. g., in Ambrose, Augustine, and Leo I.[xxxviii] They still had an effect on Luther as well.[xxxix] But this theory has not gone unchallenged in both the East and the West. Gregory of Nazianzus and John of Damascus expressly rejected the devil’s claim to power, and, in the West, Anselm of Canterbury opposed this theory in a very influential way.[xl Indeed, the notion that Jesus was given as a ransom to the powers of corruption is untenable. The New Testament interpretations of the death of Jesus as a ransom do not state precisely to whom that death was given as a ransom. If one dares to venture a statement beyond this remarkable silence, it could only be this: Jesus was given as a ransom to God, for God has put sinners under the dominion of the powers of corruption. The latter have no right of their own over human beings. Aside from the difficulty with the notion that God gave Jesus to himself as a ransom, the idea of deceiving and tricking Satan through the sacrifice of Jesus is unworthy of God. The fact that this theory of redemption did not lead to such sharp arguments that later happened with the development of Anselm’s theory of satisfaction is probably due to the fact that it did not claim to supplant or replace the other interpretations of Jesus’ death. It appeared to be merely one interpretation among others, and it has now lost its former significance in most churches.

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In the end, one has to ask what effects the differences mentioned in the fourth and fifth sections of this chapter have had on the unity of the church. In the statements about Jesus’ death there are no conflicts between the dogmas of the Christian churches. With the ancient church’s confession, they jointly confess that Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, was crucified “for us.”22 This “for us” includes not only the members of the church but all people. This “for us” is not further interpreted in this confession. In later dogmatic decisions, the salvific significance is expressed by other terms such as, e. g., “pro salute nostra” [“for our salvation”],23 “sacrificium pro nostris peccatis” [“sacrifice for our sins”],24 and “redemptio.”25 But these terms are not further interpreted in these decisions, much less has a comprehensive theory been defined as dogma that would more precisely establish why Jesus’ death is the salvation of the world. There are no conflicts here with the dogmas of the Eastern Church. The same applies to the Reformation confessions. For example, the Smalcald Articles (1537) expressly teach about the Trinity as well as about the incarnation, the death, the resurrection, and the future appearing of the Son of God: “These articles are not matters of dispute or conflict, for both sides confess them.”26 Theological doctrine is to be distinguished from confession. In contrast to dogma, it has to speak about the multiplicity of biblical statements, to justify the selection of the overarching concepts that summarize them, and to explain the salvific significance of the death of Jesus that is thereby identified, including the task of proclaiming that significance to all people. In this respect, however, i. e., with respect to the theological interpretation of the jointly confessed “for us,” “for you,” “for all,” there are considerable differences between Eastern and Western Christendom: Anselm’s teaching about satisfaction has always remained foreign to the Eastern Church. They do not even have adequate Greek words to translate the terms satisfactio and meritum, which arose from the Latin practice of penance. Anselm’s teaching has been rejected again and again in Eastern theology up to our time because of its juridical conclusiveness and because of the offsetting of human guilt by means of the innocent achievement of Jesus Christ, as well as because of the consequences that Anselm’s teaching about the merit of Christ has had for the practice of indulgences in the Roman Church.27 Also alien to Eastern thinking is

22 The Constantinopolitan Creed. [Denzinger, 150; Tanner, 1.24; BSELK, 49–50 (BC, 23). –Ed.] 23 Symbolum Quicumque. [The So-called Athanasian Creed; Denzinger, 75–76 (here 76); BSELK, 57–60 (here 60) (BC, 25). –Ed.] 24 Concilium Toledanum XI (675). [The Eleventh Synod of Toledo (7 Nov. 675); Denzinger, 539. –Ed.] 25 Concilium Valentinianum III (855). [The Synod of Valence (8 Jan. 855); Denzinger, 630. –Ed.] 26 Smalcald Articles, “Part I.” [BSELK, 726–727 (BC, 300). –Ed.] 27 Cf., e. g., Sergius Bulgakov, Du verbe incarné (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1943). [ET: The Lamb of God, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). –Ed.]

The Death on the Cross

the separation between the incarnation, as a mere presupposition, and the death of the incarnate one, as the actual cause of salvation, for the incarnation and the death have been understood instead as one act of the divine acceptance by God of the human being who had become enslaved to death. Also alien to Eastern theology is the one-sided emphasis on the influence of the incarnate one with regard to God’s honor that had been violated. Instead, Eastern theology bears witness to God and the incarnate Son, above all, in the unity of their saving work. One also cannot overlook that in the Eastern Church, the term for the honor of God (honor) used by Anselm did not correspond to the New Testament and liturgical term (δόξα [doxa], gloria), but differed significantly from the divine glory that is to be worshiped. Undoubtedly, there are differences between the Eastern and Western teachings about the death of Jesus. But they cannot be reduced to simple formulas. For example, the Lundensian school in the twentieth century described the classic type of understanding the death of Jesus as victory, a type that is rooted in Greek theology and was then brought to bear again by Luther, while the Latin understanding of this death views it as a penal suffering.28 But it is easy to show that Eastern church fathers also taught Jesus’ death as a vicarious representative punishment and a sacrifice for sin, which is also true of Luther. With respect to the Western Church, too, the Latin doctrinal tradition has never restricted itself to penal suffering, and the motif of victory is by no means missing there. There is a contradiction in the legal-syllogistic unity of the satisfaction theory, but this theory has never been raised to the rank of dogma in the Western Church. Since Anselm wrote Cur Deus homo after the Great Schism between the Western and Eastern Church, these differences were not the root cause of the church separation between Byzantium and Rome. Without a doubt, however, they are an obstacle to the efforts to unite the two churches, especially since in the Roman Church the practice of penance and indulgences was combined with the doctrine of satisfaction, which the Orthodox churches—as well as the churches of the Reformation—reject. However, church divisions did take place in the sixteenth century, when, as a result of conflicting statements about the salvific significance of the death of Jesus Christ, Socinian communities were established. If one considers the common rejection of the Socinians by the Roman Catholic, the Orthodox, and the churches of the Reformation, it becomes clear at the frontline of this dispute that Anselm—albeit by using different terminology, one-sidedly emphasizing the influence that Jesus Christ had on God, and by making an exaggerated syllogistic claim—powerfully bore witness to decisive statements in the New Testament and the ancient church,

28 Cf. Gustaf Aulén, Den kristna försoningstanken (Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses, 1930). [ET: Christus Victor, trans. A. G. Hebert (New York: Macmillan, 1966). –Ed.]

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namely, the total inability of sinners to free themselves from guilt, and the sole salvation through the vicarious death of the incarnate Son of God. With respect to the doctrine of the death of Christ, it is the task of ecumenical dogmatics to keep the view open for the multiplicity of New Testament witnesses and to guide the proclamation of the word of the cross from their midst into evernew areas and concepts. The center of all the New Testament witnesses, including the witness to Jesus’ death as a victory over the world, is ultimately always the vicarious representative action: God’s Son died for the world, namely, in place of sinners and for the benefit of sinners. This is to be taught anew again and again in praise of the freedom of God, who offered up his Son solely out of love for the world, and in him took upon himself the death of the sinner. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 12 [i]

[ii]

[iii] [iv] [v] [vi] [vii] [viii]

Many historians who have investigated the birth of Jesus date it to before 4 BC. See, e. g., Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, new ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 547; and E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993), 10. The term Schlink used here and in the title for this section is Menschwerdung, lit. “becoming human.” It will normally be translated as “the incarnation,” although in some contexts it will be rendered literally. A related term, Fleischwerdung, will be translated literally as “becoming flesh.” See Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 59, 84, 89–91, 220. See Irenaeus, Adversus omnes haereses, III.2–3, 16–20 (Against the Heresies, ANF, 1.424–425, 440–451). See the Second Letter of Cyril to Nestorius (Tanner, 1.44–50). See, e. g., FC Ep, 8.12; FC SD, 8.24 (BSELK, 1270–1271, 1516–1517 [BC, 511, 620]). See, e. g., Chrysostom, Homily 44 (Sermon on Mt. 12.46–49) (NPNF 1 , 10.278–284). For the 1950 promulgation of the dogma of the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary (the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus), see Denzinger, 3900–3904. For the German-Protestant critique of this opinion, see Evangelische Gutachten zur Dogmatisierung der leiblichen Himmelfahrt Mariens [Protestant Opinion on the Dogmatizing of the Bodily Assumption of Mary], 3d ed. (Munich: Kaiser, 1951). Schlink was the principal author of this opinion by the Protestant theology faculty of Heidelberg University. See also Schlink’s analysis of Roman Catholic teaching about Mary in his reflections on the Second Vatican Council (Schlink, NK, SÖB, 1/2.40, 47, and esp. 96–100 [ESW, 1.364, 373, and esp. 412–415]).

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[ix] [x]

[xi] [xii]

[xiii]

[xiv]

[xv] [xvi]

[xvii]

For the following statements about John’s baptism, cf. Schlink, LvT, SÖB, 3.19–22. For the expression malkut yahwe in the Old Testament, see 1 Chron. 28.5. Cf. 1 Chron. 29.11; 2 Chron. 13.8; Pss. 22.28; 96.10; 103.19; 145.13; Wis. 10.10; Dan. 4.3, 34; and 7.14, 18, 27. For the following, cf. Schlink, “Das wandernde Gottesvolk” (“The Sojourning People of God”), SÖB, 1/1.202ff. (ESW, 1.257ff.). See Martin Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums, 2d ed. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1933), 130–149; ET: From Tradition to Gospel, trans. Bertram Lee Woolf (New York: Scribner’s, 1935), 133–151; and Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, 233–260 (History of the Synoptic Tradition, 218–244). See Johannes Weiss, Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, ed. and trans. Richard Hyde Hiers and David Larrimore Holland (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971; orig. Ger. ed: 1892); and Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 315–354. Cf. Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man; idem, The Epistle to the Romans, 6th ed., trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933); and James M. Robinson, ed., The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, vol. 1, trans. Keith R. Crim and Louis De Grazia (Richmond: John Knox, 1968). See esp. C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (London: Nisbet & Co., 1935). See Wilhelm Bousset, Kyrios Christos (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913; 2d ed., 1921; ET of the 2d ed.: Kyrios Christos: A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus, trans. John E. Steely [Nashville: Abingdon, 1970]); Julius Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten [Sketches and Preliminary Work], vol. 6 (Berlin: Reimer, 1899), 187–215; and idem, Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien [Introduction to the First Three Gospels], 2d ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1911), 123–130. See, e. g., Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, 38–39, 49, 123–124; idem, History of the Synoptic Tradition, 15f., 137, 150–159; idem, Theology of the New Testament, 1.26–37; Günther Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth, trans. Irene and Fraser McLuskey with James M. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 38f., 175–178; Heinz Eduard Tödt, The Son of Man in the Synoptic Tradition, trans. Dorothea M. Barton (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965); and Ferdinand Hahn, The Titles of Jesus in Christology, trans. Harold Knight and George Ogg (London: Lutterworth, 1969), 15–67.

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[xviii]

[xix]

[xx]

[xxi] [xxii] [xxiii]

[xxiv]

[xxv]

[xxvi]

See, e. g., Julius Schniewind, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, vol. 1 of Das Neue Testament Deutsch, 7th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1954), 113f.; Das Evangelium nach Markus, 6th ed., 58–61, 64–65, 114–121 (for full bibliographic information, see footnote 11 in this chap.); idem, “A Reply to Rudolf Bultmann,” in Kerygma and Myth, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch, 45–101; Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament, rev. ed., trans. Shirley C. Guthrie and Charles A. M. Hall (Philadelphia: Westminister, 1963), 137–192; Joachim Jeremias, Jesus and the Message of the New Testament, trans. Norman Perrin et al. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 2002); idem, The Parables of Jesus, rev. ed., trans. S. H. Hooke (London: SCM, 1963); and Leonard Goppelt, Theology of the New Testament, 2 vols., trans. John Alsup (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981–1982), 1.178–205. For representative figures among Anglo-Saxon researchers who came to different conclusions from those of Bultmann, see Fuller, The Foundations of New Testament Christology, 37–43; and Vincent Taylor, The Life and Ministry of Jesus (Nashville: Abingdon, 1954), 72–83. Cf. Weiss, Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, 114–131; Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 317–354; and Rudolf Otto, Leben und Wirken Jesu nach historisch-kritischer Auffassung, 4th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1905), 33ff. In the classical world, the verbal form literally meant “to change one’s mind.” In the NT, it is translated as “to feel remorse, repent, be converted.” The noun form is translated as “repentance, turning about, conversion” (BDAG, 640–641). The Halakah (lit. “the way to behave” or “the way to walk”) encompasses the 613 Jewish religious laws that are derived from the written and oral Jewish law. See, e. g., Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, 9; idem, Theology of the New Testament, 1.26–32. See chaps. 4–8 in the Sanhedrin, which is the fourth tractate of the fourth order of the Talmud, in The Talmud: A Selection, ed. and trans. Norman Solomon (New York: Penguin, 2009), 504–513. The sixth chapter refers to Jesus’ execution, one of the very few passages in the Talmud that refers to him. This statement alludes to the theory of Schweitzer, who thought that John the Baptizer, Jesus, and their followers were engaged in forcing and compelling the coming of the kingdom. See Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 326–354. See, e. g., Athanasius, Orations against the Arians, III.29; IV.5–7 (Greek text: Orations against the Arians, ed. William Bright [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014], 184, 226–227; ET: Four Discourses against the Arians, trans. John Henry Newman and Archibald Robertson, in NPNF 2 , 4.423, 435). Cf. Aquinas, ST, III.14.1–2; III.15.5–6, 10; III.16.4–5; III.19.1; III.21.1–4. Cf. also Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces: Exegesis IV (On the Person and Office of Christ), 197–202.

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[xxvii]

[xxviii] [xxix] [xxx]

[xxxi]

[xxxii] [xxxiii]

[xxxiv]

[xxxv]

The Greek preposition ὑπέρ means “for, in behalf of, for the sake of someone/ something,” often “after expressions of suffering, dying, devoting oneself, etc., … So esp. of the death of Christ… for, in behalf of humanity, the world, etc.” (BDAG, 1030). The preposition διά (with the accusative) is a “marker of something constituting cause, the reason why something happens, results, exists: because of, for the sake of ” (BDAG, 225). The preposition ἀντί can indicate “a process of intervention,” “…in behalf of, for someone” (BDAG, 88), so that the term becomes an equivalent of ὑπέρ. See BDAG, 1030–1031. See BDAG, 88. For the “joyous exchange” (“fröhlicher Wechsel”) in Luther’s theology, see especially his 1520 treatise, Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, WA, 7.49–73 (The Freedom of a Christian, LW 1 , 31.333–377, esp. 351–352). See Peter Abelard, Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, II.2–3, in A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham, ed. Eugene R. Fairweather, trans. Gerald E. Moffatt (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956), 283–284. See Aquinas, ST, III.1; III.19.3–4; III.22; III.26; and III.46–49. Cf. Johannes Duns Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 17, pars 1, q. 1–2; and I, d. 44, q. u., nn. 5–11, in Opera Omnia, 21 vols., ed. Carl Balić et al. (Vatican City: Typis polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950–2008), 5.139–231 and 6:363–369. ET of I, d. 44: Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality, ed. and trans. Allan B. Wolter (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 191–194. Contrary to Anselm’s position, which restricts the freedom of God, Scotus placed no limits on divine freedom. Since God is the one who determines what type of sacrifice is redemptive for humankind, God is free to choose any means for accomplishing that redemption. Scotus’ four-volume Ordinatio, which was a commentary on Lombard’s Sentences, was unfinished at his death. Socinianism arose from the teaching of an Italian, Fausto Sozzini (1539–1604), whose uncle, Lelio Sozzini (1525–62), had questioned the orthodox understanding of the Trinity and the pre-existence of the Logos. While Lelio had remained in the orbit of early Swiss Protestantism, Fausto moved to Poland, where he was influential among the Polish Brethren. Fausto denied the essential divinity of Jesus and defended a form of Unitarianism. Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) set forth what is often called “the governmental theory” of the atonement, which arose in opposition to Socinianism. Grotius taught that Christ’s suffering on the cross was indeed substitutionary, in that he suffered for the punishment that humans deserve; however, Christ did not receive the exact punishment humans are due. His suffering on the cross merely demonstrated God’s displeasure with sin and the punishment that humans could have justly received.

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[xxxvi]

[xxxvii] [xxxviii]

[xxxix]

[xl]

Cf., e. g., Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, XII.40; XIII.9; XVI.8 (The Commentary of Origen on the Gospel of St. Matthew, 2 vols., trans. Ronald E. Heine [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018], 1.122–123, 137–138, 241–245); idem, Contra celsum VII.17 (Origen: Contra celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963], 408); idem, Homily VIII, in Homilies on Joshua (FOTC, 105.85–94); idem, Homily VI on Exodus, in Homilies on Genesis and Exodus (FOTC, 71.285–299). For additional references and analysis, see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 2d ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 185–186. Cf., e. g., Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–395), Great Catechism, XXIV (NPNF 2 , 5.494). Cf., e. g., Ambrose of Milan, “Letter 16” (to Constantius; sometimes numbered “Letter 72”; FOTC, 26.90–100); Augustine, De Trinitate, XIII.14 (CCSL, 50a.400–401; On the Trinity, WSA, I/5.354); and Leo I, Sermon 22, (NPNF 2 , 12.130–131). Cf., e. g., Luther, Sermon on Gen. 3 (1 May 1526), WA, 20.328–336, esp. 334–335. For a brief summary and analysis of Luther’s use of the “bait-and-fishhook” motif, see Aulén, Christus Victor, 103–104 (for full bibliographic information, see footnote 28 in this chap.). For the modern debate over Luther’s understanding of the atonement, which began with the work of Johannes von Hofmann, see Becker, The Self-Giving God and Salvation History, 173–203; and Matthieu Arnold, “Luther on Christ’s Person and Work,” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, 274–293. See Gregory of Nazianzus (329–390), Second Oration on Easter (NPNF 2 , 7.431); John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, III.27 (FOTC, 37.332–333); and Anselm, Cur Deus homo, I.7 (St Anselm: Basic Writings, 201–203).

Chapter XIII: The Exaltation of Jesus

A. The Resurrection 1. The Appearances of the Risen One We would not know that through his death Jesus had accomplished the act of salvation for the world and the victory over the world if he had not arisen from the dead. Without his resurrection, his death would have remained merely the shipwreck of his words and deeds, and the refutation of his claim, and he would have probably been long forgotten. Without his resurrection, the disciples would have fallen silent in their grief, and the church would not have arisen. But God raised Jesus from the dead. He thereby acknowledged him as his own. He vindicated him as the innocent one, he confirmed his proclamation, and he heralded his death as the salvation for the world and as the victory over the world. The resurrection of Jesus is the presupposition for understanding his death; indeed, it is the presupposition for the entire Christian message of salvation, for by raising Jesus from the dead, God revealed him to be the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord. So there would be no Christian church apart from the confession of the resurrection of Jesus. It is the community of those who say to one another, “Christ is risen!” And who respond to each other, “He is risen indeed!” That the crucified one was raised is the everlasting content of the church’s gratitude to God and of its message to humanity. The church’s message of the resurrection is authorized in a twofold manner: First, it is based on the appearances of Jesus after his death. According to the witness of all the Gospels, the discovery of the empty tomb preceded these appearances. The empty tomb, however, was not as such the basis for the certainty of the resurrection, for it was ambiguous. The body of Jesus could have been relocated or stolen. The certainty of the resurrection of Jesus only arose through the appearances of the risen one. It was only through them that the grief and unbelief among the disciples and the women were transformed, and certainty and joy awakened. The Easter message is therefore based above all on the appearances of the risen one. But if the appearances of the risen one are of such fundamental importance for the emergence of Easter faith and Easter preaching, then the eyewitnesses of these appearances are also of fundamental importance for the message of the church for all time. And indeed, these eyewitnesses had to become more important the more the church spread and the greater the spatial and temporal distance from the Easter events increased. Thus Paul shared with the congregation in Corinth a

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list of witnesses that served as the basis for his message (1 Cor. 15.5–8). Being an eyewitness also plays an important role in the book of Acts, not only in electing Matthias to the circle of the twelve apostles (1.21–26) but also in the reasoning within Peter’s and Paul’s sermons about the resurrection (cf. 2.33; 10.41; 13.31). Second, the message about the resurrection of Jesus is confirmed by the action of Jesus himself as the exalted Lord. Through the Holy Spirit, he demonstrates himself to be the living one who did not stay dead. Through the message about his death and resurrection, he demonstrates himself to be the present Lord who liberates humans from the dominion of sin and death. In the Lord’s Supper of the church, he acts as the host who gives himself to the assembled. He demonstrates himself as the living one by again and again actualizing anew the words that he spoke in his earthly life and by assuring us today with his efficacious consolation and exhortation. The basis and confirmation of the Easter message are inseparably linked. They mutually permeate each other in the tradition of the Easter appearances. Without the effective presence of the exalted Lord “every day to the close of the age” (Mt. 28.20 [L]), the accounts of the appearances of Jesus after his death would be fantastic legends. But without the appearances of the risen one and without the eyewitnesses to them, contemporary experiences of Jesus’ presence would merely be a further example of religious enthusiasm among many others in the history of religion. In the New Testament Scriptures, however, there is no account about how the resurrection itself took place. Precisely because every attempt to depict this process fails, the New Testament bears witness to the mystery of the once-and-for-all character of this event, which ruptures all our experiences. Just as little as the primeval process of the divine act of creation from nothing can be described, the same is true for the new creation from the nothingness of death. The message is not based on the description of the resurrection but on its effects, namely, on the appearances of the risen one and on their confirmation through his presence in the church. A description of the resurrection only appears in late, historically worthless assertions from the apocryphal Gospel of Peter.[i] If the message about Jesus’ resurrection is based on his appearances after his death, the New Testament accounts of these appearances are of fundamental importance for the christology of all churches. Such appearances have been handed down in strikingly abundant and manifold ways in the New Testament Scriptures. Thus—apart from the Gospel of Mark, whose original ending merely announces the appearing of the risen one—each of the Gospels contains at least two accounts of an appearance. To a large extent—such as, e. g., the appearances to the Emmaus disciples (Lk. 24.13ff.) and to Thomas (Jn. 20.24ff.)—these appearances have no parallels in the other Gospels. The book of Acts also reports several times about appearances to the disciples and other followers (e. g., 1.3f., 22; 2.32f.; 10.41; 13.31, as well as the thrice-told account of the appearance of Jesus to Paul, 9.3ff.; 22.6ff.; and 26.12ff.). Paul cited numerous appearances in a list (1 Cor. 15.5–8),

The Resurrection

on which he himself was listed as the last (v. 8; cf. 9.1). In Gal. 1.12 and 1.16, he also pointed to the “revelation of Jesus Christ” that was decisive for his work. The beginning of First John (1.1–3) also refers to the event of “seeing” and “touching,” which is foundational for the orientation of the “word of life.” Thus the early Christian message presupposes the appearances of the risen one that occurred in manifold ways, appearances to individuals, to small and larger groups, to women, and to men. The oldest literary tradition can be found in 1 Cor. 15.3–8. Here Paul has supplemented, with his own further information, an older tradition that had been given to him, which he probably received in Antioch or in Jerusalem. In contrast to the Gospels and Acts, there is no information here about the place or how of the appearances. The statements are limited to the fact of the appearances and to mentioning the eyewitnesses. Even if the accounts about the appearances in the Gospels and Acts are literarily later than the list of Paul, it is nevertheless unlikely that he would have been aware of any accounts with more precise information concerning “the how” and the place of the appearances. His interest was not focused on this in the context of 1 Cor. 15 but rather on authorizing the message about the resurrection, and that interest was underlined by the distinction between those eyewitnesses who were still alive and those who had already died (v. 6). Thus the recurring “ὤφθη” means not only that the risen one had been seen but that he had presented himself so that he could be seen, that he had revealed himself.[ii] Here it is all about the sovereign acts of the risen one. Through an intervention of the “grace of God” (v. 9f.) Paul has been changed from being a persecutor of the church to being made an apostle. The Pauline information only partially coincides with the accounts in the Gospels and Acts. In these latter texts, the appearances to the five hundred brothers and to James (1 Cor. 15.6f.) are missing. It is also not clear what might correspond to the Pauline distinction between the appearances to the “Twelve” (v. 5) and to “all the apostles” (v. 7).

There is much to be said for the assumption that in early Christianity even more accounts about the appearances of the risen one were in circulation than were written down, and that only a part of a much richer flow of tradition is reflected in the various New Testament Scriptures. In any case, Luke pointed out that Jesus “presented himself as alive by many proofs” (Acts 1.3), and the Gospel of John concludes with his reference to “many other signs” that Jesus did in the presence of his disciples “that are not recorded in this book” (20.30; cf. 21.25). Within the remarkably rich variety of the accounts about the appearances, there are, of course, also some differences and contradictions. For example, the connection between the discovery of the empty tomb and the appearances of the risen one is different: Mark merely reports the discovery of the empty tomb and the announcement that the risen one will appear in Galilee. According to Luke, the first appearance took place independently of the discovery of the empty tomb; according to Matthew, it took place when the women returned from the empty tomb (28.9f.); and according to John, it took place already at the empty

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tomb (20.14–17). According to Mark, the women were silent from horror and fear after their discovery of the empty tomb. According to Mt. 28.8 and Lk. 24.9f., they hastened to the disciples to report to them their discovery and the announcement of the appearing. Also different is the information about the persons to whom the first appearances were granted: according to Mt. 28.9, Mary Magdalene and the “other Mary”; according to Jn. 20.14ff., Mary Magdalene alone; according to Lk., the two Emmaus disciples (24.13ff.) and, independent of that (at the same time?), Simon Peter (24.34); according to 1 Cor. 15.5, the first is likewise Peter. Also different is the information about the place of the appearances: according to Mk. and Mt., the appearances in Galilee were announced. According to Lk., they only took place in and near Jerusalem, and according to Mt. and Jn., they were first in Jerusalem and then in Galilee. Also differing is the information about the interval in which the appearances took place: according to the Gospel of Luke, they happened within one day; according to Acts, within forty days; and with Mt. and Jn. there is no information about timing, but nevertheless, since both Gospels report the presence of the disciples first in Jerusalem and then in Galilee, a temporal span that corresponds to this can be assumed. In addition, there are differences in the mode of the appearing. According to all the accounts in the Gospels, the risen one appeared in human form, but according to the three accounts in the book of Acts this happened in an overwhelmingly bright glow in the presence of Paul. There is also a difference, e. g., in the wording handed down regarding the commission that the risen Lord gave his disciples. Thus baptism is mentioned only in the commissioning words in Matthew’s Gospel (28.19) and in the longer ending of Mark that was added later (16.16). In view of such differences, attempts have been made again and again to investigate the New Testament resurrection accounts, using the same methods of historical research to investigate the oldest traditions—and the historical events on which they are based—as were commonly used to inquire about the original words and deeds of the earthly Jesus and about his death (cf. 425ff.). Such investigations into the appearances of the risen one make clear that, in contrast to the story of the passion, where all the Gospels agree on the basic sequence of the events, there is a strikingly large number of individual traditions in the Easter accounts of the Gospels, which evidently were handed down orally independently of one another and for a long time before they were recorded in writing. It is also clear that there are far fewer parallels in the Easter accounts than in the Synoptic tradition of the words and deeds of the earthly Jesus. For this reason alone, inquiry about the historical events that underlie the accounts about the appearances is more difficult to respond to than investigating the history of the earthly Jesus up to his death. Above all, the difficulty lies in the fact that the Easter stories report an event that is much more unusual and without analogy than the words, deeds, and death of the earthly Jesus, namely, the appearing of the Jesus who died on the cross and who is now the risen one from the dead. The problem of the criteria by which the historical reliability of the Jesus-traditions would be measured is therefore significantly more acute in view of the Easter accounts. So it is not surprising that the results of the historical

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investigations of these accounts are considerably divergent from one another, concerning both the oldest oral traditions and especially the events on which they are based.

As a rule, historical inquiry into the events on which the New Testament accounts about the appearances are based, begins with information that is important for classifying the accounts in the general flow of history. This starting point thus begins, above all, with various details about the location, the timing, the duration, and the eyewitnesses, as well as with the linguistic and theological peculiarities in these accounts. If, however, we do not look primarily at this information but at the person who is attested to be the appearing one, we are confronted with a figure [Gestalt] who, despite the diversity of the traditions, is attested to in an identity that is quite impressive. For a long time, a large number of the same characteristic features have been noticed, which recur remarkably frequently in the midst of the different individual details of the New Testament accounts about the appearances.1 To date, these findings have largely been neglected in dogmatic work, but they gain additional importance when one does not consider these “motifs” in isolation but sees them as elements in a dynamic movement that proceeded from the appearing one and that overcame the alienation of the followers of Jesus, which was caused by their unbelief, flight, and even denial, and that restored community with them—a movement that extends from the risen one’s caring commitment toward the disciples to his increasingly more comprehensive caring commitment toward all people. If we understand the “motifs” in being affected by this dynamic, which also affects us, then, amid the differences and contradictions within the accounts about the appearances, we notice the figure [Gestalt] of the appearing one himself. His appearing is above all characterized by the following features: (a) All the accounts about his appearing attest that the same Jesus who had previously proclaimed the nearness of the kingdom of God, had called for repentance, and had held a shared meal with his followers, came to them as the living one after his death on the cross and his burial. Consequently, none of these accounts is merely about a vision. Rather, in each case, the words of the appearing one were heard and at the same time passed on further. In addition, several witnesses attest that after his death Jesus resumed shared meals with his followers (Lk. 24.30, 41f.; Acts 10.41; Jn. 21.12f.). In each case, the accounts about his appearing bear witness that after his death Jesus encountered his followers—those who had followed him and who then left him—in the bodily totality of himself. The physicality of his appearance is expressed most obviously in Jesus’ invitation to his disciples, handed down in Luke’s Gospel: “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me

1 Cf., e. g., Lyder Brun’s motive-historical study, Die Auferstehung Christi und die urchristliche Überlieferung [The Resurrection of Christ and Early Christian Tradition] (Oslo: H. Aschehoug, 1925).

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and see…” (24.39f.). Even according to the tradition in the Gospel of John, Jesus offered his hands and his side (and thus his stigmata) both for viewing (20.20) and for touching (v. 27). Although, according to the accounts in Acts, Paul did not see the figure of the risen one, and only saw the glowing light of his glory, and heard his voice, here too the crucial point is the identity of the one appearing to him and of the earthly Jesus, who appeared, in fact, in the totality of himself. When Paul asked, “Who are you?,” he received the answer, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9.5). In other words, this is the same Jesus who had been condemned by the high council and who is identified now as the living one, who is present with his witnesses who are being persecuted by the high council. (b) At the same time, the accounts about the appearances attest that after his death Jesus was encountered in a different way than in his earthly life. It was repeatedly reported that his followers did not recognize him, even when they saw him and when he spoke with them. Unbelief, doubt, and horror were handed down in the tradition, not only in view of the empty tomb and in relation to the message of Jesus’ resurrection but also more than once in view of the risen one himself (e. g., Mt. 28.17; Lk. 24.37; Jn. 20.14f.), until he made himself known. His being different is also attested by the surprising suddenness with which he appeared to his own and by his peculiar freedom from the spatial and temporal limitations of earthly corporeality. For example, the Gospel of John, which emphasizes most realistically the identity of the earthly and the resurrected body of Jesus (20.20, 27), reports that the risen one came into the midst of the disciples through closed doors (vv. 19, 26), and the Lukan account about the appearance to the Emmaus disciples (24.13–32) seems to presuppose that Jesus appeared to Simon Peter at the same time (vv. 33f.). The risen one is there in a new way of existing, in which he was taken out of the spatial-temporal limits of earthly life. So it is striking that the figure of the appearing one is nowhere depicted in the New Testament accounts of the appearances. They do not show what was different about his appearance, nor why his own did not recognize him at first. Paul described the risen one’s different way of existing as a “spiritual body,” in contrast to the earthly body, as an “imperishability” and “glory,” in contrast to the “perishability” and “dishonor” of the earthly man (1 Cor. 15.42). While Paul used these contrasts to speak generally about those who are risen with Christ, they apply first of all to Jesus Christ himself, for he “will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory” (Phil. 3.21). Despite all the differences between the New Testament accounts, these two points are again and again most strongly attested: the difference of the appearance of Jesus after his death and the identity of the earthly and the risen Jesus. His being different does not mean that someone other than the one who had died on the cross would have appeared here. And the point of identity does not mean that he would have gone back again to the earthly life that had ended on the cross. The New Testament accounts bear witness to the whole earthly man Jesus as appearing in a new way

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of existing that transcends earthly limitations. To be sure, the identity is initially hidden in the difference of the appearing one. Human beings do not unveil the identity; rather, the appearing one unveils it to human beings. He made himself known through the fact that he called his own by their names, greeted them with the word of peace, shared meals with them, gave to them his commission—addressed them and acted toward them just as he had done in his earthly life. In connection with this identity of the Jesus who had died and the Jesus who appeared after his death, the tradition about finding the empty tomb also has important significance. While the news about the empty tomb is as such no proof of the resurrection and no message of salvation, its discovery, according to the oldest New Testament accounts, also is not the basis for the certainty of his resurrection; rather, that discovery increased the sadness and despair. In connection with the appearances of the risen one, however, this tradition is an important confirmation of the identity of the earthly Jesus and of the Jesus who appeared after his death. The entirety of this earthly man has been transformed into the new existence of the one who has been glorified by God. (c) According to the older Synoptic tradition, it was characteristic of the work of the earthly Jesus that he did not make himself the content of his proclamation but rather pointed away from himself to God, to the nearness of the coming reign of God. He had not proclaimed himself and had even kept silent about himself in the parables of the kingdom of God. The content of the Easter appearances, on the other hand, was Jesus himself. Each of his appearances was about being recognized as the same one who had previously proclaimed the reign of God and had been executed for the sake of his message. The words and deeds of the risen one that have been handed down in the accounts about his appearing are words and deeds of the self-revelation of the one who was crucified and lives, that is, of the one whom God has delivered from death. This corresponds to the fact that in the accounts about his appearing, the peculiar way in which Jesus pointed away from himself to God is missing. The proclaiming Jesus and the God who is proclaimed by him are not distinguished in the same way as in the words of the earthly Jesus. Rather, he appeared as the one accepted by God, confirmed by God, and taken into the glory of God. (d) Just as the appearances of the risen one were different from the appearance of the earthly Jesus, so also his effect on the people to whom he appeared was different from what it had been. In the Easter traditions there is talk of sadness, fear, horror, unbelief, and doubt, both in view of the empty tomb and when hearing the message about the resurrection, and even in view of the risen one himself, as long as he was not recognized. But no one to whom the risen one had revealed himself is reported to have remained in fear, doubt, and unbelief, and not to have finally recognized and acknowledged who it was who was appearing. His revealing of himself was inevitably and utterly convincing. It is significant that the statement,

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“but some doubted” (Mt. 28.17), is found at the beginning and not at the end of the final appearance story in the Gospel of Matthew. Also, the statement, “in their joy” the disciples “were disbelieving and still wondering” (Lk. 24.41), does not appear at the end of the overall account of this appearance. It is to be understood as the paradoxical description of their being initially overwhelmed and stunned, and not as a statement about a persisting unbelief. The Easter appearances of Jesus did not give the people who saw them the choice of acknowledging them or contesting them, but rather those appearances took hold of the eyewitnesses and brought them into the dynamic that was emanating from the one who was appearing. In contrast to the proclamation of the earthly Jesus, who had called for the decision of faith, the one who appeared after his death bestowed this perceiving to his own. Corresponding to this, on the part of humans, is homage. This is attested on more than one occasion in the accounts about the appearances, most strongly in Thomas’ worshipful address to Jesus: “My Lord and my God” (Jn. 20.28). No Easter tradition reports that the risen one rejected such homage, in contrast to the statement of the earthly Jesus, “No one is good but God alone” (Mk. 10.18 par.). Although the Jesus who appeared after his death was identical with the earthly Jesus, his self-revelation, in its overpowering character, corresponded more to the appearance of the Son of Man at the end of time, which he had announced, than it did to his previous earthly activity. To be sure, after his death Jesus did not appear to humanity as a whole but only to the small group of his former followers. He has not yet carried out the judgment of the world, but by forgiving those who had left him he has restored community with them. As is reported time and again, he appeared to the eyewitnesses in human simplicity and in the likelihood of being mixed up with other people, not in the glory of the Son of Man that was announced by him, who will light up the whole world like lightning and who will bring its history to an end. And yet he appeared in such overwhelming majesty and power that his appearances already participated in the nature of the final parousia of the Son of Man. From this vantage point, one should understand that in the words of the risen one that have been handed down, the end-time, eschatological dimension hardly plays a role. There is no mention at all in them about the coming Son of Man, and about the future reign of God there is only an indirect reference in an account from Luke (Acts 1.3ff.). The community of the risen one with his followers already had the character of an eschatological fulfillment; it was already a participation in the kingdom of God. So also, the saying of the risen one, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Mt. 28.18), presupposed the promise of the divine transfer of power to the Son of Man, spoken of in the book of Daniel (7.14), as already having been fulfilled. (e) Handed down in many accounts of the appearance is the fact that Jesus gave a commission to those to whom he appeared. Thus multiple commissions have been handed down, both to the circle of the disciples as a whole (Mt. 28.18–20;

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Lk. 24.47f.; Acts 1.8; Jn. 20.22f.; cf. also the subsequent ending to Mark: 16.15–17) and to individuals, such as Peter (Jn. 21.15–19) and Paul (Gal. 1.16; Acts 26.16–18). A commission can also be assumed with his appearance to James (1 Cor. 15.7). A commission from the appearing one was not only given to members of the circle of the Twelve but also to others, and Paul’s distinction between Jesus’ appearance to the Twelve (1 Cor. 15.5) and his appearance to the apostles (v. 7) should be understood in this sense. The circle of those commissioned by Jesus after his death extended further than the group of the pre-Easter disciples. The wording of the commission has been handed down in very different ways in the New Testament accounts, but in each case the commission presupposes what Jesus taught, did, and suffered, and especially his appearances after his death. This is also the content of the proclamation of the eyewitnesses who are sent out. The crucial point is that the listeners accept this message and repent (Lk. 24.47), that they receive forgiveness (Lk. 24.47; Jn. 20.23), that they become disciples (Mt. 28.19), that they receive baptism (Mt. 28.19; Mk. 16.16), that they observe what Jesus taught (Mt. 28.20). It is all about the salvation of human beings by stressing the urgency of this salvation, which leaves open no other option between the forgiveness of sins and continuing in sins (Jn. 20.23), between the salvation of believers and the judgment into which non-believers fall (Mk. 16.15). As varied as the wording is that has been handed down about the commission, so too there are variations about the basis for the commission, its authorization, and the promise that is tied to it. For example, according to Mt. 28.18, the commission included the basis that “all authority in heaven and on earth” was given to Jesus and the promise that he will remain with his messengers “every day until the end of time” [SCH]. According to Lk. 24.48 and Acts 1.8, the commission is tied to the promise of the Holy Spirit, who will enable the disciples to carry out the commission. According to Jn. 20.22f., the appearing one has already bestowed the Holy Spirit upon his disciples through his commission, and has said to them that God’s own forgiving will take place through their forgiving. But despite all these differences, what is crucial is the fact that what the commission requires is made possible, directed, and accomplished through the presence of Jesus and the working of the Holy Spirit. According to the Synoptic tradition, the earthly Jesus had already sent his disciples to proclaim (Mk. 6.7–13 par.). Just as he knew that he himself was sent only to the people of Israel, so too his mission for his disciples at that time was only to the places of Israel. But the commission of the one who appeared after his death is universal. “All nations” are to be called to repentance (Lk. 24.47) and made disciples (Mt. 28.17). The message of salvation is to be proclaimed to “the whole creation” (Mk. 16.15). Without any limitation, the authority to forgive sins was given to the disciples (Jn. 20.23). While the earthly Jesus had already announced to the Jews that the kingdom of God was a universal reign, as the one who had been

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taken out of the spatial limits of earthly existence, he sent those commissioned by him in the universal direction of his universal message of salvation. These commissions were about missions through which the addressees were brought totally into servant ministry—missions that were not limited to the individual words and deeds of the addressees but that gave them the ultimate direction for all their further speaking and doing, their living and dying. These commissions must be distinguished from those limited commissions of the appearing one that have been occasionally handed down, which were completed when they were carried out, such as, e. g., the commission Jesus gave to the women: “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me” (Mt. 28.10). Only rarely does an account of an appearing end without a commission by Jesus being reported (e. g., the Emmaus story, Lk. 24.31). In each case, however, whether based on an express directive by the appearing one or not, a movement originated with the appearances. Even without an express sending/commissioning, those who had seen Jesus continued to report about what they had experienced (e. g., Lk. 24.35; Jn. 20.18). (f) As soon as Jesus was recognized and his commission was heard, he disappeared. His disappearing was just as sudden as was his coming, and it too was free from the limits of earthly existence. He did not allow his glory to be seen for any duration, but he did establish its certainty by means of seeing, a certainty that has since had to establish itself by faith. He did not allow his own to have and to hold community with him in his visible presence, but he pushed them into hastening to direct the message of his resurrection to all people. Through his appearances, Jesus lit a fire, so to speak, by awakening the certainty of his victory, a fire that should spread itself ever further through the message of his victory. In general, care was taken to view the accounts of the appearances primarily from the perspective of Jesus’ coming and his being revealed, and not of his disappearing. People wanted to persist in seeing his presence, but his disappearing is an intrinsic part of all the Easter appearances. This feature that is common to all the appearances is the definitive focus of the account of the ascension (Lk. 24.51; Acts 1.9–11; cf. Mk. 16.19). To be sure, Jesus was also seen later, and his voice was also heard later, but the New Testament Scriptures generally seem to presuppose that the physical appearances of the risen one only took place during a limited period of time, and that the later visions and hearings must be distinguished from them. In any case, although in his later life Paul experienced visions of Christ and heard his voice, he described the foundational appearance, by means of which Jesus had converted and called him, as the last in the series of appearances of the risen one (1 Cor. 15.8). If one summarizes the above observations about the New Testament accounts of the appearances, then emerging most impressively from their differences is the identity of the figure of the appearing Jesus—a figure not in the sense of a description but in the sense of a breakthrough, by which the crucified one, as the living one,

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broke through the unbelief of his disciples and by which he has awakened them to faith and to the spreading of the message of salvation. It is precisely through the multiplicity of the New Testament accounts that the identity of this figure of the appearing Jesus is clearly attested. The appearances are reported as events in the course of the history of this world, as events in a certain place, at a certain time, and in the presence of certain eyewitnesses. Above all, however, they are attested as an inbreaking into the history of this world, as a disruption of its course of events by one whose origin is different, namely, as appearances of the crucified one, who was lifted out of the constitution of this world and was encountered as the one who overcame this world. If one wanted to question the New Testament accounts about where Jesus had been between his appearances on earth, no answer would be given. This question is absurd since he appeared from another dimension. The appearances were not “supra-historical,” for they happened in history; but they were events that have ruptured unquestioned assumptions about world history, and the whole weight of these accounts rests on those events. These accounts bear witness to Jesus as the living one, who lives in a unique way that contradicts the general experience of death; who lives in a superior way by having been lifted out of earthly limits and conditions; who lives in an overpowering way that ends human sadness, despair, and unbelief; and who lives with a tenderness that overcomes all guilt, and in a glory that fulfills all longing. On the basis of these appearances, the eyewitnesses not only proclaimed, “Jesus appeared to us,” but also, “God raised him from the dead, he is risen, he lives!” This message of Jesus’ resurrection is the proclamation of an act of God that radically contradicts humankind’s experience of death and decay—a unique act that is most comparable to the creation of the universe from nothing: God has transferred Jesus from his existence [Dasein] in the nothingness of death into the life of eternal glory. Resurrection is a metaphorical term for this action of God. First of all, this word refers to being awakened from sleep so as to continue living one’s life to date, in which waking and sleeping are constantly replacing each other. The resurrection of Jesus, however, was not a return to his previous life but the transfer to a new way of existing that death no longer follows. Without exception, Jesus’ resurrection is proclaimed as final. “Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him” (Rom. 6.9). The metaphorical character of these statements corresponds to the fact that in the New Testament Scriptures the same action of God upon Jesus is referred to not only as an awakening and a resurrection but also as an exaltation. For this reason, exaltation does not mean merely the risen one’s future that is still to take place after the appearances, as it was announced in the word to Mary Magdalene, “I have not yet ascended to the Father” (Jn. 20.17), or as it is reported in the Lukan stories of the ascension. Rather, according to the New Testament witnesses, the resurrection itself is already often referred to as an exaltation (also by Luke). Accordingly, in the appearances, Jesus encountered humans as the one exalted by God. The

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resurrection has also been referred to by Paul as a transformation of the earthly man. The incomparable novelty of this divine action upon Jesus is expressed through the majority of such complementary and mutually correcting terms. This action is to be distinguished from the expectations of the resurrection in Jewish apocalyptic literature by the fact that, among other things, even before the expected resurrection of all the devout or even of all human beings, this individual, Jesus, was awakened from death. This action is also to be distinguished from the pagan myths about dying and rising gods by the fact that here one historical man has been snatched from death once and for all.

With the discovery of the identity of the figure of the risen one in his self-revealing disappearing, as handed down in the various reports of the appearances, the questions that arise for historical thinking—due to the varying details concerning the place, the time, the duration, and the eyewitnesses of the appearances, even already due to the varying details concerning the women who discovered the empty tomb—have of course not been answered. As difficult as it also is to answer these individual questions, it is nevertheless clear that the real embarrassment for historical research lies not in such differences but precisely in what the reports jointly bear witness to, namely, the dead Jesus who is appearing as living. For through these appearances, one of the most basic unquestioned assumptions of world history is overturned, namely, the process of fading away, dying, and decaying, and the analogies and fundamental correlations in this world are ruptured. The real difficulty for historical inquiry lies in the fact that in historical research it is precisely analogy (the principle that every historical event is similar to all other events) and interaction (the correlational connectedness and interdependency of all historical events) that are held to be self-evident methodological principles, which thereby actually serve as criteria for establishing what is truly historical tradition (see 429ff. and 947f.).[iii] The Easter message, however, proclaims an event that cannot have happened when measured by these criteria. If one proceeds to undertake historical investigation by using the principles of analogy and continuous interaction, then the historical basis for the unity of the New Testament’s traditions about the death of Jesus, the empty tomb, and the appearances of the risen one can only be questioned. The following answers then inevitably arise, which have been given in manifold variations again and again since the Enlightenment: Jesus’ bodily appearances and the empty tomb were possible because he did not die on the cross. But there are no clues in the tradition that support this hypothesis of an apparent death. If Jesus died, then he cannot have appeared in bodily form as the living one after his death. The historical origin of the New Testament narratives about his appearances must then be sought in the subjective presuppositions of his followers, be it in their longing for him or in their certainty that his cause continues, in their certainty that Jesus lives or in their visionary

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experiences. This certainty would then have been objectified and shaped into legends about his bodily appearances. But even if the memory of Jesus’ appearing had undergone changes in the course of the tradition, a psychological and historical riddle adheres to such hypotheses, namely, how, after the catastrophe of Golgotha, the disciples could have come to the certainty of Jesus’ resurrection and his bodily presence. The more the revolutionary impetus—which, according to New Testament tradition, is based on the bodily appearance of the crucified one—is reduced to the subjectivity of his former followers’ changed dispositions and to reinterpretations of his death on the cross, the more incomprehensible the emergence of the church becomes. In addition, by analogy with general experience, it was concluded that if Jesus died and is buried, then (unless one assumes a relocation or robbery of his body) the tradition of the empty tomb is an apologetic legend that was added later to confirm the idea of the bodily appearances of Jesus. Speaking against this hypothesis is the fact that despite the manifold differences in detail, the discovery of the empty tomb is reported more uniformly by all four Gospels than are the appearances of Jesus. While an apologetic motive plays a role in the framework of the story provided solely by Matthew (27.62–66 and 28.11–15, to deny the rumor that the body of Jesus was stolen), the report about the empty tomb as such shows no apologetic features. This is probably an old tradition, which was first passed on independently before it was then linked in various ways to the reports about the appearance. The lack of mention of these reports by Paul does not speak against the age of these traditions. Since Paul spoke of the death, burial, and resurrection as being directly linked with one another, both in the words that were handed down to him (1 Cor. 15.4) and in his own words (Rom. 6.4f.), and since the Jewish-apocalyptic concept of the resurrection ruled out the body remaining in the grave, it is very unlikely that he would have preached the resurrection of Jesus if the body had remained in the tomb. The fact that Paul did not explicitly mention the empty tomb should therefore be understood to mean that the certainty of the resurrection of Jesus and the certainty of the apostolic commission given by the risen one were based solely on his appearances. Indeed, even though the Gospels report the discovery of the empty tomb, the decisive weight rests on the appearances of the risen one.

There is, however, also the opposite possibility: Instead of starting with the principles of analogy and continuous interaction, one starts with the identity of the Jesus who appeared in a new way of existing after his death on the cross, as attested so powerfully by the New Testament accounts, and from this pre-understanding examine the differences between the spatial, temporal, and other details. That would mean that the risen one himself who is attested would be acknowledged as a criterion in the historical-critical examination of the accounts about the appearances. If the New Testament’s message of the resurrection calls us to believe that in Jesus’ resurrection God has overcome the dominion of death that is visible to everyone, then, when we undertake historical inquiry into the events underlying the reports about the appearances, we are also faced with the decision of whether to start with

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the figure of the risen one who appeared or with the obvious experience of the transitory nature of this world. The decision that is fundamental for the doctrine of all churches takes place with the common affirmation of the appearances of the risen Jesus himself, an affirmation that must determine all further theological and historical thinking. Here, in this text that sets forth the basic features of dogmatics, there is no need to deal with the individual historical hypotheses. It is clear, however, that the real impetus for historical research into the New Testament accounts of the appearances does not lie in their differences and contradictions but in what they bear witness to together, namely, to the crucified Jesus as the living one. The message of the resurrection of Jesus is no less offensive than the word of the cross. Thus, according to the report in Acts, Paul was ridiculed in Athens for his sermon about the resurrection of Jesus, and the same thing happens again and again also today. Amid the verifiable and unquestioned course of this world, the message of Jesus’ resurrection takes place as a proclamation in faith and as a summons to faith. This faith is a wager, a leap beyond the obvious, unquestioned assumptions of this world, to a confident trust in the New Testament’s message of Easter, and yet it is not an absurdity: (1) The message of the resurrection and appearances of Jesus is well attested. Indeed, it is very well attested compared to many other traditions from antiquity. The existing differences and contradictions cannot be surprising after a decades-long process of oral transmission. (2) The principles of analogy and continuous interaction cannot be proven historically or philosophically. Rather, they are heuristic principles that have been shown to be very useful in historical research, but they cannot have the authority of being ultimate and universally valid criteria. The possibility of an historical event breaking through known historical analogies and causal connections cannot be excluded either metaphysically or empirically. To prove that the resurrection of a dead man is impossible, is itself impossible. (3) Scientifically, theoretically, one cannot exclude taking the figure of the appearing one as the starting point for researching the New Testament accounts of the appearances, and then using the usual methods of historical research from within the perspective of this pre-understanding. (4) This starting point appears as a sacrificium intellectus to those who apply the principles of analogy and of continuous interaction not only as heuristic principles but as ultimate criteria for what is possible and for what is impossible. But for historical research into the origins of the Christian message and the church, there arises the paradoxical situation: if the principle of analogy is treated dogmatically, then the origin of Easter faith, the change in the disciples, and the expansion of the church remain historically incomprehensible, while conversely, if one starts with the figure of the risen one, then the origin of Easter faith and the dynamic of the

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message about Christ that has advanced through the millennia can be understood historically. By making the leap of faith over what is obvious and self-evident to all seems at first to be a sacrifice of reason, but faith in the message of the resurrection opens up reason and gives it access to the knowledge of history. Through the resurrection of Jesus, God has made Jesus to be known as the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord, as well as the new human being. In doing so, God has also unveiled the Old Testament Scriptures and the reality of this world. This knowledge that comes by faith in the crucified one who is risen, will be unfolded in the following sections. 2. The Revelation of the Son of God In his appearances Jesus was revealed to be the one who was accepted, justified, and glorified by God, namely, as the one who is uniquely wholly other, who was different from his surrounding world, and as the one who belonged entirely to God. Based on the appearances of the risen one, he was recognized as the coming one, as announced by the Old Testament prophets and by himself. So Jesus was now recognized to be the Son of Man who was to appear in glory at the end, who served human beings in earthly humility and who died on the cross. In addition to Jesus’ words about the future Son of Man and the earthly Son of Man that were handed down in the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John contains the statement that the Son of Man “descended from heaven” (Jn. 3.13). The early Christian communities in which this tradition was alive also understood Jesus to be the Son of Man who came from pre-existence into the world. While these honorific titles are found in the New Testament almost always in words by Jesus, a comparison of the Synoptic parallels with each other and, in turn, with the Gospel of John, shows that both the communities that handed down Jesus’ words about the Son of Man and the authors of the Gospels identified Jesus with the Son of Man, and that the indirect manner in which the earthly Jesus had spoken of the connection between himself and the coming Son of Man had ended for them. It is extremely strange, of course, that despite the extensive witness in the Gospels to Jesus’ words about the Son of Man, there are almost no references in the New Testament Scriptures that show that the early Christian community had proclaimed Jesus to be the Son of Man. Jesus is accorded this title only in the account of the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7.56: “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”) and in two visions from the Revelation to John (Rev. 1.13: “…and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man”; cf. 14.14: “…and seated on the cloud was one like the Son of Man”). These words bear witness to the visionary, visible presence of the exalted Jesus in the power of the Son of Man, in which he will one day appear to all people. Although Jesus’ words about the Son of Man were widely handed down in the early Christian communities,

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there are no early Christian witnesses to the invocation, worship, and confession of Jesus as the Son of Man. Even later, the church did not confess Jesus with this honorific title. No less striking than the lack of confessions of Jesus as the Son of Man is the presence of the confession of Jesus as Christ, Son of God, and Lord, for the earthly Jesus had not publicly proclaimed himself as Christ, Son of God, and Lord. In the Synoptic Gospels there are only a very few, historically disputed sayings that have been handed down in which Jesus spoke of himself as the Christ and the Son. This leads to the strange situation wherein the title of Son of Man, which played a major role in the proclamation of Jesus, is missing in the confessions that are known to us from the early Christian church, and the honorific titles, which had completely receded in the proclamation of Jesus, are present in early Christian confessions. Based on the resurrection, Jesus was proclaimed with a variety of titles of honor. Among them, the titles of Christ, Son of God, and Lord held special importance. The post-Easter community soon also used these words to call upon Jesus and worship him. They then took on the character of names for Jesus. With them he has been confessed by all churches over the centuries. Most of the christological titles of honor have their origins in Old Testament statements, which were adopted due to the impact of the appearances of the risen one and in the certainty of his presence, and then were understood anew and developed further in the advance of the message of Christ into the non-Jewish world. Only the three titles that hold special prominence in the confession will be discussed in this section, but the others will be explored later through fundamental reflection on the new understanding of the Old Testament that is opened up by Jesus’ resurrection (see 569ff.). The pre-Easter presupposition for the confession of Christ was the prophetic promise of the coming king and his kingdom of peace and justice, as well as Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom of God and his condemnation as the “king of the Jews.” The pre-Easter presupposition for the confession of Jesus as the Son of God was the Old Testament designation of the king as Yahweh’s son (2 Sam. 7.14) and his enthronement that divinely established him as a son (Ps. 2.6f.), as well as Jesus’ proclamation of the heavenly Father and the special relationship it implies between him and the Father. For the designation of Jesus as “the Lord,” particularly important was the witness of Psalm 110 to God’s installation of the king “to govern” in glory and the Septuagint’s translation of the name of God as Kyrios. It is possible that the earthly Jesus had already been addressed occasionally as Master and Lord in an absolute sense, but even if this was the case, this word of address to Jesus, as well as that of Christ and Son of God, had to appear to have been refuted by the catastrophe on the cross. After Easter, Jesus was recognized in various ways as the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord:

The Resurrection

(a) He was recognized as the one who, through his resurrection, was established by God in the dignity of the promised coming one. “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2.36). Here, in the Pentecost sermon of Peter, Luke may have adopted an old formula. The establishment of Jesus as the Son of God through the resurrection is attested in basically the same way in the primitive confession used by Paul: “… who came from David’s family according to his human birth, but was established as the Son of God, according to the power of the Holy Spirit, through his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1.3f. [S]). Also in the hymn of Phil. 2.6–11, Jesus is praised as the one whom God exalted because of his obedience unto death and whom God gave “a name above all names” so that everyone would confess him to be the “Lord Jesus Christ.” The earthly Jesus did not appear as a king, but through his resurrection he was established as the messianic ruler. This establishment meant the end of his earthly lowliness. The word of the risen one should also be understood in this sense of an establishing that he received through the resurrection: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Mt. 28.18). (b) Even before his resurrection, Jesus was recognized as the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord. As if this were now self-evident, the New Testament Scriptures speak of the earthly Jesus with these honorific titles. The speaking, healing, and suffering of the earthly Jesus was already the speaking, healing, and suffering of the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord. Thus, e. g., according to the Pauline tradition of the Last Supper, “our Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 11.23) was the one speaking and acting. The authority and the ministry of the earthly Jesus is now recognized as the authority and ministry of the promised coming one, and the vicariously representative, salvific significance of his death “for the many” (Mk. 10.45; 14.24 par.) becomes clear. Even before his exaltation, Jesus had “authority over all flesh” (Jn. 17.2 [RSV]). He was not only established by God to be the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord through the resurrection, but he was confirmed and revealed to be so by it. (c) Jesus was recognized as the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord, who was already with God before he was born as a man and had appeared publicly. In several places, the New Testament Scriptures bear witness to him as the Christ who was present already in the old covenant (cf. 574f.), indeed, as the one through whom God created the universe (cf. 185f.). Especially in the Pauline letters and in the Gospel of John, Jesus is proclaimed in several places to be the Son who was sent into the world by God (cf. 449), indeed, as the one beloved by God the Father even before the creation of the world (Jn. 17.24). Moreover, calling upon Jesus as “the Lord”—the more the identity of this title was consciously thought of in connection with the name of God—implies the acknowledgment of an eternal reign of Jesus that encompasses space and time. People now recognized that Jesus was the Son of God and Lord not merely after his resurrection nor merely since his birth or his

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baptism. The same is true of him as of God: “I am the first and the last, and the living one” (Rev. 1.17–18, cf. v. 8). In contrast to all other human beings, he “came from above” (Jn. 3.31; cf. 8.23). It is of great dogmatic significance that there is no evidence in the New Testament Scriptures that these different meanings of the three honorific titles were thought to conflict with one another. In contrast to later doctrinal conflicts and breakaways from the church, the statements about Jesus’ being established as the Christ, the Son of God, and the Lord through his resurrection, the designation of the earthly Jesus with these titles, and the acknowledgment of the pre-existing one do not stand in opposition to each other. For example, within his message of salvation concerning the Son of God who was sent into the flesh, Paul taught that Jesus was established “in the power of the Son of God through his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1.4 [S]). Also, the Christ-hymn in the letter to the Philippians begins with the witness to him who was already “in the divine nature” before he emptied himself in the incarnation and humbled himself to the point of death on the cross. And that hymn then praises him as the one who has been exalted by God and given the name of Lord. In fact, if the incarnation of the Son of God is taken seriously, these statements cannot contradict each other, for the incarnation means the entrance of the Son of God into the human existence of one who trusts and obeys God, who prays to God, and who waits for God’s answer. Incarnation means entering the mode of existence of those who depend on being accepted and saved by God. The proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection, as establishing and bestowing the honor of the Son of God upon the Son of God who became human, is not about the cyclical course of a mere restoration. Rather, that proclamation is the good news that the Son of God who became human, one of us, has been raised from the dead and exalted and established as the Christ, God’s Son, and the Lord, in order to pull us into his glory. Thus, when delimiting the New Testament canon, the church also did not perceive a conflict in the fact that in Mark’s Gospel (Mk. 1.1), “the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” begins with Jesus’ baptism, while in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke it begins with the birth of Jesus, and in the Gospel of John it begins with the incarnation of the eternal Logos. If one understands the incarnation correctly, then these statements do not preclude that in his baptism the Son of God who became flesh is proclaimed by a divine word to be “my beloved Son,” and that in his baptism the Jesus who was prepared by the Holy Spirit in the body of Mary received the Holy Spirit. A conflict between the New Testament’s “adoptionistic” statements and the confession of the eternal Son of God did not arise until the unfathomable nature of the incarnation was no longer taken seriously or was rejected altogether, as happened in monarchical Adoptionism and the second-century schism that was triggered by it, as well as in the sixteenth-century breakaway of Socinianism from the Roman Church and the churches of the Reformation.[iv]

The Resurrection

As Jesus was proclaimed and known as Christ, Son of God, and Lord, each of these titles underwent profound changes and in many ways moved away from their Old Testament messianic origin. The title of Christ became a proper name, a word that retained its connection to messianic expectations without, however, necessarily having to be further reflected upon. The title of Son of God was soon no longer understood as a messianic title but as a confession of the special communion of Jesus with God and of his special origin in God. The title of Lord was more and more thought of as a synonym for the Old Testament name of God. Also, in the development of these names, differences arose regarding their temporal relationship to Jesus’ future, his pre-existence, his history, and his presence, although each name relates to all these dimensions. Thus, in the New Testament Scriptures, e. g., there is no mention of an incarnation of the Lord and hardly any mention of the incarnation of Christ (1 Jn. 4.2), but there are several references to the mission and incarnation of the Son of God. The name of Lord was used primarily to bear witness to Jesus as the exalted one who is present in the church (cf. 583ff.). The name of Son of God, however, is different from the others, not only in that it is more closely connected to the incarnation than they are but also because the names of Christ and Lord bear witness especially to Jesus’ authority vis-à-vis the world, while the name of Son of God bears witness beyond his salvific action in the world to his relationship to God the Father. While all of the honorific titles imply the aspect of Jesus’ obedience to God and the glorification of God through him—thus implying the correspondence of his will to the Father through his behavior—that aspect is explicitly stated in the proclamation of him as the Son of God (especially in the Gospel of John). Compared to the other names and honorific titles of Jesus, this name for him has rightly received a prominent position in the triadic baptismal formula and in the formulation of the dogma of the Trinity. That is why it was also emphasized here in the heading of this section. The historical questions about where and when the different meanings of Jesus’ names arose, and about the influences upon them from their environment, cannot be investigated here. That they are based on the appearances of the risen one does not mean that they were in use immediately after these appearances. Rather, there is a history here, in which they were adopted and in which their meanings underwent change through the course of the Christian message, from the primitive Aramaic-speaking Palestinian community through the domain of the Jewish-Hellenistic communities and, beyond that, into pagan Hellenism and OrientalHellenistic Gnosticism. The problems of historically reconstructing these changes in meaning are much more complicated than was assumed during the time of the history-of-religions

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school at the beginning of the twentieth century.2 For example, the invocation of Jesus as Lord took place not only in the worship setting of the Hellenistic community but already in the primitive Aramaic-speaking community. This is proven by the call in the worship service: marana tha![v] Also, the New Testament’s statements about the pre-existence of Christ did not first emerge in Hellenistic communities but were already older than the Pauline letters. Ideas about pre-existence already played a role in Jewish wisdom literature and apocalyptic. When trying to reconstruct the history of the christological honorific titles, typological patterns of Jewish and Greek thinking were used too simplistically, which does not do justice to historical reality. Thus statements about the being of God and Jesus Christ were made not only under the influence of unhistorical metaphysical thinking but already in doxology, which responded to God’s historical act of salvation in Jesus Christ. Instead of a unilinear development of the honorific titles, today one sees multiple lines of development that took place in various domains of the church. Just how difficult it is to reconstruct the history of the honorific titles can be seen by comparing the works of Oscar Cullmann, Ferdinand Hahn, and Edward Schillebeeckx.3 The particularity of the history of the christological titles is most likely to be recognized if one understands them not primarily as designations that the post-Easter congregations have taken over from the Old Testament Scriptures and from the Jewish and Hellenistic environment, which were then transferred to Jesus, adapted to him, and thus changed accordingly, but as a result of an original experience in which the revelation of the risen one and the Old Testament promise encountered each other, and the appearance of Jesus was recognized as a revelation of the same God who had spoken earlier through Moses and the prophets. The appearance of the risen one is like a bolt of lightning that illuminates a whole area, even if the latter is passed through only later.

The question remains why the early Christian community and the later church did not confess Jesus to be the Son of Man, even though many of Jesus’ words about the Son of Man have been handed down, and Jesus is recognized as the Son of Man who is approaching and is present. A widely held reason for this is that the apocalyptic meaning of the designation Son of Man was no longer understood in the Hellenistic world. This is certainly 2 Cf., e. g., Bousset, Kyrios Christos. [Beyond Bousset, who was its central figure, the history-of-religions school originally designated a group of younger scholars at the University of Göttingen in the early years of the twentieth century. Other key figures included Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932), Albert Eichorn (1856–1926), Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923), Wilhelm Heitmüller (1869–1926), William Wrede, Paul Wernle (1872–1939), and Martin Dibelius (1883—1947), who, in their respective studies of the New Testament Scriptures, sought to understand the origin and development of Christianity as a syncretistic religion, influenced by foreign religious ideas and cultic practices from multiple ancient cultures beyond Judaism. –Ed.] 3 See Cullmann, Die Christologie des Neuen Testamentes; Hahn, Christologische Hoheitstitel; and Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus (Bloemendaal: Uitgeverij H. Nelissen, 1974). [ET: Jesus, trans. Hubert Hoskins (New York: Seabury, 1979). –Ed.]

The Resurrection

true. But the Jewish expectation of the Messiah was also foreign there, and yet the name Christ was maintained. The most obvious explanation for why the title Son of Man is missing in the creed is likely to be found in the fact that the term Son of Man also simply meant “human being.” Where the apocalyptic meaning was no longer understood, only this meaning remained, which, however, in contrast to Christ, Son of God, and Lord, said nothing about Jesus’ sovereign honor. Thus the title Son of Man was soon understood to contrast with Son of God.4 Corresponding to this is the fact that later the title Son of Man became generally accepted as a designation for Jesus’ human nature in contrast to his divine nature. This understanding has prevailed through the centuries. Only through recent historical research have the apocalyptic pre-history of this title and its honorific significance been rediscovered. 3. The Revelation of the New Human Being Raised from the dead and exalted, the Son of God did not cease to be a human, one of us. With his death and resurrection, he did not leave behind the humanity that he assumed in the incarnation, but Jesus’ appearing in the presence of his own did not entail returning to the continuation of his earthly life. That appearing was of one who had been lifted from the limits of earthly human existence. Jesus appeared as the human being who was lifted by God from the mode of existing in the “flesh,” marked by sin and death, and brought into eternal life. To that extent, the appearances of the risen one were the revelation of the new human being. The risen Jesus appeared as identical with the earthly Jesus and as identical with us, and yet at the same time he appeared as the other, as the new human being. Just as the recognition of Jesus, the eternal Son of God, had its origin in the appearances of the risen one, and was not fully unfolded immediately but only through subsequent consideration, the same was true for the recognition of Jesus as the new human being. Here, too, several interpretations need to be distinguished: (a) The most obvious understanding is that Jesus was changed into the new human being through his resurrection. This is supported by the fact that Paul makes his statements about “the last Adam,” “the second human” in direct connection with his statements about the resurrection of the dead: “It is sown in perishability, it is raised in incorruptibility; … it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15.42–44 [S]). Thus he contrasts the “first Adam,” who became a living soul [Seele], with the “last Adam,” who became “a life-giving spirit” [“Geist”] (v. 45), and “the first human,” who is from the earth, with the “second human,” who “is from heaven” (v. 47 [S]). It is thereby presupposed that already from his origin the

4 Cf., e. g., Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians, 20.2. [Holmes, 199; Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 95. –Ed.]

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first human was earthly and ensouled [seelisch], that he was created from the earth, according to Gen. 2.7, and that he received his soul through God’s breath. He did not first become earthly and ensouled [seelisch] through the fall. In contrast to a sequence advocated in Hellenistic Judaism, especially by Philo, Paul teaches that not the spiritual [geistig] but the earthly-ensouled [irdisch-seelische] human was the first (v. 46).[vi] When Paul calls Jesus Christ the “man from heaven,” there is perhaps here an echo of Jesus’ announcement of the Son of Man who will appear from heaven. (b) On the basis of his appearances, it was recognized that Jesus did not first become the new human being through his resurrection, but that already before, as earthly, he was the other, the new human being. In Romans, for example, Paul contrasts the first Adam, through whom sin came into the world, with Jesus Christ as the second Adam, through whose “obedience” (5.19) grace and justification were given to sinners. Even the Pauline statements about Jesus Christ as the image of God are not limited to the risen one. Through the resurrection, God confirmed that already in his earthly life Jesus was different from other people. If the conduct of the earthly Jesus remained ambiguous vis-à-vis his opposition to the Halakah and even to provisions in the Mosaic law, and vis-à-vis his conflict with the scribes and Pharisees, then, on the basis of his resurrection, this opposition and conflict have been revealed as obedience to God. If through his call to discipleship he had brought strife and division into families and his people, it has now been revealed that precisely in this way he brought peace and community to human beings. Although he was “in the likeness of the sinful flesh” (Rom. 8.3), he did not do the sinful works of the “flesh.” Although he lived in the realm of temptation, he remained guiltless. Thus, in the appearances of the risen one, the earthly Jesus was revealed as the new human being. As a man who was tempted and who struggled on the way of obedience, he was one of us, and yet at the same time he was the other, the new human being. If we consider the creation of human beings in the image of God (Gen. 1.27), it becomes clear that in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead the purpose given to human beings from the beginning is fulfilled. It is true that human beings were not in possession of eternal life at their origin, but they were created to be transformed into eternal life. God did not create human beings for death but for life. The creation of human beings in the image of God entails their being intended to be the image of divine immortality. After humanity became enslaved to death through sin, Jesus, as the obedient one, was transferred through death into eternal life. In this way, he is the new human being, in whose love for God, for human beings, and for the non-human creation, and in whose resurrection from the dead, the original purpose of human beings to be the image of God has come to fulfillment.

The Resurrection

4. The Unveiling of the Old Testament Scriptures On the basis of the appearances of the risen one, Jesus was recognized to be the Son of God and the new human being. At the same time, a new understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures thereby arose. Like the knowledge of Jesus as the Son of God, the new understanding of the Old Testament promise and the Old Testament law did not come about in one fell swoop, but rather in a post-Easter process of reflection. However, here also the origin and impetus for this new knowledge were the appearances of the risen one. Jesus’ death was now understood to be a fulfillment of the Old Testament promises. Especially according to the Lukan accounts of the appearances, the risen one taught the disciples: “‘Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures” (Lk. 24.26f. [S]; cf. vv. 44–46). This corresponds to the early, pre-Pauline tradition: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and was buried, and he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15.3f. [S]). The certainty that Jesus’ death was foretold by the Old Testament Scriptures has also found its expression in the use of numerous quotations from the Psalms in the passion narratives of the Gospels. Of course, if one approaches the Old Testament Scriptures with the question of where they foretell the death and resurrection of the Messiah, such a statement cannot be found. The Old Testament speaks of the suffering of Moses and the prophets, of the experience of death and the salvation of the devout, and of the punishment and exaltation of the Servant of God, but not of the death and resurrection of the promised king. Obviously, the interpretation that according to the Old Testament Scriptures Christ had to die and be glorified, is based on a synopsis of statements that were passed down independently of one another in the Old Testament Scriptures. That they were understood anew on the basis of the appearances of the risen one is also expressed in the fact that the early Christian communities proclaimed Jesus by using a multitude of honorific titles and designations of dignity beyond the names already mentioned, almost all of which have their origin in the old covenant. Their multiplicity has already been pointed out in the introduction to christology (see 413ff.). The most varied of people, institutions, and events were now understood to refer to Jesus Christ. If one investigates the Old Testament presuppositions for these designations for Jesus, it cannot be overlooked that only a few of the Old Testament statements that include honorific titles and designations of dignity explicitly speak of a single coming person.

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Many biblical passages speak of a collective group. Thus Psalm 8 (quoted in Heb. 2.6ff.) refers to human beings in general who have been created by God and given dominion. The promise in Gen. 22.18 (cf. 15.5; 17.1; 28.14; quoted in Gal. 3.16 and Acts 3.25) was for Abraham and his “seed,” and thus it refers to Abraham’s offspring in general. The “foundation stone,” the “tested stone,” the “cornerstone” in Isa. 28.16 (quoted in Eph. 2.20 and 1 Pet. 2.6) was the faithful remnant of the people of Israel. The Son of Man who “comes with the clouds of heaven and receives power, honor, and dominion” (Dan. 7.13f., quoted in Mk. 13.26 par.) was “the kingdom” of the “holy ones of the Most High” (v. 18). Other Old Testament statements that are quoted in the New Testament speak of the succession of many in one office. For example, the statement containing God’s promise to Moses in Deut. 18.18, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people…” (quoted in Acts 3.22), probably refers to a series of ever-new prophets in the further history of Israel. Likewise, the comments in the letter to the Hebrews about the priesthood of Christ—apart from the reference to Melchizedek—are based on the succession of many Old Testament priests. Other Old Testament words that are used in the New Testament to refer to Jesus deal with an individual person but not of someone in the future. Instead, they speak of someone who is now historically in the past. For example, Nathan’s prophecy in 2 Sam. 7.12 (quoted in Lk. 1.32f. and Heb. 1.5) was said to David in reference to his son Solomon: “He shall build a house for my name, and I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me” [S]. Only in a secondary sense did it apply to David’s house and kingdom in general. By citing Ps. 22.23, Heb. 2.12 equates the I of the Old Testament psalmist (“David”) with the I of Jesus Christ, and by citing Isa. 8.17, Heb. 2.13 does the same with the I of the Old Testament prophets. Also, Isa. 52.13ff. does not state that the Suffering Servant of God is to be expected as a future person. In many other New Testament passages, the quoted Old Testament words receive a meaning that goes beyond their literal wording.

For a long time, people have recognized that some New Testament interpretations of the Old Testament Scriptures do not fit with what the Old Testament authors and redactors had intended to say in their context. Jewish criticism pointed this out early on. Within the ancient church the difference between the Old Testament’s own self-understanding and New Testament interpretation became particularly apparent in the conflict between the allegorical interpretation of the Alexandrian school and the literal approach of the Antiochene school. Using a consistent method resulted in the separation of the self-understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures—i. e., the historical determination of what the authors and redactors had intended to say to their contemporaries—from the New Testament’s interpretation of the Old Testament, a separation that first occurred only in the second half of the eighteenth century, namely, with the separation of biblical theology from dogmatics and, in turn, with the separation of the theology of the Old Testament from that of the

The Resurrection

New Testament. Fundamental in this regard was the inaugural academic address by Johann Philipp Gabler in 1787.5 The isolation of Old Testament scholarship from New Testament scholarship meant that the so-called messianic prophecies would now be interpreted independently of the interpretation they had received in the New Testament. In this historical investigation, the number of “messianic prophecies” has very much melted away, and it turns out that even those Old Testament statements in which a coming individual was clearly promised do not readily allow Jesus to be recognized as the coming one. It would be wrong to avoid historical inquiry into what those Old Testament words originally meant, for by pursuing that issue the special nature of the promise becomes all the clearer. Historical research can then demonstrate itself to be an important aid for understanding the Old Testament witness to Christ as it is exhibited in Christian proclamation. Such historical inquiry, after all, does not claim to be satisfied merely with what the authors of the Old Testament Scriptures intended to say, but rather it wants to state what God has announced through these words. It was the conviction of the post-Easter community that only now, after Jesus’ resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, could what those Scriptures actually say be understood, namely, what God had promised through them. This process, for example, is described in the Gospel of Luke with the words: The risen one “opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures” (Lk. 24.45 [NIV]). And Paul spoke of a “veil” that covers the Old Testament and the heart, and which is now taken away by Christ (2 Cor. 3.14–16). The unveiling of the Old Testament Scriptures took place through their fulfillment. In addition, the post-Easter unveiling involves more than mere individual Old Testament words; it is also about the unveiling of the entire Old Testament. The statement in the tradition of the Emmaus story is to be understood in this comprehensive sense, namely, that the risen one “began with Moses and all the prophets and interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures” (Lk. 24.27 [S]). In this same comprehensive sense, Paul also spoke of the “veil” that Christ has 5 Johann Philipp Gabler, “De iusto discrimine theologiae biblicae et dogmaticae regundisque recte utriusque finibus” [On the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and the Specific Objectives of Each]. [This essay appears in Kleinere theologische Schriften, vol. 2, ed. T. A. Gabler and J. G. Gabler (Ulm: Verlag der Stettinischen Buchhandlung, 1831), 179–98. ET: John SandysWunsch and Laurence Eldredge, “J. P. Gabler and the Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology: Translation, Commentary, and Discussion of His Originality,” Scottish Journal of Theology 33 (1980): 133–58. Gabler (1753–1826) delivered this seminal address two years after his appointment as the second professor of theology at the University of Altdorf. In 1804 he was promoted to a chair in theology at the University of Jena. Eight years later, he was appointed to fill the chair at Jena that had been held by Johann Jakob Griesbach (1745–1812) until his death. Gabler, who is often called “the father of modern biblical theology,” would remain at Jena for the rest of his life. –Ed.]

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taken away. Many of the Old Testament quotations hence give an impression of randomness, and they have the character of being mere examples and illustrations for a comprehensively new understanding of the Old Testament, i. e., for the witness of the entire Old Testament to Christ. But even if New Testament interpretations go beyond the Old Testament’s selfunderstanding, it would not fit with the claim of those interpretations if one saw in them only a subsequent reading into and bringing into the Old Testament texts the content of the Christian faith. Rather, those New Testament interpretations want to bring out the true meaning of the Old Testament. Otherwise, they would not be able to claim to have any scriptural proof. We would not do justice to this claim if we only investigated the individual words in the quotations from the Old Testament. Indeed, that investigation engages the announcements of the coming one that are clear, even according to the wording in the Old Testament, but, beyond that, it takes up the whole questioning into which Israel was placed through God’s speaking and acting in the course of its history and through which it was made into a waiting people. Even if some individual interpretations that are found in the New Testament can no longer be comprehended today, the whole history of Israel has become—through the coexistence of tensions between God’s mission and human fulfillment, and through the paradox of God’s judgment and grace—a sign that points to the coming one. (a) The unveiling of the Old Testament promise about Jesus Christ. Israel had been called to account by God’s words and deeds, by questions that were neither opaque nor confused but rightly posed, revealing the outline of who was to come. But the questions were not yet the answers; rather, the answer encountered the questions. Only when Jesus appeared and gave himself to be recognized as the Christ did the answer hidden in the questions become revealed. In other words, Israel was placed in the position of waiting, of seeing the shadow of the coming one. But only because of the appearing of Jesus Christ was his image recognized in the shadow. By faith in Jesus Christ, the following certainty has arisen from the Old Testament expectation of a coming “he”: It is “this one and no other.” The Old Testament promises and questions were now heard as attestations to Jesus Christ, i. e., in their inexhaustible fullness. (1) Jesus is announced by the Old Testament prophets as the coming king in David’s lineage, as the future king of the end time, who, by the authority of the divine Spirit, will bring salvation to his people, cast down their enemies, and will set up an eternal reign of justice and peace for all people. (2) Jesus Christ is attested to with the Old Testament offices of king, priest, and prophet, which are the divinely appointed institutions of his reign. The contradiction that has emerged again and again in Israel’s history between the divine plan and the human exercise of these offices is a testimony to the coming one, in whom God’s word and human words, God’s action and human action, will be identical.

The Resurrection

The historical contradiction precludes seeing a witness to Jesus Christ in every historical king, priest, and prophet. Jesus is indeed, however, announced through the traditions of such kingly rule, by means of which God ruled; through such priestly atonement, by means of which God made atonement; and through such prophetic speech, by means of which God spoke his word. These Old Testament officeholders were witnesses to the coming Christ by means of their obedience, that is, as instruments of God’s salvific action toward his people. In this way, e. g., the word that God said to King David about Solomon, “I will be his father and he shall be my son” (2 Sam. 7.14), has now been understood as a word of God that validly applies to Jesus (Heb. 1.5). Likewise, because of the divine institution of the Old Testament office of priest, here too a reference to the coming Christ is seen in priestly activity, when it happened in obedience to the divine institution (Heb. 7–10). The same holds true for the office of prophet. Jesus himself compared his mission to the commissioning of the prophets, and he elucidated it, especially by using words from the second and third parts of Isaiah. (3) Now, too, the Old Testament temple, in which God had taken up residence, became a reference to Jesus Christ, who is the temple of God (cf. Mt. 26.61; 27.40; Jn. 2.19ff. par.), and the Old Testament sacrifice that was pleasing to God was understood as a reference to the coming sacrificial death of Jesus Christ (cf. Jn. 1.29; 1 Pet. 1.19; Rev. 5.6ff. et passim). Also, while this is not validly applicable to the temple building as such, nor to the sacrifices as such, it does apply to the sacrificial cult that carried out its work obediently. (4) In addition to the offices of king, priest, and prophet, the devout of the Old Testament, the righteous ones, those waiting for God’s coming, are also understood as witnesses to Jesus Christ. The sufferings of the devout, together with those of the prophets, were now recognized as a witness to the death of Jesus. In this way, e. g., the Twenty-Second Psalm and the fourth Servant Song were worked into the passion narratives in the Gospels as a justification for and a description of Jesus’ suffering and death.[vii] (5) Jesus Christ is attested to through the election of Israel from among the multitude of peoples, through the covenant that Yahweh made with Israel, and through every act of salvation by which Yahweh has made himself known to this covenant people. The riddle of the intrinsic contradiction of this divine salvific action, namely, that God, the enemy of sin, acts as a friend of sinful Israel, and that God, the judge of sinners, brings salvation to sinful Israel, now points to the revelation of God’s righteousness on the cross of Jesus Christ: God accepts sinners in his mercy. God’s election is now recognized as an election in Christ (Eph. 1.4). The promises made to Abraham and his seed, to ancient Israel and its remnant, but also to every member of the covenant people, now become witnesses to the coming of Jesus Christ—regardless of whether or not the promises explicitly refer to the coming of an individual. This does not mean that already in its very existence

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ancient Israel was a witness to Jesus Christ. But as the people who lived by God’s promise, it was a witness to Christ. (6) Jesus Christ is attested to through the commandments that God gave Israel, for they make clear to Israel which human beings are obedient and pleasing to God. Because Jesus Christ is the goal of all of God’s dealings with Israel, there can be no objection to the fact that many Old Testament passages cited by the New Testament Scriptures as a witness to Christ do not speak of a coming individual. Even though Jesus had not yet arrived or been crucified and raised from the dead, in the eyes of God he was already the one who would come to fulfill the divine will, to expiate the guilt of human beings through his death, and to bring about a new humanity through his resurrection. In God, the future is already the present, and his future action is already the basis for his present action. In this sense, God’s salvific action prior to the birth of Christ is described by the paradoxical formula: “propter Christum venturum.”6 (7) The New Testament witnesses went one step further by teaching that in the history of the old covenant the coming Christ was already present. Here one should not only recall Paul’s strange statements about Israel’s journey through the desert and its miraculous watering “from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10.4). In multiple witnesses, the hidden presence of the coming Christ in the covenant people is presupposed: The “Spirit of Christ” within the prophets indicated the future “sufferings that should come upon Christ and the subsequent glory” (1 Pet. 1.11 [L]). A word of Isaiah is quoted as Christ’s word (Heb. 2.13), as also happened with a word from “David’s” psalms (Heb. 2.12). In addition, the complaining, imploring, believing, praising “self ” of the psalms is identified with the humiliated and triumphant Christ. The use of the Psalter in the narrative of the passion not only means that Jesus is proclaimed here with words from Old Testament piety but that, already before the coming of Christ, these words had sighed, implored, hoped, and triumphed with him. That the New Testament quotes the words of bygone characters in Israel’s history as the words of Jesus Christ is an expression of the certainty that Christ was already active in Israel before his coming in the flesh. In other words, there is only one Word of God for all time, the

6 [While this exact Latin phrase, which means “because of the coming Christ” or “for the sake of the coming Christ,” is found in only a few of Luther’s writings (e. g., in his 1526 sermon for the morning of the first Monday of Easter [see WA, 20.324a (LW 2 , 56.165]), the idea appears throughout his works. For example, in his 1531 commentary on Galatians, he argued that Cornelius (Acts 10.1ff.) was a righteous and holy man in accordance with the Old Testament “on account of faith in the coming Christ” (“propter fidem in venturum Christum”), just as all the patriarchs, prophets, and devout kings in the Old Testament “were righteous, having received the Holy Spirit secretly on account of faith in the coming Christ” (WA, 40.1.2.338–339 [LW 1 , 26.210 (trans. modified)]). –Ed.]

The Resurrection

Word that was with God from eternity, and is God (Jn. 1.1), and which became flesh in Jesus. (8) If Jesus Christ is recognized as the future basis for the divine salvific action upon Israel, indeed, if already before the incarnation he was present in Israel, then this recognition cannot be restricted merely to the history of Israel. It is now recognized that he was already present in the paradox of the divine preservation of the world, namely, in God’s paradoxical forbearance with humankind who had fallen into judgment. This forbearance was due to the coming Christ. Indeed, even before his incarnation, the coming one was present in the forbearance of God’s preservation of the world. On the basis of the appearances of the risen one, the divine preservation of the world is now attested to as a preservation in Christ (1 Cor. 8.6; Col. 1.17; Heb. 1.3), and, above and beyond all the details, the being and abiding of the whole human race and of humankind’s position in the world (Ps. 8 as quoted in Heb. 2.6ff.) are unveiled as a witness to Christ. Consequently, after Easter, the variety of questions that confronted Israel through Yahweh’s words and deeds came together into one question, to which Jesus is the answer. (b) The unveiling of the powerlessness of the law. Simultaneously with the witness to Christ in the Old Testament Scriptures, it became clear that, prior to the appearing of Jesus, Israel had not yet received the answer to Yahweh’s questions. Because of his appearing, this “not-yet” becomes even more pronounced than was the case earlier. If the previous section emphasized that the Old Testament Scriptures bear witness to the coming one in outline, it must now be added as a qualifier that they bear witness only to the outlines of the coming one. In the old covenant, it was only the shading [Abschattung] of Jesus Christ that was visible, not yet his reality. “The law has only the shadow [Schatten] of the good things to come, not the image of the things themselves” (Heb. 10.1 [S]; cf. Col. 2.17). In the following, the term shadow [Schatten] will be used as a comprehensive, systematic term beyond the specific context of the letter to the Hebrews. For understanding the Old Testament witness to Christ, it is crucial to emphasize the shadowy nature of the Old Testament promise and the powerlessness of the law. (1) The Old Testament promises were only preliminary shadows of the future Christ. The time was not yet fulfilled. The one in whom God’s word and human words, God’s action and human action, would be identical, was not yet born; the reconciliation on the cross was not yet accomplished; the new creation in Jesus’ resurrection had not yet dawned. The great turning point had not yet taken place. (2) The Old Testament promises were a multifariously subdued shadow of the one Jesus Christ. For example, the statements in the Old Testament about the future king at the end time and about the Suffering Servant of God are unrelated to each other. Standing side by side are also various Old Testament ministerial offices. A variety of people had been active in them. The diversity of Old Testament sacrifices,

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and the necessity to repeat them over and over, stood in contrast to the one sacrifice of Jesus in the future (cf., e. g., Heb. 9.25f.). The variety of Old Testament sacrifices now becomes an expression of their imperfection and their lack of finality and effectiveness. (3) In its original form, the Old Testament promise was only a partial shadow of the universal Christ. The variety of witnesses, ministerial offices, officeholders, and sacrifices—in succession and side by side—in Israel’s history contrasts with the extremely limited, vanishingly small area in which all this was applicable. How small the nation and the land were, for which these ministerial offices had been established, and over which such individuals had been given authority! The king was only the king of Israel and was again and again called back by the prophetic word to this limited task and away from world-political plans, even if the coronation liturgies overextended this domain. The prophet was only a prophet in Israel. Although he was asked to speak also to pagan nations, his ministry was located within the borders of ancient Israel. The same holds true for the priests. They had no commission to establish the cult of Yahweh in foreign lands. That all peoples would come to Jerusalem and worship there was an expectation that did not correspond to any historical fact in the old covenant. (4) If Israel was originally promised the earthly good of many descendants and the possession of Canaan, this was only a shadow of the dawning of the kingdom of God in Jesus, which is not of this world and is coming to all peoples. Even the promise of a long earthly life for the devout was only a shadow of the eternal life that dawned in Jesus’ resurrection. To be sure, life was promised in the old covenant, but without the overcoming of death. Even for the devout, it was true that God is not praised in the realm of the dead. (5) The Old Testament law was merely a powerless shadow of the authoritative Jesus Christ. The law required obedience, but it did not bring about obedience. With its commandments, the law showed what the heart that pleases God should be like, but it did not create the new heart. Precisely in this way, the law was powerless. It was impossible for it to liberate people from the dominion of death and sin (Rom. 8.2f.); it could not give life (Gal. 3.21; cf. 2 Cor. 3.3ff.). Along with its commandments, it continued to be demanding vis-à-vis human beings; it continued to be written on stone tablets, but it did not write itself on the heart. Although the law is “holy, just, and good” (Rom. 7.12), it does not make others holy, just, and good. Although it is spiritual (Rom. 7.14), it does not bestow the Spirit. It is “weak and useless, for the law has accomplished nothing” (Heb. 7.18f. [S]). The law only afflicts human beings in what they do, and it unveils them as what they are. (6) In addition, the powerlessness of the cultus is now also recognized. The sacrifices did not bring about the atonement to which they point. With the most pointed intensification, the letter to the Hebrews denied that they gave what they indicated (cf. Heb. 10.1ff.). Here the Old Testament sacrifices, which of necessity had to be

The Resurrection

offered again and again, are not understood as a sign of a forgiveness that was already effective in the old covenant but as a sign of lasting sin. Now the weakness of the Old Testament gifts of salvation is emphasized, and precisely the earthly enormity of them is understood as a mere shadowing of the salvation that came in Jesus: a country upon this earth instead of a new creation, a stone temple instead of the indwelling of God in the flesh, animal sacrifice instead of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. (7) After God established the new covenant in the crucified Christ, and created new hearts through the Holy Spirit, the reason for foundering under the law was not seen solely in Israel’s disobedience. It is undoubtedly clear now that “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Rom. 7.12), and that it “should lead to life” (v. 10). And yet Paul understood the foundering of Israel under the law not only as a consequence of its disobedience, but he also took this foundering to be an effect willed by God. “The law came in so that the trespass became even greater” (Rom. 5.20 [S]). “It was added because of transgressions” (Gal. 3.19). That the law brings sin to life (Rom. 7.9) is not only the establishment of a fact but a statement about the divine purpose of the law. Although Paul knows very well that the Old Testament law has already attested to God’s free grace, namely, “the righteousness of God which comes by faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (Rom. 3.21f. [S]), he nevertheless declares the opposite to be the result of the actual preaching of the law: “The law is not from faith, but rather ‘whoever has done them (the commandments) will live through them’” (Gal. 3.12; cf. Rom. 2.12; 10.5). (8) Corresponding to this is the fact that Paul did not refer to the Old Testament promise as the gospel. The latter is the message about the crucified Christ. Corresponding to this, on the other hand, is the fact that Paul almost nowhere referred to the commandments that are based on the message about Christ as law. He referred to them as exhortation [Mahnung], for the law was “our disciplinarian until Christ came” (Gal. 3.24). “Christ is the end of the law” (Rom. 10.4). (9) Not only the knowledge of the Old Testament witness to Christ but also the knowledge of the shadowy nature of the Old Testament promise, and of the powerlessness of the law, go beyond the Old Testament’s self-understanding. That God gave the law to increase sin is not an Old Testament understanding but is rather a conclusion of the New Testament, based on the history of Israel under the law. (c) The unity and difference between the Old Testament Scriptures and the postEaster message about Christ. A distinction must therefore be made between the self-understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures and their interpretation in the New Testament. In other words, in the apostolic message about Christ, a distinction must be made between the unity of the Old Testament Scriptures that is hidden in the Old Testament’s self-understanding and the unity of the Old Testament Scriptures and the apostolic message of Christ that is revealed on the basis of the

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appearances of the risen Jesus. The real pathos of early Christian interpretation of the Old Testament, however, was the unity that had become revealed in the difference, namely, the recognition that God had fulfilled the Old Testament promises in Jesus. Both the unity that has been revealed and the difference belong inseparably together. If one were to separate that unity and that difference from one another, then one would no longer confess the coming of Jesus Christ as the unique historical event, namely, as the new, once-and-for-all act of God’s salvation. Only those who take seriously the unity of the two testaments can confess the incarnation of the Son of God, for the whole history of Israel is the historical preparation for this incarnation. Only those who take seriously the difference between the two testaments can take the incarnation of the Son of God seriously, for Jesus is at the same time the one who is completely different, who did not originate from the history of Israel, and the one who entered into this history. If one were to sever [lösen] the unity and the difference from one another, the history of Jesus would disintegrate [auflösen]. It would either become the legend of another Old Testament prophet (or even merely a rabbi) or the myth of a heavenly being. If one did not hold on to the togetherness and intertwining of the unity and the difference, then one would also miss the relationship between God’s promise and God’s fulfillment. In the fulfillment, God stands by his promise, and at the same time he surpasses it. In every fulfillment God shows himself to be faithful to those to whom he has spoken his promise, and at the same time he exceeds human expectations in the freedom of his caring commitment to them. The wellunderstood concept of the Old Testament “prophecy” includes the unpredictability of its fulfillment. Certainty about the future belongs together with an openness that accompanies the waiting. In contrast to fortune-telling, the promises of the Old Testament are not clear predictions of the promised future, nor do they establish such a future in time. The fulfillment of the promise is a new and free act of divine faithfulness. That is also why historical-critical interpretation does not resolve the meaning of the Old Testament promises but does help to understand their nature. All churches have maintained a canon of Old Testament Scriptures together with that of the New Testament Scriptures. Indeed, before the New Testament canon came into being, only the Old Testament Scriptures were the church’s Bible. The churches have refused to renounce the Old Testament as such or make use of texts from other religions in worship and teaching, as if they were on par with the Old Testament Scriptures. They have retained the Old Testament not only in the sense that, without it, Jesus and the New Testament message cannot be understood, but also in the certainty that God speaks to the church not only through the New Testament gospel but also through the Old Testament promises and demands. They are also certain that God speaks to the church through the old covenant’s events of salvation and judgment. Moreover, the church gives thanks to God for his act of

The Resurrection

salvation in Jesus Christ, using words from the Old Testament Psalter. While there are individual differences among the churches regarding the delimitation of the Old Testament canon, these differences were not the reason for divisions between the churches. Which Old Testament statements are to be heard as God’s address to the church, and which are no longer valid because they have been abolished by Jesus’ coming? In other words, how is the relationship between unity and difference, between the Old and the New Testaments, to be determined in detail? This question has been answered in very different ways in the course of church history, and these differences have actually led to divisions among the churches. Despite its great importance for the unity of the church, this question has received little attention in ecumenical dialogue, for the determination of the relationship between the unity and the difference of the two testaments has usually not been defined in confessional statements and dogmas, so that with respect to this fundamental subject there are no dogmatic definitions that are in conflict with one another. However, it is indeed the case that existing differences and conflicts about this question are operative in the definitions within other doctrinal statements, such as, e. g., those about the two kingdoms and about the sacraments. The underlying fluctuations and biases in the determination of the relationship between the two testaments have mostly received only incidental consideration and have not been reflected upon in a fundamental way. It is clear that in New Testament proclamation, the Old Testament liberation from Egypt has been replaced by the liberation from the dominion of sin, death, and the powers of corruption, and the Old Testament exodus and the Old Testament conquest have been replaced by the transfer into a life that is not of this world and is not bound to a particular country. Also, existence under the law has been replaced by life that lives in freedom from the law, namely, life in the Holy Spirit. Throughout church history, however, there has been a trend to weaken this difference in favor of Old Testament statements. It came to the point that churches identified themselves with worldly empires, analogous to ancient Israel, and that the expansion of the church was in part undertaken by force of arms, and the wars of Christian empires were fought as holy wars, based on the Old Testament model. The weakening of the difference between the two testaments has also had an effect within the church, e. g., the Lord’s Supper was interpreted in terms of Old Testament sacrificial offerings, and the early Christian multiplicity of spiritually gifted servant ministries was forced back into the form of the Old Testament priesthood. Each of these dogmatic and church-law decisions in turn challenged doctrines and church orderings that opposed them, and church unity was thus shattered on both sides. The question arises whether a consensus of the churches is at all possible if one goes beyond the self-understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures and finds meanings in them that go beyond the wording of their statements and the intention of their authors. Indeed, there

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will always be an element of spiritual freedom in attesting to that which God wants to say through the Old Testament to the church in its current situation. But this freedom is not arbitrary. No comprehensive Old Testament hermeneutic can be developed at this point, but the basic principles of the same should be briefly presented. These principles are encompassed within the principles of biblical hermeneutics, which will be discussed later in connection with the doctrine of the biblical canon (cf. 943ff.) (1) Just as the New Testament texts are to be investigated to discern what Jesus, the apostles, and the other early Christian witnesses intended to say in their environment, so also inquiry is to be made into the self-understanding of the Old Testament, i. e., what the authors, redactors, and compilers of the various Old Testament statements intended to say in their setting. At the same time, the Old Testament texts must not be isolated but are to be interpreted in their overall historical context, which is based on the election of Abraham, the deliverance from Egypt, and the covenant, and is determined by Yahweh’s promises and leading, as well as by his judgments and the new promises he made following Israel’s breach of the covenant. In no way can Christian interpretation skip over the self-understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures, which must be exegeted as clearly as possible. (2) When interpreting the Old Testament, the church’s pre-understanding is determined by the resurrection of Jesus and thus by the divine confirmation of his message, his work, and his death. Since Jesus proclaimed the God of Israel as the heavenly Father, and the coming of the reign of God as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise, the church’s pre-understanding also entails acknowledging the identity of Yahweh with the heavenly Father proclaimed by Jesus. If, in its interpretation of the Old Testament, the church were to disregard Jesus’ resurrection, this would be an anachronism; the church would be stepping out of its historical existence vis-à-vis God, which is determined by Jesus’ death and resurrection. (3) With this pre-understanding, the Old Testament is to be investigated philologically and historically and compared with New Testament traditions and witnesses. In no way does this pre-understanding imply the termination of careful philological-historical research of the Old Testament Scriptures. Rather, the literal meaning of the texts intended by the Old Testament authors, redactors, and compilers must be compared with the literal meaning of the New Testament texts, and the existing similarities and differences must be identified. In the event of a conflict, the New Testament statements have priority over the Old Testament. Thus, e. g., the New Testament witness to Christ takes precedence over the Old Testament expectation of the Messiah, and the kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus—which is not of this world—takes precedence over the expectation of a restoration of the earthly kingdom of David, just as the traditions of the Lord’s Supper take precedence over the sacrificial meals of the old covenant. So also, Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies overrides the call for vengeance, which was justified in the old covenant. Based on the pre-understanding that is determined by Jesus’ resurrection, it is not possible to override or restrict New Testament statements by the Old Testament, but rather only vice versa. There is an irreversible sequence here, both historically and factually.

The Resurrection

(4) In the church’s dealings with the Old Testament Scriptures—beyond this fundamental clarifying of the agreements and differences regarding what is still valid in the law and what is no longer in force—the relevant address of Christians takes place again and again in the hic et nunc [here and now] through the present God. Then, in Yahweh’s promise of salvation to Israel, the word of the Father of Jesus Christ, which justifies and makes alive, encounters us, as does the present Christ in the prophetic announcement of the coming king. In a similar way, e. g., the promise of the heavenly home can encounter us in the promise of the land of Canaan, and the witness to Jesus’ Last Supper can be perceived in the accounts of the Old Testament covenant meal. Likewise, e. g., the Old Testament account of Israel’s failure on its journey through the desert (1 Cor. 10.1–13), and the hardening that partially happened to the Jews because of their rejection of Jesus Christ (Rom. 11.25), are to be heard as a warning to Christendom. If Old Testament texts become relevant for the church beyond their historical meaning, then this is experienced not as a projection of the contents of the New Testament into Old Testament texts but as the latter’s revelation, namely, as an address of God that happens just as inevitably through these texts as through New Testament ones. That this concrete encouragement, guidance, and exhortation by God happens again and again through the Old Testament, and indeed through far more Old Testament passages than are expressly quoted in the New Testament Scriptures, is the ever-new experience of Christendom again and again, both in its worship assemblies and in the piety of individuals. What happens in the church when praying the psalms, e. g., is always new and exciting, and for centuries it has been described in the history of hermeneutics as the illumination of the mystical sense or of the sensus plenior [the fuller meaning] in contrast to the grammatical sense of the Old Testament.[viii] (5) This perception of God’s speaking in the present, and this certainty of the presence of Christ in the Old Testament witnesses, cannot be obtained by force through any exegetical method; rather, it comes freely from God. No allegorical, typological, or anagogical method can turn the Old Testament texts into God’s address in the midst of our contemporary temptations, failures, and fears. This overcoming of the distance across the millennia is the work of the Holy Spirit. The working of the Holy Spirit can be recognized by the fact that he brings Jesus Christ to remembrance (Jn. 14.26). Just as spiritual gifts are to be tested (1 Cor. 12.10; 1 Jn. 4.1ff.), so too are spiritual interpretations of the Old Testament. Without question, in the course of church history quite a few claims have been made for Old Testament texts that do not meet this standard.

5. The Beginning of the New Creation The resurrection of Jesus was not only God’s act upon him, the one who was crucified, dead, and buried, but it was at the same time God’s act of salvation upon the world. Jesus Christ was raised not only for his sake but for the sake of the world. No sooner had he escaped the persecution of his enemies and abandonment by his disciples than he committed himself to his own. This caring commitment was

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not limited to the fact that he gave himself to be recognized, which triggered a process of knowledge in which his names, honorific titles, and designations of dignity were accorded to him and the Scriptures of the Old Testament were opened, but in addition he re-established community with human beings in such a way that he bound their life to his and included them on his path through suffering to glory. Beyond the unveiling and its significance for that cognitive process, the dawn of the new creation took place in his resurrection. As the new human being, the risen one is the beginning of a new humanity. He was raised “as the first” (1 Cor. 15.20, 23) so that many could follow him in the resurrection; “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (v. 22). He was “raised a spiritual body” (v. 44). “Just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so we will also bear the image of the heavenly man” (v. 49 [L]). “He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory” (Phil. 3.21). This transformation of the earthly man into the image of the risen Christ, this growth of the new humanity on the basis of the new human being, Jesus Christ, has already begun. So now this is also true: “If anyone is in Christ, that one is a new creature; the old has passed away—see, everything has become new” (2 Cor. 5.17 [S]). Nevertheless, the new is still under the old, one’s life with Christ is still hidden under one’s dying with him. Still, because the old has ultimately been overcome by Jesus’ death and resurrection, it cannot stop the future revelation and fulfillment of the new humanity. The risen one is the beginning and the head of the new humanity. It is his body. If the dawn of the new creation took place in Jesus’ resurrection, then this statement cannot be limited merely to human beings, for humanity cannot be separated from the non-human creatures. The origin of the human being presupposes the existence of other creatures, from which the human being was called out by God’s address and appointed to be God’s vicarious representative. If God’s Son became human, he thereby also entered the relationship between human beings and the non-human creatures. If he did not cease to be human in his resurrection, then this relationship also cannot be set aside. With their turning away from God, the dominion of human beings over the other creatures became perverted, and the creation was subjected to the powers of futility [Nichtigkeit] under which it groans for redemption (Rom. 8.19–22). But if the dominion of the powers of corruption is broken by Jesus’ death and resurrection, then this is the beginning of a new creation that extends beyond the realm of humanity. Even if “a new heaven and a new earth” are announced merely at the margins of the New Testament message, we cannot set any limits to the consummation of the new creation that began in Jesus’ resurrection. The new creation will exceed our earthly expectations in an unimaginable way. While in the Western churches the resurrection of Jesus was often understood merely as an act of God upon Jesus, and as an unveiling of the salvific significance

The Reign of Christ

of the cross, the Eastern Church has generally praised it more vigorously as a selfrevelation of the glory of the Son of God and as a universal renewal of creation, and thus accorded greater weight to the resurrection.

B. The Reign of Christ 1. The Present Lord After the end of the appearances of the risen one, his own awaited the coming of Jesus in the glory of the Son of Man, who will judge the world, redeem the poor, and establish the messianic kingdom of justice and peace. They expected that Jesus would encounter the whole of humanity in the same inescapable and irrefutable visibility that he had met them as the risen one. But they were not only waiting for this promised future; they also knew that they had already taken part in it, for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and its manifold effects in their midst were a sign to them that the promised end-time action of God had already begun. So in their waiting, they did not understand themselves to be in an empty space between the appearances of the risen one and his coming in glory, between the event of his resurrection and the coming resurrection of all, but were certain of the presence of Jesus through the working of the Holy Spirit. Despite their waiting for his coming, they were truly not abandoned by him. In the New Testament traditions there are no signs of mourning over his disappearance. Those left behind are in no way orphans (Jn. 14.18). Rather, they know the one who once had visible community with them to be present in their midst in a different way. Jesus has not only become an object of remembrance and is not only an object of expectation, but he is the one working through the Holy Spirit in the midst of the community. The exalted one is present to believers as the one who has come and the one who is to come. In the working of the Holy Spirit, this promise is true: “Behold, I am with you every day until the end of the world” (Mt. 28.20 [L]). When in their worship assemblies believers cry out “marana tha” to the coming Christ, they are certain that the one who once came is already now coming to his own. The same holds true for the word of the exalted one: “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me” (Rev. 3.20). Through this word, Jesus’ coming is not only promised for the “Great Feast” at the end of time, but, as this future one, he is coming already now and maintains community with his own. In this way, the appearances of the risen one were not the end of Jesus’ historical ministry. In contrast to modern historical-critical portrayals of the life of Jesus, the Christian faith, when speaking of Jesus’ life, can never restrict itself merely to the time up to his death—not even if the visions of the disciples after his death

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are mentioned as an appendix. Rather, the Christian faith confesses Jesus to be the risen one who lives and the exalted one who continues to work in history. If, on the basis of his appearances, his own disciples had recognized Jesus to be the one who had been established by God to be the Son of Man, the Christ, so that he might establish the kingdom of justice and peace, they trust that he, as the exalted one, is continuing to act historically toward this goal so that God’s reign will be realized. The church thus confesses Jesus to be the present Lord. The establishment of Jesus as Lord is attested to by the New Testament Scriptures as an establishment “at the right hand of God.” Hardly any other Old Testament saying is quoted so often in the New Testament as the first verse of Psalm 110: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” In the Constantinopolitan Creed and the Apostles’ Creed, Christendom confesses Jesus to be “seated at the right hand of God the Father.” “At the right hand of God” means reigning with God, reigning with divine authority, reigning like God. The phrase, “with divine authority” no longer means merely the authoritative announcement of the coming reign of God and the coming Son of Man. Jesus no longer points away from himself to the one who is coming, as if that one is someone else who is different from him. He himself is now the Lord. Thus the reign of Jesus Christ is at the same time the reign of God. The kingdom of God and of Christ are spoken of in various New Testament passages. In such statements, God and Christ stand with one another and for one another, whereby sometimes God is named first and sometimes Christ. This togetherness is an interrelatedness; indeed, it is an identity of reign, just as the name of Yahweh in the Old Testament is differentiated from Yahweh, and yet it is at the same time Yahweh himself. The exalted Jesus was established to function like the name of Yahweh. God has given his power to the risen one. If Jesus is exalted above the universe, he also transcends the spatial-temporal constitution of this world as Lord. This reign of the exalted one over the constitution of the world has been discussed in the history of theology especially with regard to the problem of space, but it is also true with regard to time. This issue has been discussed again and again, especially in the doctrine of baptism and the Lord’s Supper (cf. 726f. and 754f.). In the witness to Jesus’ reign, the same words recur that are in the creation statements of the Old Testament: “everything” is subject to him; “heaven and earth” are also mentioned here as a summing up of the whole creation. The enumeration of powers and authorities in the witness to the exaltation of Jesus is exactly the same as in the witness to his mediation in creation (cf. Eph. 1.21 with Col. 1.16). Jesus Christ is the “King of kings,” the “Lord of lords” (1. Tim. 6.15). Jesus Christ is not only Lord over Israel and the church but over all humanity, indeed, over the whole creation, not just over the visible but also the invisible creatures, not merely over God’s good creation but also over the creation that is in rebellion against God. The kingdom of the world and the powers of corruption have been put under his

The Reign of Christ

feet; they belong to the war booty of Jesus Christ, which must follow him in his triumphant march. He has exposed them, disarmed them, and put them on display (Col. 2.15). In this way, the church teaches that Jesus is not only its Lord but also utterly the Lord. That Jesus is established as Lord over the universe—over all creatures, powers, and authorities—certainly does not mean that all creatures, powers, and authorities already now acknowledge him as Lord, that they have submitted to him, obey him, and serve him. The world is still raging in its rebellion against God the Lord. It still refuses to acknowledge Jesus’ victory and its own end. Although everything is subject to Jesus as Lord, the warning to believers is still relevant vis-à-vis the powers and authorities. Believers have to pray repeatedly, “Deliver us from evil” (Mt. 6.13), and they have to endure the temptations of the evil one. While it is true that the letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians contain strong statements about the fact that Christ has already overtaken the powers, in the same letters there are stern warnings against following “the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient” (Eph. 2.2). These letters also contain the most urgent exhortations to fight with the full armor of God, “for your struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6.12). Here there is a warning about these powers, who are enemies of Christ, which in other passages (e. g., Eph. 1.21) are said to be placed under the feet of Christ who is sitting at the right hand of God (cf. also 1 Pet. 3.22 with 5.8). In “putting everything under” Christ, God “left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him” (Heb. 2.8 [NIV]). When speaking of the subjection of the world to Jesus Christ as something that has already taken place, this must be understood as a subordination [Unterstellung] toward the world’s subjection [Unterwerfung] or, in the eschatological perfect tense, in the same sense as of the baptized, about whom it is said that they not only will be resurrected with Christ but are already risen with Christ (Col. 2.12), or in the way that the Psalter bears witness to the praise that all nations offer to Yahweh, even though only Israel acknowledged Yahweh. If, in this sense, one distinguishes between the subordination of the world to Christ as the Lord and the subjection of the world to him, then one cannot say that all powers and authorities are already serving Christ. No, they are still against Christ, although they are subordinate to him. God has established Jesus as Lord so that he would subject the universe, all creatures, powers, and authorities under him. God has subordinated all things to Jesus so that he might put an end to the turmoil in the world, to the suffering of creatures, and to the dishonoring of God. Paul thus speaks of the termination of every ruler and every authority and power through Christ as a future event: “He must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Cor. 15.25). As grounds

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for this future subjection he adds: “for he (God) has put all things under his feet” (v. 27). Hebrews 10.12f. also speaks of this future subjection: “‘He sat down at the right hand of God,’ and since then has been waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.’” Jesus is exalted as Lord over all so that he might subject all things to himself. His task of disempowering the powers of corruption is as such also the redemption of the poor, the disenfranchised, the suffering, those waiting for the reign of God. In this double function of casting down and raising up, of binding and redeeming, the exalted one actualizes the judgment of the world and establishes the kingdom of peace and justice. The world is subordinated to him so that he can establish the reign of God that was promised in the Old Testament, not merely over Israel but over all nations. Arising from the resurrection and oriented toward the parousia, Jesus exercises his reign over the universe: through his call to faith that extends to all, through his community with believers, and through his governing of the world. The following three sections deal with these three modes of his reign. 2. His Reign as a Call As the one exalted to be the Lord, how does Jesus Christ subject the world to himself? Completely differently from the lords of this world, who are accustomed to subjugating others, but also differently from how the earthly Jesus preached about the coming of the Son of Man as the judge and end of the world. The exalted one subjects people to himself by committing himself toward them as the one who died and was raised for them. He does not subject them by force but offers himself to them as the one in whom God has reconciled the world to himself: as the one who died and was raised for you. He does not execute judgment upon those who have fallen into judgment but comes to them as the Savior. He encounters them less as one who is demanding and commanding, and more as one who is inviting, yes, even pleading. The risen one has thus sent into the world those who witnessed his appearances in order to proclaim to all people the act of salvation that God has fully accomplished in and through him. He lets his death and resurrection—his humiliating coming into the world and his exaltation above the world—be proclaimed to all people as having happened for them. He lets this proclamation be extended to everyone, to the presumptuous and the despondent, to those in power and to the disenfranchised, to those who block themselves against God’s reign and to those who are longingly waiting for God’s reign. He makes known to all that he has acquired them as his property, that they have been handed over to him, and he invites them to acknowledge him as their Lord, the one who suffered judgment in their stead. With this message the risen one sent his disciples into a struggle, for the world defends itself against him as Lord, it defends itself against its disempowerment, it

The Reign of Christ

wants to be subject to itself, it wants its own eternity. Just as it had turned against Jesus’ message of God’s reign, so now it turns against the message of the reign of Jesus Christ. In this resistance to the gospel, there is a radicalization and unleashing of the world’s enmity against God. After all, the gospel triggers a resistance and a rebellion that are now no longer directed merely against the self-witnessing of God in the works of his creation and against his law that is written upon hearts—a contradiction that also turns not merely against Moses and the prophets but against Christ, the last and final word that God has spoken. The book of Acts thus reports that wherever the gospel was heard there were strife and divisions, divisions that went right through families and nations. But those who accept the message of Christ, who confess Jesus as Christ and Lord, will receive salvation from the judgment toward which the world is heading. In baptism they receive a new source that is not of this world, the source in Christ, who is life. The Lord also sends those who have been saved from the world back into the world so that they can proclaim the salvation that is through him alone. This sending of the believers to proclaim the same proclamation by which they themselves are saved is so urgent that faith and silence are mutually exclusive. It is impossible to keep salvation as one’s personal possession. By allowing salvation and peace to be proclaimed by believers in the world, the Lord exposes his messengers at all times to the hostility of the world, the same hostility that persecuted him and fixed him to the cross. In the midst of the world’s indignation against the Lord, they are exhorted again and again to struggle anew, a struggle that is not merely against humans but against the forces of darkness that rule the world. The weapons with which the world fights against the witnesses of Christ, on the one hand, and the weapons with which the witnesses fight against the world, on the other, are quite incommensurate. Indeed, the weapons of believers can hardly be called weapons at all when compared to those of the world, since they are so powerless from a worldly point of view. They have to resist worldly violence with witness and prayer; worldly lies and the hostility of the world with love, truth, and blessing; and the defiance of the world with self-sacrifice. In the New Testament we do not find any suggestion that worldly power would have been sought by believers in order to overthrow those who oppose Christ’s reign. To be sure, according to the Acts of the Apostles, Paul had the legal protection of the Roman state against the threatened lynching by the Jews in Jerusalem; but forcing Christ to be acknowledged as Lord by means of worldly violence would essentially contradict Christ’s reign. In his caring commitment to the world, the Lord does not let himself be stopped by any resistance. First, he sent the eyewitnesses of his resurrection. Then he sent those who had come to faith through their witness. In this way, he keeps sending witnesses until all peoples have heard the gospel. The witnesses’ message is not only a message of Jesus Christ but a message through which the exalted one himself

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approaches people. It is not merely a message about the past events of his death and resurrection and about the future event of his coming but a message by which Jesus Christ is actively present as the crucified and risen one and as the coming one. To those who are trapped in guilt and whose freedom is enslaved—to those who are deaf and blind to God’s act of salvation for the world—he opens the ears and the eyes through the Holy Spirit in order to hear and see God’s salvation, and he gives them the freedom to make a decision of faith for him. He sends the Spirit, however, not only to make faith and understanding possible but also to enable believers, through manifold spiritual gifts, to serve in the world. Through the message about Christ the exalted one calls people to the obedience of faith, and through the Holy Spirit he sets them free for this obedience. This all means that the exalted one, after having escaped the hostility of the world, has again exposed himself to the world’s hostility in the calling of his witnesses who are powerless from a worldly point of view. 3. His Reign as a Community How does the exalted one reign over those who respond in faith to his call? Like his subjecting, his reigning over those who submit to him is also completely different from the exercise of domination that we encounter in this world. To those who accept the message about Christ by faith and confess him to be Lord, he bestows everything that is his, his righteousness, his holiness, his life. Through baptism he incorporates those people into his death and resurrection. He makes them his friends, his brothers and sisters, children of God. To be called by Christ means to be granted his gifts. To be the slave of Christ means to be Christ’s freed person. To live under him, the Son of God, means to live with him as God’s child, to live with him as a sibling. To be subject to this Lord means to be accepted by him and made victorious with him. His sending of the believers into the world is also a self-giving. He does not leave them alone. Their word is not merely the transmission of the words that he once spoke on earth, and not merely a report about his death and his resurrection, but with it comes his promise: “Whoever listens to you listens to me” (Lk. 10.16); “It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Mt. 10.20). He also makes the sufferings of his witnesses into his sufferings: “whoever despises you despises me” (Lk. 10.16b [L]). He lets them not only follow his sufferings, but he is present in their sufferings. This suffering with Christ is referred to in the New Testament as the reason for joy, for these sufferings are the signs by which the witnesses are made like their Lord. Not that they have to repeat Jesus’ way of suffering again. Jesus paved that way once and for all; he completed that path for everyone. You do not first have to prepare that way; you merely have to follow him. In the struggle against boasting about self-chosen sufferings, Protestant Christianity

The Reign of Christ

has largely forgotten the Pauline statements about suffering with Christ. From the true sentence, “Christ has suffered for us,” the wrong conclusion has often been drawn, namely, that is why we need not suffer. Rather, the sufferings of Christians can now take on a new meaning. Because Christ is risen, believers not only share in his sufferings, but in his sufferings they also already share in his victory. In their suffering he is present as the one who has overcome death. In their weaknesses the power of Christ is at work. It is precisely in the sufferings of his own disciples that Jesus’ victory in the world manifests itself. Never are the witnesses to Christ so humiliating and disarming, so faith-inspiring and overpowering, as in martyrdom. In this way, the exalted one reigns as the eternal high priest who had once sacrificed himself on the cross in order always to take the place of the believers as this one who was once crucified. Exalted as Lord, he vicariously represents his own before God the Father, vicariously represents the prayers that are voiced in his name on earth. He vicariously represents us as one who, from his own experience, is familiar with all human weaknesses, trials, and tribulations, and who therefore has compassion on us. He sends his Spirit, who prays in our stead when we can only sigh in our weakness. The one exalted to be Lord was not only human in his humiliation but remained human in his exaltation, and will remain so for all eternity. He remains the one marked by his humiliation. All authority is given to the Lamb that is slain, and, as this slaughtered Lamb, the exalted one stands before God (Rev. 5.6f.). Because he, as the exalted one, does not cease to be human, he is not only Lord over human beings and for them, but he lives with them and in them, and they live in him. He not only stands opposite them as their lord and head, but he makes them members of his body. In this way, the exalted one reigns over those who subject themselves to him, by granting them community with him. If his reign works in a community of believers with him, so it also works in the community of believers with one another. Community with the Lord Christ is at the same time the new community of human beings who acknowledge with one another his reign by faith. In the midst of the opposing races and peoples of the world, and amidst the conflicts between rulers and ruled, the exalted one gathers new people from all races, peoples, and classes of humanity into a community that is different from all other human communities. Through their source in the one Christ, and through the gifts of the one Spirit, believers are united. The exalted one brings about the people who acknowledge God’s judgment over their sins, and who confess Christ to be the one who was brought into judgment for them and who was exalted to be the Lord of the universe. This group of people serves the world in the love by which they have been torn from the bonds of the world by God. The church is thus both the effect and the agency of Christ’s reign, both the effect and the instrument of this reign. The world is not Christ’s kingdom, although it is subject to Christ’s reign. Instead, the community of believers is that kingdom. Not

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only is Christ’s kingdom promised to them, not only are they intended to receive “the inheritance of the kingdom of Christ and God” (e. g. Eph. 5.5), but they are “liberated from the reign of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1.13 [S]). They are members of the kingdom of Christ. God’s kingdom always means at the same time the acknowledgment of God by creatures. Christ’s kingdom means the community of those who confess him to be the Lord. Wherever the gospel is believed and further proclaimed, there is Christ’s kingdom on earth. In the worship assembly, the believers already participate in this kingdom. The reign of Christ that is breaking into the world is to be distinguished from God’s governing of the world as the Creator over all people, even over those who have not yet heard the gospel, as well as those who have heard it but have not accepted it, or who fell away from it after accepting it. Although God governs the world, the kingdom of the world is not the kingdom of God. It is also not the kingdom of Christ. Christ’s kingdom is the community of those who have surrendered themselves to Christ in faith, who have been delivered from the bonds of this world by Christ, and who have been taken into his service, a community that is advancing into the world. God’s governing of the world, however, extends to all creatures, whether or not they acknowledge him and his Christ as Lord. God the Creator preserves the good and the bad and governs all that happens, including the rebellion of humans against him. There are also differences between the means and the agency through which Christ’s kingdom establishes itself in the midst of this world, on the one hand, and those through whom God’s governing of the world takes place, on the other. Christ’s kingdom exists and grows through the gospel, that is, through the word, which is powerless from a worldly point of view, and under the signs of water, bread, and wine, which are also powerless from that perspective. Through word and Spirit, sinners are made righteous. God’s governing of the world, however, takes place through worldly powers and authorities, through the establishment and destruction of worldly empires. But this distinction between Christ’s kingdom and God’s governing of the world in no way means there is a separation between the two, for one and the same God preserves and governs the world that is in turmoil so that it might be saved through Christ and so that the new creation might grow in the community of believers. 4. His Reign as a Governing of the World Christendom has thereby not been satisfied with understanding Christ’s reign merely as a call to faith and as his community with believers. It also confesses Christ’s governing of the world: Christ is not merely the Lord of that community but also the Lord of the universe. He governs not only the course of the church but also the history of the world. Nothing in the world takes place apart from his will,

The Reign of Christ

just as nothing takes place apart from the will of God the Father, apart from what he permits, limits, and directs, for God and his Son Jesus Christ are one. To be sure, nowhere in the New Testament Scriptures is Christ referred to as “Lord of the world” (κύριος τοῦ κόσμου [kurios tou kosmou]). Even Paul did not proclaim Christ as the ruler of world history. He did refer to him, however, as the end and judge of the world and as Lord of the church. Also, “not a single word of Rom. 13.1–7 refers to the enthronement of Christ; indeed, his name is not mentioned at all, although Paul, of course, gives an explicit theological foundation for the position of authority and the Christian’s duty to obey.”7 Paul “understands the state as a part of the regnum Christi [reign of Christ], but of the old aeon, in which the law applies, and according to God’s will is and should be judicially executed, a pointer to God’s judgment toward which we all move.”8 Political authority is not first established and legitimized through the exaltation of Jesus. In other New Testament statements, too, secular office is not described as an ordering of Christ or the agency of his reign, even though certainly all creatures, powers, and authorities are subordinate to Christ. The cosmic expanse of Christ’s reign is indeed expressly attested in Colossians and Ephesians, and Jesus’ governing of the world is most concretely proclaimed in the book of Revelation, for God has given the Lamb the sealed scroll of world history, and only the Lamb can loosen the seals (Rev. 5). But then, when the Lamb opens the seal, the apocalyptic horsemen set off on their sorrowful ride across the earth. Not only the course of the gospel, and not only the final judgment, but also the historical catastrophes preceding his parousia are given to the exalted one as Lord and are elicited by him. Statements about Christ’s governing of the world ensue especially, with compelling necessity, from the confession of his exaltation to the right hand of God. If Jesus is established in divine power, his reign, like the reign of God, is all-embracing. Consequently, all churches not only confess Christ’s regnum gratiae [reign of grace] through word and Spirit but also Christ’s regnum potentiae [reign of power] through his preserving and governing of the universe. If everything is already subordinate to Christ, then everything continues to live because of Christ’s forbearance. He still allows space and time for the rebellion of people, powers, and authorities; he lets them struggle against his reign. If we confess Jesus as Lord, then we believe that, until the parousia, the world lives not only because of the forbearance of God the Creator but at the same time because of the forbearance of Jesus Christ, whose delayed parousia gives people who have fallen into judgment time to repent and be granted salvation. Even before his coming, everyone lived because of him, that

7 Günther Bornkamm, Das Ende des Gesetzes, 5th ed. (Munich: Kaiser, 1966), 170. [ET: The End of the Law, trans. Paul L. Hammer (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 28 (trans. modified). –Ed.] 8 Bornkamm, Das Ende des Gesetzes, 169–170. [ET: 24 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

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is, they were preserved by God for his coming, by his future death, but now they live under him as the one who came, who died for the world, and who is exalted above the world. The world has no lasting existence in itself but exists through the forbearance of its Lord and Judge. Just as God’s preserving not only takes place by conserving and by governing, and just as God’s permitting is not only an act of watching but also an action of reigning, so also Christ lets the world have not only space and time for the decisions that it makes, either for or against him, but he governs all these events. After all, he reigns at the right hand of God the Father, over the good and the bad, over his friends and his enemies, over just and unjust political powers, over prosperity and hunger, over peace and war. Nothing happens apart from his governing of the world. The exalted one thus governs not only through word and Spirit but also through the events of world history and thus also through the preservation and downfall of worldly power. Luther, too, occasionally made statements about God’s governing of the world as statements about Christ’s governing of the world, and he based these statements not only on the exaltation of Jesus but also on the Trinity. The unity of the triune God must not be ripped apart, “for the three distinct Persons are one God, Creator and Father of all the world.”9 “For Jesus Christ is no other God or Father or Creator than the Father or the Holy Spirit, even though he is a different Person.”10 With these statements, the argument is made that if Christ is God’s Son, and of the same nature as the Father, then he is also the Creator, like God the Father, and he is the Preserver, like God the Father. Then God’s governing over the secular authorities and over world history is at the same time Christ’s governing of the world. Whoever confesses the exaltation of Jesus Christ, his “sitting at the right hand of God the Father” and his oneness with God the Father, cannot deny these statements about Christ’s governing of the world, even though again and again in the course of church history they have become the starting point for a non-eschatological condemnation of Christ’s reign, and have led to the denial of their paradoxes. If Christendom thus confesses that the course of the church and the history of the world are governed by the one Lord Jesus Christ, Christ’s kingdom and Christ’s governing of the world must nevertheless be clearly and distinctly differentiated, that is, just as the dawn of God’s reign and God’s governing of the world need to be distinguished. Christ’s kingdom is the community of those who by faith give him glory. Christ’s kingdom will only embrace all creatures when they acknowledge as Lord the Christ who is coming again. Christ’s governing of the world, however, takes place regardless of whether the creatures acknowledge him or not, whether

9 Luther, Von den letzten Worten Davids (1543), WA, 54.69.2ff. [On the Last Words of David, LW 1 , 15.315. –Ed.] 10 Luther, Von den letzten Worten Davids, WA, 54.65.9f. [LW 1 , 15.311. –Ed.]

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they persist in their rebellion or become subject to him. Christ’s kingdom is the community of believers who live by forgiveness. Christ’s governing of the world, however, also embraces sinners who have rejected the message about Christ or who have not yet heard it. Christ’s kingdom is the community of the saints who have been renewed through the Holy Spirit, taken into servant ministry, and transferred into new life. Christ’s governing of the world extends also over those who remain in their sins and whose hubris is only kept in check by means of secular authority and power, but who are thereby not free from judgment and death. The kingdom of Christ remains distinct from all peoples, cultures, and kingdoms of this world. Although kingdom, people, and citizenship are in this world, his kingdom does not have its origin in the world, nor does it coincide with the borders of any earthly kingdom or people. Both ways in which Christ reigns—through the community of believers, which is his kingdom, and through his governing over the world, which defends itself against him as a kingdom of its own—are as clearly distinguishable as God’s governing of the world and God’s kingdom. Through the call of the gospel Christ’s reign is revealed, but in his governing of the world his reign is hidden. Thus, acknowledging Christ’s governing of the world does not mean the end of the struggle between the kingdom of the world and the church, just as God’s governing of the world did not exclude the world’s struggle against the earthly Jesus and the reign of God that was dawning in it. This struggle will continue without interruption until the Lord’s parousia. The distinction between the kingdom of Christ and Christ’s governing of the world is easy to make conceptually, but in the midst of the reality of history it is an ever-new challenge. Periods of open hostility by the world against the church often change abruptly into periods of peace between the world and the church, periods in which the church seems to have prevailed in its social setting, in which secular rulers also acknowledge Christ as Lord, and the church appears to be protected. But periods of popularity in the world have often been more dangerous for the church than those of open hostility by the world. The struggle between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world is more unpredictable than has often been assumed in church history, more unpredictable than is even widely assumed today. What seems to be a defense today in this struggle can become an obstacle and a threat tomorrow. As has already been said, this struggle is an ongoing one; it only comes to an end with Christ’s parousia. It should be added that this struggle is taking place at new fronts that are constantly popping up, in ever-new temptations that cannot be determined in advance. These fronts are not immediately visible, but must be discovered and unveiled anew each time by faith and discerning the spirits. These fronts do not coincide with the opposition between church and state. That opposition between church and world also cannot be regulated once and for all by legal determinations of the relationship between church and state, between church office and secular office. The relationship

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between church and world is much more differentiated, although secular power and the very different spiritual power come together in a particularly concentrated form in offices from both sides. Still, people in governmental positions can be living members of the kingdom of Christ, and members of the church can be far removed from the kingdom of Christ, bound to the world that has fallen into judgment. The relationship between the two kingdoms, the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world, cannot be stabilized in the long run, roughly like two concentric circles, for it is not static for a moment but always dynamic and dramatic. Why is this struggle between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world so difficult? Why are the historical fronts in the struggle constantly changing? Why is the stabilization of these fronts, by means of concrete definitions of the relationship, impossible in the long run? Because the church is in the world, and both the world and the church can present themselves in very different ways in historical reality: The kingdom of the world is a complex reality. The world is the creation of God, especially humanity, but this creation has rebelled against the Creator and thereby has come under the dominion of the powers of corruption. This world has fallen into divine judgment and has lost its right to exist. Despite having fallen into judgment, it is preserved and governed by God. Indeed, despite its rebellion, it is so loved by God that he gave up his Son for it. In historical reality there are times when the world, despite sin and corruption, is very much more the creation preserved by God, and other times when the world, despite its being preserved by God, indeed, despite the divine love that appeared in Christ, is more heavily marked by rebellion, hubris, and decay. There are times when secular justice more or less corresponds to the commandments of God the Preserver, and other times when God’s command to preserve life and freedom is trampled upon—times when even pagan rulers correspond to the divine ordering of secular power more closely than members of the church who, appealing to Christ’s governing of the world, want to enforce the kingdom of Christ by means of secular power. The church, too, presents itself in very different ways in historical reality. It is true that it has been called out of the world, that it has its origin in Christ, that it is not of the world, and its “citizenship” is “in heaven” (Phil. 3.20). It is true that it has been sent into the world by Christ as his force to proclaim his death to it and to call it under his reign. But the assembly of the baptized can also forget its alien character in this world. The assembly’s origin and purpose can fade in its consciousness. It can become lazy and inert. Instead of being the sojourning people of God, it can become sedentary in this world.[ix] Instead of carrying through with its struggle against the world, it makes peace with it, and instead of suffering with Christ, it treats its own security in the world as most important. Then it is not working as the force of Christ and as the means of his salvific advance into the world. Rather, it is now standing in the way of his reigning.

The Reign of Christ

But even when the church is aware of its alien character in the world, it is still in the world. Christians have to demonstrate themselves to be Christians in the world, in their families, in their work relationships, and in the civic realm. “In the Lord” they have to obey those who hold a superior position to them in the world. “In the Lord” they also have to serve those who are subordinate to them in the world. Not only do they have to proclaim to the world the last day and the salvation that is solely in Christ, but they also have to serve the world by obeying the commandments through which God preserves the world, by advocating for justice and peace in the world. It is essential that impulses come from the church for change in the secular realm, for the elimination of injustice, misery, and corruption. So it was entirely logical that Christians, who had been exhorted by the apostle Paul to obey the secular ruler, would later also assume responsibility for secular power in order to serve the Lord in the performance of their duties, this Lord who wants to preserve the life and freedom of human beings through secular justice. By struggling against the world on behalf of Christ, the church also serves to preserve the world. The proclamation of the reign of Christ is always at the same time the illumination and awakening of political and social responsibility, and it is precisely from the most radical eschatological preaching that the strongest impulses of this kind have emanated. In this responsibility for the world, the church is constantly surrounded by temptations, and it has not infrequently succumbed to such temptations on its way through history: (a) The larger a Church becomes, and the more its members exercise the functions of secular power, the greater the temptation is to use secular power to secure the church. According to the Lord’s commission, the believer will never be satisfied with the continuing existence of the church but will work so that everyone confesses Christ as the Lord. From this point of view, it seems to be obvious that Christians, where they are in the majority and possess the power of the state, will then use this power to ensure that their non-believing co-citizens are subject to Christ as the Lord. The aim is then to have nations and states wherein all the inhabitants are members of the kingdom of Christ. The ways in which this goal was realized have been different, and sociological presuppositions have played a major role. A nation’s sense of community can be so strong that when its sovereign is baptized, his followers also spontaneously desire baptism. On the other hand, baptism has also been enforced with the threat of violence in the name of Christ. Here the confession of Christ is not only defended by the state but has been made into a state law so that the person who does not make this confession is punished as an enemy of the state. But if secular power is exercised in the name of Christ inwardly, that is, to enforce the confession of Christ within a nation or state, then it also makes sense to use secular power externally, as a means of establishing the kingdom of Christ. By taking these steps, Christ’s kingdom and Christ’s reign over the world appear to be brought increasingly into alignment. The secular empire is understood to be the

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representation of the kingdom of Christ in this world. Corresponding to this, church office and the office of secular justice are also to be brought into alignment as much as possible, be it that the emperor rules the church, its synods, and its bishops as Christ’s representative (Byzantium), or that a single leader, as the vicarious representative of the Lord of all lords, claims dominion over emperor and sovereigns (Rome). The church, as the eschatological people of God, is called to the greatest sobriety and vigilance in the face of these manifold strivings for a secular empire in which the kingdom of Christ is represented. The church must have a clear understanding of the dangers associated with these concepts: On the one side, there is the danger of obscuring the gospel of Jesus, the crucified and risen one; of obscuring his earthly lowliness and the non-worldly glory of his exaltation; of obscuring the special power of the Holy Spirit, which is different from secular power; and at the same time, the danger of obscuring faith as a free decision. Christian faith then becomes a world-like way of life, and the mission of the church is merely an expansion of political power. In this way, the kingdom of Christ is obscured. On the other side, there is the danger of distorting secular justice. It is no longer understood then as the effect of divine forbearance and long-suffering, which preserves the life of the just and unjust, the believer and the non-believer; it is no longer understood as restricted to earthly justice, to the punishment of gross external offenses that threaten human coexistence; it is no longer understood as a defense of the freedom to decide for or against the gospel. In this way, Christ’s governing of the world is also obscured. Throughout the whole history of the church there has been an urge to bring Christ’s kingdom and his governing of the world into alignment prior to the parousia—initially in the domain of a people or a country, but then beyond that to include all peoples and the whole earth. Wherever this has happened, it has distorted the ministry of the church to the world and has divided the church. In our time we have received the comeuppance for Christian empires in the East and the West of the world—due to wars waged in the name of Christ against non-Christians and heretics, as well as because of political expansions in which heathen peoples were subjugated in the name of Christ. It is shameful that the church, in many cases, has had to be forced to relinquish positions of political power which it had attained in such empires. (b) Today, the conception of the unity between the kingdom of Christ and secular empire has been shattered almost everywhere. The more the church loses its worldly power and is thrown back upon the band of believers, the more Christians are tempted to be ashamed of their worldly powerlessness, and thereby also of the word of the cross, and then to try to have an influence on the world. Amid the turmoil and upheaval of the times, the church then offers itself primarily as an essential aid toward establishing a just and peaceful order, thereby making it indispensable. Humanity is more or less understood now to be the people of God, and progress toward a universal order of world peace is understood to be the establishment of God’s reign. This is not the Constantinian conception, but here too the kingdom of Christ and secular empire are identified in a different way, not, to be sure, in the use of violence

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by Christians against non-Christians but by interpreting non-Christians as “anonymous” Christians who are “unknowingly” so.[x] It has become common practice today to speak of Christ’s dominion over all areas of human life, in science, culture, the economy, the state, etc., but this talk of Christ’s dominion over the world has largely detached itself from the expectation of the parousia of this Lord and from the announcement of the judgment toward which the world is approaching, and under which it now already stands. But if the reign of Christ is no longer understood mainly as salvation from judgment and as community with him who has triumphed on the cross, then speaking of Christ’s dominion over the world is merely empty talk, and the salt that preserves this decaying world loses its strength and becomes “saltless” [dumm].11 (c) If the church recognizes these two dangers, there lies in wait a further one, namely, the temptation to retreat into the worship assembly, however small the congregation might be, and leave the world to itself. But then Christians would be failing to obey the commandments of God the Preserver, who requires a commitment to secular justice, and they would be failing to advance the witness to Christ in the world. By fleeing from the world’s struggle against the claim of Christ’s reign, the church is no longer the force of Christ’s reign but has become a meaningless enclave in the world and thus also a part of the world, albeit a pious world. Dissolving all relationships between church and world is impossible, as impossible as is an absolute separation between church and state.

The whole variety of ways in which temptation encounters the church cannot be set forth here, for it is part of the essence of this struggle that it takes place at ever-new and unpredictable fronts. However, it is possible to formulate the decisive, fundamental perspectives that are always valid in the struggle of the church at every historical front. (1) In the struggle of the kingdom of the world against the reign of Jesus Christ, the church has to prove itself by the fact that its members always subject themselves anew to Christ as the Lord and to allow themselves to be gifted and sent by him. This means at the same time that the church must not be ashamed of the fact that it is an alien in this world—that until the parousia its normal condition is not a state of calm but one of struggle, of not being popular but hated, of not being secure but being uncertain, indeed, a situation of being persecuted. Where it lives in peace, security, and worldly prestige, it will have to wonder whether it has weakened or even silenced the offense of the victory on the cross over against the world. (2) In its struggle against the world, the church does not fight against God’s creation but against the rebellion of creatures vis-à-vis the Creator. In its struggle 11 [Schlink here was alluding to Luther’s translation of Matt. 5.13: “Wo nun das Salz dumm wird, womit soll man’s salzen? Es ist hinfort zu nichts nütze, denn das man es hinausschütte und lasse es die Leute zertreten” (“If salt becomes saltless [dumm, lit., “dull” or “stupid”], what should you salt with? It is no longer of any use, and one should pour it out and allow it to be trampled upon by people”). –Ed.]

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against the world, it fights for the creation. By proclaiming to the world its end and the sole salvation in Christ, the church sets before the world the purpose that God gave creation from the beginning. There is thus no conflict between Christ’s reign and God’s creation. In Christ’s reign the purpose of creation becomes clearer, and it reaches its goal. Christ’s kingdom fights against the world because the latter is the creation that has been usurped by the creature and persists in opposing God. (3) In its struggle against the world, the church also does not fight against the action and regulations by which God preserves the world that has fallen into corruption. In its struggle against non-Christian religions and atheistic ideologies, it does not fight against the self-witness of God in creation or against the law of God the Preserver that is written on the heart but against the distortion of this divine claim on the part of human beings, and it fights for God’s truth that is hidden in the religions and in atheism. In its struggle against political powers, the church does not fight against the divine ordering of lawful and just political power, but against the misuse of that power. The church fights for the human justice that is called for by God and for the authority of lawful and just political power that is ordained by God. When the church in Christ serves God the Preserver, changes and transformations take place at the same time in the orderly structures of the world, first in the domain of the church itself, then also in its vicinity, when the existing orderly structures are measured and corrected against the standard of the directives established by God the Preserver. (4) In this way, through its struggling, the church serves the world not only by announcing the end of the world but also by working for the preservation of the world. The real mission of the church, however, is not to preserve the world but to proclaim the deliverance from the world. The church is not the orderly structure of this aeon, but rather, in the midst of this aeon, it is the voice [Organ] of the new aeon: it is in the world but not of it; it is for the world, but above all it is for the deliverance from the world; above all, it is the voice of the reign of God and Christ that is breaking into the world. (5) In its struggle, the church can be certain by faith in its Lord that he also governs its enemies—that they cannot do anything against the church without him giving them space to do so, that even in their extreme hostility they can live only from his forbearance, and that the church can never fall into the hands of strangers. The fight of the world against the kingdom of Christ has already been decided. The world is already subordinate to him. He is already the victor. By faith in the gospel, the world has already been overcome. In the midst of the fight, there is already the deepest peace, for the fight of the world is like the futile skirmishes and losses of troops who are inescapably surrounded on all sides, with no way out except to surrender. In this sense, the persecutions of Christians and the catastrophes of world history can be understood as signs of the coming spring of the revelation of the Son of Man and of the final establishment of the reign of God (cf. Mk. 13.28f.).

The Reign of Christ

5. The Time of Grace Jesus Christ thus reigns very differently from the lords of this world. He does not subjugate others through secular power, but rather he calls people into his kingdom through the word, which, from a worldly point of view, is powerless. The reign of Jesus Christ, however, also takes place differently from how it had been expected on the basis of the Old Testament promises about the messianic kingdom, indeed, differently from how it had been expected on the basis of the earthly Jesus’ announcement of the reign of God and the appearing of the Son of Man. Just as the prophets did, Jesus had announced the reign of God as a comprehensive kingdom of peace and justice, as the elimination of all rebellion against God, and as the redemption of the poor, those who are waiting to be liberated from all hostility and oppression. And yet, the world persists in its rebellion against God. Injustice and war have not ended. Those who hunger and thirst, the disenfranchised and oppressed, are still not freed from their misery. The exalted one has still not yet encountered the world publicly in the inescapably visible glory of the Son of Man who was announced by him. Instead, he reigns in a hidden way, in the lowliness of human words and earthly signs, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, which seems powerless and ambiguous in the eyes of the world. The paradoxes of the earthly humility of Christ return here, as do the paradoxes of God the Creator’s preserving and governing of this world that has fallen into judgment. Indeed, they appear to be completely radicalized. To be sure, Jesus did not give a date for the coming of the Son of Man to execute judgment. Statements have been handed down about the present and the future of the coming one, including those about his coming already in the generation of Jesus’ contemporaries, and those in which the timing of this coming is unknown even to Jesus. But in any case, he had proclaimed the nearness of God’s reign and of the appearing of the Son of Man. Consequently, the early Christian community expected the nearness of the parousia of Jesus Christ and of the establishment of God’s reign. The delay of the parousia soon became a problem for the community. Discussion and debate about it had already impacted the oral tradition of the words and history of the earthly Jesus.12 That debate then also influenced the New Testament Scriptures with respect to the different understandings about the time that has unfolded since the end of the appearances of the risen one. If Paul’s proclamation still connected the future and the present of the end-time salvation, the not-yet and

12 Cf. Erich Gräßer, Das Problem der Parusieverzögerung in den synoptischen Evangelien und in der Apostelgeschichte [The Problem of the Delay of the Parousia in the Synoptic Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles], 2d ed. (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1960).

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the already-now, in a way that is similar to the proclamation of Jesus, then in the Gospel of John the expectation of the future recedes in favor of bearing witness to the presence of the Revealer, and in the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles the stretching out of time is favorably understood as salvation history. Then in Second Peter there is the apologetic piece of information, i. e., that with God a thousand years are like one day. At the same time, however, the most remarkable fact must be observed, namely, that the delay of the parousia of Jesus did not truly create a crisis for early Christianity. If the early community was unquestionably confronted with a serious problem by the non-occurrence of the imminent arrival of the Lord, one must nonetheless understand that the early community survived the non-arrival of the parousia without any serious disruption.13 The early Christian community continued to pray for the coming of the kingdom, and it continued to wait for Jesus Christ as the one who would come in glory. Neither in the Lukan texts nor in the Gospel of John is that expected future relinquished. It cannot be excised from the Gospel of John as a redaction of the later church. Even as the duration of this world continued to stretch, the church recorded in its creed the expectation of Jesus Christ, “who will come to judge the living and the dead,” and thus the expectation of the end of this world and the consummation of the reign of God. It is true that the church has by no means always waited with the same vigilance and ardor for the coming one. Often it has become dull and tired, it has often settled down in this world, secured itself, and clung to the earth as if this world is not passing away; it has often wavered between a one-sided emphasis on the present and a one-sided emphasis on futuristic eschatology. Despite all its vacillating, the church has maintained the confession of the parousia of Jesus Christ. That the delay of the parousia did not lead to a fundamental crisis in the church was simply due to the certainty about Jesus’ resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus was the divine confirmation of his message but also the fulfillment of the message of the kingdom of God to himself: he, the poor one, the wretched one, the disenfranchised one, was saved from his enemies, from the dominion of the powers of corruption, and from death. In him the eschatological expectation of the resurrection was fulfilled—and thereby the promise of the reign of God that changes everything. The saving act of God’s reign did not only take place on the man Jesus, whom God exalted. In the appearances of the risen one, the eyewitnesses already encountered the glory of the Son of Man—although it has not yet become manifest

13 Günther Bornkamm, “Die Verzögerung der Parusie: Exegetische Bemerkungen zu zwei synoptischen Texten [The Delay of the Parousia: Exegetical Observations about Two Synoptic Texts], in In Memoriam Ernst Lohmeyer, ed. W. Schmauch, 116–126 (Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1951), here 116.

The Reign of Christ

to the world, it did appear to his own. The risen one appeared to his own in the glory of the coming one, whom no one can resist. That the expectation of God’s reign was not given up was due to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In the old covenant, that event was promised as God’s eschatological act (Joel 2). After Jesus’ resurrection, that outpouring was granted to his own and was experienced by the early Christian community as a profound renewal. It was understood to be the dawn of the end, a down-payment of the consummation. For this reason, the eschatological jubilation was already now: Because Jesus Christ had taken all powers captive, everyone gives honor to him. The victory is won. That the delayed parousia has not meant the end of expecting the parousia was due ultimately to the fact that the believers already knew that they were under Christ’s reign because of the appearances of the risen one and the outpouring of the Spirit, even though this reign was still hidden in the world. It is indeed true, however, that as the history of the world has continued, the expectation of the parousia has been questioned, or has even become untenable wherever one was no longer certain of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. When challenged by visible trial and tribulation, whoever perseveres by faith in the risen one, in the certainty of his reign through the Holy Spirit, and who waits for Jesus to come in glory, the paradox of his reigning becomes an occasion for great joy, for precisely in this way the believer recognizes the apparent powerlessness of his reigning to be the revelation of the power of his love. The apparent powerlessness of the exalted one does not refute the message of Jesus but actualizes it, in that he transcends it at the same time. The delay of the parousia is not to be understood as powerlessness but as a demonstration of his love for the world. It is precisely in this powerlessness that the glory of the one who died on the cross for the world demonstrates itself, that, as this one who died for the world, he is the Lord not only over it but for it and is acting for its benefit. Whoever believes in the risen one is certain that it would be an easy thing for the Lord to force the world to acknowledge him. This would be his reign in the form of judgment, which would be the end of the world. But he wants to save it. That is why he gives people time, through the gospel, to decide freely for him. Christ does not overpower the world. He does not seek a coerced or grudging assent but to be freely acknowledged, which is precisely how he brings forth the new creature. He calls one to this freedom through the gospel, and through the Spirit he gives that person the new possibility of making a decision. Accordingly, the delay of the parousia is a gracious gift. Given that Christ’s reign bears the traits of his humiliation, the exalted one does not carry out his triumphal procession as a defeat but as a victory over his enemies, that is, as a triumphal march in which the vanquished are saved. The paradox of the reign of Jesus—as a seeking, a waiting, a saving, as giving time and space for the world, as the non-termination

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of the world—is seen with new eyes by faith. Precisely in this way, the believer recognizes the glory of this reign in the paradoxes of Christ’s reign, just as in this same way the believer recognizes in the defeat of Jesus on the cross his victory, and in his God-forsakenness God’s nearness to us sinners. Consequently, faith does not see in the delay of the parousia any refutation of the promise that history will end, but rather it sees the promise’s fulfillment that exceeds and surpasses expectations. But if the lengthening of time since Jesus’ earthly appearance is understood to be a time of grace, in which Jesus, as the exalted Lord, transfers sinners into his kingdom, then this time also does not refute the nearness of God’s reign proclaimed by the earthly Jesus. When the exalted one joins the paradox of divinely preserving and governing the world, and proclaims the gospel, this time of divine forbearance becomes the time of divine grace because of his death for the world. In the paradox of the reign of the exalted one, in its hiddenness under the ongoing history of the world, the mystery of the church is thus unveiled to believers, a mystery that had been previously hidden. It is to Luke’s credit that he recognized the theological significance of the time between the end of the appearances of the risen Christ and the parousia, and that he emphasized it in his book of Acts. In the letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians, the meaning of this time is developed in the statements about the growing body of Christ. The real subject of the doctrine of the reign of Christ is not the juxtaposition between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world, for the kingdom of the world is passing away; it is now already ultimately subject to Christ as the Lord, and in this sense it is now already ended. The real subject of the doctrine of Christ’s reign is certainly not the relationship between church and state, for both are passing away. The state is passing away with this world, and the church is not yet the kingdom of Christ in the form of its completion. The real subject, rather, is the reign of Christ as a community and the reign of Christ as a disempowerment. As a community, the reign is a community of those who, by freely assenting in faith, confess Christ as their Lord. As a disempowerment, the reign is the defeat and binding of those who refused the obedience of faith and, against their will and in view of the parousia, had to confess that Jesus is the Lord. In his parousia, Christ will reveal himself as the Lord to all. Everyone will then confess and serve him, whether they want to or not. In other words, there remains the difference between the body of Christ and those who are under Christ’s feet, between those who have been delivered out of the world and those who are overpowered, bound, and disempowered. The appearances of the risen one and the reign of the exalted one are thus to be understood as a hastening movement of God’s reign, which is storming into the world and will reach its consummation in the parousia of Jesus Christ. Resurrection, reign, and parousia are a dynamic unity. Just as the Son of God’s becoming human was already about his being delivered up, about his self-surrender, so his resurrection

The Return

was already about his reigning over all creatures. Just as the incarnation already includes his becoming subject to the law and thus subject to curse and death, so the resurrection already includes the overpowering of all enemies, even and precisely the last enemy that Paul names in his enumeration of the things the risen one will put in subjection under him (1 Cor. 15.26), namely, death. Just as the Son of God’s becoming human presupposes his willingness to die, and that his death on the cross is the fulfillment of that which was already decided with his becoming human, so the resurrection is already the complete establishment of the man Jesus in the full authority of his reign, even if those subordinate to him only gradually bow down to this reign, and some of them reject it and refuse to be subject to it until the end of the world. Just as the different steps of Jesus’ humiliation were the outcome of what had already happened in the incarnation, so his sitting at the right hand of God and his parousia are the outcome of what has already happened in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. As the risen one, he is already the Lord of all people. As this Lord, he encounters the disciples in the successive acts of his grace, and then, through the gospel, he encounters all peoples, and finally, in the parousia, he comes as the Judge of the world. The temporal succession of these acts must not prevent us from clearly recognizing the factual interrelationship of these acts of the exalted one. The world is defeated, even if it is still fighting. It is defeated, even if few admit it. The appearances of the risen Christ, the reign of the exalted one, and the parousia of Jesus Christ in glory are to be understood as one hastening movement, as one world-encompassing triumphal march of the crucified one who lives. There is no moment of static pause here; it is about the most powerful dynamic, the deliberate, ongoing, advancing acts of the ruler of the universe to take possession of it. This whole movement of the reign of God rushing into the world is to be seen as a unity. The proclamation of the gospel in the present moment is about the totality of God’s reign. If its dawning and fulfillment are understood as one unstoppable action of divine activity, then it is not surprising that the same shortening of perspective that is found in Jesus’ statements, namely, the skipping over of time intervals, was also characteristic of the Old Testament prophetic promise. Jesus’ second coming does not add anything new to his reign, only that he will then appear to everyone, and everyone must give him honor.

C. The Return 1. The Coming of Jesus in Glory The same Jesus who, as the earthly one, had spoken of the Son of Man as of someone other than himself and had announced the coming of the Son of Man as the coming of another, will appear as the Son of Man “in great power and glory” (Mk. 13.26 [S]

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par.). The same Jesus who had previously exercised his reign as the exalted one in the hiddenness of human words and earthly signs will then reveal himself unveiled as the Lord over the universe. At that time, he will appear not only to a few wavering followers, as he did after his resurrection, but to all people who live on earth, both his followers and his opponents. Just as the appearances of the risen one were inescapable, so the appearances of the returning one will be inescapable. While it is true that at that time the risen one was not recognized by some at first glance, nevertheless none of those whom he encountered, according to the reports, failed to receive the knowledge of his presence. So no one will be able to refuse to acknowledge the returning one, whether to recognize him with joy as the Lord or to do so with horror. Through his appearances, the risen one had established the certainty of his divine mission and the salvific significance of his cross, and then he disappeared. He sent out eyewitnesses to demonstrate this certainty in faith and to call all people to faith. But as the returning one, he will never disappear again. Through his return, faith will finally be replaced by sight. The parousia of Jesus Christ will be the end of what had been the previous options for human decision-making, for, in view of his revealed glory, no one will be able to decide against God any longer. Everyone will have to acknowledge that glory, whether spontaneously or by force, as a fulfillment or as a refutation of the hopes with which they had approached the future. Then human beings will no longer have the possibility of distorting the “invisible essence” of God that is revealed in creation (Rom. 1.19ff.). Then, too, human beings will no longer have the possibility of rejecting as folly and powerlessness the divine wisdom and power encountered in the witness to Christ. Then there will be no further call to faith since God’s glory will finally be visible in Jesus’ glory. His coming will put an end to the actions of those who rebel against God and who torment other human beings. He will save those who hunger and thirst, those who are oppressed and persecuted, those who are merciful and peacemakers, those who, amid all their suffering, cry out to their Redeemer. He will finally actualize the promises in the beatitudes that he had proclaimed as the earthly Jesus. He will finally establish and fulfill the reign of God, which had dawned in his earthly activity and had spread in the activity of the exalted one. With the return of Jesus, the dead will be resurrected. The whole of humanity, from all eras, will be set before him. All people who have ever lived will be encountered by him as the Lord. While it is true that the decisions of the deceased ended with their death, no humans can escape God’s claim upon their lives, not even by dying. The history of human decisions in faith or unbelief, in love, indifference, or hate, is not annulled by death. In the resurrection, the dead will be presented with the decisions that they had made in their earthly body, together with the consequences of those decisions and the suffering they caused others. The establishment of God’s reign will take place in the actualization of the universal

The Return

history of humanity and by bringing in the harvest that has ripened on the basis of the blessings of God the Creator and the Redeemer. Jesus Christ will come suddenly. As lightning illuminates the whole horizon in the middle of the dark night, so, by his coming, he will illuminate the whole world situation. No human can know the time of his coming. Nobody can cause it to happen. One can only pray for it, just as he once taught the disciples to pray for the coming of the kingdom of God. To those who are waiting for him, he will come like a bridegroom to his bride (Mt. 25.1ff.; cf. Rev. 22.17)—but to others, he will come like a thief who unexpectedly breaks into a house (Mt. 24.43). Although Jesus’ return is in the future, and the time of this coming is unknown, it is confessed as a fact in the creed of the church. That confession does not express merely a hope, as one hopes for the success of a plan and the good outcome of an enterprise. Rather, it confesses the coming of Jesus to judge the living and the dead as part of a single sequence that forms the content of the faith, a sequence that includes the events that have taken place once and for all: his birth, his suffering and death, his resurrection, and his establishment at the right hand of God. No hint of a difference in certainty is expressed here. In fact, the certainty of his return is already contained in the belief that he is exalted as the Lord over the universe. At most, what is problematic about this belief is the duration of his delay, but not his return. Indeed, this expectation is already so firmly grounded in the earthly Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom of God and the Son of Man that giving up the expectation of his parousia and the establishment of God’s reign would also mean giving up the message of the earthly Jesus. 2. The End of World History and the Problem of Language in Statements about the Acts of the Coming One When the return of Jesus puts an end to the possibilities of human decision-making, that will be the end of world history—the end of the history of the rebellion of creatures against the Creator, of the struggle of the kingdom of the world against the kingdom of Christ. The parousia will mark the end of the time of forbearance, when God endured the sin of humanity and preserved human beings, despite their having fallen into judgment. It will also be the end of the offer of grace by which God calls human beings out of their corruption. When the coming one ends the history of the world, he will bring forth something new, and he will reveal and complete that new creation, which is hidden and dawning in the old one. As definite as the confession of Christ’s return is, the possibilities for describing how it will take place, for describing the action of the coming one, and the effects of this action, are limited. The problem with these statements is not only that they are based merely on promises and not on their fulfillment, for the fulfillment cannot be set off against the promise, since, in the fulfillment, God freely surpasses the

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promise and therefore exceeds human expectations that are based on the promise. The problem with these statements is also fundamentally a problem of language in eschatological statements in general, for we exist in this world, and our language is shaped by our perceptibility of the structure of space and time in this world. The possibilities of eschatological statements are limited by the fact that we can only talk about that new future in language from our present world, which is still the old one. There are more possibilities in our language for making clear statements about the passing of this world than about the establishment of the kingdom of God and the consummation of the new creation, which is different from this world. In the witness to the parousia and its effects, the ideas and concepts of this world have to be shattered. The announcement of Jesus’ coming “on the clouds of heaven” ruptures the structure of our spatial thinking. We cannot imagine, within the spatial structure of this world, how Christ, taken from this world, can become visible to all of humanity in an instant. Correspondingly, this holds true for the temporal sequence as well, in which the coming of Jesus, the raising of the dead, and the judgment will take place. Will Jesus first raise the dead and then judge them? Or will the judgment take place in differing ways, raising the one to eternal life and the other to eternal death? It is not by chance that both statements are found in early Christian proclamation. Are resurrection and judgment one event that we can only express as a sequence in our worldly language? How can this, in turn, be reconciled with the New Testament statements, according to which the judgment will not only take place in the future but already in a person’s earthly life, namely, in the acceptance or denial of faith? Then the coming one would make manifest the separation that had already taken place before his coming. Other New Testament statements about the actions and effects of the coming Christ also cannot be harmonized in a temporal scheme. For example, the sequence of the resurrections according to 1 Cor. 15.22ff. does not accord with the sequence in Rev. 20.4–6 and vv.11–15. Because of the announcement of the end, we are also prevented from unquestioningly using our worldly conception of time to speak of an “intermediate state” of the human being between death and resurrection. The limitations of language also become clear when one considers the New Testament statements about the parousia with respect to their clarity [Anschaulichkeit]. On the one hand, the new creation that is coming is attested to by means of negation, namely, by statements about what will then no longer be (e. g., Rev. 21.4: “… Death will be no more; no suffering, no crying, and no hardship” [S]). But if one inquires about the positive statements regarding what then will be, one comes across a multitude of images that cannot be harmonized with respect to their clarity, such as, e. g., statements that describe eternal life as a banquet, as a wedding, and as the heavenly Jerusalem. The differences between the images can be clarified not only

The Return

by means of various apocalyptic traditions but also in terms of the fundamental problem of bearing witness to the coming new creation in language from the old one that is passing away. The most profound difference, however, exists between the announcement of the judgment that will be issued upon all people, including the members of the church, and the promise that believers in Christ will be lifted from the judgment. On the one hand, Paul proclaimed the justification of the sinner and thereby the eschatological acquittal that is granted to believers already now, apart from works, and yet at the same time he announced: “[A]ll of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Cor. 5.10). In view of these difficulties, one might consider restricting oneself to the negations of what now exists and to calling for a fundamental openness to an indefinite, completely different future. Nevertheless, while statements about the end of the present condition of the world do play an important role in the New Testament announcements about what is to come, they are subordinate to the positive witness to Christ’s coming. The real subject of Christian hope is not the passing away of the old creation but the coming and persisting of the new one. Despite the limitations of language in eschatological statements, this hope does not remain indefinite, but rather, precisely in their multiplicity and inconsistency, they are gratifyingly clear, for the new creation does not come to destroy the old one but to transform and complete it, and thus, despite their limitations, positive statements are possible because of an identity and continuity that extends to the end of world history. This identity is not hidden from faith: (a) The certainty of this identity has its basis and center in the appearances of the risen Jesus after his death. The same person who had previously been active as an earthly man, as one of many, as one who was put to death, appeared in a new mode of existence, as one who has overcome death and the structure of this world. The one who is coming in glory will not be some indeterminate and other figure. The same Jesus will come, whom God raised from the dead and established as Lord. Like the risen one, the one who is coming again also will not cease to be identical with the earthly Jesus. (b) The identity of the redeemed will also be determined by the identity of the earthly and risen Jesus. Through their redemption, they do not become completely different and indeterminate. Rather, the same people who had previously worked and suffered in their earthly life will be transferred by the coming Lord into the new mode of existence that is eternal life. They will be transformed into the equivalence of his resurrected life. From the traditions of the appearances of the risen one, statements about the new humanity are not only possible but logical and necessary. (c) In Jesus’ resurrection and in the raising through him, the original purpose given to humankind comes to its fulfillment. The end of world history is not the

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end of the purpose that the Creator has given to humankind and the universe. Rather, the end of world history means the end of the enmity and corruption that have come to dominate within creation. The end of the world will therefore be the liberation of creation for the actualization of its purpose. In the identity of the earthly and the coming Jesus, the faithfulness of God is attested, who holds fast to the purpose of creation, even if creatures have failed to fulfill this purpose. (d) From this christological center, the issue of space and time within eschatological statements is also elucidated. The notion of an equally structured space-time continuum, in which the history between God and humankind takes place, is far from biblical thinking. Eternity is not understood as an endless timeline on which the acts of God and human beings could be entered as a series of points. Rather, the structure of space and time is determined by the one who exercises dominion here and by what takes place here. Thus the aeon of this world is determined by the dominion of sin and the powers of corruption, but the coming aeon is determined by the reign of Jesus Christ. However, through his exaltation, he is established not only as the Lord over the things of this world but also over the structure of this world. Lifted from the earthly way of existence, the risen one appeared to his own, and one day he will appear to all as the Lord over this world’s transient structure. (e) We are still in this world. We cannot take a position from which we could survey and contemplate the present and the future. We can only proceed in the present toward what is to come. Neither can we find a theoretical equilibrium that would balance the contradictory statements that speak of the judgment that comes upon all human beings, on the one hand, and of the believers who are lifted from the judgment, on the other. For example, we cannot dismiss as a Jewish residue the announcement about the judgment according to works. It is too firmly anchored in the proclamation of Jesus and the apostles. We can only approach the coming Lord by acknowledging the judgment we deserve and by trusting in Jesus who was crucified for us. These basic considerations must be kept in mind when, within the framework of christology, one inquires about the actions of the coming Christ upon the world, and then when, within the framework of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, one inquires about the end-time new creation. These are not two separate effects, one of the coming Christ and the other of the Spirit who creates anew. Rather, they are about one and the same divine action of fulfilling through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. However, because of the many perspectives that need to be taken into account here, this dogmatics, as in the ancient church’s confessions of faith, expresses the eschatological expectation both at the end of the section on christology and in the one on pneumatology.

The Return

3. The Judgment of the Living and the Dead God has transferred to Jesus the judgment into which humanity had long since fallen. Although human beings have been evil, God has preserved them in his forbearance, and although the end has been announced to humanity through the Old Testament prophets and through Jesus, God has granted humans the time of grace, time in which to turn back to him. The judgment that will put an end to the rebellion of humans against God and of their self-inflicted sufferings is still pending. This long overdue judgment, which God has postponed in his forbearance and which he took upon himself on the cross, will be carried out by the coming Christ. In the coming judgment, the living and the dead will be unveiled as those who have been accountable to God in their earthly corporeality, who have remained inescapably accountable to God for everything they have done in the time of divine forbearance and grace. Thereby, the expectation of the general resurrection not only means that people cannot free themselves from their past and that all their deeds remain their own deeds, which they bring with them and retain, even if they want to get rid of them, but, in addition, the expectation of the coming general resurrection of the dead also means that God’s identity as the Creator and Judge will be acknowledged. If God had created human beings so that they would give him honor in their corporality, he will one day bring them forth in that same form so that they may be revealed in the presence of the returning Christ as those who had made a decision, one way or another, in their earthly corporeality. Then the veils behind which we hide from God, from others, and from ourselves, will be thrown off. Our whole life, together with all our thoughts, words, and deeds, will then be laid bare. We will not be able to hide anything or do anything further, nor will we be able to add anything to what we have already done. “What each individual has accomplished will then become manifest; the day (of the coming judgment) will unveil it” (1 Cor. 3.13 [S]). To be sure, God has already unveiled the human reality through his self-witnessing in creation, through the Old Testament law, and finally through the New Testament gospel, but human beings have nevertheless been able to escape this unveiling in manifold ways. They could even misuse the gospel to justify their disobedience to God. But when Jesus appears in glory, it will be revealed that even those who thought they were near to him are far from him, and some who thought they were far from him are near to him. What we wanted to be and what we thought of ourselves will not last. The coming one will pronounce his judgment on every individual according to the works that that person has done. The basis for this judgment is found again and again in the traditions of Jesus’ announcement of it. It is also found in the early Christian message about the judgment, especially in the letters of Paul, who puts a great emphasis upon it. According to his message, pagans, Jews, and Chris-

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tians will be judged according to the good and bad that they have done (cf., e. g., Rom. 2.5ff. and 2 Cor. 5.10). In this judgment of human works, the law is operative, namely, as that which is given to all people as a command of the Preserver, and which was given to the people of Israel as an historical word of revelation, and which encounters people in a radicalized way in Jesus’ requirements. In none of these forms, however, is the standard of judgment the law in isolation, for God’s requirements are based on God’s deeds of lovingkindness. According to the New Testament’s announcements, as certain as the coming judgment is about each act of the human person, nevertheless, individual acts as such are not meant to be isolated from the totality of the person’s behavior, i. e., apart from the person’ basic decision in relation to the lovingkindness of God that one has received (cf., e. g., Rom. 2.4). The basic decision against God’s goodness, however, manifests itself in many acts of disobedience. It is in this sense, i. e., of a basic decision, that Paul also refers to bad and good works as the fruit that comes from sowing to the flesh and sowing to the Spirit (Gal. 6.7ff.; cf. 5.19–23). In his judging, the coming one will hand down various verdicts according to the variety of actions and the basic decisions of people that are expressed in them. But in contrast to all the smooth transitions that we have before our eyes in this world, between good and bad deeds, as well as between those who fear God and those who deny God, a separation has been announced that will cut straight across all forms of community and human togetherness that now exist and across all transitions and compromises between good and evil. This separation will go deeper than the divisions that persist in this world between people, nations, and political systems, deeper too than the divisions that separate the churches. This separation is announced as a twofold judgment by which the coming one calls out to some, “Come to me, you blessed ones of my Father, receive the kingdom as an inheritance…” And to others, “You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire…” (Mt. 25.34 [S] and v. 41). The parable of dividing the grain from the weeds on the day of harvest is also about a separation (Mt. 13.24–30; cf. vv. 36–43). The coming judgment is consistently announced in the sense of an either-or, namely, as the judge’s “Yes” to the one and his “No” to the other. In both directions, this judgment contradicts people’s self-assessment and their expectations. “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’” Then he will declare to them, “I never knew you” (Mt. 7.22–23). On that day others will ask, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you…?” Then he will reveal himself as the one who was present and refreshed the hungry, the thirsty, and the homeless, and he will greet those who fed and visited these as the ones who are “blessed of my Father” (Mt. 25.34ff.). The revelation of Jesus Christ in glory will bring about a separation that will run counter to our knowledge.

The Return

The coming Christ will not only unveil and judge the past, but he will change it profoundly. Through his judgment, he will not only separate what is already there but will also do away with the old creation, and he will create the new. His judgment will be an active word. Thus the call of the coming Christ, “Come to me!,” will be the final act of redemption. With this judgment, the time of being-in-theworld, the time of temptation, of struggle and suffering, of persevering in faith, is finally concluded, and life with Christ in the vision of God and in community with the redeemed of all times is finally actualized. This means a transformation of the human being to the very foundations of human existence: the resurrection to eternal life. The affirmation of the returning one will find its realization in the action of the Holy Spirit to create anew, who makes the redeemed conformed to the risen Christ. By shouting, “Depart from me,” the coming one will bind those who rejected him in their decision against God. This being bound and the inescapability of having to acknowledge God is the torment of “hell.” This being self-enclosed and excluded is also called “eternal death.” What is meant by this is not falling into the nothing [das Nichts] out of which God created everything but abiding in the nothingness [Nichtigkeit] of that which they have chosen for themselves. But how, in this coming judgment, can people survive with their deeds? The Christian is also faced with this question. Who has not failed in one’s little faith, one’s doubts, and all sorts of individual acts? 4. Redemption The one to whom God has transferred the judgment of the living and the dead is the same one who has taken the judgment of sinners upon himself. If the crucified one were not the judge, no one could withstand the final judgment. Already by preserving humanity, despite its having fallen into judgment; already by electing Israel, despite its stubbornness; and by giving new promises to Israel, despite its breach of the covenant; yet wholly by delivering up Jesus to the judgment into which Israel and all humanity had fallen—in all this, God did not act on the principle of retribution. Conviction and acquittal, punishment and recompense, are not found in parallel next to each other in the statements about the coming judgment. The difference between the two judgments is greater than that the one is merely the opposite of the other. Then both judgments would have the same structure in relation to the underlying factual situation regarding the human side. But there is no parallel structure in the two judgments, and this becomes clear precisely when one seeks to compare them in a parallel train of thought. Although both judgments will be based on the actions of human beings, both are not about the actions of humans in the same sense. The binding judgment has its basis in a person’s own acts, namely, in the acts by which one rejects the purpose of one’s life that is given through God’s deeds of lovingkindness and God’s requirements,

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and in the acts that a person does as one who has made up one’s mind to live for oneself and to use other human beings and non-human nature for one’s own purposes. It is about the acts of the self-constituting and self-asserting human being, who more and more suppresses the knowledge of God’s deed of lovingkindness and God’s demand, and who adjusts the difference between good and evil to fit that one’s own needs. These acts are ones self-justifying individuals do, who refuse to own up to the evil they are doing, and who ultimately do not even know that they have done evil. The redeeming judgment, on the other hand, is issued on the basis of the acts that are the effects of God’s deeds of lovingkindness on humans. Even if people do these acts, they are not their own acts. Even if they wrestled and struggled to do them “with fear and trembling,” the following statement applies here: “It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work” (Phil. 2.13). In a unique way, the I of the person who is working is crossed out and is borne by God’s action. “I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Cor. 15.10). Here the determinative cause for the action of the person is God’s action: “We are his workmanship,” and our good works are those “which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2.10 [RSV]). Because God is the cause of the acts to which the redeeming judgment is responding, human self-glorifying is excluded. At the judgment, individuals will not be able to make assertive claims about their good works. Only in the most highly paradoxical manner will the redeeming judgment thus have its basis in human actions. The judgment is issued regarding the effects of the forbearance and grace of God in the action of humans. Although both judgments will not only unveil human beings and pass judgment on their acts—and will be the actions of the coming Christ upon them—they will not happen to people along the same line. The binding judgment encloses humans within that which they have made of themselves. It encloses them in their turning away from God and in their selfishness. It encloses them in the death that the person has already chosen by turning away from God, the source of life. In this respect, the binding judgment does not bring about anything new; it merely respects the decision that the human being has made against God. It thereby maintains the indestructibility of the human being that is given by the Creator. The redeeming judgment, on the other hand, not only confirms and accuses humans for what they have done and have become through their action, but it perfects what God, in his forbearance and grace, has begun in human beings and in their action. The redeeming judgment will be a transforming, recreating, and glorifying action of the coming one upon humans. Although acceptance and rejection, redemption and binding, are often announced in parallel formulations in the New Testament Scriptures, the statements about eternal death are obviously far fewer than those about eternal life. The statements about the eternal life of those who are glorified with Christ take up

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much more space and are much richer in content than the brief references to eternal fire, darkness, and the like, which were known within Jewish tradition. Without thereby weakening the seriousness of the coming separation, early Christian proclamation was oriented much more toward the coming consummation than toward the rejection. This rupturing of a parallelism between the two also stands out in the New Testament statements about the future raising of the dead. The weight rests on the resurrection to eternal life. Thus, although Paul shared the expectation of the general resurrection, he only made statements about the corporeality of the risen ones in glory, not about that of the rejected. Ultimately, however, a parallelism between the two judgments has been completely overcome by those New Testament witnesses in which there is no mention at all of a judgment about believers, but only of their entry into eternal life. The Johannine statement by Christ is not alone in this regard: “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me… does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life” (Jn. 5.24). Corresponding to this is the fact that Paul does not mention any judgment in his statements about the consequence of the unification of the returning one with those Christians who have already died and those who were still living (1 Thess. 4.16), as well as in his statements concerning those who belong to Christ and who will be the first to rise again (1 Cor. 15.22ff.). Indeed, the risen redeemed will encounter the world with the returning Christ and will judge the world with him (1 Cor. 6.2). Consequently, the weight of the message about Jesus’ coming rests overwhelmingly on his redeeming action. The two judgments that he will then speak do not have the same structure, nor the same weight. Both are not equally the goal of his coming, for God’s Son did not come “to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (Jn. 3.17 [SCH]). He will come to fulfill, not to destroy. His “No” becomes his “Yes”; his binding will serve his loosening, not the other way around. Just as in numerous Old Testament statements, where God’s judging is expected to be his helping, liberating, and establishing, so the ultimate binding of evil through the coming Christ will be the redemption of the poor, the hungry, the mourning, those who are waiting for God. Redemption, not binding, is expected to be the proper action of the returning one. This does not mean that we can deny the coming judgment according to works, toward which we are all approaching. Nor does it mean that we should understand the announcement of the binding judgment as only a threat that will remain unrealized. We are also prevented from speculating as to whether eternal death will only be a temporary binding. The contradiction between the announcement of the judgment according to works, which is also imminent for Christians, and the message of the justification of believers for Christ’s sake apart from works, as well as the contradiction between the binding and the redeeming judgment, cannot be theoretically resolved. Rather, we must approach Christ in acknowledging the

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rejection we deserve. He will meet us not only as our judge but also as our defender. “Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us” (Rom. 8.34). We must proclaim this Savior to all people and call them to faith while the time of grace still lasts. Moreover, we are not allowed to make judgments about who will be accepted and who will be rejected. We cannot anticipate his final judgment. 5. The Establishment of God’s Reign All churches confess the coming of Christ at the end of time: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead; and his kingdom will have no end.”14 This confessional statement is recited in every worship service, whether in the wording of the Constantinopolitan Creed or of the Apostles’ Creed. Another question, however, is whether Christians are really awaiting the coming Christ, whether they are watchful and ready for his coming, whether they are letting their lives be so determined by it that he will appear suddenly and surprisingly and speak the final judgment. For many, the return of Christ is a long way off and has faded in significance, although they continue to confess it in the creed, and even though the returning one comes now in the gospel and the sacraments. But when the expectation of the return of Jesus fades, then the knowledge of what belongs inseparably together in the coming of the exalted one threatens to fall apart. Some one-sidedly emphasize the nowness of Jesus’ coming in word and sacrament. Others one-sidedly understand the historical expansion of the church in the world as the coming of Christ. But when the expectation of the future coming of Jesus at the end of history is asserted against these one-sided emphases, then this often results in an opposite one-sidedness, which understands the return merely as the end of proclamation and the sacraments and as a judgment on church history. This opposite one-sidedness overlooks the fact that the ultimate revelation of what has already become new in and through the church will then take place. It is true that the early Christian witnesses place the accents differently regarding the future and present salvation. Paul thus emphasized the future judgment more strongly, while the Gospel of John speaks of the judgment that is already fulfilled in the earthly encounter with Jesus. While the baptismal statements in the letter to the Romans are oriented toward the future resurrection to life, the letter to the Colossians states that the resurrection has already taken place in baptism. But these differences are encompassed by the common acknowledgment of the Lord who is present and is coming at the end of time. In the early Christian witnessing to the coming Christ, his future and his present belong together, just as the church is also understood in

14 The Constantinopolitan Creed. [Denzinger, 150; Tanner, 1.24; BSELK, 49 (BC, 23). –Ed.]

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terms of both. In this unity, the expectation of the return of Christ is an imminent expectation. This is true regardless of the length of time that separates believers from the end of world history. For many, however, the end-time coming of Jesus has not only become a remote, waning, and non-existential statement of traditional dogma, which not only faces the danger that the expectation will fall apart into one-sided emphases, but the expectation of the appearing of Jesus and the establishment of the reign of God have also been reinterpreted in such a way that the sovereignty of God’s eschatological action has been lost, or is expressly denied—be it, as in the wake of Kant, that the coming of the kingdom of God is an intrinsic part of the history of religions and the ethical progress of humanity; or be it that the reign of God was interpreted as a timelessly valid idea, or as a reign of values that human history always faces as something that needs to be actualized but never fully does.[xi] The biblical witnesses, however, are about more than this, for they speak about the establishment of God’s kingdom and the end of the world. A dissolution of the expectation of the end of history also took place, e. g., in early “dialectical theology,” which reduced the eschatological coming of Christ to the nowness of God’s word that is breaking into this world, and which reinterpreted the New Testament’s statements about the end of the world to fit this understanding.[xii] In every direction, various possibilities have been considered for devising a modern eschatology that is detached from the expectation of the end of the world, most radically in modern German Protestant theology.[xiii] But at no time have the churches of the Reformation abandoned the confession of Jesus Christ, “who will come to judge the living and the dead.”15 Even most representatives of dialectical theology were not content with denying the significance of the end of history in that confession (e. g., Karl Barth and Emil Brunner).[xiv] The fading significance, reinterpretation, and denial of the confession of the return of Christ at the end of history is about much more than merely the loss of a single sentence in the creed. It is about the whole of christology, namely, about the truth of the earthly Jesus’ message about the coming reign of God, the coming Son of Man, and the reality of his establishment as Lord over all. At the same time, it is about the truth of the Old Testament promises regarding the universal messianic kingdom of peace. Indeed, God himself becomes questionable if he does not stand by what he has promised and has begun in Jesus’ coming. If the following Pauline statement is true, “If Christ is not risen, your faith is futile” (1 Cor. 15.17), then this one is no less so: If Christ does not come, your faith is futile. The whole message of Christ would be emptied if the expectation of the final and universal establishment of God’s reign by the coming Christ were given up.

15 The Apostles’ Creed. [Cf. Denzinger, 10–30; BSELK, 42 (BC, 22). –Ed.]

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The idea of a universal kingdom of peace and justice is deeply anchored in the longing of humanity, and this longing has been made fully conscious through the Christian message. But if the expectation of judgment and redemption at the end of history has faded, and the message of Christ emptied, then it is inevitable that human beings will be overly confident that they can even end the present state of the world and establish the eternal kingdom of peace and justice that Jesus announced as the sovereign act of God. But this is precisely how post-Christian and anti-Christian systems of political violence emerge, which are unlawful and opposed to peace. The coming Jesus will fulfill God’s reign through his judging and redeeming; he will end the rebellion of humans against God and the agony that humans inflict upon each other, and he will unite the redeemed from all times with himself. Here God’s reign does not only mean the exercise of divine power, without which no creature could exist, and in view of which even rebellion against God would be impossible. Rather God’s reign means the community of God with human beings, in which he is beheld, and in which his love is met with reciprocal love. In the victory of God’s reign there thus arises the new community of all the redeemed. Even beyond humanity, the coming Jesus will encounter the world as Judge and Redeemer. He will disempower the powers of corruption and will also liberate and renew the non-human creation that is longing for redemption (Rom. 8.22). He will do away with the enslavement and distortion into which it has fallen through the guilt of human beings and under which it is bound with human beings. Jesus Christ “must reign ‘until he has put all his enemies under his feet.’ The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15.25f.). Paul continues, “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15.28 [S]). This subjection of the Son to God the Father cannot mean that Jesus then ceases to be the Son who has been with the Father from eternity. This is not about a kind of subordinationism, as it later developed. Rather, his special commission to subject the world to God the Father will have been carried out, and he will return this commission to the Father. In doing this, and by subordinating himself to the Father, he will enter fully into the community of those whom he has redeemed, and they will ultimately be united with one another and with the Father. The fruit of his establishment of the reign of God will persist. In this sense, the church’s confessional statement is true: “His kingdom will have no end.”16

16 The Constantinopolitan Creed. [Cf. Tanner, 1.24; Denzinger, 150; BSELK, 49–50 (BC, 23). –Ed.]

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Editor’s Notes to Chapter 13 [i]

[ii]

[iii]

[iv]

The pseudepigraphal Gospel of Peter, which only survives as a fragment that focuses exclusively on the death and resurrection of Jesus, likely dates from the first half of the second century. It includes a description of “two men” who come down from heaven to the tomb of Jesus early on Easter morning. The stone rolls away by itself, the two men enter the tomb, and they then come out supporting a third (presumably Jesus). A cross follows them on its own and even responds, “Yes,” when a voice from heaven asks, “Have you preached to those who are asleep?” While the heads of the two men “reached up to heaven,” the one whom they supported “stretched beyond the heavens” (The Gospel of Peter, in After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity, ed. Bart D. Ehrman [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999], 246). The Greek word ὤφθη (ōphthē) is the third-person singular, aorist-passive indicative form of the verb ὁράω ([horaō] “to perceive,” “to see”). The form ὤφθη can be translated as “become visible” or “appear,” and in the New Testament this verbal construct is used “mostly of beings that make their appearance in a transcendent manner, almost always with the dative of the person to whom they appear” (BDAG, 719). This form is thus used of God, angels, and the risen Christ. Schlink here was alluding to two of the three principles of historical criticism, as classically defined by Ernst Troeltsch. In addition to the principles of analogy and correlation (mutual interaction), Troeltsch also referred to the principle of criticism. See Troeltsch, “Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology,” 13–15. See also Matthew L. Becker, Fundamental Theology: A Protestant Perspective (New York: T&T Clark, 2015), 311–314. Monarchial adoptionism refers to a movement in early Greek theology that regarded Jesus as a man who was gifted by divine powers at his baptism, when he was “adopted” by God. This view, which seeks to maintain the strict monotheism and unity (“monarchy”) of the Godhead, was initially represented by the Ebionites, a Jewish-Christian sect that flourished in the first few centuries of Christianity, but was later developed by Theodotus (second century) and Paul of Samosata (third century). Adoptionistic Monarchians (also called “Dynamic Monarchians”) held that Jesus was “God” only in the sense that a divine power from the Father energized his human person.

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[v]

[vi] [vii]

[viii]

[ix] [x]

Schlink here was referring to a principal piece of evidence against Bousset’s main thesis that the cultic veneration of Jesus did not emerge within primitive “Palestinian Jewish-Christianity” but within primitive “Hellenistic Gentile-Christianity.” According to Bousset, that emergence took place under the influence of pagan religious traditions about divine figures and divinized heroes (e. g., within pre-Christian “mystery” cults that promulgated a supposed redeemer-myth). Already in 1915 Paul Althaus and Paul Wernle had argued that the use of the Aramaic words “marana tha” (“Our Lord, come!”) in 1 Cor. 16.22 indicates early cultic veneration of Jesus within primitive Palestinian Jewish-Christianity. Johannes Weiss and others also criticized Bousset’s severance of Paul from the circle of Jewish believers in Jerusalem. By criticizing Bousset’s thesis, Schlink here was also leveling criticism at Rudolf Bultmann, who was heavily influenced by Bousset’s work and had helped to edit the posthumously published second edition of Kyrios Christos. In the wake of studies by Martin Hengel (1926–2009) and Larry W. Hurtado (1943–2019), scholars today generally do not make such a sharp distinction between “Palestinian-Jewish” Christianity and “Hellenistic-Gentile” Christianity, and they tend to recognize greater cultural complexity within ancient Judaism than did Bousset and his followers. See esp. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 2 vols. (London: SCM Press, 1974), and Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). Cf. Philo of Alexandria, The Works of Philo, new ed., trans. C. D. Yonge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 10–12, 19–21, 56, 747, and 791–792. The fourth Servant Song (or poem), about the Servant of God’s victory, is found in Isa. 52.13–15 and 53.1–12. These so-called “Zion poems” are central to Second Isaiah. The term sensus plenior has been attributed to Andrea Fernádez in the late 1920s. According to Raymond Brown, “The sensus plenior is that additional, deeper meaning, intended by God but not clearly intended by the human author, which is seen to exist in the words of a biblical text (or group of texts, or even a whole book) when they are studied in the light of further revelation or development in the understanding of revelation” (Raymond Brown, “The Sensus Plenior of Sacred Scripture” [S.T.D. diss., St. Mary’s University, 1955], 92.). See also Raymond Brown, “The History and Development of the Theory of a Sensus Plenior,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 15 (1953): 141–162. Cf. Schlink’s essay, “Das wandernde Gottesvolk,” SÖB, 1/1.202–210 (ESW, 1.257–265). For Rahner’s concept of “anonymous Christian,” see editor note 3 at the end of Nissiotis’ and Fries’ forewords above.

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[xi]

[xii]

[xiii]

[xiv]

See especially Book Three (“The Victory of the Good over the Evil Principle, and the Founding of a Kingdom of God on Earth”) and Book Four (“Concerning Service and Pseudo-Service under the Sovereignty of the Good Principle, or, Concerning Religion and Clericalism”) in Kant’s treatise, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 85–190. For the early Barth’s understanding of a “dehistoricized eschatology” and the challenges posed to theology by the proponents of “consistent eschatology” (e. g., by Franz Overbeck [1837–1905]), matters that led him to the significant changes he made to the second edition of his commentary on Romans, see McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 226–235. Bultmann, too, was fundamentally influenced by those who argued for a “consistent eschatology” (esp. Albert Schweitzer). For Bultmann’s “existential” approach to the proclamation of the word in the present moment, see, e. g., his early book, Jesus and the Word. For Schleiermacher’s subtle analysis of the notion of “the return of Christ,” including his presentation about the perfection of the church and the continuation of the human after death, see CG, §§160–163 (2.978–998). His second postscript to these “prophetic points of doctrine” (CG, 2.439–440 [2.998]) is especially apropos to Schlink’s point here. Albrecht Ritschl’s discussion of the return of Christ is much briefer: Christ’s and the apostles’ expectation of the end of the world “has not maintained itself in the church, though it is still held in sectarian circles. The hope cherished in the church gives up the expectation that this earth will be the scene of Christ’s dominion, while it holds fast the practical truths of the divine judgment, and of the separation of the blessed and the lost, as well as the final attainment of the highest good in the case of the former” (Ritschl, Instruction in the Christian Religion, in Swing, Theology of Albrecht Ritschl, 263–264). Beyond these points, according to Ritschl, a clear presentation of Christian eschatology is impossible. For Barth’s later teaching about the parousia of Christ, see, e. g., KD, IV/1 §62, especially its third section (“The Time of the Community” [CD, IV/1.725–739]). For Brunner’s brief statement about the Christian hope of the final coming of Christ, see Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1952), 377–378 (cf., Brunner, The Mediator, 589–590). For Brunner’s much-more-extensive treatment of the return of Christ, see his book, Eternal Hope, trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1954). Brunner wrote this volume in preparation for the final part of his dogmatics and in view of the Second Assembly of the WCC (Evanston, 1954), whose theme was “Christ—The Hope of the World.” Schlink delivered the keynote address at this assembly (see SÖB, 1/1.211–220 [ESW, 1.266–275]).

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Summary of Chapters XII and XIII: The Doctrine of the Threefold Office of Jesus Christ

The previous two chapters on the humiliation of the Son of God and the exaltation of Jesus were not merely about facts but about their salvific significance. In the New Testament witness to each of these historical and eschatological events, we encountered a multitude of statements about their salvific significance, but we also encountered differences in the way in which they have been adopted and further developed by the various churches in their doctrinal teaching and liturgy. This was clear, e. g., in the Western Church’s emphasis on the vicarious penal suffering and satisfaction in its teaching, and in the emphasis on the victory of the cross that the Eastern Church makes in its teaching about the death of Jesus. Differences also became clear, e. g., in the doctrine of Jesus’ resurrection: In the Eastern Church the universal new creation that took place in Jesus’ resurrection has been emphasized more strongly, while in the Western churches more emphasis has been placed on the salvation from death that Jesus experienced and on his exaltation as the first fruits of the believers. It is very important for ecumenical inquiry that not only the different interpretations of the individual events in the course of Jesus’ path are taken into account, but that attention is also given to how the whole of this path was received and interpreted in the different churches. It is true that in the creed all churches confess the whole course of Jesus’ path from the incarnation to his parousia. The churches thereby reject that our salvation is based solely on the incarnation, or solely on Jesus’ earthly activity, or solely on his death, or solely on his resurrection, or the announcement of his return. All churches confess that Jesus is the Savior in all these events that belong inseparably together, the center of which is Jesus’ death and resurrection. But in the sequence of these two opposing events, human forsakenness and divine love went to such a depth that human thinking is again and again unable to grasp the whole of this mystery in words. In view of this unspeakable abyss that opened up in the wake of Christ’s humiliation and exaltation, it stands to reason that individual events in the life of Christ should be emphasized more strongly in the liturgy and doctrine of the various churches, and other events less so. Such differences in emphasis regarding the individual events within the whole of the humiliation and exaltation of Christ are not infrequently more momentous for the relationship of the churches to one another than are the different interpretations of the salvific significance of each event. In the preliminary remarks in the introduction to christology (“The Exaltation of Jesus as the Presupposition for the Doctrine of the Humiliation of the Son of

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God”), it was pointed out that the words, deeds, and suffering of the earthly Jesus have been handed down by the early Christian community with the knowledge of his resurrection, so that, e. g., words of the earthly Jesus were understood not only as having been spoken in the past but as words of the Lord who is present in the community. In this way, some changes were made to the original wording. As a comparison of the Gospel of John with the Synoptic tradition shows, the lowliness of the earthly Jesus was overshadowed in very different ways by the appearances of the risen one and by experiences of his presence within the community. Without eliminating the difference between Jesus’ death and his resurrection, John’s Gospel nevertheless already refers to the crucifixion as the exaltation. The more the difference between the earthly hiddenness of the incarnate Son of God and the revelation of the exalted one through the Spirit faded—and the qualities and honorific titles of the exalted one were transferred to the earthly Jesus—the more the incarnation became prominent, and it took on the significance of giving focus to all the statements about Jesus’ historical and eschatological path. With that attenuation, the salvific significance of these two events was already accorded to the event of the incarnation of the Son of God: Jesus’ death was already contained in it insofar as God had assumed mortal human flesh by means of it. But the incarnation also included the resurrection since the immortal Son of God could not be held fast by death. Thus, by assuming mortal human nature through the incarnation of his Son, God redeemed humanity from death and transferred it into eternal life. In this way, eschatology became above all the doctrine of the unveiling of the universal new creation that was already realized in the incarnation. Such a shift in emphasis within the whole course of Jesus’ path can be demonstrated by numerous references from the history of the liturgy and theology in the Eastern Church. The lowliness of the earthly Jesus, however, is not only overshadowed by the exaltation but is unveiled in its depth, for only on the basis of the appearances of the risen one could a person recognize undeniably that God’s Son went through our temptations and suffered our fears and our God-forsakenness, yes, that in him God himself took upon himself our guilt and the judgment into which we have fallen. Faith’s interest in the earthly Jesus is not a matter of mere historical curiosity, but rather the assurance that in his incarnate Son God has moved through all the abysses of our existence and has accomplished everything that we owe him, all of which is decisive for our salvation. From this starting point, the cross can, of course, move so close to the center of the liturgy and church doctrine that the salvific significance of the resurrection, as well as of the other events in his way of humiliation and exaltation, fade in comparison. So one finds, e. g., in the answers given by Anselm of Canterbury to the question, “Cur Deus homo,” no statements about the salvific significance of Jesus’ resurrection, and the incarnation of the Logos is merely the necessary presupposition for the salvific significance of Jesus’ death and not in itself something that already brings salvation. Because of this shift

The Doctrine of the Threefold Office of Jesus Christ

in emphasis within the whole of the doctrine of humiliation and exaltation, the question of how the individual can gain a share of the merits acquired by Jesus’ death (which medieval scholasticism and the Reformers answered differently) was accordingly formulated less in terms of the present than of eschatology. This shift in emphasis has become widespread in Western Christendom, both in the Roman Catholic Church and in the churches of the Reformation, regardless of whether the salvific significance of Jesus’ death is described as a “satisfaction,” a “sacrifice,” as “penal suffering,” or as a “ransom.” These two conceptions presuppose that both the Eastern and the Western churches acknowledge the whole course of Christ’s humiliation and exaltation. Only within this shared acknowledgment, formulated in the creed, do the abovementioned differences in emphasis and interpretation exist. It needs to be kept in mind, however, that within these “basic features” of an ecumenical dogmatics, only a simplified typology of both conceptions can be offered, and the diversity within both Eastern and Western christology does not receive due expression. The more one delves into the liturgical texts and piety of the Eastern and Western churches, the more one discovers insights there (e. g., regarding the issue of the sinner’s free will or bound will; cf. 247ff.) that seem to have been neglected in doctrinal reflections. Such shifts in emphasis, therefore, cannot be accorded any church-dividing significance, but rather they mutually illuminate each other. Together, they offer contrasting reflections on the same unfathomable mystery of Christ’s humiliation and exaltation. Without question, the Eastern Church’s “physical doctrine of redemption” has often been misunderstood and caricatured in the West, while the Western Church’s “juridical doctrine of satisfaction” has suffered similarly in the East.1

1 [These phrases echo the influential views of Adolf von Harnack, who argued that the Eastern Church’s “physical” doctrine of redemption is distinct from the Western Church’s “juridical” doctrine of satisfaction. According to Harnack, the “physical” event of the incarnation, i. e., the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures (physis) in the person of Christ is decisive for the Eastern Church’s doctrine of salvation. Harnack traced this view back to the Eastern fathers, especially to Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius, and Irenaeus. In Harnack’s view, the Western Church, influenced especially by Augustine, understood Jesus’ death on the cross as the decisive salvific event, whereas the incarnation was viewed only as the presupposition for what happened on the cross. So whereas the Eastern Church teaches a “physical” redemption, whereby all is already saved through the mystery of the hypostatic union, the Western Church, following Augustine, teaches a “juridical” redemption, whereby the sacrifice on the cross is essential to satisfy God’s justice. Harnack linked the “physical” doctrine of the Greek East to the theology of the apostle John, while the Latin West’s “juridical” doctrine was linked to the apostle Paul. Cf. Adolf von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 4th ed., 3 vols. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1909–1910), 1.550ff.; 2.44ff.; 2.157ff.; and 2.229ff. ET: History of Dogma, 3 vols. in 7, trans. Neil Buchanan (New York: Dover, 1961), 2.239ff.; 3.163ff., 288ff.; and 5.54ff. –Ed.]

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Such different shifts in emphasis within the doctrine of the whole way of Christ are to be distinguished from deficient teachings about the salvific significance of Jesus Christ, which are limited to certain individual events on his path and which overlook or even explicitly deny others. There are, to be sure, some very one-sided positions, such as, e. g., Søren Kierkegaard’s teaching about following the cross, which do not deny the creed and whose diminution of the “for us” of the cross is to be understood as a necessary corrective to a church that has become sluggish and complacent.[i] But there are also one-sided positions that make an exclusive claim that goes well beyond the content of the creed. This is true, e. g., of the Socinian denial of the vicarious-representative significance of the suffering and death of Jesus, or of the rationalistic denial of the incarnation of the eternal Son of God, or of the denial of the present inbreaking of the reign of God in the coming of Jesus by one-sidedly emphasizing the future, as in “consistent eschatology.” Today, across the churches, but especially in the West, there is a tendency to interpret Jesus one-sidedly as a socio-political teacher, whereby his incarnation and the atonement, as well as his resurrection and the expectation of his coming as Judge and Fulfiller, are disregarded. There is no doubt that today, in view of the christology within some churches (especially in Europe and South America), greater oppositions exist now than did so in the historical situation of the schism between Eastern and Western Christianity and in the schism between the Roman Church and the churches of the Reformation. In view of the richness of the salvific significance of the humiliation and exaltation of Christ that are attested to in the New Testament Scriptures, it is striking that the creeds of the ancient church remained extremely reserved about this witness. The Apostles’ Creed only mentions the facts of the way of Jesus Christ, and the Constantinopolitan Creed restricts itself to adding the words “for us and for our salvation” to the confession of the incarnation, and then adding the words “for us” in connection with the crucifixion.2 With this phrase, “for us,” which is central to the New Testament message, everything is truly said in the end, but it is much less interpreted in the creed than is the confession of Jesus Christ as “the only begotten Son of God.” The doctrine of the threefold office of Jesus Christ goes beyond these brief references in the creeds of the ancient church. Already in the early church, Jesus was spoken of as the king, the shepherd, the priest, the prophet, the servant of God, the apostle, and other titles fitting his mission. Occasionally, one finds in these statements starting points for focusing on two offices but very rarely on three.3 But such starting points did not initially lead

2 The Constantinopolitan Creed. [Tanner, 1.24; cf. Denzinger, 150; BSELK, 49 (BC, 23). –Ed.] 3 E. g., Eusebius of Caesarea, Historia Ecclesiastica, I.3. [Church History, NPNF 2 , 1.85ff. –Ed.]

The Doctrine of the Threefold Office of Jesus Christ

to a formulaic summary and interpretation of these offices, not even in the Middle Ages. For example, Thomas Aquinas dealt in detail with Christ’s priesthood4 and his royal-judicial authority,5 but makes only passing reference to the interconnectedness of the three offices of law-giver, priest, and king, which “all come together in Christ, as the fount of all grace.”6 It was not until the sixteenth century, especially through John Calvin, that a formulaic teaching about the “threefold office of Christ” was developed from the starting points in the ancient church.7 This teaching was first used by the Reformed and then, following Johann Gerhard, it was taken up by Lutheran dogmatics.8 The most thorough Roman-Catholic interpretation of it can be found in the Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik by Matthias Josef Scheeben, who, incidentally, points out that in the development of this doctrine, Protestant theology preceded Roman-Catholic theology.9 Since Scheeben’s work, this doctrine has had a firm position in Roman Catholic dogmatics. It has also found its place in modern Greek-Orthodox dogmatics.10 It is true that this doctrine does not have the status of a solemnly proclaimed dogma, but it does in fact have dogmatic validity if one takes into account the consequences that the Second Vatican Council drew from this teaching in relation to ecclesiology and the doctrine of the church’s ministerial offices.[ii] The spreading of the doctrine of the munus triplex Christi [the threefold function of Christ] is an ecumenically unique phenomenon, for this teaching did not receive its dogmatic form before the separation of the churches but only afterwards, and, with its statements about the salvific work of Jesus Christ, it has established itself as a shared doctrine across the church divisions. The main reason for this unusual process might well be found in the fact that three complexes are bracketed together in this teaching, which have a fundamental importance in all churches: (a) The sequence in which the three offices of Christ are listed has not always been the same. But it is widely accepted today that the prophetic office is discussed first, the priestly office second, and the royal office third. This sequence corresponds

4 5 6 7

Aquinas, ST, III.22. Aquinas, ST, III.58–59. Aquinas, ST, III.22.1, ad. to obj. 3. Cf. especially the Catéchisme de l’Eglise de Genève (1545) [ET: Catechism of the Church of Geneva, in John Calvin: Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975), 253–254. –Ed.]; and idem, ICR, II.15. [1.494–503. –Ed.] 8 See Johann Gerhard, Loci theologici, IV.15. [ET: Theological Commonplaces, vol. 4 (On Christ), ed. Benjamin T. G. Mayes, trans. Richard J. Dinda (St. Louis: Concordia, 2009), 318–330. –Ed.] 9 Matthias Josef Scheeben, Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik, 2d ed., 7 parts, ed. Carl Feckes (Freiburg: Herder, 1954), 5/2.226–306. [Here: 234. –Ed.] 10 Cf., e. g., Panagiotis Trempela, Dogmatike tes orthodoxu katholikes ekklesias [Dogmatics of the Orthodox Catholic Church], 3 vols. (Athens: Adēlphotēs theologōnē hē “Zōē,” 1959), 2.143–203.

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to the chronological order that moves from the proclamation and death of the earthly Jesus to the lordship of Jesus, who is exalted “at the right hand of God.” (b) At the same time, however, in each of these three offices a distinction is made between their exercise by the earthly Christ and their exercise by the exalted Christ. The earthly Jesus thus exercised the prophetic office through his preaching, while the exalted Jesus exercised it through the apostolic mission, and he continues to exercise it further through the gospel. The earthly Jesus exercised his priestly office through his self-sacrifice unto death, and the exalted Jesus exercises it by interceding before God on behalf of his own. His royal office arose not only through the establishment of his lordship as the exalted one but already in the dominion of the earthly Jesus over the powers of nature and the powers of corruption. (c) In addition, it should be noted that in the doctrine about Christ’s threefold office, titles of Old Testament offices have been included, but their meaning has been significantly changed. Compared to the Old Testament prophets, who, after hearing the word of God, proclaimed it further to the people (“Thus says Yahweh…”), Jesus’ words encountered people with the claim of direct divine authority (“but I say to you…”). If there were many prophets in the old covenant, he is the unparalleled and final one, in which person and word are one. Jesus not only proclaims the word, but he is “the Word” (Jn. 1.1). Compared to the Old Testament priests, who followed one another in a hierarchical order, and who sacrificed animals for atonement, Jesus is the one high priest who offered himself as the final atonement for the sins of the world. He thus ended the blood sacrifices of the Old Testament sacrificial cultus. Compared to the national earthly kingdom of David, Jesus is the universal king of the kingdom of God, which is not of this world and will have no end. Even if the tasks of political leadership, the cultus, and proclamation sometimes overlapped (e. g., as happened in the cases of Moses, David, and Solomon), in the subsequent period, the offices of kings, priests, and prophets stood side by side and were often opposed to each other in essential respects. But in Jesus Christ they are united. He does not have three offices but one threefold office. The doctrine of the munus triplex Christi is thus also about the unity and difference between the old and the new covenant. The limitations of this doctrine have often been pointed out, for by emphasizing these three offices, the fullness of the salvific significance of Jesus Christ is not articulated (e. g., when his death is interpreted one-sidedly in relation to the cultus). Also, in the description of the threefold office, the profound difference between the humiliation and the exaltation is not always sufficiently clear in both states. Likewise, reflection on the relationship between the unity and difference between the old and the new covenant, and thus on the understanding of Christ’s work as the fulfillment and termination of the offices in the Old Testament, often remains too superficial and too weak. In addition, the use of the term and concept of office to refer to Christ’s work does not sufficiently express the fact that his work was and

The Doctrine of the Threefold Office of Jesus Christ

is not only distinguished by the mission that was given to him by God but also by the spontaneity with which the Son of God himself freely chose to carry out his ministry. Despite such limitations, the doctrine of the threefold office of Christ is still helpful for working toward the unification of the church, for when evaluating the limits of this doctrine, one must keep in mind that every dogmatic formula comes from selecting individual concepts out of a much larger number of them in the New Testament. One would misinterpret dogmatic propositions if one were to understand them to be a substitute for the multitude of statements out of which they arose. Rather, they must be understood as pointing to this abundance, and they must be interpreted through the multiplicity of the underlying concepts. If one understands the doctrine of the threefold office of Jesus Christ to be pointing toward the much more far-reaching witness of the New Testament to the salvific significance of Christ, then, in connection with the difference between the humiliation and the exaltation, as well as with the difference between the old and new covenants, this doctrine demonstrates itself to be a very useful warning against one-sided and deficient teachings about Christ’s work of salvation. It also refers importantly to the indispensable and basic ways in which Christ’s salvific significance is to be attested, taught, and praised at all times. Indeed, the criticism of the doctrine of the munus triplex has been made much more radically by deficient positions than by those that affirm the salvific significance of the entire work of Jesus Christ. Editor’s Notes to the Summary of Chapters 12 and 13 [i]

[ii]

Cf., e. g., Søren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination/Judge for Yourself, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); idem (Anti-Climacus), Practice in Christianity; idem, Attack upon Christendom, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968). See, e. g., the second, third, and fourth chapters of Lumen gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church [Tanner, 2.856–860, 864, and 877–878]).

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Edmund Schlink Works Edited by Matthew L. Becker Volume 2/2

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

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Edmund Schlink Ecumenical and Confessional Writings Volume 2 Part 2 Ecumenical Dogmatics: Basic Features Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Matthew L. Becker Translated by Matthew L. Becker, Robin Lutjohann, Hans G. Spalteholz, Mark A. Seifrid, Eleanor Wegener, and Ken Jones Forewords by Heinrich Fries, Nikos A. Nissiotis, and Wolfhart Pannenberg Afterword by Michael Plathow

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

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Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.de. Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright  1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved. Other Scripture quotations, as noted, are from the Holy Bible, The New International Version, copyright  1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers. Other Scripture quotations, as noted, are from the Holy Bible, The Revised Standard Version, 2d ed., Copyright  1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved. Originally published as Schriften zu Ökumene und Bekenntnis. Band 2, edited by Michael Plathow  2005, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A.  2023 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Theaterstraße 13, 37073 Göttingen, Germany, an imprint of the Brill-Group (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands; Brill USA Inc., Boston MA, USA; Brill Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore; Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn, Germany, Brill Österreich GmbH, Vienna, Austria) Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Typesetting: le-tex publishing services, Leipzig Cover design: SchwabScantechnik, Göttingen Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISBN 978-3-647-56075-5

Contents

Chapter XIV: The New Testament Gospel.............................................. Introduction: The New Covenant ..................................................... A. The Gospel ............................................................................... 1. The Message of Jesus Christ ................................................... 2. The Assurance of the Act of Salvation through the Gospel ......... 3. God’s Salvific Action through the Gospel ................................. 4. Salvation ............................................................................. 5. Justification ......................................................................... 6. Vivification .......................................................................... 7. Sanctification ....................................................................... 8. The Transformation into God’s Image ..................................... 9. The Call to Faith ................................................................... B. Exhortation .............................................................................. 1. The New Commandment ...................................................... 2. The Comforting Exhortation .................................................. 3. The Commandment to Love .................................................. 4. Prayer ................................................................................. 5. Witness................................................................................ 6. The Commandment of the Redeemer and the Commandment of the Preserver: The Obedience That Is the Image of God .................................................................. 7. The Law of the Spirit ............................................................. 8. The Boundary of Death ......................................................... 9. The Call to Repentance .........................................................

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686 691 692 695

Summary of Parts A and B: God’s Action of Grace and Human Action .... 709 Chapter XV: Baptism ........................................................................... 1. The Foundation of Baptism......................................................... 2. Baptism into Christ ................................................................... 3. Baptism through the Holy Spirit .................................................. 4. Reception into the Church.......................................................... 5. The Presuppositions for Infant Baptism ........................................

721 721 726 728 729 730

Chapter XVI: The Lord’s Supper ........................................................... 737 1. The Foundation of the Lord’s Supper ............................................ 737

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2. 3. 4. 5.

The Gift of Jesus’ Body and the Blood of the Covenant ................... The Promise of the Meal in the Kingdom of God .......................... The Eucharistic-Anamnetic Recognition of the Present Christ ........ The Edification of the Church .....................................................

742 746 748 762

Conclusion to Chapters XIV–XVI: The Richness of God’s Action of Grace and the Number of Sacraments ................................................. 771 Summary of Chapters XI–XVI: The Distinction between Law and Gospel......................................................................................... 1. The Issue of Distinguishing between Law and Gospel .................... 2. The Gospel in the Old Testament Law ......................................... 3. The Law in the New Testament Gospel ......................................... 4. The Unity of Law and Gospel ..................................................... 5. The Distinction between Law and Gospel .................................... 6. The Gospel as God’s Proper Word................................................ 7. Being Tested in Anfechtung ........................................................

779 780 781 781 782 783 784 785

Chapter XVII: The Confession of God the Redeemer .............................. 1. Jesus the Redeemer .................................................................... 2. The Eternal Son ........................................................................ 3. “Truly God and Truly a Human Being” ........................................

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THIRD PART The Doctrine of the New Creation Chapter XVIII: The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit .................................... 1. The Event of Pentecost .............................................................. 2. The New Creation through the Holy Spirit ................................... 3. The Holy Spirit as Power ............................................................ 4. The Holy Spirit as Lord .............................................................. 5. The Recognition of the Spirit’s Action ..........................................

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Chapter XIX: The Church...................................................................... Introduction to Chapters XIX–XXII: The Starting Point for the Doctrine of the Church ................................................................... 1. The Origin of the Church ........................................................... 2. The People of God Called Out from the World ............................. 3. The Prophetic, Priestly, and Royal People of God Sent into the World ...................................................................................... 4. The Worship Assembly ..............................................................

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Contents

5. The Ekklesia of God, the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit: the Growing New Creation ....................................... 862 6. The Unity, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity of the Church ..... 870 7. The Communion of Saints .......................................................... 875 Chapter XX: Spiritual Gift and Ministerial Office .................................... 1. The Apostles ............................................................................ 2. The Community of the Charismata ............................................. 3. The Sending into Servant Ministry .............................................. 4. The Church’s Ministerial Office ................................................... 5. The Pastoral Office and the Church ............................................. 6. Apostolic Succession ................................................................. 7. The Secular Office and the Church’s Ministerial Office ...................

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Chapter XXI: The Preservation of the Church......................................... Introduction: The Indestructibility of the Church ............................... A. Holy Scripture........................................................................... 1. Holy Scripture as a Collection of Church Writings .................... 2. The Authority of Holy Scripture .............................................. 3. Basic Principles of Biblical Hermeneutics ................................ B. Confession ............................................................................... 1. Confession as a Response of the Church .................................. 2. The Basis for the Authority of Dogma ..................................... 3. Basic Principles of Dogmatic Hermeneutics.............................. C. Church Order ........................................................................... 1. Church Law as the Regulation of the Church ........................... 2. The Authority of Church Law ................................................. 3. Concerning the Hermeneutics of Church Law ..........................

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Chapter XXII: The Unity of the Church and the Disunity of Christendom ...................................................................................... 1. The Dangers of Ecclesial Self-Preservation ................................... 2. The Scandal of a Disunited Christendom ..................................... 3. The Question Concerning the One Church in a Disunited Christendom ............................................................................ 4. Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Traditions of Christendom ................. 5. Apostolic Tradition and the Traditions of Christendom ................. 6. Recognizing the One Church in a Disunited Christendom ............. 7. Representing the One Church in the Unification of the Separated Churches ..................................................................

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Chapter XXIII: The Consummation of the New Creation.......................... 1. The End Time of World History ................................................. 2. The First Creation and the New Creation ..................................... 3. The Resurrection to Eternal Life ................................................. 4. The Creation of the New Heaven and the New Earth ...................... 5. God Is All in All ........................................................................

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Chapter XXIV: The Confession of God the New Creator .......................... 1053 1. The Holy Spirit, the New Creator ................................................. 1053 2. The Eternal Spirit of God ............................................................ 1056

FOURTH PART The Doctrine of God Chapter XXV: The Adoration of God ...................................................... 1. Thanksgiving for God’s Acts ....................................................... 2. Doxology ................................................................................. 3. The Adoration of God as a Sacrifice of Praise ................................ 4. Adoration of the Divine Name ................................................... 5. Adoration from the Depths ........................................................ Excursus: On the Issue of Theological Analogy ..................................... 6. Dogma and the Doctrine of God ................................................ 7. The Starting Point and Organization of the Doctrine of God ..........

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Chapter XXVI: The Triune God .............................................................. 1. God the Father, the Eternal Origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit ....................................................................................... 2. The Unity of God in the Distinctiveness of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ..................................................... 3. The Distinctiveness of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in the Unity of God ................................................... 4. The Trinitarian Dogma .............................................................. 5. The Mystery of the Divine Fullness of Life .................................... 6. The Trinitarian Dogma as the First and Last Statement .................. 7. The Ecumenical Significance of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed ..............................................

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Introduction to Chapters XXVII–XXIX The Holy God and the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes .......................................................... 1115

Contents

Chapter XXVII: The Lord ....................................................................... 1. God’s Omnipotence .................................................................. 2. God’s Omnipresence ................................................................. 3. God’s Eternity .......................................................................... 4. God’s Glory .............................................................................

1119 1119 1121 1125 1127

Chapter XXVIII: The All-Consuming God................................................. 1131 1. The Inescapable God.................................................................. 1131 2. The Wrathful God ..................................................................... 1132 Chapter XXIX: The Self-Giving God........................................................ 1. The Love of God........................................................................ 2. The Righteousness of God .......................................................... 3. The Wisdom of God .................................................................. 4. The Steadfastness of God ...........................................................

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Summary of Chapters XXVII–XXIX......................................................... 1151 1. The All-Consuming and Self-Giving God ..................................... 1151 2. The Adoration of the Triune God in the Glory of His Love ............. 1154

CONCLUDING PART Chapter XXX: God’s Decree of Love ...................................................... 1. Solely by Grace.......................................................................... 2. The Eternal Decree of the Triune God ......................................... 3. The Issue of Double Predestination ............................................. 4. Election ................................................................................... 5. Rejection ................................................................................. 6. The Incommensurability between God’s Electing and Rejecting ...... Excursus: On the Issue of the Theological Syllogism ............................... 7. The Warning to the Church and the Invitation to the World ...........

1159 1159 1159 1161 1162 1164 1165 1169 1170

Afterword: The Gospel—The Basis of an Ecumenical Dogmatics. Remarks on the Influence of Edmund Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics: Basic Features.................................................................. 1175 Bibliography ....................................................................................... 1191 Index of Scripture References ............................................................. 1227

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Index of Persons ................................................................................. 1253 Index of Subjects ................................................................................ 1265 Editor and Translators......................................................................... 1277

Chapter XIV: The New Testament Gospel

Introduction: The New Covenant God established a new covenant in the death of Jesus. This covenant is not merely the restoration of the old but rather a different one. The old covenant was broken by Israel, and a new one took its place. To be sure, it had already been promised in the old covenant (Jer. 31.31–34; 32.40) and is connected to it not only through the historical sequence but especially because it was founded by the same God. And yet the new covenant is so new, so different, that faith in Jesus Christ recognizes in it the final and proper covenant, for which the old covenant prepared the way. While the ministry of the old covenant also had glory, it nevertheless “has lost its glory because of the greater glory” of the ministry in the new covenant (2 Cor. 3.10). The ministry of the old covenant was the ministry of the letter. The ministry of the new covenant is the ministry of the Spirit. “[F]or the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3.6ff. [NIV]). In contrast to the old one, the new one is the “better covenant” (Heb. 7.22; 8.6). “For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need to look for a second one” (8.7). The relationship between the old and the new covenants is not uniform in the New Testament Scriptures. God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ has sometimes been understood more as the fulfillment of the law, at other times more as the end of the law. One side puts greater emphasis on the continuity of salvation history, the other side on the newness vis-à-vis the old that has passed. In the course of church history, continuity has often been emphasized one-sidedly, e. g., in the interpretation of the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice offered by the priest and of the church’s ministerial office as a priesthood, or also in the reference to Israel’s holy wars during the Christian Crusades. In contrast to this emphasis, however, the New Testament witness to the difference between the old and new covenants should by no means be overlooked. Both emphases have great ecumenical significance. Though “attested by the law and the prophets,” “now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed” in Jesus Christ (Rom. 3.21). Although the Old Testament law was righteous, the revelation of God’s righteousness in the new covenant is a wholly new act. Law and grace now stand in such opposition to one another that being-under-the-law and being-under-grace mutually exclude each other. In the Gospel of John, too, Jesus is juxtaposed to Moses as the one who brought something new. “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (Jn. 1.17). Here, too, not the correspondence but the contrast between the Old Testament

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food of manna and Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, is emphasized: “Moses did not give the bread from heaven” (6.32 [S]). The Johannine self-declarations of Christ also contain the antithesis between Moses and Jesus, since he exclusively claims for himself the common designations for the Torah as the way, truth, life, water of life, and light. As he did with the old covenant, God also established the new one in the freedom of his love for sinners. The new covenant, too, is in no way grounded in the behavior of human beings. Rather, it is God’s sovereign act by which he initiates community with sinners. The new covenant, too, is God’s free election of love by which he accepts sinners, despite their enmity against him. In contrast to the old covenant, however, God not only made known his love by delivering Israel from earthly slavery and in leading them through earthly impasses, but in the incarnation of his Son he has entered into all human need, and in offering up Jesus on the cross he has taken upon himself all human guilt and the judgment into which they had fallen. In taking on human nature and human guilt, God made the new covenant not merely with Israel, in contrast to the old, but he put it into effect for Jews and Gentiles. In contrast to the Old Testament sacrificial meals, the New Testament community receives the cup with the dominical saying: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mk. 14.24 [S]; cf. 1 Cor. 11.25). Just as the old covenant was made known by God to the people of Israel through Moses, so the new covenant was made known to all nations by the witnesses of Jesus Christ who were commissioned by God. Just as the Old Testament covenant required the “Yes” of the nation Israel, the new covenant requires the nations’ acceptance of the Christ message in faith. God put the old covenant into effect with a twofold address: God’s word came to Israel as a word of acceptance and obligation, as promise and law. The New Testament gospel also comes to people in a twofold address: As assurance [Zuspruch] and claim [Anspruch], as gift [Gabe] and commandment [Gebot], namely, as the proclamation of the act of salvation that God accomplished in Christ, and as a call to live in accordance with this act of salvation. At the same time, assurance and claim are closely intertwined in the New Testament letters, often strangely interrelated and yet distinct, and this distinction is recognizable in the very structure of the letters, for the commandment is grounded in the assurance of God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ. In this sense, a distinction within New Testament proclamation will be made below between the gospel as assurance and the exhortation of the gospel. This distinction is not identical with that between promise and law in the old covenant, for the promises of the old covenant are now fulfilled through Jesus Christ. The promised king has come, the promised kingdom has dawned. Jesus is recognized as the Son of Man whom he had proclaimed. The word of God did not

Introduction: The New Covenant

remain a promise but has become flesh, and, in this incarnation, the fulfillment of the still outstanding promises is also guaranteed. The commandment of the new covenant is also different from the requirements of the Old Testament law, for the law now no longer remains externally facing the members of the covenant people, demanding and judging. Instead, through the Holy Spirit, it is “placed within them and written in their hearts” (Jer. 31.33; cf. Rom. 3.27; 8.2; Gal. 5.22ff.). The particularity of the new covenant is not the reestablishment of the law as externally facing the human being but the placement of the divine will into the human heart, not obedience to the law as a condition for remaining in grace but obedience as the effect of grace. Since the presupposition of the New Testament requirement vis-a-vis the Old Testament law is fundamentally changed, and since God requires nothing that he has not given through the gospel, the new requirement of God, in contrast to the Old Testament law, will be described below with a term from the New Testament letters, namely, as paraklesis, comforting exhortation. While, in keeping with the Jewish terminology used in the time of Jesus, the Old Testament promise and demand are summarized above with the term of the law, the New Testament assurance and claim will be summarized below with the term of the gospel. In Israel, the law, from the beginning, had not been the comprehensive and dominant designation for God’s address to his people. It became that only after centuries, when the promise had been called into question by God’s historical judgments, and the law thereby became independent and took on an absolute status. But from the beginning, the New Testament exhortation was so closely tied to the renewing work of God in the assurance of the gospel that with this assurance even the exhortation can be described as gospel. At the same time, one must consider that—in contrast to the term law, which was used as a comprehensive formulation in Jesus’ time—the New Testament Scriptures do not use merely one word for describing the message about Christ. Instead, one finds here a great multitude of nouns (gospel, word of God, word of Christ, word of the cross, message, witness, etc., whereby the word gospel is absent in the Johannine writings and in the letter to the Hebrews). When all these designations are subsumed under the term gospel, it is already a systematic-theological decision that expands the New Testament term. Moreover, the assurance of the gospel must not be separated from the administration of baptism and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the two sacraments that are distinguished as the two main sacraments even by those churches that, beyond these two, describe additional acts as sacraments. Wherever the gospel is proclaimed, it calls for the reception of baptism. Baptism, in turn, opens access to the Lord’s Supper. At the same time, the reception of baptism and the Lord’s Supper again and again leads to a new hearing of the gospel. Proclamation and baptism belong so closely together that one can say both that rebirth happens through baptism and that it happens through the word (1 Pet. 1.23; James 1.18). Proclamation and the

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Lord’s Supper belong so closely together that Paul even described the Lord’s Supper as the proclamation of the Lord’s death (1 Cor. 11.26). Through proclamation, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, the same forgiveness and the same new life are received in different ways. In the discussions below, the doctrine about the assurance of the gospel (A) is treated first, followed by (B) the doctrine about evangelical exhortation, and only then by baptism and the Lord’s Supper. This is done, not to separate the gospel from the sacraments but in order to show the continuity and difference between the Old and New Testament word through a structure that corresponds to the sequence of (A) promise and (B) law in the Old Testament law (chap. 11). In the statements about the gospel, both baptism and the Lord’s Supper should be kept in mind as integral elements, even if they will not be treated in detail until later (chaps. 15 and 16). The exhortation of the gospel is also closely tied to baptism and the Lord’s Supper. All imperatives have their basis in God’s act of salvation, which is proclaimed through the gospel and promised to believers. Here the New Testament exhortations call people to remember baptism in particular, through which God bestowed Christ upon human beings once and for all, given them into his death, and renewed them for life with him. It is now a matter of living the new life that was given by baptism. The exhortations are also grounded in the Lord’s Supper. Because Christ assembles the recipients of this meal into one body, it is now a matter of living as members of this body. It is from the unity of the proclaimed gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper that the New Testament exhortations acquire their encouraging and liberating urgency. That is why the doctrine of evangelical exhortation presupposes not only the proclamation of the gospel but also God’s action through the sacraments. The exhortation will have to refer to them, even if only the two following chapters treat baptism and the Lord’s Supper in detail. The fact that the chapters on baptism and the Lord’s Supper follow the teaching about evangelical exhortation, the one after the other—even though they are part of its presupposition—makes it clear that the New Testament commandment is surrounded and sustained by God’s salvific action on all sides, that it springs forth from God’s grace and repeatedly calls to the reception of that grace. The message of Christ, the sacrament of baptism, and the Lord’s Supper belong so closely together that when the New Testament letters speak about God’s saving work through the gospel, they are likely referring not merely to the proclaimed word but also to baptism and the Lord’s Supper. This is suggested by the fact that, despite their great significance for the life of the church, baptism and especially the Lord’s Supper are mentioned somewhat rarely in the New Testament letters, in comparison to the message of Christ. Just as Augustine summarized and differentiated proclamation

Introduction: The New Covenant

and the sacraments as “sacramentum audibile” [audible sacrament]1 and “verbum visibile” [visible word],2 it is also possible to summarize the sacraments with the message of Christ, without thereby disregarding the special way in which believers are given gifts through the message of Christ, through baptism, and through the Lord’s Supper. With these considerations about the new covenant, we now enter into the doctrine of grace. Although all churches confess that they live from the grace of God, such profound differences have nevertheless arisen in the doctrine of grace that they have at times caused church divisions. This is least true of Eastern Christendom, whose understanding of grace is expressed primarily in the performance of its liturgy, while it has rarely made grace the object of dogmatic definitions. In the confessions of the ancient church, too, the doctrine of grace was not the object of explicit statements but was contained in the confession of the saving acts of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as well as in the acknowledgment of “baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”3 The history of this topic unfolded differently in Western Christendom since Augustine made grace the object of reflection in his struggle against Pelagius and his followers and brought about synodical dogmatic decisions.[i] Even after the rejection of Pelagianism, grace remained contentious in the West. Moreover, it was not limited to oppositions between various theological schools, but there were schisms over the doctrine of grace between the Roman Church and the churches of the Reformation, and later with respect to the Jansenist churches of Utrecht (today connected with the Old Catholic Church). The most important, frequently recurring issues in the history of the disputes about grace include the relationship between divine grace and human agency (the problem of monergism and synergism in their various iterations) as well as the relationship between God’s gracious action and the visible earthly signs of the sacraments (i. e., e. g., the relationship between the water and rebirth in baptism and the relationship between the bread and the body of Christ, as well as the wine and the blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper). Finally, one of the most important issues that is disputed is the difference in understanding grace as a divine disposition or as a divine bestowal or as a new quality bestowed on human beings, and the relationship between grace and the Holy Spirit.

1 [Although widely attributed to Augustine, the phrase “sacramentum audibile” is not found in any of his authentic writings. However, a related phrase, “signum audibile,” is found in his treatise De magistro, IV.8.74 and 76 (CCSL, 29.166; The Teacher, FOTC, 59.17–18). In this context, “signum” and “sacramentum” are near synonyms. –Ed.] 2 [Augustine, In Ioannis Evangelium tractatus, LXXX.3 (CCSL, 36.529; Homily 80 [on Jn. 15.1–3], WSA, III/13.287); cf. De civitate Dei, X.5 (CCSL, 47.277; The City of God, WSA, I/6.309). –Ed.] 3 [The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (Denzinger, 150; Tanner, 1.24; BSELK, 49–50 [BC, 23]). –Ed.]

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The more differentiated the investigation of these questions became, the more the doctrine of grace took on a life of its own in the construction of dogmatics. In early scholasticism, the doctrine of grace was discussed within christology or the doctrine of the sacraments, or in elaborations about faith and love, and it was discussed in high scholasticism as part of the doctrine of God or of creation. But later it became an increasingly independent topic and has generally remained as such in the dogmatics taught in Roman Catholic schools and seminaries until today. In the old-Protestant dogmatics, it was treated more and more as its own topic (often under the heading: de gratia spiritus sancti applicatrice), separated from christology, the doctrine on law and gospel, and the sacraments.[ii] However, the work of grace and the Holy Spirit were more closely tied together again than had been common in the scholastic tradition after Peter Lombard. In contrast to those who treat the doctrine of grace independently, our starting point will be God’s gracious action through the gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, namely, in the elementary acts of hearing the gospel and receiving baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as well as the remembrance of those acts by which our further life is given its lasting validity and purpose. For the problem of synergism, this means that we begin at the point where the human being is existentially affected by God’s twofold address in his assurance and in his demand. We do not begin with the reflection about the relationship between divine grace and human agency, and we do not seek to take such a theoretical stand, from which we would then attempt to calculate the balance between God’s action and those of human beings. Some of the most profound dogmatic differences in the doctrine of grace have only arisen because theological thought removed itself from the act of hearing and receiving. In the existential hearing of God’s twofold address there do not arise theories about the cooperation of divine and human action. Instead, God encounters us as the loving Lord who shows mercy to the whole person out of free grace, and who makes a claim on the whole person on the basis of this mercy. Theoretical attempts to define this relationship are structurally secondary, and it is no coincidence that they have taken place in a variety of ways, yes, at times in opposing ways. Beginning with the elementary acts of hearing and receiving also has important consequences for the doctrine of the sacraments, for in receiving, believers are not determined by the question of how the water is theoretically related to rebirth, or how the bread and wine relate to Christ’s body and blood, but rather by the experience of being transferred to the ownership of Christ in baptism and by the distribution and reception of the Christ who gives himself in the Lord’s Supper. In the history of the doctrine of the sacraments many differences have arisen because people thought that one could step out from the act of faithful reception to take up a position from which one could survey the sacramental event. Then, instead of praising the divine grace, reflection about the relationship between

The Gospel

sign and gift moves into the foreground. It is similar with the question about the relationship between human words and the word of God in proclamation: When the existential act of hearing and receiving is the starting point of dogmatic thinking, the immeasurable richness of the divine gift is unveiled, and the question about the number of the sacraments is seen in a new light, receiving a different weight than was largely the case in the controversies between the separated churches. Beginning with the hearing of the gospel and the reception of the sacraments means beginning with the reception of grace. In doing so, one’s gaze is not directed at the human being who receives but at the God who gives. The difference between God’s gracious disposition and his action, on the one hand, and grace as a condition and attribute of human beings to whom grace has happened, on the other, does not emerge until a later stage of reflection. In the act of receiving grace, the believer may be sure of the faithfulness of God who does not toy with the person but carries out and completes what he began in his grace. The elementary statements about standing in grace are statements of the steadfastness of God’s gracious dealing with humankind. Being in grace is as inseparable from the steadiness of the gracious divine work as being in the Holy Spirit is inseparable from the ever-new hearing of our prayers for his coming.

A. The Gospel 1. The Message of Jesus Christ The gospel is not merely the continuation of Jesus’ message about the soon-to-arrive reign of God and the coming Son of Man, nor is it merely the report about his passion. Rather, it is by Jesus’ resurrection that his earthly hiddenness is lifted. He has become revealed as the Lord to whom is given the reign of God, and as the promised one who has come. His death is revealed as a death for the world and as a victory over the world. Thus the gospel is the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and, even where it is only called the word of the cross, this word is inseparable from the message of the resurrection. From this center, the gospel also proclaims the parousia of Jesus Christ and the incarnation of the eternal Son of God. Moreover, this is not merely about proclaiming facts but about proclaiming their salvific significance. The gospel thus proclaims: “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1.24), as the one who was given by God for “righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1.30). The gospel proclaims “the righteousness of God” that has become revealed in Christ (Rom. 3.21)—“the love of God” that has appeared in him (1 Jn. 4.9). All these and similar statements are about God’s caring commitment to sinners taking place in Christ. To them he gives his righteousness

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and love, and shares his power, wisdom, and holiness. Because of this historical act of salvation, God is praised in doxology as the eternal Holy One, as the eternal love, righteousness, might, and wisdom. Yet the gospel’s content is not primarily about God’s attributes but about his historical salvific action. The gospel proclaims Jesus Christ as God’s final act of salvation.[iii] He has borne the sin of the world, he died for all, and he is placed over all as the Lord. In him God “was reconciling the world to himself ” (2 Cor. 5.19). He prepared in him redemption for all, for he “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2.4). From the universal finality of this act of salvation, Paul virtually—bluntly—concluded: “Since one has died for all, we all have died” (2 Cor. 5.14 [S]); “one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” (Rom. 5.18). Through the death and resurrection of Jesus all human beings are transferred into a new situation, whether they know it or not, whether they accept the gospel or reject it. By proclaiming Jesus as the Savior of the world, the gospel calls all people to faith in him. It calls them to accept the one who was crucified and raised for them, to accept the love of God that has appeared in him, and to die in baptism with the one through whose death our sins and our death are overcome. Along with the proclamation of this new situation into which humanity has been transferred through Jesus’ coming, an invitation goes out to embrace this situation by faith and to live from it. Thus the gospel is not merely the universal message that “God has reconciled the world with himself in Christ,” but it is also the highly urgent call to the given hearer: “[B]e reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5.20f.)—let God the Reconciler deal with you. In contrast to the Old Testament promises, the gospel proclaims the fulfillment that has taken place in Jesus. Yet it is not solely referencing back to what Jesus has accomplished. It also looks forward to the final advent of Jesus and to the fulfillment of God’s reign. In this sense, the gospel also is promise. But even in its orientation to the future, it differs from the Old Testament promises, for in its message about the coming one it is a message of the one who has come. The future promised by the gospel, and toward which it exhorts the hearer to run, is no less certain in faith than the past. After all, Jesus will not become Lord through his return. He is already the Lord to whom all is subjected. Everything is already decided in the death and resurrection of Jesus. 2. The Assurance of the Act of Salvation through the Gospel The proclamation of Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world takes place by the gospel addressing ever more people in the temporal progression of history and in its spatial expansion over the earth. Due to the salvific significance of Jesus for all, the gospel cannot rest until it has been proclaimed to all nations. The content of

The Gospel

the proclamation and the act of advancing its proclamation ever farther belong together in the concept of the gospel. It is a word that hastens, advances, and never stops. This means that the proclamation of the gospel takes place not only through the transmission of the words and fate of Jesus, not even only through passing on the kerygmatic and confessional formulas of the ancient Christian community, but by assuring the universally applicable salvific act in the particular historical situation of a given listener. The gospel is not only the doctrine about the salvific significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus but the personal assurance: he died and rose for you, he bore your sins, and opened to you the access to life. Here the concentration of the tradition into kerygmatic and hymnic formulas and confessions is certainly significant, as they are, in a sense, constants within the quite manifold instances in which the gospel is assured again and again anew. Thus Paul already used such formulas as weighty arguments in his own proclamation. But the proclamation of the gospel always goes beyond these. As a personal assurance of the act of salvation to a concrete person within that person’s historical “now,” it has not been formulated and handed down once and for all but is an ever-new living word. This assurance must be distinguished from and coordinated with doctrinal tradition in a manner similar to how Paul distinguished and coordinated prophecy and teaching. As such assurance has taken place, doctrinal statements about the salvific significance of Jesus Christ have unfolded in manifold ways. Thus proclamation was not content merely to make doctrinal statements about Jesus’ death as a punishment, as an atonement for the world, and as the world’s reconciliation and redemption, nor was it content even with doctrinal statements about Jesus’ resurrection as the beginning of the universal resurrection and the new creation. Rather, it has concretized the phrase “for the world” into an historical assurance: “for you personally!,” for “you all!” Through assurance to particular persons of Jewish and Gentile origin the universal statements were elaborated further. Hence, the gospel declares forgiveness, rescue, liberation, justification, rebirth, new life, healing, transformation into God’s image, and glorification to humanity—to name but a few of the most important concretizations. To such New Testament forms of assurance others were added in the course of church history, such as the Eastern Christian description of the act of salvation as the “deification” (θεοποίησις [theopoiēsis]) of the human being.[iv] Assurance received another concrete expression in the West of the eighteenth and nineteenth century in the concept of “awakening” [“Erweckung”] (revival, Réveil), which signified a movement that gripped the Protestant churches and, in opposition to rationalism, led them afresh to the biblical foundation.[v] A precise boundary between such statements of assurance to believers and the underlying doctrinal statements about the salvific significance of Christ for the world cannot be drawn. Even if in the development of dogmatics most churches generally treat the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus within the doctrine of the work of Christ, and justification and

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sanctification of the sinner within the doctrine of grace, these statements belong closely together, for the same thing that God has done once and for all time for all human beings encounters individuals in the assurance of the gospel, and becomes their own by faith. This great multiplicity of ways in which the assurance is concretized corresponds to the inexhaustibility of grace, which exceeds the limits of human words. It cannot be adequately attested to through one single concept, but it requires manifold attestations, each of which expresses one particular aspect of the divine salvific action. This circumstance has great ecumenical significance, given that in the dogmas of the church particular concepts have been chosen and used as overarching concepts, within which the multiplicity of ways in which the assurance takes place is meant to be summarized. Just as the foundational New Testament statements about the salvific significance of Jesus’ death have not been subsumed into dogmatic definitions in the same way in the various churches (cf. 413), such is even less the case with the New Testament statements about the concrete assurance of this death. This is true in two ways: First, the same concepts did not become overarching concepts in all churches. Since, however, none of these concepts can capture the entire richness of the New Testament statements, there inevitably arise dogmatic differences between the churches. Thus, e. g., the doctrine of justification only received a dominant role in post-Augustinian Western Christendom but not in the churches of the East. Conversely, the concept of the “deification” of humanity has achieved considerable prevalence in the Eastern Church, but it has remained largely foreign to Western Christendom. Secondly, it needs to be noted that the same terms by which the gospel assures human beings of God’s gracious action refer to the responsibilities given to the believer in the New Testament exhortation. Thus, e. g., salvation, righteousness, and sanctification, which are assured through the gospel to believers, return in the requirements made on believers, to work out their salvation, to walk in righteousness, and to pursue righteousness. Ecumenical difficulties have arisen in the course of the history of theology because one-sided fixations on such terms were established either as designations about God’s gracious act or as designations about the actions required of human beings, so that their twofold meaning of assurance and claim receded. For instance, in the correspondence between the Lutheran theologians of Tübingen and the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1573–1581, the Lutheran side understood justification primarily as the justification of the sinner by faith, while the Orthodox side understood the assurance of absolution in the final judgment according to the works of a Christian.[vi] What Pauline theology had held together in a paradox was here divided into different dogmatic positions. While the witness to grace was by no means missing in the letters of the ecumenical patriarch, they were expressed through other concepts, such as sanctification, vivification

The Gospel

[Lebendigmachung], and deification. Another example is the widespread one-sided usage of the concept of sanctification. While ancient Christian sanctification (in accord with justification) was attested to as God’s gracious act upon the sinner, and, on the basis of this divine act, called for works of sanctification by the sanctified person, some trends in recent Protestant theology use this term one-sidedly as a designation for the new obedience that ought to follow the divine saving act of justification. This results in a one-sided moralizing about sanctification, and not only for the Orthodox understanding. Undoubtedly, in questions about the acquisition of salvation, the work of translating concepts is especially needed in order to drill down the actual agreements and differences among the churches. 3. God’s Salvific Action through the Gospel The expression gospel of Christ means that the gospel proclaims Jesus Christ and has its origin in him. At the same time, the term origin not only means that the gospel emerged from him historically but that it is emerging from him now—that he did not merely commission his disciples long ago with the promise, “Whoever listens to you listens to me” (Lk. 10.16 par.), but that in their successors he is commissioning ever more proclaimers with the same promise. The earthly Jesus, in whom the divine time of salvation dawned long ago, is present today as the ascended Lord and bestows salvation through the gospel. In all times his messengers are the representatives and instruments of the present Christ: “So… we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5.20). Jesus Christ comes and acts in the gospel, saves and judges through the gospel. Through the gospel he carries out his triumphal procession through humanity, which has been handed over to him by God. In this sense “the brilliance of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. 4.4 [S]) is the brilliance of Christ himself, who enlightens human beings. As the work of the exalted Christ takes place through the gospel, the work of the Holy Spirit takes place simultaneously, by whose power the exalted one is present on earth. The gospel is not a letter but a life-giving spirit. It may be considered a fundamental conviction of Paul, beyond his particular encounter with the congregation in Thessalonica, that “our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1 Thess. 1.5). The gospel is not only a human word but a life-giving action of the Spirit of God. It is the saving “power of God” (Rom. 1.16). Through the gospel, the Holy Spirit works and is bestowed as a gift. In the proclamation of the gospel, the salvific action of God in Christ thus takes place through the Holy Spirit. The expression gospel of God means not only that God is the content of the proclamation, nor does it mean merely that it has its historical origin in him. As certainly as the content and origin of the gospel of God

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is the act that was once and for all completed in Jesus’ death and resurrection, it is also true that through the gospel God is doing to the believer today what he has done once and for all for every human being. He gives what the gospel promises: forgiveness, salvation, justification, adoption, etc. Having once acted through the incarnation of his Son and the outpouring of his Spirit upon humankind, God continues to do so through the word and deeds of those who are sent by his Son and filled with the Holy Spirit. The gospel thus bears witness not only to God’s word and deed, but God speaks and acts through the gospel. In the New Testament statements God’s saving work is so closely tied to the gospel that one can even say that the gospel saves. It not only bears witness to salvation, but it is salvation because it is the instrument of divine saving—just as one can say, “baptism saves” (1 Pet. 3.20f. [S]), because God utilizes it for his saving. The gospel not only proclaims that God has carried out the judgment of the sinner in Jesus, but it takes the sinners out of the judgment under which they had fallen. The gospel not only proclaims that Jesus is the first to be raised from the dead, but it lets the believer share in his resurrection. Because the gospel is utilized by God’s action, one might even speak of it as an active entity independent of the proclaimer. The proclaimer of God’s word might be put in chains, but “the word of God is not chained” (2 Tim. 2.9 [S]). It keeps on going further and bears fruit. The question arises as to how this ever-new, advancing salvific action of God through the gospel and his unique, once-and-for-all accomplished act of salvation in Jesus Christ relate to one another. The problem becomes especially clear when one juxtaposes several Pauline statements that seem to contradict each other. On the one hand, Paul teaches that “…the righteousness that leads to life is given to all people” (Rom. 5.18 [S]). On the other hand, he teaches that “a person is justified by faith (alone)” (3.28 [S]). On the one hand, he teaches that “… one has died for all; therefore all have died” (2 Cor. 5.14). On the other hand, he teaches that through baptism into Christ we have died to sin (Rom. 6.3ff.). People have often been attempted to eliminate these and similar contradictions by watering down the act of salvation that has taken place once and for all, in the sense of treating it as something like a divine offer for all, or as a possibility for justification or dying to sin, which are available to all. The entire weight is then shifted to God’s present salvific action through the gospel and the sacraments. But as surely as the revelation of the righteousness in Christ must be distinguished from justification by faith in Christ, so the statements about the new situation created for all humanity through Jesus’ death and resurrection go beyond the understanding of a mere offer or a mere possibility. The opposite attempt to eliminate the aforementioned contradictions means watering down the present salvific action of God through word and sacrament by a one-sided emphasis on what has taken place once and for all: Since Jesus’ death and resurrection, all human beings have been justified, have died with Christ, and

The Gospel

are transferred into a new life, independently of whether or not they believe in Christ. With this understanding, one can no longer say of the gospel that it saves, only, at best, that it gives the listener knowledge about the salvation that has already been accomplished in Jesus’ death and resurrection. As a final consequence of this shift from an effective to a noetic understanding of the gospel and the sacraments, these are ultimately no longer understood as God’s acts upon human beings but as human acts in relation to God, by which people publicly confess God’s unique historical act of salvation.4 But the consensus of the churches teaches (albeit with varying emphases) both God’s historical, unique, and final act of salvation and his constant salvific action through the gospel and the sacraments. Thus, e. g., the Eastern Church—despite the most robust liturgical statements about the renewal of the whole creation that has already taken place in Jesus’ resurrection—has not at all watered down the active working of God to create anew through baptism. This simultaneous holding fast to both God’s unique act of salvation in the past and his constant saving work in the present is necessary, and it is based on the fact that the same thing that God accomplished once and for all—for all—is brought to each individual through the gospel. God wants to bring every person into that which has happened in the past. God will not rest until his act of salvation is embraced by human beings. In the ever-advancing salvific action of God through the gospel, the unique act of salvation permeates the whole of humanity. God’s unique historical act of salvation is different from his ever-new salvific action, which takes place through the proclamation of this act of salvation in the course of time, but that historical act and God’s present action cannot be separated from each other. They must not be played off against one another, nor watered down at the other’s expense, nor dissolved into the other. Do the New Testament statements about the gospel correspond with the experiences which we have with its proclamation today? Does the gospel demonstrate itself as the power of God? Does not proclamation largely seem to consist of mere words that have no effect? When this complaint arises, one could point out that human beings, in their proclamation, are not lords over the freedom of divine grace. But God wants the salvation of all human beings. So when the proclamation about Christ seems to have no effect, one must first ask if it is really the gospel that is being proclaimed, i. e., the offensive “foolishness” of the word of the cross and the message of his resurrection that contradicts all analogies, and one must ask if the gospel is really being assured to human beings in their concrete despair and arrogance. But we, too, get to be comforted by the promise that the gospel, even if it is not accepted by all who hear it, is never proclaimed in vain, and that it always bears fruit, even if it is only visible at a much later time.

4 So the later Karl Barth, KD, IV/4 (1967). [CD, IV/4.2ff. –Ed.]

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Among the multiplicity of concepts by which the gospel assures human beings of God’s salvific action, the most ecumenically important will be highlighted below. In the various churches, they have not become dominant in the same way. 4. Salvation The gospel is “the power of God to save everyone who believes in it” (Rom. 1.16 [S]). In the New Testament Scriptures, to save [Retten] and salvation [Rettung] are among the most common designations for God’s gracious action in the new covenant. By using the translated term salvation [Heil], salvation has widely been given the significance of an overarching concept under which the various other designations are subsumed, e. g., justification, vivification, and sanctification. God’s saving action also had foundational significance in the old covenant. God had liberated the Israelite tribes from bondage in Egypt, led them through enemy threats into the Promised Land, and continued to support them again and again as their Savior. This salvation had been about keeping and multiplying these tribes in the Promised Land. The gospel, however, proclaims the salvation that will take place on the Lord’s coming day of judgment (1 Cor. 5.5; 2 Cor. 5.10), salvation from the coming wrath of God (Rom. 5.9; 1 Cor. 3.15 et passim). Presupposed here is that human beings have failed to fulfill their purpose and have squandered their life. In the Last Judgment, those who believe in Christ will be taken out of their forsakenness to share in the glory of the exalted Christ. We expect “a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory” (Phil. 3.30f.). Salvation is therefore expected as resurrection and life in the perfected reign of God. “The Lord … will deliver you into his heavenly kingdom” (2 Tim. 4.18 [S]). In contrast to the old covenant, the gospel does not proclaim a salvation for the continuance of life in this world but salvation from the world for life in the new mode of existence of those who will be glorified like Jesus Christ. This salvation is the future that is approaching ever nearer toward us (Rom. 13.11). At the same time, however, this salvation is proclaimed as an event that already takes place in the proclamation of the gospel to the believer. “[S]ee, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Cor. 6.2, referencing Isa. 49.8). This is true already now: You are being saved through the gospel (1 Cor. 15.2). For this reason, salvation can also be spoken of as an event that has already taken place, an event that has taken place in the hearing and accepting of the message about Christ. “For by grace you have been saved by faith” (Eph. 2.8 [S]; cf. v. 5)—you have already been taken out of the divine judgment of wrath and made alive with Christ (cf. 2.3–7). Although the statements about salvation that use the future tense and those that use the perfect tense are weighted differently in the individual writings of the New Testament, both types of statement can be found almost everywhere. Paul, too, proclaimed salvation and

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glorification not only as something future but also as having occurred already: “In hope we are saved” (Rom. 8.24 [SCH]). God has glorified us (v. 30). God thus promises the future salvation through the gospel, and he accomplishes it already now through the gospel for those who accept it in faith. The gospel is therefore more than the mere announcement of future divine saving. It is, at the same time, the bestowal of this future saving in the here and now. That we are saved “in hope” does not deny that we are now already saved; it merely indicates that we do not yet see this and are still waiting for the coming revelation of glory (Rom. 8.24ff.). Salvation thus includes the earthly life of those who believe in Jesus Christ. As the ones who are saved, they wait for salvation, and as the ones who are expecting their salvation, they are saved. The threats and catastrophes of this world no longer have any ultimate power over them. The gospel proclaims Jesus Christ as the basis for salvation. “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4.12). It is true that Jesus’ death and resurrection are presupposed here, but, compared to what is said in the New Testament statements about justification and vivification, fewer details are given about why Jesus Christ is the basis for salvation. Above all, they point to the glory of the risen one who has been exalted to be the Lord. These New Testament statements reflect less about the meaning of the cross for salvation. In contrast to inner-worldly events of salvation, the salvation that the gospel proclaims is once and for all. It is as distinct from the rising and falling of innerworldly salvation as God’s kingdom is from the rising and falling of the world’s kingdoms. To be sure, the Synoptic Gospels also describe Jesus’ healings as salvation, even though their effect was not yet the overcoming of the boundary of death and the transference into eternal life. But in their limitation they nevertheless pointed beyond themselves and were signs of the inbreaking reign of God. In the present ecumenical situation there is much talk of salvation [Heil]. This term is widely understood as a comprehensive designation for all of God’s gracious activity. But in contrast to the New Testament witnesses, this term is increasingly faded and empty, for it is often used in such a way that it is detached from its eschatological reference to the Last Judgment. This detachment from God’s judgment and from the transformation of the human being into the mode of existence of the resurrected Christ, results in understanding salvation as an earthly benefit, and turns it into an inner-worldly ideology. But Jesus Christ, even with his earthly gifts, is at all times also concerned that human beings—who in their tribulations and fears have hardened themselves against God’s love—become open again to fulfilling their purpose, which is to be in community with God. One of the most urgent ecumenical tasks is to fully regain the christological and eschatological context of the proclamation of salvation and to keep in mind that the concept of salvation is not able to encompass the whole of God’s gracious dealings with humankind.

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5. Justification The gospel is the proclamation of the “justification of the ungodly” (Rom. 4.5 [S]). It proclaims the righteousness of God that has appeared in Christ and promises it to those who believe in Jesus Christ. This particular witness to God’s gracious action is found among the New Testament Scriptures only in some of Paul’s letters (especially Gal. and Rom.). Moreover, the righteousness of God is neither solely an attribute of God, nor is it solely his justifying action upon the sinner, nor is it solely the gift of righteousness bestowed upon believers. Each of these meanings is found in the Pauline texts, but the interconnection of these three meanings is crucial. In their unity they bear witness to the dynamic advance of God’s righteousness into the world for the sake of justifying the ungodly. Here God’s righteousness does not stand in opposition to God’s love and mercy. Instead, Paul proclaimed the revelation of God’s righteousness as the revelation of his love and his mercy. With this understanding of God’s righteousness, Paul stood in the tradition of the Old Testament, for Israel had already proclaimed and praised Yahweh’s saving, leading, and preserving faithfulness to its covenant and community as his righteousness. The understanding of Yahweh’s righteousness was so significantly defined by his merciful and supporting action, that his judgments were not described as effects of his righteousness but of his wrath. Of course, after the Northern Kingdom and then Jerusalem had been destroyed, the certainty of divine faithfulness was profoundly shaken. The search for divine righteousness by means of the fulfillment of the law now became predominant. Even where righteousness was expected solely from God’s grace—as, e. g., in the Qumran texts—this expectation was tied to increased efforts at fulfilling the law.[vii] By contrast, Paul taught with great determination that the righteousness of God has now been revealed “apart from the law” (Rom. 3.21 [S]). “[A] person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law” (v. 28 [S]). Moreover, the law is understood here to include not only the Israelite judicial and cultic law but also the Decalogue and the law written into every human heart. The law is not the way of salvation; indeed, it is now recognized as given by God in order to uncover sin and to increase it. Paul did not deny that good works are done by Jews and Gentiles. But God’s law is fulfilled only by the one who fulfills all his commandments. That is why no one may boast before God about their good works. The righteousness of God is only “attained by faith in Jesus Christ” (Rom. 3.22 [S]), for God has given Jesus into death in the place and for the benefit of sinners. Paul bore witness to this with cultic language—probably utilizing an older formula from the community: “God offered him up publicly to make atonement… through his blood” (Rom. 3.25 [S]). But the faith by means of which God’s righteousness is attained, is also based on the message of Jesus’ death as reconciliation (2 Cor. 4.19ff.; Rom. 5.10) and as redemption (Gal. 3.13). In his dying, Jesus Christ suffered the

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judgment into which all human beings had fallen. For our sake God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5.21). “Made him to be sin” also means that he was treated as a sinner. God’s hostility against sin and God’s judgement of the sinner are not minimized by the message of justification. God stands by the validity of his commandments and his threats of judgment against those who transgress them. God’s righteousness, however, is revealed in that he let his Son suffer this hostility and, through him, took upon himself the judgment into which sinners had fallen. As much as the message of justification is the assurance of the word of the cross, so also Jesus’ death and his resurrection are not to be separated in that same message. “God has handed him over for our trespasses and raised him for our justification” (Rom. 4.25 [S]). This is not only true in the sense that the salvific significance of Jesus’ death only became apparent because of his resurrection; rather, the exalted one turns to humankind as the same one who was crucified for them. “He is at the right hand of God and represents us” (Rom. 8.34 [L]). Through the gospel, the exalted one grants participation in his righteousness. The gospel proclaims to those who believe in Jesus Christ that their faith is “reckoned as righteousness” by God (Rom. 4.5f., 9ff., 22ff.). It can also be said that God credits Jesus Christ as righteousness to those who believe in him, for faith as act and as content (fides qua and fides quae creditur) are not distinguished in the Pauline doctrine of justification as they would be in the subsequent history of theology.[viii] Thus in justification a verdict is rendered upon the believer by which God declares the person, the sinner, to be just. While this verdict has a forensic character, it is contrasted with the verdicts of normal jurisprudence in that it does not find any deeds in the person on the basis of which the person should be acquitted. In view of what human beings have in themselves, no acquittal would be legitimate. Instead, the sentence of judgment suffered by Jesus Christ is promised to believers as their acquittal. By faith in Jesus Christ, the ungodly are reckoned before God as pleasing to him. In justification a verdict is rendered upon the ungodly that declares to them something they are not. This verdict, however, not only gives the believers a new designation but also has a decisive influence upon their life. It not only declares them to be just but makes them just. By faith being reckoned as righteousness, the righteousness of God is received by faith. God’s justifying verdict is an active word that creates anew. Justifying faith is faith in the one “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom. 4.17). In this way, the relationship of the justified to God is profoundly changed. “Since we are therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5.1 [S]—the more probable reading).[ix] The “access to this grace” is opened (v. 2). About the justified it can truly be said: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (v. 5). Thus justification

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is not only about the non-reckoning of sins that have been committed but about the liberation from the dominion of sin in order to live a life “in Christ Jesus for God” (Rom. 6.11 [S]). Through the forgiveness of sins already committed, which is included in the assurance of justification, believers also receive renewal. This might help to explain why Paul only rarely makes explicit mention of the forgiveness of sins in his statements about justification. Just as the proclamation of salvation applies not only to the future of believers but also to their present, so the assurance of justification applies not only to the “now” of accepting the gospel but also to their persisting unto the Last Judgment, for Paul ascribes a finality to the justifying verdict that would exclude any further condemnation of the believer. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8.1). “Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us” (Rom. 8.33f.). For the justified, there is no higher authority who could accuse and condemn them than the God who pardons. Although the future final judgment still remains, the acquittal or the condemnation already takes place in the acceptance or rejection of the gospel, i. e., in the decision of faith or unbelief. In this the Pauline and Johannine proclamations encounter each other: “Whoever believes in him (the Son) will not be judged” (Jn. 3.18 [E]). Thus the life of those who believe in Christ is covered and supported by God’s righteousness. The finality of the justifying verdict, however, does not mean that the struggle of believers against sin has already ended. Taken out of the dominion of sin, they remain surrounded by temptations and in danger of becoming once more the servants of sin. But through justification the preconditions for enduring in this struggle are given—above all, in the assurance that the crucified one will stand up for them in the future as well. The Pauline doctrine of justification initially found only a weak resonance in the ancient church, though the debates about the practice of penance might have benefited from its instruction. Only with Ambrose and Augustine did it attain relevance, and since then it has not disappeared from the consciousness of Western Christendom. It attained a fixed place in the doctrine of grace. Of course, it was interpreted rather differently in the various medieval schools of theology, especially with regard to the relationship between nature and grace, human action and divine action. These differences did not create a church division at that time. A solemn dogmatic definition of justification, which would have limited this diversity, did not arise in the Middle Ages. By comparison, the doctrine of justification also played no central role in the Eastern Church in the centuries following the Greek fathers. This reticence saw itself confirmed by the fact that in the West, both in the doctrine of the salvific significance of Jesus’ death and in the discipline of penance, the concept of satisfaction became

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increasingly emphasized. This concept was rejected by the Eastern Church as a specifically Latin legal narrowing. In the course of the sixteenth century, the doctrine of justification ceased to be a matter of theological opinion and was now defined dogmatically. Thus the unity of the Western Church was broken. Of course (as with the debate about the sacrifice of the Mass), this division took place not only because of the differences in doctrine but because of widespread differences in piety and in the liturgical and formal regulation of repentance. The basic text, mandatory for most of the churches of the Reformation to this day, by which justification became known as a doctrine of the churches of the Reformation and not merely of particular Reformers, is Article IV of the Augsburg Confession. It teaches “that we cannot obtain forgiveness of sin and righteousness before God through our merit, work, or satisfactions, but that we receive forgiveness of sin and become righteous before God out of grace for Christ’s sake through faith.”5 This article was not opposed to established dogma, nor was the difference between it and the scholastic opinions that were existing then in the Roman Church any greater than the differences that existed among those scholastic opinions. After the rejection of this confession by Charles V—a decision he made on the basis of the opposing theological opinion, the Confutation—Melanchthon expounded the Reformation doctrine of justification in great detail in the Apology. Of course, in his polemics he primarily had the thendominant Ockhamist-Nominalist school in view, and thus he did not give sufficient attention to supporters of the Augustinian and Thomistic doctrines of justification, who were contemporaries of his as well. Luther’s teachings about justification in the Smalcald Articles (1537) also attained the significance of a confessional text in the churches adhering to the Augsburg Confession.[x] In 1547, in its sixth session, the Council of Trent completed the line of demarcation over against the Reformation doctrine. The interpretation of the canons of this council is complicated by the fact that those doctrinal statements that are condemned are named, but not the persons who were accused of teaching them. Since the Council of Trent as a whole took a position against the Reformation doctrine in particular, Roman Catholic dogmatics, as taught in its schools and seminaries, has generally assumed as a matter of course that, aside from the anti-Pelagian Canons 1–3, nearly all the anathemas are aimed against the churches of the Reformation.6 But this is not true. Here it must be considered that council fathers gave little attention to the difference between the doctrine contained in the confessions of the churches of the Reformation and the statements of individual Reformation theologians, and the latter were known almost entirely from

5 AC 4. [German text. BSELK, 98 (BC, 38, 40). –Ed.] 6 See Denzinger, 1551–1553. [Cf. Tanner, 2.679–681. –Ed.]

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collections of quotations but not from the total context of their writings. There were multiple religious debates between 1530 and the beginning of the Council of Trent, in which both sides drew closer in the doctrine of justification—which was not the case in the doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass. Yet no agreement was achieved. Thus the Augsburg Confession, which was set forth with unusual ecumenical openness and was originally aimed at preserving the unity of church, was understood more and more by both sides as a church-dividing boundary.

When one compares the doctrine of justification of the Reformation confessional writings with that of Trent, the differences appear primarily in the following issues: (a) God’s justifying action upon the sinner; (b) the understanding of faith; (c) the validity of God’s commandments for the justified; (d) the understanding of repentance; (e) the certainty of salvation; (f) the relationship between God’s grace and human action in preparing for justification and after receiving it; and (g) God’s justifying action through the proclamation of the gospel and through the administration of the sacraments. In this section we will initially treat only the first of these issues, since it is specifically about justification, while the other issues are not exclusively topics in the doctrine of justification. They also arise in view of the New Testament witness about the salvation, vivification, and sanctification of the sinner, indeed, in reflection about any type of witness to God’s redemptive action upon the sinner. What happens to sinners when God justifies them? In Canon 11 about justification, the Council of Trent explains: “If anyone says that people are justified either solely by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, or by the forgiveness of sins alone, to the exclusion of grace and love which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Spirit and abides in them; or even that the grace by which we are justified is only the good-will of God: let that person be anathema.”7 This canon has generally been interpreted in Roman Catholic theology as the rejection of the Reformation doctrine of justification. Yet even though the concept of gratia inhaerens [inhering grace] was never adopted by Reformation theology, this decision opposes neither Luther’s teaching on justification nor that of the Augsburg Confession and its Apology, since they too hold that being declared righteous also means being made righteous, and that the non-reckoning of sin also means rebirth.[xi] Thus the Apology of the Augsburg Confession explains that the justification of the sinner “means that out of unrighteous people righteous people are made or regenerated; it also means that they are pronounced or regarded as righteous”—therefore, justification means both being made alive and receiving the forgiveness of sins.8 These statements by

7 Denzinger, 1561. [Trans. modified. Cf. Tanner, 2.679. –Ed.] 8 Apol. IV.72; cf. IV.117 et passim. [BSELK, 298, 316–317 et passim (BC, 132, 139 et passim). –Ed.]

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Melanchthon agree with the answer that Luther gave in the Smalcald Articles to the question, “How does a person become righteous before God?,” namely, “…that ‘through faith’ … we receive a different, new, clean heart and that, for the sake of Christ our Mediator, God will and does regard us as completely righteous and holy.”9 The difference between this Reformation teaching and that of Trent is not that the former understands justification only as a declaration of righteousness, while the latter understands it in addition as a renewal. Rather, the difference is that Trent sees renewal, i. e., grace poured into the heart, as the basis for the forensic justifying verdict. “We each receive righteousness in us according to the measure in which ‘the Holy Spirit bestows to each, as he wills’ (1 Cor. 12.11) …”10 “…[T]he righteousness is called ours because we are justified by the (righteousness) living in us,” which “is poured into us through Christ’s merit.”11 In this way, the forensic verdict is, according to the Reformation understanding, a synthetic judgment, which efficaciously promises sinners the righteousness that they do not possess, while, according to the Tridentine understanding, it is an analytic judgment, which finds that which has already changed in the sinner by grace.[xii] This difference cannot be ignored, but it also must not be overstated. After all, the Reformers frequently drew on Augustine’s teaching about justification. Yet even with him one finds statements of this kind, that justification is bestowed upon those into whose hearts grace has been poured, and that by growing in grace one’s justification also grows.[xiii] For the Reformers, such statements were no reason to distance themselves from Augustine’s teaching about justification. But justification by faith would be called into question if subjective experiences of grace were required as a condition for the justifying verdict. For then, justification would be denied to those who can find in themselves only sin. This, however, is not at all what the Tridentine statements about the outpouring of grace intend. The later Melanchthon, Calvin, and the Formula of Concord, which was finalized in the development of the Lutheran Confessions in the sixteenth century (1580), differentiate between justification and rebirth, much in contrast to Luther and the earlier confessional writings. It was not a question of moving away from Luther and the earlier foundational confessional writings but of making a necessary correction to the teaching about justification by the Lutheran theologian Andreas Osiander, which had triggered many controversies after 1550.[xiv] By speculatively equating the proclaimed word with Jesus Christ, Osiander had grounded the believer’s righteousness in the indwelling of the divine nature of Christ in the believer, but he neglected the forensic aspect of the imputation of God’s righteousness and

9 SA III, art. 13. [BSELK, 776–777 (BC, 325). –Ed.] 10 Denzinger, 1529. [Trans. modified. Cf. Tanner, 2.673. –Ed.] 11 Denzinger, 1547. [Trans. modified. Cf. Tanner, 2.678. –Ed.]

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the forgiveness that results from the imputation of Christ’s death, which is indispensable on the basis of the Pauline doctrine of justification. In contrast to this one-sidedly analytic understanding of justification, which stresses its efficacy, later Lutheran and Reformed theologians differentiated between justification and renewal. In particular, this differentiation led to greater precision in the use of terms, by which the same salvific action was taught from two different perspectives, but it did not separate God’s justifying and renewing action.12 This is merely one of the controversial issues in the doctrine of justification. The others will be discussed in the context of the entire doctrine of God’s assurance and claim. The understanding of faith (issue “b” above): in connection with the manifold witnesses to God’s salvific action under the heading “The Call to Faith” (A.9). The relationship between God’s justifying action and the validity of his commandments (issue “c”): in the sequence of the doctrine of the gospel as assurance (Part A) and the doctrine of the exhortation of the gospel, the new commandment (Part B). The understanding of repentance as the conclusion of the doctrine of the new obedience (issue “d”): under the heading “The Call to Repentance” (B.9). From the unity of repentance and faith follows (issue “e”) the uniqueness of being certain of salvation. The relationship between God’s grace and human action (issue “f ”) will then be discussed in a summarizing addendum to this chapter, while the relationship between word and sacrament as means of God’s justifying action (issue “g”) will be discussed after the doctrine of the sacraments.

6. Vivification The gospel proclaims the life that has appeared in Jesus Christ, and it gives new life to those who believe in Jesus Christ. In Israel, too, there was an awareness of the connection between sin and death, as well as between the forgiveness of sins and life. Sudden death was regarded as God’s judgment upon the sinner, while long life was considered a divine acknowledgment of the righteous. This understanding was not only about earthly life as such but also about life in the praise of God, for it was known that God was not praised in the realm of the dead (cf. above 259ff.). By contrast, the life proclaimed by the gospel is no extension of earthly life, but a new life, namely, the participation in the new way of being of the resurrected Jesus. Vivification is about the whole human being, including the body, yet not the preservation of this earthly body, but rather its transformation into the likeness of the glorified Christ, who has overcome the world defined by transience and its spatial-temporal structures. This vivifying action of God upon human beings thus has its basis in Jesus’ resurrection from death and therefore in the appearance of Jesus, who is life. Just as Jesus’ death is not the basis of the justification of sinners

12 On this point, cf. FC SD III. [BSELK, 1388–1415 (BC, 562–573). –Ed.]

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apart from his resurrection, so also Jesus’ resurrection is not the basis of vivification apart from his death. Since we have been united with Christ’s death in baptism, we will also be united with his resurrection (Rom. 6.4ff.). Thus the certainty of the future new life is opened up for the believers in their earthly life. They have “new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet. 1.3). However, the new life that the message about Christ promises to believers does not only consist of hope. Vivification takes place already now. It was in this sense that Paul spoke not only of the future new creation but also of it as a present reality: “So if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creature; the old is past; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5.17 [S]). It was in this sense, too, that the letter to the Colossians, in contrast to the letter to the Romans, not only spoke of the future resurrection of those who have died with Christ, but it proclaimed that “when you died with him in baptism, you were also raised with him by faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col. 2.12 [S]). The believer, therefore, lives in this world with the expectation of the resurrection and as one already risen, with the expectation of the new creation and as a new creature. This mystery of the “not yet” and “already now” defines the life of believers. Their new life is not yet revealed; for now, it is “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3.3), and yet it is already a present reality. The worldly sufferings of believers are not thereby removed, but they are transformed. They are now sufferings in which the power of the risen Lord is present, who bears those who suffer and manifests himself in the world through them. The new life is already a reality, even if death is still in front of us, for sin, the “sting of death,” is removed (1 Cor. 15.56), and death is transformed. Indeed, death already belongs to the past, even though it is still coming, for believers are given into Jesus’ death in baptism and have died with him. Death is forever behind them. One day, however, when the earthly life that is now visible will have passed, the reality of the new life that is now hidden will become visible. The New Testament statements about vivification are aimed at the future resurrection, at the transformation of this earthly life into the mode of existence of the risen Christ, at the eternal community with him and the glorified people of God of all times, at the joint vision of God, and the joint glorification of God. In other words, they are aimed at the parousia of Jesus Christ. This orientation is so definitive in the New Testament Scriptures that one finds in them only passing references that are not at all consistent with respect to the condition of believers between their death and their future resurrection. For instance, Paul expected to “be with Christ” (Phil. 1.23 [SCH]) when he departed this world, even before the parousia. When people think of death today, they largely think only about dying. But both the Old and the New Testament’s expectations go beyond the process of dying, to the existence of those who have died—which is a lasting condition, one that no human being can avoid.

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The vivification proclaimed and promised by the gospel is also frequently narrowed in modern Western theology to have only an ethical meaning, and so instead of the renewal of the whole person, it is applied specifically to the behavior commanded in the new obedience. Yet even this imperative fades away here, for it is grounded in the promised new creation of the whole human being that is already dawning. As surely as new action must follow from the vivification, so surely is it connected with God’s ultimate victory over death. In the Eastern Church’s understanding of the new life, which is more strongly determined by the new creation that has already taken place in Jesus’ resurrection, the problem of a purgatory between death and resurrection could never have played the role it has had in the pre- and counter-Reformation Roman Church. 7. Sanctification The gospel proclaims that God sanctifies sinners, and it addresses believers as saints. Sanctification, too, is God’s action. It is bestowed on believers by grace, without their merit. That they should strive for their sanctification presupposes that God has sanctified them. Israel encountered God’s holiness again and again in deadly horror as their sin was exposed, for although it had been chosen by Yahweh as his own possession, and subjected to his commandment, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19.2), Israel’s history had become a history of transgressions and divine judgments. Efforts on the part of the post-exilic community sought sanctification by strictly insulating the community from foreign cults and by transferring the temple and sacrifices, the priests, and the whole nation to God’s exclusive disposal. Yet all of this, including the post-exilic concentration of sacrificial ritual into sacrifices of atonement, did not by and large bring about the renewed fulfillment of the promises that had once been given to Israel. Only on rare occasions in the old covenant were love (Hosea) and redemptive action (Deutero-Isaiah) proclaimed as expressions of God’s holiness. By contrast, God’s sanctifying action in the new covenant grasps human beings, not only by accepting them as his own but by transforming them and awakening in them a new urge to sanctify themselves. Of course, the New Testament Scriptures also use cultic terminology to bear witness to sanctification. One hears it, e. g., in the words of the High Priestly Prayer of Christ before his death: “And for their (the disciples’) sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth” (Jn. 17.19 [E]). It is clearly visible in the letter to the Hebrews: he, the Son, who was made “perfect through sufferings” is “the one who sanctifies” (Heb. 2.10f.). He who “offered himself without blemish to God” is able to “purify our conscience” by his blood “to worship the living God” (9.14). “And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (10.10; cf.

The Gospel

v. 14). Because God delivered his son into death, the Old Testament cultus is now finished, and from all nations those who believe in Christ are “the saints.” This sanctification is at the same time attested to as the work of the Holy Spirit. God’s Spirit had been active before in individual members of the ancient people of Israel, especially in the prophets. But now the Spirit is poured out on all who believe in Jesus Christ. The Spirit is also active in the saving glorification, in the justification, and in the vivification that are proclaimed and assured by the gospel. Through the Spirit, believers receive the glory, righteousness, and life of Jesus Christ. But the work of the Holy Spirit is most clearly attested to in the New Testament statements about sanctification. Through the Spirit’s sanctifying work, believers are brought into the holiness of God the Father and of Jesus Christ and permeated by it. Being “sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1.2) and “sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15.16) belong together. By sanctifying sinners, God brings about their separation from the world, their purification, their acceptance as his own possession, and their empowerment for servant ministry. Believers in Jesus Christ are not merely declared holy; rather, they are grasped by God’s holiness. This is true of all believers, not merely those individuals who are granted special charismata or appointed to special church offices.[xv] All are sanctified, everyone is “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 6.19). Sanctification is about putting human beings into service, in which God encounters them not with an unfulfillable demand but as the New Creator, who gives them the joy of being able to serve him at the same time as they separate from the world. The New Testament statements about sanctification are also future-oriented, although they do not speak of the Last Judgment and the resurrection with the same explicitness that is found in the statements about salvation, justification, and vivification. But believers have finally and completely become God’s own possession through sanctification. This becomes especially clear when sanctification is considered in connection with baptism (e. g., 1 Cor. 6.11). Sanctification is a foundational event that defines the entire remainder of one’s life. The sanctified are prepared by God to offer themselves again and again to him as “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom. 12.1; cf. 15.16). Sanctification received from God urges lifelong sanctification for God. But the future dimension of sanctification does not consist primarily in the imperative but in the promise of faithfulness made by the sanctifying God, who never ceases to fulfill the work begun in Christ upon believers through the action of the Holy Spirit. The sanctified are thus promised that they will one day judge humanity (1 Cor. 6.2) and will praise God’s glory together with the glorified saints of all times (Rev. 7.9ff.). In all churches, sanctification is taught as God’s sanctifying action in sinners. In the Western Church it is most often treated within the doctrine of justification. In some parts of contemporary Protestantism, it is distinguished from justification. It is subordinated to the latter as the new obedience that is commanded to

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the justified person. Yet, just like justification, sanctification is above all the fundamental gracious action of God upon believers, which makes possible the new obedience. In the liturgy and doctrine of the Eastern Church, this gracious action, in its particularity, is given more prominence than justification. Here, too, there was a greater awareness of sanctification as an effect of the Holy Spirit than had become customary in Western scholasticism as a result of the preference that the latter gave to grace and because of its systematization of the various kinds of grace. 8. The Transformation into God’s Image Through salvation, justification, vivification, and sanctification, God brings about a correspondence [Entsprechung] between believers and Jesus Christ. God makes them similar to the just and holy one, whom he had saved and awakened to new life. They are transferred into community with him. They are accepted as children of God and have therefore become “brothers and sisters” of Jesus Christ. This correspondence has its basis not in us but in Jesus Christ, the just and holy one. It, too, has its basis in the fact that God has made him to be salvation, righteousness, life, and holiness for humanity. The correspondence is irreversible in its foundation. We have become God’s children through him, the one Son who has loved us and continues to love us. But Jesus did not become God’s Son through our acknowledgment of him; rather, he is the eternal Son of God who became human. He is the “only-begotten Son” who is of one essence [Wesen] with the Father (filius dei natura [the Son of God by nature]). We, however, are creatures and enemies, whom God has accepted as children (filii dei adoption [lit. sons of God by adoption]) for the sake of Jesus Christ. The correspondence between believers and Christ also means the correspondence between them and God, for in Jesus Christ God’s glory, righteousness, life, and holiness have been revealed. The eternal unity of God the Father and the Son is the basis for the correspondence between believers and God. This correspondence is realized in human beings through the Holy Spirit, who opens us for Jesus Christ and gives us, already now, a share in the fulfillment proclaimed through the gospel. Although we are still waiting to become God’s children, he already lets us cry out together with Jesus: “Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8.15). Although “what we will be has not yet been revealed,” we are already God’s children (1 Jn. 3.2 [S]). Thus God realizes in Jesus Christ the purpose that he had given to the human being from the beginning, the intended purpose of being in God’s image. Though humanity fell short of this purpose, God has held fast to it. He has shown it to all human beings through his self-witnessing as the Creator and through the command of the Preserver written on their hearts. He showed it to Israel through the promises and the law of the old covenant. Although human beings withdrew from this

The Gospel

purpose again and again, God sent his Son so that, as the incarnate one, he might fulfill the original purpose of humanity to be in God’s image: in love toward God, in community with human beings, in dominion over the non-human creation, and in the reception of eternal life. This fulfillment of humanity’s purpose does not mean that Jesus had become God’s image merely through his obedience. Just as he was already God’s Son before the incarnation, indeed, before the creation of the world, he was already God’s image before all that, and thereby the primordial image, on the basis of which and toward which God created the human being. This eternal image, who is one with God the Father, became flesh in Jesus in order to fulfill, under the conditions of human existence, the purpose that humanity had failed to fulfill. The gospel proclaims the transformation of believers into the image of Christ (1 Cor. 15.49; 2 Cor. 3.18; Rom. 8.23). It is the transformation into the image of God. According to the New Testament witnesses, this takes places in a mediated fashion, namely, through transformation into the image of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Cor. 4.4 and Col. 1.15). The gospel declares to believers their bearing the image of God for Christ’s sake: Because Jesus Christ is holy, you are holy, as God is holy. Because Jesus Christ is just, you are justified. Because he lives, you may live. Because he is the splendor of God’s glory, we reflect his glory (2 Cor. 3.18). This transformation is carried out on the whole person. It pertains not only to human beings’ knowledge and action but also to their embodiment: “We will bear the image of the heavenly human being” (1 Cor. 15.49 [S]), i. e., we will rise in the likeness of the transfigured risen body of Christ; we will rise with a spiritual body (v. 44). The completion of this transformation therefore lies in the future. It is a process that takes place through the ever-new “putting on of the new human being” (Eph. 4.24 [S]) and the ever-new turning away from sin (Col. 3.5ff.). This process is often painful, and it proceeds through dying. But the transformation does not remain uncertain. “What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him” (1 Jn. 3.2, whereby here Christlikeness and Godlikeness cannot be distinguished). The New Testament statements about the acceptance of sinners as God’s children, and the statements about the transformation of sinners into Christ and therefore into God’s image, provide access to understanding the concept of the deification (θεοποίησις [theopoiēsis]) of the human being, a term that does not appear in the New Testament Scriptures. The Greek church fathers (but not only them) used it to describe God’s salvific action in a comprehensive way. To this day, this concept occupies a central position in the Orthodox Church, while it became more and more foreign to Western theology and was eventually avoided altogether, due to its supposed abolition of the distinction between God and humans. However, the fathers never taught that human beings will be like God (hence the temptation by the snake in paradise, Gen. 3.5), nor that the person of the human merges into

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the Godhead. Just as the fathers distinguished between Jesus Christ, the only Son who is one with the Father (and in this sense, the Son of God “by nature”), and believers, who are the adopted children of God, so they likewise distinguished between God and deified humans. The word theopoiesis itself already excludes the possibility that human beings could become gods in the same sense as God. After all, God is not made by anyone. Human beings, however, are deified by his action. When immortality is specially highlighted as the effect of deification, there still remains this difference, namely, that God is immortal as the Eternal One, who is without beginning, while human beings have their origin within time. They receive immortality from the one who alone is immortal from eternity. This reception has fundamentally taken place in the incarnation of God. Corresponding to the Pauline statements about the exchange between the rich one and us poor ones (2 Cor. 8.9), the church fathers again and again taught with bold consistency that God (i. e., the divine Logos, the Son who is of one being with God) became human so that we humans might become deified. Deification takes place by the indwelling of Christ in believers through the Holy Spirit and is completed by the resurrection from the dead. The doctrine of deification includes not only what Christ has done for us, and what kind of future he has opened for us, but also that he lives in believers through the Holy Spirit and that they live in him. Furthermore, since Christ is one with God the Father, and since God has entered into humanity through the Son, life in Christ is at the same time life in God. Deification happens when believers are taken into the eternal trinitarian life of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. When we consider the preceding sections (4–8), it becomes clear that the ways of promising and assuring the divine salvific action through the gospel are quite diverse. Indeed, they are even more manifold than has been addressed here, for we are restricting ourselves to those New Testament statements that have special dogmatic significance and that are especially important for the mutual relationship between the churches. After all, the same New Testament term has not become an overarching dogmatic concept in every church, and such differences have contributed to the development of church schisms. Nevertheless, despite such significant differences, the statements share the same basic structure: (a) In every instance, there is the awareness of the sin and judgment into which humans have fallen, as well as their inability to free themselves from the dominion of sin and death. Even if the churches’ statements about the freedom and the unfreedom of the will of sinners diverge in their dogmatic reflection, all Christians are certain, in the act of confessing sin, that they cannot remove their guilt on their own and are in need of God’s grace. (b) What sinners cannot do, God has done in Jesus Christ, and he does this through the gospel. In the various statements about God’s salvific action, how this action is grounded in the person and history of Jesus does not take place in the

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same way everywhere. Some emphasize his death more, some his resurrection, while some emphasize the incarnation or the parousia. Yet all the christological groundings attest that God’s salvific action in Christ takes place by grace alone and that human beings have no entitlement to God’s redeeming action. (c) All forms of the assurance of grace through the gospel contain the forgiveness of sins, but it is not explicitly mentioned in every one of these attestations. As immeasurably great as the gift of forgiveness is, the gospel brings about not only the removal of past transgressions and the erasure of old guilt but also the renewal of the sinner, the opening up of eternal life and eternal glory, the transformation into God’s image, and deification [Vergöttlichung]. (d) Even if the Holy Spirit is not always explicitly mentioned in the various ways in which God’s action of redemption through the gospel is assured, the Spirit’s work is always presupposed. It is through God’s Spirit that justification, vivification, sanctification, the Abba-call of God’s children, and deification take place. (e) Within these various forms of assurance, salvation is at times proclaimed more as a future eschatological divine action and sometimes more as one that is already taking place in the present, but the present and the future always belong together. The same salvation that is presently hidden now will one day be revealed. The promise of salvation always encompasses the whole life of the believer, from the present moment of hearing the gospel up to and including the future consummation. Differences do arise, of course, insofar as sometimes what gets emphasized more is the fundamental beginning of the work of grace through the acceptance of the gospel and the reception of baptism, while at other times what gets emphasized is the ever-new work of grace that is ongoing in believers. But as certainly as the original liberation and renewal of sinners define their entire future life, so that one might speak of being brought into the state of grace, nevertheless one’s standing in grace takes place in the ever-new reception of grace, and the reborn remain dependent on God’s renewal “day by day” (2 Cor. 4.16). Again and again they must hear the exhortation: “be transformed by the renewing of your minds” (Rom. 12.2; Eph. 4.23). Dying with Christ in baptism is followed by daily dying with him until the end of one’s earthly life. Even though these various attestations of salvation through the gospel reveal a common basic structure, they are not identical. None of these attestations can express the whole on its own or replace the others. Even if in the doctrine and piety of the various churches certain of these concepts have special weight, they still need the other concepts alongside them. Therefore, the overarching dogmatic concepts used in the various churches should complement one another through their diverse witness to grace.

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9. The Call to Faith Whenever the gospel is proclaimed there is always at the same time a call to accept the gospel and thus to believe in Jesus Christ. This is true no matter in what form it assures God’s salvific action for the sinner, as deliverance, as justification, as vivification, as sanctification, or in one of the many other attestations. With every such assurance the call to faith goes out: The gospel calls upon all human beings to accept God’s act of salvation in Christ as having been done for them and as God’s present action upon them. The gospel calls us to trust that, with this assurance, God comprehends the future of the believer and will bring the saving action that has begun in the believer to its consummation. The gospel calls all human beings to join with all the believers—in confession of faith, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper—in acknowledging together the proclamation of Jesus’ death and resurrection as the true message of God’s final act of salvation. Of course, this call to faith is, in many ways, a challenge and an imposition. The acceptance of the gospel goes against what is clearly evident: while the death of Jesus on the cross is historically proven, the salvific significance of this death is not, for it was revealed through the appearances of the risen one. But the message of Jesus’ resurrection is a testimony that contradicts the experiences that human beings otherwise have of death. Another obstacle to the acceptance of the gospel is that the New Testament message proclaims not only God’s love toward the sinner but also God’s wrath on account of sin. Indeed, it proclaims Jesus Christ not only as Savior but also as the coming Judge of the world, namely, the Judge of unbelievers and believers. Not only does the justification of the sinner take place through the gospel, but Paul also announced that judgment is a divine action, one that takes place “according to my gospel through Jesus Christ” (Rom. 2.16 [E]). The continuing progress of world history, with all of its injustices and cruelties and the many incomprehensible fates of individuals and entire peoples, again and again seems irreconcilable with the omnipotence of divine love. After all, faith confesses the Creator without whose preservation and governance nothing takes place. Both the outrage at God’s action in history and the indifference over these events turn against the call to faith. The acceptance of the gospel, however, is completely opposed to the matter-offact way in which we trivialize and deny our sins. Instead of confessing our guilt before God, we accuse him. Instead of agreeing with him as the Judge, we make ourselves judge over his actions. The call to faith requires us to drop the moral concepts that we hold against God and that help us to evade acknowledging our guilt.

The Gospel

The call to faith is therefore always at the same time the requirement to rethink, to depart from the ways in which we are accustomed to think and act, and to refuse to accuse God because of the injustice and suffering that befall us. The call to faith always includes at the same time the call to recognize and confess one’s own corruption, and so it is thus a call to repentance. The acceptance of the message of Jesus Christ is always at the same time the acknowledgment of one’s own lostness. Faith is inseparable from the recognition of sin and the remorse for it. The call to faith is also a demand [Zumutung] and a challenge to those who recognize their sin and acknowledge that they deserve God’s judgment—albeit an imposition of a very different kind: namely, not to have our focus stuck on the sight of our own mistakes and the threat of God’s judgment but to avert our eyes away from that which we notice about ourselves, and which we know we have deserved through our sins, and to direct our gaze toward the Christ who was crucified for us, to take hold of him in faith, and to cling to him. There is indeed a sin of despairing about oneself, through which human beings can barricade themselves against the assurance of the gospel and deny God’s goodness. For people like this, the demand for faith in the gospel consists in the incomprehensibility of the love with which God tends to those who are his enemies. Paul repeatedly spoke of faith in the gospel as the “obedience of faith” (e. g., Rom. 1.5). Indeed, it is a matter of a decision by the person, of recognizing, appropriating, and trusting, of admitting one’s sins and regretting, and of daring to leap over that which lies before one’s eyes into the arms of divine mercy. The decision for faith is always a personal decision, which is supported by the community of believers, but which no person can do for you. It is the most personal decision a human being can ever make. And yet faith is not our action. It is the reception of the divine act of salvation upon us. Faith is not our decision for God but the discovery that God has made the decision to choose us. Faith is not our taking hold of God but the discovery that God in Christ has taken hold of us. Even though the gospel, as a call to repentance and to faith, causes a battle within us and makes us struggle for faith, ultimately faith is solely an act of reception. We cannot boast about our battle but only about the battle that Christ has fought for us. But even this act of reception is not the work of a human being, even though humans are the ones who are doing the receiving. Not only that which faith receives but also the reception of faith is God’s work. The gospel is “the power of God”—a message of God’s accomplished salvific act and of God’s present salvific work in the power of the Holy Spirit. God opens up sinners who are curved in on themselves and he enlightens their darkness through his Spirit. However hard people have had to struggle for faith, they will always confess that faith was given to them as a gift. “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through

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the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith….”13 Accepting the truth of the gospel, appropriating it, and trusting in the abiding faithfulness of God are at the same time the recognition of one’s inability and of the impossibility of liberating oneself by one’s own power from the captivity of sin and death. Therefore, faith finds salvation, not beyond the offenses that the gospel presents but precisely in their midst. Faith recognizes the death of Jesus Christ as the death of our sin and our death, and it recognizes the lack of an analogy to his resurrection as the beginning of the new creation. In the contradiction between assurance and claim, acquittal and judgment, it recognizes the manner in which God draws us toward himself and transforms us into his likeness. It recognizes in the continuance of world history, not God’s impotence but the might of his patience and the comprehensive breadth of his loving desire to save all people. In the radicality with which God exposes and judges our hostility against him, faith discovers the love of God, who desires to make us his friends. The earthly Jesus already called for the kind of faith that trusts and expects everything from God. He praised faith precisely where, against all appearances, it dared to ask and to keep on pleading, like the faith of the Canaanite woman, who actually had no right to ask for help, or the faith of the Roman centurion, who expected help to come from just a single word out of Jesus’ mouth. Jesus called the hopeless and those marked by sin and illness to have faith, and he awakened their faith. The call to faith is more an invitation than a demand [Forderung]. The statements in this section were defined by the gospel’s call to faith. They were not intended to give a psychological description of faith but an elaboration of the invitation that meets human beings in the call to faith, defined by the content of the gospel. This is not to deny that there are significant differences in the psychological process of faith’s origin, development, and experience. Thus, e. g., to one person the gospel might suddenly become obvious and inescapably convincing, while some come to faith only after prolonged struggle with the contradictions between their own previous understanding and the gospel. Thus, for some people, faith might come about primarily through a new existential insight, for others, primarily through a new existential orientation of the will, for still others, through the development of a new mental disposition. Moreover, for some people the development of faith might go hand in hand with extraordinary experiences of joy and peace, yet for others only in the overpowering certainty of the truth of the gospel. Here one must not overlook that many such differences have had an impact on the dogmatic definitions of faith, e. g., in the Tridentine rejection of the Reformation’s

13 Luther, SC (Explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed). [BSELK, 872–873 (BC, 355). –Ed.]

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understanding of faith as trust14 or in Lutheran Orthodoxy’s rejection of Pietist conversion experiences. Even in recent spiritual-awakening movements and charismatic groups, which also came alive in the Roman Catholic Church, many tensions have arisen over the difference of experience. Likewise, in the medieval Greek Orthodox Church, the debate about the hesychastic experience of the uncreated light endangered church unity.[xvi] If one investigates these differences more closely, it becomes clear that they are not based on differences regarding the message about Christ, but that their origin is rather more complex. Certainly, one must acknowledge here the freedom of God’s gracious action. Undoubtedly, one must also consider the anthropological circumstances that have an impact on divergences in the process of coming to faith—be they the circumstances of belonging to a certain cultural environment, or those regarding the particularity of one’s personal biography, or be they the varying basic structures of a human being’s psychosomatic constitution. Thus, e. g., there are very different basic forms of existence awareness, as well as of self-object awareness (cf. 138f.). Since faith is about the most personal of human decisions, namely, the acknowledging, appropriating, and trusting commitment of the whole human being, it is inevitable that this commitment takes place within the basic forms of existence awareness and self-object awareness that belong to the constitution of the individual in question, even if they are changed by the gospel and the believer in Christ receives a new existence. An ecumenical dogmatics must therefore be restrained in its descriptive statements about the act of faith. Since faith itself essentially takes place in a human being’s turning away from the self and turning toward Christ, dogmatic statements about faith must be primarily statements about the Christ proclaimed by the gospel, not about psychological descriptions of faith. At the same time, dogmatics will not deny that the development of faith can be connected to various experiences of joy, peace, even ecstasy, and that faith can be expressed in various forms of thanksgiving, rejoicing, and even dancing. God is richly generous to delight believers in a multitude of ways. Yet such experiences and expressions cannot claim a normative significance for the recognition of true Christian faith. If one attempted to interpret the statements in the sections above about justification, vivification, sanctification, and deification as psychological statements about the transformation that is perceptible in human beings, the inevitable objection would be that many of these statements sound unrealistic, exaggerated, or triumphalistic. After all, through individual sober self-examination, all Christians would notice in themselves further sins, despite justification; some of the old, despite renewal; and plenty that is all-toohuman, despite deification. All the aforementioned statements about the salvific action of God in human beings are concerned with faith statements, which the

14 De justificatione, canon 12. [Denzinger, 1562; Tanner, 2.679. –Ed.]

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gospel encourages, despite the counter evidence that we see. By faith in the gospel, a new existence is opened up for us again and again, which (without downplaying visible reality) Paul expressed through dialectical statements about existence “as dying, and see, we live… as sorrowful, and yet always rejoicing… as having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Cor. 6.9f. [S]).

B. Exhortation 1. The New Commandment Just as people encountered God’s assurance [Zusage] and demand [Forderung] in the old covenant, so this also takes place in the new covenant. Yet just as the New Testament gospel is differentiated from the Old Testament promise, so also the New Testament commandment is differentiated from the Old Testament law. It is a new commandment. Jesus interpreted the Old Testament law by requiring something new from human beings, and he did so not only in opposition to the Jewish understanding of the law at that time. He also contradicted the old Mosaic traditions. Thus, in his interpretation of the command to love, he broke through the boundaries of his own people by requiring even the love of one’s enemies. In his interpretation of the Ten Commandments, he undertook an unheard-of radicalization of its demand. Against the Mosaic law, e. g., he forbade divorce, repeatedly flouted the commandments about the sabbath, fasting, and ritual purity, and he even encouraged his disciples to do the same. Early Christian proclamation continued to pass on Jesus’ requirements as normative. The newness of his interpretation of the law became fully evident when Paul continued on the way of Jesus by asserting, in hard-fought intra-church battles, the fundamental freedom of Gentile Christians from Jewish cultic law, as well as the basic unity of Gentile and Jewish Christians. However, the newness of the New Testament demand not only consists of new content, but it also has a new basis. After all, Jesus not only interpreted the law in a new way, but he also took the law’s curse against sinners upon himself and suffered the law’s judgment on a cross—the judgment into which all people, Jews and Gentiles, had fallen. The New Testament commandment is based in the new covenant that God established in place of the old through the death of Jesus. “Christ is the end of the law” (Rom. 10.4). Believers in Christ are no longer servants of sin but children of God and brothers and sisters of Christ. The righteousness, holiness, and life of Jesus Christ have become their own. Christ lives in them, and they live in him. The newness of the New Testament requirements does not call into question that there is also a continuity between the Old and New Testament commandments.

Exhortation

It is the same God who established first the old and then the new covenant. He had liberated Israel from bondage in Egypt through Moses, and now he liberates the believers from the bondage of sin and death through Christ. The same God gave the Old Testament law and the new commandment to humanity. This identity of the commanding God is also expressed through the identity of that which is commanded, which has endured despite the differing content between the Old and New Testament requirements. Paul thus admonished the Roman congregation with words from the Decalogue (Rom. 13.9), and 1 John calls the commandment to love both “a new commandment” and “the old commandment” (1 Jn. 2.7f.). Though the Old Testament’s ceremonial and judicial law is set aside for Gentile Christian congregations, it is impossible to deny that fundamental requirements in the Old Testament, regarding one’s behavior toward God and neighbor, return in the New Testament exhortations. Despite such continuity in terms of content, the New Testament imperatives rarely make explicit reference to the authority and wording of the Old Testament law. Their content is defined above all by the teachings, work, and suffering of Jesus Christ and by the new life of believers in Christ. In this sense, the New Testament letters highlight the newness of the commanded obedience. In keeping with the newness of this commandment, the Decalogue barely played a role in the catechetical instruction of the ancient church, although it had a uniquely prominent role within the Old Testament law, and its content was largely retained in the New Testament exhortations. Although in the ancient church Justin mentioned the Decalogue multiple times, as the natural moral law given to all human beings, this does not mean that catechetical instruction would have consisted of the interpretation of the Decalogue.[xvii] The fixed parts of catechesis were initially the confession of faith and the Lord’s Prayer. For the sake of ethical behavior, other elements were added (but without a consistent attachment to one specific text), such as the interpretation of the twofold commandment to love, or the beatitudes, or also the virtues of “faith, love, and hope,” or the seven gifts of the Spirit according to Isaiah 11. Only in connection with medieval penitential practices did the Decalogue become a major topic of catechesis, and it has remained as such to this day in the catechisms of the Reformation. Here it should be noted that the catechetical text of the Decalogue differs from the text in the Old Testament, and not only in Luther’s catechisms. The most important differences are the fact that the catechisms lack God’s selfdesignation as the Redeemer from Egypt (this statement has been replaced by the creed, namely, the confession of redemption through Jesus Christ), and they lack a prohibition against images, for God became human in Jesus Christ and thus has entered into the realm of visibility.

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2. The Comforting Exhortation Just as God’s salvific action through the gospel is witnessed in the New Testament Scriptures through manifold concepts, so also is the new commandment. This is not only true about its many individual requirements but also about the descriptions of its total claim, which encompasses the individual requirements. Indeed, in the demand [Anspruch] of the new commandment we encounter the same concepts by which the salvific action of God was proclaimed through the gospel: While the gospel proclaims the salvation of the lost by faith in Jesus Christ, it is now required of believers: “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2.12). To the assurance of salvation by God’s grace is now added the demand [Forderung] that human beings be involved in their own salvation. While the gospel proclaims the justification of sinners by faith and therefore their acquittal in the Last Judgment, it is now required of believers that they place themselves at the service of righteousness (cf., e. g., Rom. 6.19) in order to be acquitted in the future judgment. The justified hears the cry: “Pursue righteousness” (1 Tim. 6.11). If believers have died to sin through the gospel and have been transferred into a new life, they are now admonished to walk in this new life so that they might partake in the future resurrection (Rom. 6.3–5). Indeed, the one who already rose with Christ in baptism (Col. 2.13; 3.1) is now encouraged, by the mortification of their earthly members and their evil desires, to seek the life that is hidden with Christ in God and to expect his future appearance (3.3f.). It is similar with the exhortation to sanctification. Believers, as those sanctified, are admonished: “Pursue holiness without which no one will see God” (Heb. 12.14 [S]). Accepted as the children of God, we must now live as such and “wait to be adopted as children” (Rom. 8.23 [S]). Transferred into Christ, we must walk in him and toward him. Many of these exhortations were also uttered in the form of warnings and prohibitions (e. g., Rom. 6.13). Thus the believer hears the cry: “Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness?” (2 Cor. 6.14). This is both the calling to live a new life and the prohibition against being in charge of one’s own life and once more giving room to sinful desires. Rather, sin must be mortified. One must “daily drown the old Adam.”15 Hence, the encouragement to pursue sanctification includes the prohibition against giving up the inheritance of the firstborn through fornication and libertinism (Heb. 12.16). The children of God are forbidden to revert once more to the attitude of slaves be-

15 Luther, SC (Baptism). [BSELK, 884 (BC, 360). –Ed.]

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fore God. Yet, despite many such warnings and prohibitions, the main emphasis of the New Testament exhortations rests not on them but on the positive instructions. Of course, this takes place in a very specific way. They are appeals to reach the ultimate decisiveness, salvation, acquittal, life, and to be engaged in the most intensive kind of human commitment. Thus there is a call that one’s whole life be “presented to God as a living, holy, and pleasing sacrifice” (Rom. 12.1). There is a call to run toward the goal of salvation, to pursue, to wrestle, to struggle, and to endure until victory. These imperatives receive their utmost urgency when, on multiple occasions, they add that which verdict you receive in the Last Judgment, and whether you will receive the prize of eternal life, depends on this commitment to keep running and struggling. Not uncommonly, obedience to the exhortations is required as a condition for salvation, and salvation is announced as the reward for the struggle. While the gospel declares the sinner righteous by faith, the exhortation states: “Everyone who does what is right is righteous” (1 Jn. 3.7). While the acquittal of believers in the Last Judgment takes place by justification, the exhortation presents them with a final judgment according to their works. Though God has transferred the sinner into new life by baptism, he requires that the baptized struggle, that they might attain “the crown of life.”16 Is the assurance of the gospel not canceled by the exhortation? Do not demand and assurance contradict one another? This would be the case if the imperative stood immediately next to the assurance of the gospel. But God’s salvific act through the gospel is the basis for the imperative. God requires nothing of believers that he has not already given them. The exhortation to achieve salvation presupposes the salvation announced and given to the one believing in Christ. The exhortation to place oneself along with all of one’s members at the disposal of righteousness presupposes what has taken place in baptism: “Our old human being has been crucified with Christ” (Rom. 6.6 [S]). Thus one is snatched from the dominion of sin. Likewise, the calls to pursue sanctification and to take hold of eternal life presuppose that believers are already sanctified by baptism and transferred into a new life, yes, are already raised from the dead. Because we have died to sin with Christ, we must henceforth no longer serve sin. Because we have received new life in Christ, we must walk in a new life. The presupposition of this struggle against sin, which seeks to establish its dominion over the liberated once more, is therefore the victory which Christ has gained over sin and into which he has brought the believers. The mortification of the flesh through dying with Christ is the presupposition for the struggle against the resurgence of the flesh against the Spirit. Thus all the running and struggling finally mean nothing else than abiding in the assurance of the gospel and thus abiding in Christ and in God. It is especially

16 [Rev. 2.10. –Ed.]

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the Johannine writings that call for this abiding. But the Pauline statements about Christ’s life in believers and their life in him are also about this abiding. All the exhortations to struggle are supported and surrounded by God’s acts of salvation. “Not that I have already obtained this …, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Phil. 3.12). Here the final security and the most vigorous activity of believers are intertwined. But the reverse question arises as well: If God has already granted salvation, justification, and vivification to believers, why then would they still need to make an effort throughout their whole earthly life in order one day to be saved and acquitted and to participate in the resurrection? Is the exhortation not redundant if the reward to be pursued in obedience is already given by grace apart from human works? Then why the sacrifice of believers as a condition of salvation, if they have received salvation through the sacrifice of Christ? The most important answer is that God has created human beings as his Thou so that they would in turn respond to him as their Thou. He has loved them in order to be loved back by them and to live in community with them. By accepting sinners in Christ as his children, God makes them into his likeness, which through their own decision-making fulfills what was given to them. The gift of God seeks to take on form in the believers’ behavior toward God and neighbor and have an ever-widening effect. This is the sense in which one must understand the exhortation to grow into the grace that God has given. On the other hand, the following question is absurd: “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?” (Rom. 6.1). Of course, these two answers do not provide a theoretical solution to the contradiction that exists between the assurance [Zuspruch] of the gospel and the claim [Anspruch] of the exhortation. They provide no theoretical determination of the relationship between divine and human action, no determination of the size of the respective divine and human parts in the process of salvation. Rather, we are called to receive the entire ultimate salvation by faith and to commit our entire selves to the attainment of this salvation. Yet, just as believers will always confess that their faith is not their own work but the gift of God, the one making an effort toward salvation and struggling for victory will always confess that God “enables both the will and the work to do his will” (Phil. 2.13 [S]). Having the work required of us circumscribed by God’s work is also attested to strikingly in the following saying: “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Eph. 2.10). Since the new commandment requires nothing of believers that they have not received by grace, and since it only commands them to live as the new human beings they have become through grace, the New Testament exhortations are, despite their urgency and assertiveness, friendly, parental instructions of divine mercy. The Greek term for this evangelical giving of instruction (παρακαλεῖν [parakalein]) encompasses both meanings, “to admonish” and “to comfort.”[xviii] “As a special

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form of proclamation, this urging, adjuring exhortation, which springs forth from concern for the one being admonished, almost pleading more than demanding, is directed to the brothers, not as the chastising and shaming voice of the law but as the bearer of a hidden consolation.”17 Of course, even the Old Testament law had its basis in God’s salvific action. As such, in the relationship between God’s act of salvation and his commandment there is a correlation between the Old and the New Testaments. But the basis for the new commandment is the new covenant and therefore the renewal of the sinner by faith in Jesus Christ. That is also why the exhortations in the New Testament letters are not described as law (in an absolute sense), and in those few instances where the term law is used for them, they are contrasted with the Old Testament law through additions like “the law of Christ” (Gal. 6.2) or “the law of the Spirit” (Rom. 8.2). Thus in Paul’s exhortations, in contrast to his statements about the law of the Old Testament, there are no judgments about the impossibility of fulfilling them, nor about their purpose, which is to magnify sin and condemn sinners. Regarding the New Testament commandments of God, it can be said: “his commandments are not burdensome” (1 Jn. 5.3). Even when, in the post-apostolic period, the difference between the New Testament exhortation and the Old Testament law was no longer known with the same clarity, it lingered on in the fact that it was described as a “new law.” Luther described the New Testament exhortation, not as law but as commandment, specifically as usus evangelii practicus [practical use of the gospel].[xix] When, with Calvin and the Lutheran Formula of Concord, the term tertius usus legis [third use of the law] began to catch on, it was clearly distinguished from the political and sin-revealing use of the law, namely, as the comforting, parental instruction of God.[xx] 3. The Commandment to Love All New Testament exhortations have their center in the commandment to love. It is the ultimate “new commandment” (Jn. 13.34f.). It points beyond all the other gifts of grace to the “exuberant way” [“überschwenglichen Weg”] (1 Cor. 12.31 [S]). Without love, the knowledge of God, prophetic speech, works of faith, the giving of one’s possessions, and even of one’s life, are all worthless (13.1–3). The commandment to love is based in the love of God, who sent his Son into the world. In the incarnation of the Son of God, in the work and death of the incarnate one, God’s love has taken hold of the world.

17 Heinrich Schlier, “Vom Wesen der apostolischen Mahnung nach Röm 12,1–2” [The Nature of Apostolic Exhortation according to Romans 12.1–2,” in Die Zeit der Kirche [The Time of the Church] (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1956), 73.

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How can love, the most spontaneous movement of the heart, be demanded? Although the commandment to love indeed encounters believers as God’s demand, it does not remain opposite them, for “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Rom. 5.5 [E]). Through the gospel, believers are taken into the love with which God has loved the world in his Son. Thus love, which Paul praised as the highest gift of the Spirit and commanded to the congregation, bears the features of Christ’s love. In the central Pauline statements about the effect of love (1 Cor. 13.4–7), one could replace “love” with “Christ” without needing to change any other words. The love that has appeared in Christ and is present in the congregation is that to which believers must give room in obedience to the commandment to love. Christ, exalted and present in his congregation, wants the world to experience his love through the love of his own. This is the presupposition from which the church has continued to transmit the interpretation of the commandment to love that the earthly Jesus had given. At the same time, in the New Testament exhortations to love, the same forwardpropelling limitlessness is found which was characteristic of Jesus’ interpretation of the commandment to love. The commandment to love is the commandment of selfsacrifice to the one who has sacrificed himself for us. Just as Jesus totally sacrificed himself to God, we also should hand ourselves over totally to God’s free disposal, body and soul, with all our might, with everything we own, our expectations and ideas of self-worth. If we sacrificed only our members to God, but not our heart, then actions and members would remain dead and lifeless. And if we brought only our interiority to God, but did not commit our body to him, then even the deepest of religious thoughts and feelings would remain empty and without love. Just as in the Old Testament and in Judaism, so Jesus and early Christian exhortation differentiate between love for God and love toward neighbor. Both are commanded by God, but in these two orientations the one who loves not only turns toward a distinct Thou—the Creator, on the one hand, and creatures, on the other—but that person’s love is also carried out in a different way of self-sacrifice toward each. (a) The love for God is established by the fact that he first loved us and that his love turned toward us when we were his enemies. The love required of us can only ever be a faint echo of his overwhelming love. We can only give him our rebellious life. He, however, gives us his love in the sinless Christ. That which is pleasing to God in our sacrifice has its origin in his grace. Love of God, therefore, consists less in that which we offer to God and more in our thanking him for his love, trusting him, and letting ourselves be brought into the working of his divine love. Just as Jesus had interpreted the Old Testament commandment to love God primarily through his call to faith, Paul too encouraged faith as obedience to this commandment more than anything, and thereby the ever-new reception of God’s love proclaimed by the gospel. Even where New Testament exhortations explicitly

Exhortation

call for love toward God (as in 1 John), it is clearly distinguished from God’s love: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn. 4.10). The twofold commandment to love is also summarized by this letter in the following way: “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another” (3.23). (b) The correlation between God’s love and the love of the neighbor is called for in a different way. Since God loved us even when we did not love him but were his enemies, the love of neighbor is likewise commanded as a crossing of the boundaries of alienation, rejection, and hostility. With the commandment of the love of enemies, a behavior is required of us that corresponds to God’s love. In the New Testament letters, the commandment to love the neighbor is interpreted with a particular focus on the behavior of Christians among themselves. It is reiterated again and again in view of the arrogance of some toward others and in view of boasting to others about gifts received from the Spirit (e. g., 1 Cor. 12–14), but also in view of preference given to the rich instead of the poor (e. g., James 2.1–9). Again and again the members of the congregation are exhorted: “Let one and the same love be at work among you; be of one mind and in full accord, not quarreling and ambitious, but in such a way that you think little of yourselves and place others above yourselves…” (thus, e. g., Phil. 2.2ff. [S]). The diversity of spiritual gifts needs to be circumscribed and permeated by mutual love. Every gift belongs to the community of believers and must serve it. Moreover, love among Christians is not limited to spiritual sacrifice, but it must also be concerned with the other’s bodily need. Nevertheless, the interpretation of the commandment to love one’s neighbor may never be restricted to love among Christians. Beyond this, the commandment exhorts love toward those who are hostile to the congregation. Thus, in Romans 12 the exhortations to love the other members of the church are immediately followed by these commandments: “Bless your persecutors, bless and do not curse” (v. 14); “Do not retaliate evil with evil” (v. 17); “When your enemy is hungry, feed that person; when your enemy is thirsty, give that person something to drink” (v. 20 [L]). When Christians obey these commandments, the world encounters the same love with which God has turned toward it despite its hostility. (c) Love of God and love of neighbor belong inseparably together. If one attempted to dissolve one commandment into the other and solely limit oneself to obeying one of these two commandments, one would be shirking obedience to both commandments. There is the danger of focusing love so one-sidedly on God that the neighbor fades in comparison. The neighbor is no longer loved as a Thou but is merely an occasion for loving God. The neighbor is no longer loved for that person’s own sake

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but only for God’s sake. This is an egocentric love of God, which is one-sidedly focused on experiences of God and which ignores the Thou of the neighbor. However, there is also the opposite danger of focusing love so one-sidedly on the neighbor that the love of God is practically dissolved into the love of one’s neighbor. Here God is no longer acknowledged as the one who, as the Lord, stands opposite the one loving and that person’s neighbor, and the love of neighbor is changed into humanism and social programs. Only by constantly returning to God can the neighbor be seen properly, so that the love of neighbors does not become a mere indulgence on the one hand or an ideological exercise of power over them on the other. Both commandments about love have their unity neither in the commandment to love God nor in the commandment to love the neighbor. Instead, both have their unity in God’s love for the world. All who accept the message of God’s love in faith will thank God for this love and love him back. In the neighbor they will recognize someone who is also loved by God. None who receive God’s love can keep it to themselves, for it desires to work further through us. In all who are embraced by it, it desires to give itself to even more people, to make them also into beloveds and lovers, and this likewise by the twofold orientation toward God and the neighbor. God’s love is like a stream. Poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, it desires to flow on and be poured into ever-new hearts through our sacrifice to God and neighbors. (d) The correct understanding of the commandment to love is not only threatened by the isolation of the one commandment to love from the other but also by the attempt, repeated throughout church history, to derive from the commandment “you shall love your neighbor as yourself ” yet a third commandment, namely selflove. This commandment was then, e. g., interpreted by the obligation to sustain one’s own health and by the prohibition against suicide. These requirements are already well-founded by faith in the Creator, who forbids us to do whatever we want with our life. Furthermore, the requirement to love one’s neighbor as oneself means precisely the dethroning of self-love and the radical refutation of the self-evident rule: “Everyone is his own best neighbor.”18 Here Jesus’ saying applies: “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (Jn. 12.25). “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn. 15.13). In the requirement to sacrifice oneself to God and other people, the commandment to love contradicts human desires and the matter-of-fact way in which they are satisfied. Yet precisely by thwarting our desire, the commandment to love unshackles the original yearning of humanity for God, which had been weighed down

18 [Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, IX.7.8 (The Basic Works of Aristotle, 1086 [trans. modified]). –Ed.]

Exhortation

and disfigured by the choice of our own goals and fulfillments. The commandment to love is the end of human desire, insofar as humanity constituted itself in turning away from God. The fear that those sacrificing themselves might be hindered from realizing their purpose betrays a superficial view of humanity. Instead, self-sacrifice leads to the fulfillment of the deepest of yearnings that human beings had received through their creation in the image of God. This interrelatedness of self-sacrifice and self-discovery, of dying to self and coming alive in love, can be realized in very different ways. In the separated churches there are some one-sidedly settled models of the obedience of love and some one-sidedly ideal images of the experience of love, which stand in the way of the concrete, constantly called-for obedience, and these models and images also make the unification of the churches all the more difficult. Within these twofold commands, to sacrifice to God and to neighbors, prayer and witness take on a special significance. After God has taken us into his love through his word, the response of believers in their love toward God and neighbor also cannot remain wordless. 4. Prayer We should respond to God’s message of love by calling upon him as the Father who was proclaimed by Jesus—by calling upon him in the name of Jesus, who has given himself to us. We should thank God for his historical act of love and should worship him as the one who is eternal love. Since thanksgiving and worship define the structure of this dogmatics as a whole (cf. the final chapter of each of the first three main parts and the doctrine of God in the fourth main part), the topic of this section should primarily be intercessory prayer. The invitation to prayer is unlimited. We get to ask God for everything. At all times we get to call on him. The promise of being heard is also limitless: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” (Mt. 7.7). “Whatever you ask for, only believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mk. 11.24 [S]). These promises of Jesus have been handed down and interpreted in Christendom through ever-new words. We should trust that God desires to continue working among us as the one who loves us. At the same time, being heard does not mean merely the divine hearing of petitions but their fulfillment—and not merely the gift of an attitude that is able to bear the hardship but the actual rescue from this hardship. The broadness of this invitation to prayer and the promise of hearing prayers has been given a lastingly valid form by Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer. In it he has given us not only a prayer formula that must be continually repeated but an instruction for prayer in general. This applies not only to his disciples but to the church of all

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times. All prayer must keep in mind that the Lord’s Prayer begins with the petition for the glorification of the divine name and the coming of God’s kingdom. The I of the one who prays is not mentioned in the first petitions. They are solely about the establishment of God in the world, indeed, of the God whose name is already holy without prayer and whose reign in Jesus is already a present reality. These petitions are about the glorification of the divine name through the whole creation and the consummation of the kingdom, in which the loving work and the loving response of creatures are in concord. Only after this come the petitions in which the praying person is explicitly mentioned. But in the Lord’s Prayer this happens exclusively in the form of the We—the I does not occur in this prayer. This is not a rejection of the personal invocation of God on the part of the individual but a minimizing of praying simply for the selfish wishes of the individual. One is invited to pray as a member of the community of those who are loved by God. Thus prayer is also that expression of Christian faith in which the divisions of Christendom are least actualized. In prayer Christians experience their belonging together as brothers and sisters beyond the boundaries of their own church body. It is no coincidence that prayer services were the first to be celebrated in ecumenical gatherings.[xxi] The rest of the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer are for the divine preservation and direction of God’s people, who are walking toward the consummation of God’s kingdom: for daily bread, and thereby, in great humility, for that which is indispensable for the preservation of earthly life; for the ever-new forgiveness of sins; and for protection within the temptations and suffering of this world, which precede the consummation of God’s reign. Since for the sojourning people of God these petitions are inseparable from the petition for the reign of God that is coming toward all humanity, the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer also contain within themselves the command to intercede for all of humanity, pointing beyond the community of believers.[xxii] The guidance given in the Lord’s Prayer is no limitation of the all-encompassing invitation to pray and the all-encompassing promise that prayers will be heard. Precisely by putting first the petitions for the glorification of the divine name and the coming of the kingdom, prayer is directed toward the comprehensive salvation, whose coming will still all human yearnings and will end all suffering. In the orientation toward the kingdom, the individual petitions receive their appropriate weight. The promise of fulfillment is given to those prayers which are offered to God in this orientation. Just as the consummation of the kingdom is announced as the free action of God, whose timing no one can calculate in advance, the answers to prayer also occur out of God’s freedom. He determines the timing and the manner of his answer to prayers. While he answers many prayers right away, in some cases he makes petitioners wait in order to lead them from pressing for the gift to the Giver himself. He answers many prayers in the same way that the petitioner meant them, but other cases he fulfills in a different way. Yet he always gives more, and not less, than we

Exhortation

expect. In the Matthew text of the Lord’s Prayer, the following petition is added: “Your will be done on earth as in heaven.” If petitioners place their petition under the condition “if it be your will,” this implies neither a weakening of the assurance, nor a conditionality of the certainty of answers to prayer, for the will of God is not an unknown fate but his revealed will to love. There are obstacles on the part of human beings that can get in the way of the answer to their prayer. There is a kind of babbling prayer that consists of mere words but that draws back from self-sacrifice to God. There is also a kind of manipulative prayer, which seeks to use the promise of answers for one’s own purposes. According to the guidance of the Lord’s Prayer, just as the refusal to forgive the neighbor’s sins precludes the answer of the petition for God’s forgiveness, there are also other obstacles that get in the way of the answer to one’s prayers, e. g., complacency toward the need of one’s neighbors and toward the injustice they experience. There is also, however, a kind of false reverence, which does not utilize the permission of the familiar address of God as Father and the invitation to pray for everything, but which views the purpose of prayer only as a bowing to God’s hidden will. Although God in his love also hears some selfish petitions, no one may evade the self-criticism of their praying under the commandment of the love of God. But are there not also those prayers that were spoken in self-sacrifice to God that did not result in fulfillment? This is true, e. g., of the prayer of Paul for his liberation from severe suffering under the blows of the “angel of Satan,” the “thorn” in the flesh (2 Cor. 12.7ff.). Throughout church history there have been many kinds of suffering from which the praying people were not liberated, even though they wanted to serve God. This question becomes most intensified in the face of the tradition about Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. Yet here one can speak of unanswered prayer only in a superficial way, for here God gave more than was prayed for. Precisely through Jesus’ death, God accomplished redemption and established the crucified one as the Lord who will complete the reign of God. With Paul, too, one can only speak of unanswered prayer in a superficial sense, for precisely in the suffering of Paul the “power of Christ” was made manifest: it “is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12.9). Throughout church history there are various cases of God answering prayer in a way that appeared to be unheard prayer but that turned out truly to be the kind of answers which surpass what had been prayed for in unexpected and immeasurable ways. Such a surpassing also takes place when we do not know how to pray and only sigh to God (Rom. 8.26f.), for in the wordless sigh the Holy Spirit prays within us. 5. Witness Because we have experienced salvation through the message of Christ, our love of neighbor cannot remain silent. Of course, love that is directed even to the enemy is such an unusual occurrence in this world, and so greatly contradicts the

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principles usually defining human relationships, that the loving actions toward enemies themselves already raise questions about their motivation. But love cannot be satisfied with the neighbor becoming a questioner; rather, believers owe their neighbor an account of the love with which God loves the world. Although active love of neighbor cannot be replaced by the word, deeds of love also must not lack the witness to the divine love that takes place through the word. Like the command to pray, this command to bear witness applies to every believer, not merely to the church’s ministerial office. Although not everyone is called to lead the worship gathering, everyone is commanded to bear witness to the one who is the salvation of the world. All members of the congregation must “proclaim the mighty deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2.9b [S]). This commandment is also about the other believers: through joint witness God desires to strengthen their community. Beyond that, it is also about unbelievers: through witness God desires to awaken their faith and let them become partakers of salvation. There are no limits to the expansion of this witness, for God wants all human beings to be saved. The command to witness is not limited to the situation of persecution. Rather, like the command to pray, it is valid at all times. This witness can be borne in various ways. Thus in his statements about the gifts of grace in the congregation, Paul pointed, e. g., to the various forms of prophecy, teaching, exhortation, and the interpretation of ecstatic speech. In a multiplicity of statement-structures, the witness also advances into the sphere of unbelievers, be it questioning and confessing, or comforting and exhorting, or informing and arguing. In addition, there are different ways of coordinating witness in word with witness in deed. Whatever the structure of the testimony, the witness to Christ on the part of the individual cannot be separated from the joint witness of believers and thus from the creed of the church, just as little as the prayer of the individual can be separated from the we of the praying people of God. Just as the command to pray is connected to the promise that prayer is heard, so the command to bear witness has the promise that such witnessing will not lack fruit—that it awakens faith and leads to salvation. Again and again it is promised that such witnessing will bear fruit, regardless even of the number of people who accept or reject it. Through witness, it is not only the one witnessing who speaks, for God is speaking to human beings through the witness. Thus witness—like love and prayer—is not so much a human action in obedience to a commandment as it is ultimately a gift. This is especially true in a time of persecution, the most radical situation of Christian witnessing: “what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is … the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Mt. 10.19b and 20b). The one who witnesses is commanded to be a loving sacrifice. Witnesses must dedicate themselves completely to the creaturely and historical uniqueness of their

Exhortation

neighbors; they must enter into their situation, seek out their questions, and engage them. They must see their neighbors as those who are loved by God and for whom God is struggling. Witnesses must not offer their testimony as if the offer involves no commitment, for they know that the acceptance or rejection of this message concerns the most important thing in the life of the other. In turning toward others with love, they must interpret arrogance, desperation, and even debauchery as the unsatisfied yearning for God. The witnesses must come alongside, yes, enter the place of their neighbors, in order to hear what God desires to tell them. The witnesses are not only to proclaim the self-humiliation of Jesus Christ, but they are to follow him in his self-humiliation. This sacrifice initially happens through waiting. No witness can determine the time at which God will address the other. This hour must be given. God alone is able to bring about the testimony to Christ and the understanding ear. In addition, no witness is able to determine the word that God desires to say to the other; the witness must let it be given as a gift. There are situations in which it might be advisable to wait a long time and let the questioning of the other have the first word. There are situations in which the testimony that has already been rejected must not be reiterated to the other, at least not initially. There is no psychological method to determine the hour and the words of the witness by which the neighbor will be impacted. Here the dialogue of the witness with God and the dialogue of the witness with the neighbor are intertwined. Just as love of neighbor and love for God belong inseparably together, so do witnessing to the neighbor and praying for the neighbor. Those witnessing remain dependent on divine guidance and instruction, which they receive in their intercessory prayer and in their listening for God’s word. When the witness to Christ is rejected by the hearers, witnesses must initially seek the reason for this in themselves. Undoubtedly, there is a loveless kind of witness when witnesses do not follow the example of Jesus, who put himself in the place of the other, and are driven instead by the desire to dominate the other. Such loveless witnesses might dump general kerygmatic and dogmatic formulas on the other, but, just like babbling in prayer, such babbling takes place in contradiction to God’s commandment. Just as there is a manipulative kind of prayer, which diverges from the orientation of the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer, so there is a manipulative kind of witness that diverges from the center of the message about Christ and therefore from the creed of the church. There are testimonies whose center is not the call to faith in Jesus crucified and risen for the world, wherein particular insights that are important to the witness have been made into the norm for all Christendom, and the overall proximity or distance to the center of the faith has not been considered. There are also testimonies that have been turned into appeals to accept such expectations of salvation, in which the promise of the kingdom of God is misused to justify social and political objectives in an ideological manner. Then, however, under the pretense of witnessing, the world is deprived of

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the best and most important thing, namely, salvation. There is, however, not only a culpable babbling and misleading relevance but also a culpable silence, whether out of a false respect toward the church’s ministerial office on the part of the “laity” or because of cowardice. Yet even bearing witness out of self-sacrificing love might not have the hopedfor effect. Everything seems to stay the same. Those addressed are not moved. If anything, they are alienated, and the witnesses become isolated. A wall of rejection is created, and the witnesses are met with hostility, slander, and persecution. Still, even here the testimony does not remain fruitless. For here God uses not only the words and deeds but also the suffering of the witnesses in the service of his work. He lets the witnesses participate in the failures and suffering of Jesus. In the suffering of the witnesses, he sets the suffering Jesus before the eyes of the world, and in the powerlessness of the witnesses, he manifests the strength of the exalted Lord. Even if the witnesses themselves do not get to see the fruit of their testimony, God lets it emerge in a later hour determined by him. Oftentimes, the seed of suffering sprouted later, which meant that the witnesses could not experience the fruit. But it is certain to sprout. Wherever someone prays or bears witness in love, no prayer remains unheard and no testimony is without fruit. 6. The Commandment of the Redeemer and the Commandment of the Preserver: The Obedience That Is the Image of God The new commandment is grounded in the divine salvation of human beings from the judgment into which they had fallen. It takes place simultaneously with the gospel and requires self-sacrifice in love. The commandment of the Preserver takes place through the self-witnessing of the Creator to all people and requires of them action on behalf of the preservation of human life and the curbing of evil through the just use of force. Here righteousness in human community must be distinguished from the righteousness of God that is given to believers through the gospel. Similar to the way in which the commandment of the Preserver is included in the law of the Old Testament (cf. above 406f.), so it is also included in the New Testament exhortations. Thus, in the Sermon on the Mount, the summary of the Old Testament’s law and prophets as proclaimed by Jesus, the following widespread rule has been handed down among many cultures: “Whatever you desire others to do to you, the same you should do to them” (Mt. 7.12 [S]). Thus the exhortations of the New Testament letters adopted many ethical instructions that were common in the Jewish-Hellenistic environment and in popular Hellenistic philosophy. That was true, e. g., of the catalogues of virtues and vices, whereby Paul presupposes that all people have the law of God written on their hearts (Rom. 2.15). Only in this way is it possible to make sense of the exhortation that Christians conduct themselves in a way that does not give them a bad reputation among non-Christians.

Exhortation

In the New Testament exhortations, even the pagan political powers are more than once explicitly recognized as powers ordained by God, and obedience to them is required. Just as the acceptance of Canaanite legislation into the Old Testament law was a critical process, so too was the New Testament’s reception of ethical demands from the Hellenistic environment. The demands of God the Preserver, which apply to all human beings, were lifted out of the distortions done to them by conformity to human desires and by the vainglory of self-righteousness. Thus, e. g., Paul rejected homosexual intercourse with great severity (Rom. 1.26f.), although on the whole there was little objection to it in the Hellenistic environment. Even in his statements about the recognition of pagan political powers as God’s ordinance (Rom. 13.1–7), the dynamic of criticism is by no means absent. After all, the yardstick to which the actions of political powers are held is the distinction between good and evil. At the same time, however, the new commandment’s relationship to the commandment of the Preserver is different from the latter’s relationship to the Old Testament law, for the Old Testament law was grounded in the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, as well as the promise of an earthly land and of preservation within it. The new commandment, however, is grounded in the dawn of the future reign of God, which is not of this world but will judge this world, and bring about and fulfill a new creation. In other words, the foundation of the new commandment is the lifting up of the crucified Christ, to whom is given dominion over all things, and who will bring about and complete the reign of God. While Israel’s journey into the Promised Land took place through holy wars, the dawn of God’s reign took place in the defenseless suffering of Jesus. While the defense of Israel in its land took place amid ever-new bloody battles, the reign of God begins in powerlessness, and its consummation will take place without the use of human force, and all wars will be ended. This means that the New Testament exhortations undertake not merely a critical recovery of that which God the Preserver requires of all people and which is misunderstood and misused by them in one way or another. Rather, tensions became clear between the commandment of preservation and the new commandment, for the latter is defined by the future end of the world, while the former is about the preservation of this world. This opposition is fundamentally different from the one between Israel, on the one hand, and the legal systems and cults in its cultural environment, on the other. Instead, according to the New Testament, all earthly kingdoms now are opposed by a kingdom that is not of this world. This other kingdom is breaking into the earthly kingdoms and will make an end of them. Finally, it is only on account of Jesus’ cross and resurrection that the depth of this world’s hostility to God becomes visible, as well as the enormity of the paradox that God preserves the world despite its hostility and its having fallen under judgment.

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Consequently, those who believe in Christ stand under a twofold demand of God, namely, the commandment of the Preserver, which had already been in place, and the new commandment of the Redeemer. Both commandments remain valid until the end of the world, for the same God preserves and redeems the world. Faith in Christ recognizes that the patience of God the Preserver was already defined by the love that then appeared in Jesus Christ, and that God’s suffering under humanity took place not only on the cross of Christ but began much earlier through the suffering of human hostility. The two commandments, however, do not coincide. Instead, they are in tension with each other. On the one hand, Christians and all other human beings are under the commandment of God the Preserver. Together with all others, Christians also bear responsibility for the preservation of other human beings, whether these people believe in Christ or not. Thus Christians pray not only for the daily bread and peaceful life of Christians but also for humanity’s bread and peace. Christians’ active engagement is not merely for the sake of preserving themselves but includes the responsibility to quench hunger and remove injustice and discord among humankind in general. The commandment of the Preserver also includes working for the just use of political power. This responsibility cannot be restricted to obedience to the existing political order. By connecting this obedience to the good commanded by God, this responsibility already contains within itself the command to disobey political ordinances that are ungodly. It thus includes a responsibility to use political power correctly. On the other hand, however, believers are subject to the commandments of Jesus, especially as they are summarized in the Sermon on the Mount—commandments through which they are called away from using secular laws and political power as a matter of course to preserve their own lives. Since Jesus called his disciples out of their families, out of their professions and possessions, into discipleship—thus calling them from that which God the Preserver had permitted and protected—the self-evident confidence with which humankind is secured within secular structures is therefore forever troubled in Christendom. The right of the owner is confronted by Jesus’ demand: “Give to everyone who asks” (Mt. 5.42 [L]). The right of selfdefense is contrary to Jesus’ commandment not to resist evil: “whoever strikes you on the right cheek, to him present also the other…” (Mt. 5.39f. [S]). In Jesus’ actions and instructions to his disciples one does not find guidance for the use of force as God had given it to political powers and also to Israel for the sake of preservation. Instead, what takes place here is obedience to the new commandment , which ultimately calls for the renunciation of self-preservation through defenseless, self-sacrificing love. While the commandment of the Preserver is the foundation for the legal structures through which life, marriage, family, work, and property are secured, a rather irregular dynamic has entered into the common life of human beings through the new commandment to love.

Exhortation

Through the commandments of God the Redeemer and Preserver, the believer is thus subject to contrasting questions: Does not the salvific message about the crucified Christ become inauthentic when it is not proclaimed in the same nonviolent way in which Jesus let himself be led to the cross, nonviolently and without resistance? Are not Christians, even in times of persecution, forbidden to use violence for their own survival? On the other hand, would not injustice in the world prevail if Christians did not also participate in the just use of political force to curb evil and support the oppressed in their struggle against oppressors? Attempts to weaken or eliminate the difference between the commandment of preservation and the new commandment are found throughout church history in the most varied of forms. A certain harmonization of the two began already in the household codes of the later letters of the New Testament. In their exhortations regarding the behavior of husband and wife, children and parents, slaves and masters, as well as behavior toward political powers, one hears neither Jesus’ radical requirements—to hate parents and wife for the sake of discipleship, and to leave everything—nor the responsibility to change unjust social and political structures. Solutions to the tension between the two commandments have also been undertaken again and again by means of emphasizing one commandment over the other. On the one hand, this has taken place when political power has been utilized not only to preserve human life in the broadest sense but to preserve and expand the church. On the other hand, the same thing has taken place in ascetic counter-movements, which have attempted to assert the new commandment without limitations, have rejected the use of force for themselves, and have more or less left the political powers to their own devices. But despite all attempts to weaken or harmonize the commandment of the Preserver and that of the Redeemer, the basic contradictions between them have again and again broken through. Neither can they be eliminated through the institutionalization of secular and spiritual vocations and offices. After all, every human being, both the officeholder of political power and the most world-denying ascetic, is subject to both commandments. Even to withdraw from political responsibility is itself a decision that has political consequences. It is crucial that the tension between these demands of God is recognized throughout Christendom in every time period. Because the two commandments do not coincide, believers are put in the position of having to make a specific decision. A concrete way of obedience is not prescribed for them because of the simultaneous validity of these two incongruous commandments. Instead, the matter is left to their decision. They cannot be spared the decision by means of making logical deductions from the two commandments. Instead, the decision has to be reconsidered and again and again made within

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the given historical responsibility vis-à-vis both commandments. In light of this decision, the following aspects must be especially considered: (a) The tension between the commandment of the Preserver and the new commandment is not a timeless dialectic but is determined by the orientation of the divine governance of the world toward the consummation of God’s reign and thus toward the end of the world. The decision of believers with respect to both commandments is therefore a decision in this world, on the way toward the coming Lord. Thus the expectation of the coming one and the remembrance of his historical salvific action determine above all the decision in the here and now. (b) Because the preservation of the world has its foundation in God’s love, the same love that is manifest in the redemption through Jesus Christ, the use of political power also cannot be separated from the commandment to love. It is true that the protecting, judging, and punishing done by this power takes place through other means than those called for by Jesus’ commandment not to resist evil. Nevertheless, the political power of Christians must be used above all for the wellbeing of other human beings and not for their own self-preservation. In this way, God’s love seeks to have an effect through a measured and patient use of force that also considers the wellbeing and salvation of the lawbreaker. (c) That the way of obedience to both of God’s commandments has to be found ever anew in changing social and political situations, does not mean that Christian ethics can be merely a formal ethics, i. e., calling for obedience to God without stating what that obedience entails. Since the commandment of the Preserver, like that of the Redeemer, is given with commands and prohibitions that have a definite content, it is certainly a material ethics. However, it is possible to develop it as a selfcontained material system, from which a comprehensive casuistry could be derived, through which the decision commanded by God could be determined in advance, down to the details. Certainly, one can find occasional beginnings of a casuistic interpretation of God’s commandments in the New Testament Scriptures, e. g., in the exceptions to Jesus’ absolute prohibition against divorce through the addition of the words “except in cases of adultery” (Mt. 5.32 [S]), or in the Pauline explanations about marriage between Christians and pagans (1 Cor. 7.12–16). However, such casuistic statements are noticeably rare in the New Testament Scriptures compared to the Old Testament law. Just as the relationship between God’s reign and God’s governance of the world (cf. above 469), and the relationship between Christ’s reign and Christ’s dominion over the universe (cf. above 590f.), are relatively easy to define, so also is the relationship between the new commandment and the commandment of preservation. But actual, concrete historical obedience is another question.

Exhortation

7. The Law of the Spirit The space for making a decision that is determined by the new commandment and the commandment of preservation is no empty space in which human beings stand alone, helpless, and are left to the whim of their own decisions. This free space is instead the space in which the Holy Spirit rules. That is why liberation from the law through Christ must also be described as liberation through the Holy Spirit. Without expanding on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in its comprehensive context here (on this, cf. chap. 18ff.), it is appropriate to inquire already how the liberating work of the Holy Spirit takes place. The Holy Spirit awakens human beings to faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. In this way he liberates the human will from the enslavement in which it existed before: from captivity to its actions in culpability and from captivity to its perception, from the distortions in which it had previously seen God and human beings. The Holy Spirit grants freedom to perceive the situation in which we find ourselves together with others before God, as well as freedom to make a decision for God and other human beings. The Holy Spirit awakens in a human being a delight in God’s commandments and a desire to obey them. They no longer confront the person as an alien, limiting, and threatening norm, but they are given to believers “in their inner being” and written “on the heart” (cf. Jer. 31.33 [S]). The “law of the Spirit” (Rom. 8.2), in contrast to the Old Testament law, is the urging of the Holy Spirit within human beings for the realization of that which is given to them in Christ. Above all, he urges the unfolding of the divine love that has been received so that it is expressed in love for God and toward the neighbor. Thus the Spirit awakens within the heart the invocation of God as Father. He calls in our hearts: “Abba, Father” (Gal. 4.6) and “through him we call: Abba, Father” (Rom. 8.15). In this way, he also awakens the petition for the coming of Jesus Christ and for the consummation of God’s reign. The Holy Spirit awakens the witness of Christ to the surrounding world, as well as a loving sense that discovers the need of other human beings, makes that need one’s own, and helps them. In addition to granting recognition of the servant ministry that is commanded, the Spirit gives the power to carry out that service. The Holy Spirit works the fulfillment of the new commandment through his fruit. The fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness … There is no law against such things” (Gal. 5.22f.). The Holy Spirit thus brings about the fulfillment of the New Testament exhortations, which, despite their difference from the Old Testament law, match the content of the latter’s central requirements. Through this work, the Holy Spirit enables human beings to know the great movement of God’s action, which unfolds from creation onwards, through the

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paradox of world preservation and world governance, and on toward redemption and the new creation. Indeed, he brings believers into this movement. All of this must be considered when reading the exhortation to “walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5.16 [L]; cf. v. 25). This imperative indicates that a human being’s decision is not constrained or eliminated through the work of the Holy Spirit. Instead, such exhortations appeal to human decision-making. This is true even when the work of the Holy Spirit takes place as “urging” or otherwise as “preventing.” In contrast to overpowering or disabling the human will by taking complete possession of it, the Holy Spirit makes human beings free. This freedom is the opposite of the kind of freedom humans choose when they turn away from God and seek to constitute themselves through their own decisions. Such use of autonomy leads them into heteronomy, namely, into being self-enclosed in their own self-chosen finitude and in the prison of guilt and alienation from God. In freedom, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in the midst of changing historical circumstances, believers must walk toward the reign of God, obeying both the new commandment and the old commandment of preservation. The Old Testament law was characterized by a strong tendency toward a casuistic embellishment of ethical, legal, and cultic requirements, which ultimately constrained life and made the response to changing historical situations more difficult. By contrast, because of their christological and pneumatological origin, the New Testament exhortations maintain an open space of freedom for new initiatives of love within the congregation and in behavior toward the world. Through the simultaneous validity of the new commandment and the commandment of the Preserver, this space of freedom is again and again called forth afresh into human awareness. Of course, this free space has often been covered over by the churches through so many regulations that the churches were prevented, in historical situations that had changed, from proclaiming God’s will in careful alertness to the present moment. Instead, the churches held on to old church customs and ordinances and closed themselves off to the new things called for by God. This issue is undoubtedly an important factor in the emergence of church schisms, especially in times of societal change. 8. The Boundary of Death New Testament exhortation is a compassionate, comforting, encouraging commandment, for it requires of believers nothing that they had not received through God’s grace. Yet that is precisely why New Testament exhortation also calls them into question, for human beings cannot extricate themselves from making the comparison between the reality of their willing, speaking, and doing, on the one hand, and that which has been assured to them through the gospel, on the other.

Exhortation

When the righteousness, holiness, newness of life, and adoption by God that are promised and bestowed through the gospel do not become actualized in the actions of believers, have those people really received those gifts—are they in Christ at all? How about their delight in prayer and in witnessing and in working on behalf of those who suffer? How about their spontaneity of love? Where is the fruit of the Spirit? Not only do the exhortations implicitly call into question those who examine themselves in their light, but as such they also call believers into question explicitly in the form of warnings, prohibitions, and threats. Believers are warned forcefully not to become servants of sin again, from whose dominion they had been liberated through baptism, and not to make room again for the desires of the flesh, to which they had died. Such warnings are frequently combined with threats of dire consequences. For example, Paul illustrated his exhortations against wrongdoing and deeds of the flesh by listing such sins in detail and declaring that those members of the congregation would not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6.9–10; Gal. 5.19–21). In the threats of judgment contained in the New Testament exhortations, those who have already been granted future justification and acquittal, as assured through the gospel, will face conviction in the future judgment, and eternal death is announced to those who had been transferred into the new life. Thus the exhortations point to the judgment in which the coming Christ will create a separation between human beings, even between members of the church, and, according to the works of each, he will unite some with himself and send others away. The New Testament exhortations thus point to the future boundary that runs between eternal life and eternal death. However, they not only announce this future demarcation, for there are also words in the New Testament message by means of which the demarcation is already taking place now. This applies, e. g., to the “anathema”: “As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed” (Gal. 1.9; cf. v. 8). “Let anyone be accursed who has no love for the Lord” (1 Cor. 16.22). The anathema means casting out someone from community with Christ (cf. Rom. 9.3) and handing someone over to God’s judgment of wrath. The two anathema verdicts above do not mention the names of the persons involved. Therefore, despite the utmost severity, these verdicts still encounter the individuals as a call to self-examination and to repentance. But Paul not only pronounced such verdicts in general ways since he also handed over individual persons to the divine judgment. For instance, with respect to a member of the congregation who was cohabiting licentiously with the wife of his father, Paul made the decision “to hand this man over to Satan” “in the name of the Lord Jesus”: “he shall be destroyed in his bodily existence, so that his spirit might be saved on the day of the Lord” (1 Cor. 5.3–5 [S]). In this context, Paul also gave additional instructions for the expulsion from the congregation: when a

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member of the congregation “lives in licentiousness, greed, and idolatry, as a gossip, drunkard, and robber—then you should not associate with him and not share a meal with him” (1 Cor. 5.11 [S]). The prohibition against intercession for those who committed “a sin unto death” (1 Jn. 5.16 [L; KJV]) also means handing them over to God’s judgment. Just as the boundary of death is not defined in detail by Paul, neither is it in 1 John. Above all, it probably refers to the denial of Jesus as the incarnate Son of God and to hatred against other members of the church. Therefore, the gospel results not only in compassionate, comforting exhortation but also in the threat of future judgment, indeed, the execution of this judgment already in the here-and-now of earthly life among those who turn away from the faith and insist on closing themselves off from the exhortation. The message of Christ thus has a twofold effect: salvation and destruction, justification and condemnation —it makes alive, and it kills; it brings into community with Christ, and it excludes from it. Both things are true: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1.18). Both things are true about preachers of the gospel: they are “to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life” (2 Cor. 2.15f.) In the threat of judgment and then fully in the execution of judgment, the New Testament exhortation matches the curse of the Old Testament law. The person who has heard the gospel and rejects it remains under the verdict of the law—whether that person is a Jew, a pagan, or an apostate Christian. Indeed, the judgment threatened by the exhortation exceeds even the Old Testament declaration of judgment, for the former was about the loss of earthly life, an earthly home, an earthly temple. The New Testament threat of judgment, however, deals with the threat of exclusion from the coming kingdom of God. In this sense, the Reformers described the revealing and judging action of the New Testament exhortation as law (usus elenchticus legis).[xxiii] However, if one compares the very few anathemas and expulsions of egregious sinners from the congregation in the broader context of the many exhortations handed down in the New Testament Scriptures, it becomes clear that the true and proper subject of the exhortations is not the anathema but rather the calling of sinners back to their being grounded once more in what God had done for them in baptism—to remain in Christ, whose possession they had become, and to walk in the Holy Spirit, whom they had received. If one considers how many sins are pointed out in the first Christian congregations by the New Testament letters, and how many sinners continued to be carried along as members of the congregation by pointing to God’s salvific action, it becomes clear that the true and proper task of exhortation is very different from that of the Old Testament law, which, according to Paul, was intended to magnify sin and to subject the sinner to the law. The true task of exhortation is not threat and judgment but a comforting gift of instruction

Exhortation

for living on the basis of the gift of the gospel. After all, the purpose of the gospel is not to condemn but to save, not to harden someone in sin but to forgive it, not to kill but to make alive. If in the course of church history the uniqueness of the new commandment in contrast to the Old Testament law and the freedom of believers was not always deliberately maintained, this could not but have an impact on the comprehension of the New Testament exhortations and threats of judgment. Just as the New Testament exhortations were later often defined in a variety of casuistic regulations, so too were the warnings and threats defined by many casuistic prohibitions and declarations of punishment. Without question, in the course of church history the anathema has also been pronounced upon such members, or even upon entire sections of the church, that had not fallen away from the confession of Christ or had refused the obedience of faith but had simply differed in their articulations and decisions of the same faith. 9. The Call to Repentance By praying the Lord’s Prayer in every worship service, all churches agree that every one of their members requires the forgiveness of sins again and again. As Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer to his disciples, all churches also agree in the conviction that God is ready to answer this petition for forgiveness. “When we say: ‘We have no sin,’ then we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But when we confess our sins, then he (God) is faithful and just, in that he forgives us our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1.8f.) [L]). If individuals thought they could say, “I am not aware of any sin,” they would have to continue with the apostle, “but in this I am not justified, for it is the Lord who judges me.” When he comes, “he will bring to light what is hidden now and reveal the desires of the hearts” (1 Cor. 4.4f. [S]). All churches agree further that the Lord gave his apostles and their successors the authority to forgive sins. This knowledge, that the one who turns back will receive forgiveness and acceptance with God, is the ever-new source of joy and gratitude among all Christians. The fact that the doors of the kingdom of heaven are always open to the contrite—that there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over a hundred righteous—this is reason enough for everyone not to despair. The call to repentance does not happen just once, at the beginning of discipleship; rather, it is in daily repentance and in receiving forgiveness anew that the life of a Christian unfolds. Despite this fundamental meaning of repentance shared by all, the doctrine of repentance is controversial among the churches in multiple ways. This is partly because the church regulations for repentance emerged in response to very different dangers: in defense against an exaggerated rigidity that contradicted the gospel, but also in response to a laxity in treating sinful members of the congregation

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who ignored God’s commandments. Thus the practice of repentance underwent significant changes in church history, and significant differences emerged in the church orders for repentance, both chronologically within the same church body as well as in comparison between the different churches. The differences in the doctrine of repentance are dependent, in a particularly noticeable way, on the practice of repentance, and largely have the character of a subsequent justification and rationalization of the existing regulations for repentance. In this way, some historically conditioned regulations were given the rank of dogmatic decisions (cf., e. g., the Council of Trent’s anathemas against the rejection of compulsory private confession and the satisfaction imposed as part of it).19 The ecumenical issue of repentance is especially difficult, given that here pastoral, liturgical, church-legal, and dogmatic aspects overlap in a particular way. Yet, similar to the doctrine of the church’s ministerial office, the doctrine of repentance must be distinguished from dogmatic statements and historical regulations. Just as the above discussions about faith began not with a description of the act of faith but with the existential hearing of the call to faith, here too one should not begin with the existing church orders for repentance but with the existential hearing of the call to repentance that is issued to Christians. We must break through the differences among the regulations for repentance, and move toward the basic requirements that are contained in the call to repentance, as well as move toward the response that God gives to those who heed the call to repentance. (a) The call to contrition. All Christians must examine themselves again and again in light of God’s commandments—be it the twofold commandment to love, or Jesus’ interpretation of the Decalogue, or his beatitudes—to examine how they have sinned against God or neighbor. Here one should not restrict oneself to the question of so-called severe sins. Mistakes that are hidden from the public, or deemed to be minor, could have the weight of “deadly sins” before God. Once I realize that I have broken God’s commandments in thoughts, words, or deeds, I realize not only that I have sinned but also that I am a sinner. Since even the Old Testament only counted as fulfilled when all of its commandments were fulfilled, the New Testament exhortation calls for complete surrender to God. The call to contrition is not only about the knowledge of sin but also about shame over sin and about disgust in the face of it. This call excludes the possibility that human beings could in any way be proud of their sin and the advantages attained through it. The call to contrition therefore includes within it a commitment to intend not to remain in sin but to turn away from it. If harm was done to other people through the

19 De sacram. poenitentiae, canon 6f. and 12–14 (Denzinger, 1706f. and 1711ff.). [Doctrine on the Sacrament of Penance, Session 14 (25 Nov. 1551); cf. Tanner, 2.712–713. –Ed.]

Exhortation

transgression, it is necessary to redress this harm, e. g., by returning the possessions of others attained by cheating, and by retracting untrue claims. Many consequences of sin, however, cannot be reversed once the sin has been committed. Yet contrition is the willingness to carry the burden of these consequences with others, even if this ends up being a lifelong burden. The call to contrition does not permit procrastinating in carrying out this intention. Wherever contrition burns in the heart, it urges one to turn away immediately from that by which one has sinned against God and neighbor. Thus the call to contrition requires, e. g., the breaking off an adulterous relationship and ceasing to exploit other people. That is why the ancient church prescribed a space of time before the reintegration of grave sinners, in which the seriousness of their contrition was to be demonstrated by turning away from the sin. (b) The call to faith. Christians, too, cannot remove the guilt they have incurred before God by their own devices—not even by paying attention to their effort of turning away or to the good works they have done, for God claims the whole person. People are unable to blot out their guilt by appealing to the grace they received in baptism. Precisely because of the grace they have received, the sins of Christians have special weight. Neither can Christians undo the sin against God through the intention and attempt to remedy the harm done to other human beings. On the contrary, Christians also remain trapped in their guilt, together with their possibilities. Contrition that only focuses upon one’s own guilt and one’s own efforts to become free from it must lead to despair. God invites us to confess to him, by renouncing any and all self-justification, that we have sinned once again, and to stand before him as sinners. The confession of sin is at the same time the acknowledgement that we deserve divine judgment. This confession must be made either directly before God or before the members of the congregation, especially those who have received the office of pastor[xxiv] from God, or even before the congregation as a whole. Yet even here an abyss of despair opens up when we focus only on God’s commandment and his judgment. In the end, it is utterly decisive that we confess our guilt to God while having faith in his mercy. Already in the old covenant, God was praised as the Lord “who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, … He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities” (Ps. 103.3, 10). In this mercy God sent his Son, who proclaimed the Father who waits for the sinner and runs toward that sinner with forgiveness. The call to repentance is always at the same time the call to faith, and not only by acknowledging the divine attributes of love and mercy but by trusting that God will treat me as the loving and merciful one. In this faith, the sinner does not stand alone. The sinner is surrounded by the community of believers. The sinner calls upon the crucified one, who is present in the church, which is the fruit and the instrument of God’s forgiveness. Faith in the Lord who is actively present in the church recognizes the help that comes

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to the contrite sinner through the individual asking for forgiveness, not only in isolation but through the intercessory prayers of the congregation’s members who surround and support that person. This is especially true when faith is too weak to overcome one’s despair over sin, and one’s entanglement in concrete sins is too great to break free of them on one’s own. In its regulations for repentance, the ancient church assigned great significance to intercessory prayer for those who undergo repentance. Contrition and faith, turning away from oneself and turning toward God, are personal decisions that often take place only after difficult inner struggles. And yet, all who have become contrite and have asked God for forgiveness will confess that their contrition and faith are not the result of their own turning away from sin and turning toward God, but rather are given to them as the gift of divine grace. (c) The assurance of forgiveness. When people ask for forgiveness through contrition and faith, they notice that they are surrounded by a plethora of affirmations, through which God blots out the sin that was committed: Forgiveness encounters them in Jesus’ promise that the Father in heaven hears prayers and gives us that for which we pray. This trust in God’s forgiveness is encouraged by the Lord’s Prayer. Forgiveness comes to the sinner in the proclamation of the gospel, for the gospel is not only the proclamation of God’s act of redemption that was accomplished once and for all in Jesus Christ, but it is also the assurance of this act. Through the assurance of the death and resurrection of Christ, God liberates sinners from their guilt. Forgiveness is granted to the sinner through the word of absolution that is the response to the corporate confession of sin by the gathered congregation. In most churches this takes place in every service, whether the absolution is stated in a deprecatory form (“May God forgive you your sins…”), or in an indicative form (“I forgive you your sins in the name of God…”), or through the assurance of a biblical word of grace. Forgiveness cannot be seized by anyone; it can only be received. Here it is particularly helpful when forgiveness is given personally, to this unique human being who is burdened by specific transgressions. The promise that prayers are heard, the proclamation of the gospel, and the absolution spoken to the whole congregation in the worship service—all happen simultaneously to many. Here individuals might remain in doubt whether their prayer was really heard and whether they are liberated from their guilt. The most direct, concrete, and unmistakable assurance of forgiveness takes place through that absolution which is given to an individual after the confession of specific sins. In the ancient church, this took place when those who had fallen away, or had been excommunicated, were received back into the church. This took place most often in public, in the worship assembly, but from the beginning of the Middle Ages it was done most often in private confession.

Exhortation

Here the indicative form of absolution probably expresses most clearly that through these words of forgiveness from the person authorized by him, God himself is forgiving the guilt. Absolution is “not the voice or word of the person speaking it, but it is the word of God, who forgives sin. For it is spoken in God’s stead and by God’s command.”20 We must believe absolution is “nothing else than (God’s) voice sounding down from heaven.”21 In the Lord’s Supper, too, forgiveness is received in an entirely personal way by everyone who approaches in contrition and faith, for every participant is given Christ’s body and blood of the covenant for the forgiveness of sins. At the same time, it becomes most clear through the participation in the Lord’s Supper that the forgiveness of sins is always also the reconciliation of believers with one another. The call to repentance can be both things. On the one hand, it is difficult to heed, given our reluctance to repent, our self-deceit and self-justifications, our sluggishness in making amends for the damage we have done and in sharing the suffering we have caused others. On the other hand, the invitation to receive forgiveness is full of divine love, and its power to blot out sin and renew the sinner is overwhelming—overwhelming too in the manifold ways by which God’s forgiveness comes to the person who is contrite and believes in Christ. What is even greater than the difficulty to heed the call to repentance is the divine love to which it bears witness. The basic challenges and offers that are contained in the call to repentance and have been set forth above, leave open the possibility for quite different church orders of repentance. Yet, regardless of how they are specifically defined and dealt with, it is crucial that the connection between contrition and faith be retained, and the sin-erasing and renewing power of forgiveness not be diminished. Since one of the most important reasons for the schism of the Western Church in the sixteenth century was the practice of repentance, its history is briefly expounded below so that both the fundamental diversity that is possible and the dangers of certain orders of repentance become clear. In the ancient church, orders of repentance arose in connection with excommunication, namely, in response to the desire of those who had apostatized in times of persecution, and of those who had been excommunicated for grave sins, to be readmitted to the community of the church and to be allowed to partake in the Lord’s Supper. There was some trepidation against this, due to the holiness of the church, and in light of particular New Testament traditions wherein Jesus taught that the “sin against the Holy Spirit” (Mk. 3.29 par.) is unforgiveable, and given that the letter to the Hebrews threatened the impossibility of a second repentance for those who had apostatized after their reception of the Holy Spirit (Heb. 6.4–8, as well

20 AC XXV. [German text. BSELK, 148 (BC, 72). –Ed.] 21 Apol. XII.40. [This quotation is a paraphrase by Schlink. Cf. BSELK, 446 (BC, 193). –Ed.]

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as 10.26–31 and 12.16–17; cf. also 1 Jn. 5.16f.). In the ancient church, the “mortal sins” of apostasy, murder, and fornication were at first largely excluded from forgiveness, but in the third century the forgiveness of those sins also became established, although for centuries in the West such a second repentance of grave sins was only permitted once in a person’s lifetime. The repentance of those who had committed mortal sins took place in public, in front of the congregation, and often involved very strict and long-lasting impositions of penance before the penitent was gradually permitted to be present at the sermon, participate in the prayers, and finally partake of the eucharist. These penitential practices served to prove the seriousness of contrition but were also regarded as punishment for the sins that had been committed. After the sinner had fulfilled the penitential requirements, the bishop performed the reconciliation of the sinner to the church (reconciliatio). This readmission into the church as the realm of divine grace simultaneously opened up access to divine forgiveness. Martyrs and confessors have also pronounced absolution. In the Eastern Church, according to the witness of Clement of Alexandria and Origen, this was seen less as the exclusive task of the church’s ministerial office and, in a special way, more the responsibility of pneumatics. This responsibility has continued in the ongoing preference that sins be confessed to monks. Amid hard-fought battles and after profound schisms, such as that of the Montanists and the Church of Novatian, the principle that the forgiveness of all sins should be permitted without limit—provided there was contrition and penance—was finally established, whereas the limitation that one could repent only once was also dropped.[xxv] This principle corresponds to the predominant New Testament witnesses about God’s readiness to accept every repentant sinner. The issue of the limits of the possibility for absolution has of course continued throughout church history, and it also played a role in subsequent schisms. For those Christians who had not committed any mortal sins there was no comparatively rigid order of repentance in the first centuries, albeit the forgiveness of sins was very important for all of them. An order of repentance that was binding for all Christians was developed only in the early Middle Ages in the form of private confession, after the ancient church’s order of public repentance had diminished in significance, partly as a result of its rigidity, partly due to its being restricted to mortal sins, and partly because of its later connection with civil modes of punishment. Private confession spread from Irish-Scottish monasticism into the West and East, yet it did so without ever fully abolishing the ancient church’s order of confession for the excommunicated. While in the West private confession was undertaken in front of priests and bishops, in the Eastern Church this was largely done in front of monks, for many centuries even in front of those who had not been ordained as priests. In private confession the essential acts of the ancient church’s order of repentance were retained: confession of sins, penance, and absolution. They had merely been taken out of the public view of the congregation, and some of them now attained a different meaning and status in the process of repentance. While in the ancient church’s order, absolution had been mainly the reconciliation of the excommunicated with the church, and only implicitly the assurance of divine forgiveness, God’s forgiveness now moved into the foreground in the order of private confession, which was preceded by excommunication only in the rarest of cases. In

Exhortation

the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was much reflection about which of the acts was the one through which divine forgiveness was received: did this already take place through contrition, whether before confession or during confession, so that the subsequent priestly absolution, if it followed the acts of penance, also had a merely declarative significance, or, if absolution took place before the acts of penance, it only represented a conditional assurance of divine forgiveness? Or was the divine forgiveness received through the priestly absolution? The latter interpretation gradually predominated, although the Thomistic-Aristotelian interpretation of absolution as the sacrament of repentance’s forma and contrition (and the acts of penance) as its materia placed divine forgiveness in the middle of the process of repentance and still closely tied it to contrition.[xxvi] This understanding is reflected in the fact that amid the various formulations of absolution, the indicative one (“I declare you free from your sins…”) became established in the West, with the deprecative and optative formulation (“May God forgive you your sins…”) added to it as an introduction, while the deprecative form has been preserved in many Orthodox churches. In the certainty that the believer receives God’s forgiveness through the human word of absolution, the Reformers also retained the indicative form of absolution in their orders of repentance. In fact, it may correspond most clearly to New Testament traditions about the transfer of the power of the keys. In the history of private confession, confession of sin and absolution were soon combined in one act of confession. The consequence of this was that the performance of the acts of penance imposed on the sinner no longer preceded absolution but followed it. The demand for such acts of penance, which had to be fulfilled after absolution as a kind of punishment or satisfaction, seemed to imply the notion that absolution was only given conditionally and that it only became effective after the acts of penance had been done by humans, and thus was dependent on human works. That would be perceived as a weakening of the effective validity of absolution. But if one understands it as God’s forgiveness of sins, as God’s justifying verdict, then repentant believers are liberated both from their guilt and from the divine punishment they deserve. Then Rom. 8.33ff. applies. That is why not only the churches of the Reformation had rejected the satisfactio that was to be done by people in the process of penance, but so too had the Orthodox Church before them. A momentous change in the practice of repentance took place in the Latin Church with the emergence of indulgences in the eleventh century. Originally, they were the partial or total remission of the imposed penitential penalties that was granted on the basis of the assurance of the church’s intercession for the sinner, which took the place of that sinner’s acts of penance. Since the thirteenth century, indulgences have been derived from the jurisdictional power of bishops, above all the pope, which is given with the power of the keys and which allows bishops to grant access to the church’s treasury of the saints’ merits. This power includes the claim that the indulgences are valid and effective for the living and the dead. Temporal punishments for sins to be paid on earth or in purgatory are partially or fully waived in this way. Neither the Orthodox Church nor the churches of the Reformation see the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory as being based on apostolic teaching, nor are they able to

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agree with this expansive interpretation of the power of the keys given to the apostles. This is not to deny that Christians, after receiving divine forgiveness in absolution, require the intercession of the church in bearing the consequences of their sins and in struggling against backsliding into sin. In chap. 20 (“Spiritual Gift and Ministerial Office,” 889ff.), we will discuss the ecclesiological presuppositions for the fact that, during the persecution of the ancient church, not only the absolution by bishops but also that by confessors and martyrs was acknowledged as valid, and why, in the Eastern churches, absolution was especially regarded as the responsibility of pneumatics, and for centuries was given by monks, just as later Luther also did not assign absolution exclusively to the church’s ministerial office. In the summarizing section (“The Richness of God’s Action of Grace,” 771f.), we will return to the question that arose in the early Middle Ages and was soon commonly answered in the affirmative (also, by the way, in Art. XII of the Augsburg Confession), namely, whether, in addition to baptism and the Lord’s Supper, repentance might also be called a sacrament.

Looking back on the history of the orders of repentance, it becomes clear that, amid the manifold ways of assuring divine forgiveness, private confession as such, namely, the individual person’s confession of sin in front of an authorized member of the church, and the absolution spoken to the former by the latter, was far less controversial than the manner in which it was ordered and practiced. Especially controversial was understanding the new obedience as satisfaction and punishment, as well as the practice of indulgences. In addition, the necessity of private confession on the part of every Christian, the frequency and the occasions for confession, as well as the requirement for a complete recounting of all the sins committed, were often debated. However, although these questions were not answered in exactly the same way in the Latin and Eastern churches, they did not become the reason for schism. Neither was there a break with private confession as such in the time of the Reformation. To be sure, Luther rejected compulsory confession and the obligation to confess all sins, given that such an obligation opened an abyss that exceeded the possibility of self-knowledge, but he too, like Calvin, recommended private confession for troubled consciences. In the era of Lutheran Orthodoxy, there was even a reintroduction of compulsory confession, whereby, in addition to the confession of sins, the examination of faith played a significant role. But even when the general confession of the assembled congregation, which was already widespread in the early Middle Ages and was resumed by the churches of the Reformation, increasingly displaced the order of confession, its most important elements, the confession of sins in faith and the assurance of forgiveness, remained in pastoral conversation. Faced with the very opposite dangers of the church’s rigor and laxism, and the scrupulousness and frivolity of its members, it was and is obviously not possible to regulate the process of repentance in the same way once

Exhortation

and for all without obscuring the consolation of forgiveness and the joy of the sinner’s repentance. Looking back at the two concluding sections (A.9 and B.9) of the two main parts of this chapter, and comparing the explanations of the “call to faith” and the “call to repentance,” it follows that both calls are closely related, indeed, are intertwined. For the call to faith that is directed toward the world contains within it the call to repentance, and the call to repentance that is directed toward Christians contains within it the call to faith. Just as the call to faith exhorts us to live a life of faith, the call to repentance exhorts us to live a life of repentance. Just as one can call the state of being a Christian a state of faith, so also in the East, Basil and the other Cappadocians required daily repentance, and they called monasticism a state of repentance. In the West daily repentance was required by Ambrose and Augustine, and since then this requirement has not fallen silent. This is also the historical context of the first of Luther’s 95 Theses (1517): “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt. 4.17), he willed that the entire life of his believers on earth should be one of constant repentance.”22 In all churches one finds witnesses who report on their experience that, in the course of a life led in faith, the awareness of sin does not decrease but rather increases. Indeed, it may approach such a level that the affected person comes to think that salvation is an impossibility. However, there are also witnesses in that same context who report that God used especially these other people as instruments of his gracious work toward others, even though this instrumentality remained hidden to them. By being brought to nothing before God in a particular way, God works through them. Growth in faith takes place at the same time as growth in repentance, and growth in repentance takes place through one’s own diminishment and becoming nothing and by Christ becoming ever greater and more powerful in the servant ministry carried out by the believer. Because the life of Christians takes place in repentance and faith, the certainty is determined by both: We can only be certain of salvation when we agree with God’s judgment through repentance and at the same time hold on to the crucified Christ by faith. Repentance and faith belong together. The certainty (certitudo) of faith is no security in the sense of a human possession (securitas) that cannot be lost, for believers too can fall. And yet they may be certain that the crucified one who is seated at the right hand of God intercedes for them.

22 Luther, Thesis 1 of the “Ninety-Five Theses.” [This is a paraphrase by Schlink. Cf. WA, 1.223 (LW 1 , 31.25). The German, tut Busse (the form Schlink quoted), as with the Latin form, poenitentiam agite, may be translated in two ways: “repent” and “do penance.” –Ed.]

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When repentance and faith are intertwined, it remains to be asked why the doctrine of the assurance of the gospel (A) concludes with the call to faith, and the doctrine of evangelical exhortation (B) concludes with the call to repentance. Since both belong so closely together, the reverse order or the same heading at the end of both parts would also be possible: “The call to repentance and to faith.” The reason why the call to repentance comes at the end of the doctrine of the exhortations to Christians is that in the churches there is again and again an embarrassing tendency, namely, to urgently call non-Christians and members of other churches to repentance, while they themselves evade repentance. Of course, members of one’s own church body are also called to repentance, but this call to repentance is generally privatized. It is directed to individuals but rarely to one’s own Church as a whole in the historical development of its worship, its teaching, and its ordering. But the readiness of the churches to repent in this broad sense is of the greatest importance in overcoming the divisions. Even if this ecclesiological problem will be discussed only in the third main part of this dogmatics, it should be prepared now by the fact that already here the call to repentance is unfolded particularly as a call to Christians. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 14 [i] [ii]

[iii]

See, e. g., the eight canons against the Pelagians that were adopted at the Fifteenth (or Sixteenth) Synod of Carthage, begun on 1 May 418 (Denzinger, 222–230). On “the grace of the Holy Spirit in the application of redemption,” as set forth in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Lutheran dogmatics, see Schmid, 261–318 (ET: 407–499). Many of Schlink’s statements in the rest of this chapter echo emphases that he made decades earlier in the central chapters on law and gospel in his study of the Lutheran Confessions. Cf. Schlink, TLB, SÖB, 4.66–122.

Exhortation

[iv]

[v]

[vi]

Theopoiēsis (θεοποίησις, “making divine”), sometimes also called theosis (θεοσις, “deification,” “divinization”), is the Orthodox teaching that Christ’s humanity is a deified humanity, and that human beings are called to participate in this deified humanity, i. e., to share in its deification. See, for example, the famous statement by Athanasius: “For [the Word of God] was made human that we might be made divine” (Athanasius, De incarnatione Verbi, 54.3 [PG, 25.192b; On the Incarnation of the Word, NPNF 2 , 4.65 (trans. modified)]). “This deification is realized when we become members of the Body of Christ, but also, and especially, by the unction of the Spirit when the latter touches each one of us: the ‘economy of the Holy Spirit’ means precisely this, that we are able to enjoy communion with the one and truly deified humanity of Jesus Christ throughout history from the time of the Ascension to the final parousia: ‘God has sent out the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out in us, Abba, Father’ (Gal. 4.6)” (John Meyendorff, The Orthodox Church, 3d rev. ed., trans. John Chapin [Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1981], 195–196). The Erweckungsbewegung was a broad spiritual revival movement in German territories that occurred in the first half of the nineteenth century. While this movement had close ties to German Pietism, among Lutheran theologians there was a concern to relate the personal experience of spiritual rebirth to the Lutheran confessional teachings about repentance, the sacraments, faith, and good works. See Becker, The Self-Giving God and Salvation History, 3–15. A German edition of this correspondence appeared under the title Wort und Mysterium [Word and Mystery] (Witten: Luther-Verlag, 1958). For an English translation, see George Mastranotonis, Augsburg and Constantinople: The Correspondence between the Tübingen Theologians and Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople on the Augsburg Confession (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006). When in 1573 Baron David Ungnad von Sonnegk (ca. 1538–1600) was appointed ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire to Constantinople, he took with him as his chaplain, Stephen Gerlach (1546–1612), who was a graduate of Tübingen University. Gerlach brought letters to the ecumenical patriarch from Jakob Andreae (1528–1590), who was then the chancellor of Tübingen University, and Martin Crusius (1526–1607), who taught Latin and Greek there. In 1574 Andreae and Crusius sent another letter to Patriarch Jeremias II (1530–1595), along with a 1559 Greek translation of the Augsburg Confession. The patriarch replied briefly in 1574, and then two years later there began a series of theological exchanges—three letters from the patriarch and two replies from the Tübingen professors—which lasted until 1581. Cf. Schlink, “Gesetz und Evangelium als Kontroverstheologisches Problem” [Law and Gospel as a Controversial Issue in Theology], SÖB, 1/1.145 (ESW, 1.194).

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[vii]

[viii]

[ix]

[x] [xi]

[xii]

Cf. The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English, ed. Florentino García Martínez, trans. Wilfred G. E. Watson (New York: Brill, 1994), 47–48, 77–85, 87–90. The phrase fides qua creditur refers to “the faithful action by which one believes,” i. e., the act of receiving in faith what is proclaimed. The phrase fides quae creditur refers to “the content of the faith that is believed,” i. e., the Christian faith as a body of teaching. Cf. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 117. Schlink here broke with Luther’s translation (“…since we…, let us have peace with God…”) to side with the consensus of modern textual critics that the more probable reading is the indicative (“we have”) rather than the subjunctive (“let us”). See the textual note for Rom. 5.1 in the NRSV. See also Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2d ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 452. See BSELK, 718–785 (BC, 297–328). Gratia inhaerens, sometimes called gratia inhabitans, refers to “inhering grace” or “indwelling grace,” which underscores that “justification is a true rebirth, that it produces a new creature, a temple truly inhabited by the Spirit of God himself…” (Rahner and Vorgrimler, Dictionary of Theology, 198). Cf. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 130–131. Here Schlink made use of an important distinction that was classically formulated and analyzed by Kant: “In all judgments in which the relation of a subject to the predicate is thought (if I only consider affirmative judgments, since the application to negative ones is easy) this relation is possible in two different ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A as something that is (covertly) contained in this concept A; or B lies entirely outside the concept A, though to be sure it stands in connection with it. In the first case, I call the judgment analytic, in the second synthetic” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 48). “An ‘analytic’ sentence, such as ‘Ophthalmologists are doctors,’ has historically been characterized as one whose truth depends upon the meanings of its constituent terms (and how they’re combined) alone, as opposed to a more usual ‘synthetic’ sentence, such as ‘Ophthalmologists are rich,’ whose truth depends also upon the facts about the world that the sentence represents, e. g., that ophthalmologists are rich” (Georges Rey, “The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta (online), url: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/ analytic-synthetic (accessed 20.3.2020).

Exhortation

[xiii]

[xiv]

[xv]

[xvi]

For the most important passages on grace in the writings of the doctor gratiae, see J. Patout Burns, “Grace,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald, O.S.A. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 391–398. According to Burns, Rom. 5.5 is the biblical text most often cited in Augustine’s writings. Andreas Osiander (1498–1552) was a pastor in Nuremberg and a professor of theology in Königsberg. His understanding of the doctrine of justification was subject to significant criticism. He defended his view in a formal disputation at the university in 1550. Subsequently, most Lutheran churches in German-speaking lands rejected his position. The Greek term χάρισμα ([charisma]; plural: χάρισματα [charismata]) means “gift of grace” or “freely bestowed divine favor” (cf. BDAG, 1081). Schlink frequently transliterated the singular form of the word into German as Charisma and the plural form as Charismen. On occasion he also used the German word Geistesgabe(n) (“spiritual gift[s]”) to refer to the same gift(s). Some scholars render charisma and charismata into English as “chrism” (singular) and “chrisms” (plural), while others simply transliterate these Greek terms into English. Here and elsewhere in this edition, the second option will normally be taken. The German word Charismen will always be rendered as “charismata,” while Geistesgabe(n) will be translated as “spiritual gift(s).” On occasion, however, when context is determinative, the singular Charisma will be translated as “spiritual gift.” Schlink also used a related term, Charismatiker, which will be rendered as “spiritually gifted individual,” that is, a person who has received one or more of the charismata that are listed in the New Testament (e. g., in 1 Cor. 12 and 14). “Hesychasm,” a term that comes from the Greek word for “quietness,” refers to the Eastern tradition of inner, mystical prayer, especially the praying of the socalled “Jesus Prayer.” “The immediate aim of the Hesychasts was to secure what they termed ‘the union of the mind with the heart,’ so that their prayer became ‘prayer of the heart’” (ODCC, 764). This praying leads eventually to the vision of the Divine Light, which the Hesychasts thought could be seen with one’s earthly, bodily vision, aided by divine grace. The Hesychasts considered this Light to be identical with the Light that surrounded Jesus in his transfiguration on Mt. Tabor, i. e., “the uncreated energies of the Godhead” (ODCC, 764), and thus the object of the beatific vision. This tradition of prayer is closely tied to the monks of Mt. Athos, but its origins can be traced back to the fourth century, particularly to Gregory of Nyssa and Evagrius Ponticus (346–399). This tradition developed most fully in the theology of Gregory Palamas. At that time, in the fourteenth century, Hesychasm was fiercely criticized by some as a superstition. The critics maintained that a human being could not behold the Divine Light with bodily eyes. Moreover, the critics argued that the Hesychast distinction between the essence and energies of God impaired the unity of God. Gregory Palamas not only defended Hesychasm but was able to get it formally recognized at several councils that met in Constantinople in the mid-fourteenth century.

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[xvii]

[xviii] [xix]

[xx]

[xxi] [xxii] [xxiii]

[xxiv] [xxv]

[xxvi]

For Justin’s understanding of the Decalogue, cf., e. g., Justin Martyr, Second Apology, 5ff. (ACW, 56.77ff.); Dialogue with Tryphon, 18, 34, 46 (FOTC, 6.174ff., 198ff., 216ff.). Cf. BDAG, 764–765. Portions of this paragraph come from Schlink’s earlier essay, “Law and Gospel as a Controversial Issue in Theology” (cf. ESW, 1.167, 179). The phrase “usus evangelii practicus” does not appear in Luther’s writings, although it fits with emphases he made in his more mature theology, e. g., in his 1531 (1535) lectures on Galatians (see LW 1 , 26). Schlink likely learned this Latin phrase from his close friend and colleague Peter Brunner, who used it in an essay to describe Luther’s alternative to what Melanchthon had called the tertius usus legis (the third use of the law). See Peter Brunner, “Gesetz und Evangelium: Versuch einer dogmatischen Paraphrase” [Law and Gospel: An Attempt at a Dogmatic Paraphrase], in Bemühungen um die einigende Wahrheit: Aufsätze [Efforts to Find the Unifying Truth: Essays] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), 74–96 (here 90). Cf. Hans-Martin Barth, “Gesetz und Evangelium I,” in TRE, 13.134 (which also refers to Brunner’s use of this Latin phrase). For Calvin’s exposition of the tertius usus legis, see ICR, II.7.12 (1.360–361). For the statement in the FC SD (Art. VI), see BSELK, 1250–1255 (BC, 587–591). According to Gerhard Ebeling, the doctrine of the triplex usus legis originated with Melanchthon. See Gerhard Ebeling, “On the Doctrine of the Triplex Usus Legis in the Theology of the Reformation,” in Word and Faith, trans. James W. Leitch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1963), 62–78. Cf. Schlink, “Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.24 (ESW, 1.57). Cf. Schlink, “Das wandernde Gottesvolk,” SÖB, 1/1.202ff. (ESW, 1.257ff.). The usus elenchticus legis refers to the elenctical (lit. refutational) or pedagogical use of the law, i. e., its use to confront, refute, and accuse the sinner, and to drive the sinner to Christ. See Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 320–321. Literally, “the shepherd office” (“Das Hirtenamt”). This was Schlink’s preferred way of referring to the ministerial office of the pastor. Montanism was an apocalyptic movement in the late second century that was tied to Montanus, who lived in Phrygia. He and his followers expected the imminent outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the church. Montanus himself evidently claimed to be the Paraclete promised in John. Montanus and his co-prophets and prophetesses engaged in ecstatic prophetic activity. Their asceticism attracted large numbers of Christians in Asia Minor and North Africa, including Tertullian. Novatian had been a Roman presbyter (elder) in the third century. He joined a morally rigorous group of Christians, which had separated from those Christians who had compromised with pagans during the Decian persecution (AD 249–250). He was consecrated as a rival bishop of Rome. While the Novatians were doctrinally orthodox, they were excommunicated because of their schism. The eighth canon of the Council of Nicaea set forth the terms by which the Novatians could be received back into the Catholic community (cf. Tanner, 1.9–10; see also ODCC, 1165). See Aquinas, ST, III.84 and III.90.

Summary of Parts A and B: God’s Action of Grace and Human Action

The two previous parts dealt with the assurance of the gospel and the exhortation of the gospel—and thus with God’s salvific action through the gospel and God’s new commandment—as well as with the salvation of sinners from the judgment into which they have fallen and the judgment according to works that is still in the future. Both the divine action of grace and the divine demand are inseparably connected. This is taught by all churches, also by the churches of the Reformation. As a glance at the catechisms of Luther and Calvin shows, as does the Heidelberg Catechism, all of them teach not only the Apostles’ Creed but also the Ten Commandments. It is not the churches of the Reformation that are addressed by the Council of Trent’s nineteenth canon on the doctrine of justification but antinomian and libertinistic groups: “If anyone says that in the gospel nothing but faith is prescribed, while other matters are indifferent, neither prescribed nor forbidden, but free; or that the Ten Commandments in no way apply to the Christians: let that person be anathema.”1 On the part of human beings, the twofold address of God corresponds to faith and the new obedience, to the reception of divine grace and the self-sacrifice to God and neighbor, to letting oneself be embraced by God’s love and the response of love toward God and neighbor. Faith and the new obedience belong closely together. “If I have all faith…., but not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13.2 [S]). Thus it is a universal Christian conviction “that such faith should yield good fruit and good works and that a person must do such good works….”2 Despite their close connection, however, God’s two addresses seem to contradict one another in some sense. Hence, e. g., the well-known tension in Pauline theology between the doctrine of justification by faith apart from works and the demand for deeds and fruit, through which the law is fulfilled (cf., e. g., Rom. 13.8–10 and Gal. 5.22–24). Ultimately, there is a conflict in his teaching about justification as acquittal now in relation to the Last Judgment (Rom. 8.31–34) and his announcement of the future judgment according to works, which even the justified will have to face (cf., e. g., 1 Cor. 3.13–15; 4.4–5). Of course, both addresses have their origin in the one God who has come to us in Jesus Christ. But this does not yet resolve the tensions and contradictions. Rather, they become all the more distressing. The same God is encountered as the one who is bestowing everything and demanding everything, the one who is saving and the one who is judging.

1 Denzinger, 1569. [Trans. modified; Cf. Tanner, 2.680. –Ed.] 2 AC VI. [German. BSELK, 100 (BC, 40). –Ed.]

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Thus, for theological reflection, there emerges the question about God’s action and human action in the attainment of salvation. How are divine and human action interrelated? Which part belongs to which of the two? How do they work together? Can the tensions and contradictions of the biblical statements be overcome through an overarching formula free from contradiction? These questions were first developed with fundamental acuity in the struggle between Augustine and Pelagianism, and they have not fallen silent since.[i] They have remained the cause for a certain disquiet and have also led to deep divisions in the church. Looking at how the answers to these questions have changed in the course of church history, one notices that generally, as a rule, two more or less contradictory, or at least distinguishable, definitions of the relationship between the divine action of grace and human action have been given at the same time. This simultaneous duality of answers is probably not coincidental but has its reason in the particular nature of the topic. The history of how the relationship between grace and works has been defined cannot be explained in detail here. For instance, we cannot expound here the changes in Augustine’s teaching about free will or the differences within Pelagianism between Pelagius and his followers Caelestius and Julian. Here we are merely able to provide an outline of the most important historical figures in the definition of this relationship and of the consequences for the unity of the church: According to Pelagius, humanity was free to live sinlessly, even after Adam’s fall. For Pelagius, grace meant the creaturely freedom of the will as well as the commandments of God and the example of Jesus. According to Augustine, humanity is unable not to sin after Adam’s fall. The human will needs to be liberated for obedience to God through grace, namely, through the redeeming action of God that is grounded in Jesus’ death and through the renewing work of the Holy Spirit. Every deed of obedience is the effect of freely given grace (gratia gratis data). According to Pelagius, human beings can use their natural ability to acquire merit before God, with which they are able to endure in God’s judgment. According to Augustine, the merits of human beings are gifts of grace. When Augustine died, Pelagianism was already condemned in the West, and Augustine’s doctrine of grace began to take on the significance of a dogma—naturally, a dogma with a different topic and a different structure of statements than the previous dogmas, which had been defined by the basic shape of the creed. After their condemnation in the West, the representatives of Pelagianism had found acceptance in the Eastern Church. In contrast to the decisions of the African synods and the Roman bishops, here they were regarded as orthodox. When they were finally condemned in the Council of Ephesus in 431, this was less because of their teaching on grace and more because of the protection they had sought and found with Nestorius. To be sure, there are clear differences between Eastern theology and Pelagianism in the teaching about the salvific significance of Jesus Christ and God’s action of grace through the sacraments, as well as in the understanding of creation (cf. above 257). Yet they shared a strong interest in the

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freedom of the will that remained even after the fall and in the responsibility of human beings for their deeds. Both Eastern theology and Pelagianism perceived Augustine’s doctrine of original sin and grace as a novum and refused to make this topic the subject of a dogma. These differences did not lead to a schism between the Eastern Church and the Western Church, but they contributed to a certain alienation between them. Another objection to Augustine’s doctrine of grace took place in southern Gaul. Here, in contrast to Pelagianism, original sin and saving grace were acknowledged. But, in contrast to Augustine, theologians there taught that while the will had been weakened by original sin, it was not incapable of turning to God and having faith, and they taught that God’s grace supports all human beings who desire to receive it and who struggle against sin. Behind this was a concern that Augustine’s teaching about the sole efficacy of grace would stifle the participation of human beings in the struggle for faith and good works and that his teaching about predestination would lead people to despair. This disagreement between the “Semipelagians” and the representatives of Augustine’s theology concluded in 529 with the decision of the provincial synod at Orange (Arausicanum). In agreement with Augustine, this synod taught that human beings can neither believe in God nor love him because of original sin, but grace alone can work faith and good works in them. In this way, every single merit of human beings toward the attainment of salvation is excluded. At the same time, however, the irresistibility of grace was not mentioned, and double predestination was rejected.[ii] In a very subtle form this distinction is also found in the teaching about grace by high scholasticism, specifically in the differences between Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas.[iii] Following Augustine, both placed the action of grace prior to human works and made a distinction between prevenient grace (gratia gratis data) and the grace that renews people (gratia gratum faciens). But while the Franciscans taught that the free action of human beings was already enabled by prevenient grace, which is then followed by renewing grace, Thomas Aquinas taught that grace has a determinative effect, even in the works of human beings. What Thomas emphasized was not the self-functioning [Eigenwirken] of human beings who are enabled by grace but the action of grace working through human beings as its instrument. This corresponds to the fact that Bonaventure already recognized the good works of human beings accomplished on the basis of preparatory grace as merit (merita de congruo), while Thomas himself ultimately denied the character of merit to the works accomplished on the basis of renewing grace.[iv] Thomas is closer to the Augustinian doctrine of grace. But in both there is a deviation from Augustine in that the renewing grace is expected one-sidedly from the sacraments, and the proclaimed word is only given a preparatory significance. Both theologians also deviated from Augustine in that their statements about grace have largely become independent from those about the work of the Holy Spirit and are focused on the gifts of qualities that are bestowed on human beings. Bonaventure’s voluntaristic approach, which was surrounded and supported by the doctrine of grace, was expanded along the way via Duns Scotus to Ockhamism into a fundamental voluntarism, according to which human beings may already attain salvation (similar to Pelagianism) by willingly realizing the potential contained within them (facere quod in

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se est).[v] From this starting point, it followed that the outward contrition of fearing God’s punishment was valued as highly as the heart’s contrition in faith and love that were brought about by grace, and the meritum de congruo, which, according to Bonaventure, still belonged to the preparation for grace, was regarded as highly as the meritum de condigno that was brought about by renewing grace. This voluntarism differed from Pelagius in that it also taught a divine voluntarism grounded in predestination, whereby the human and the divine will stand opposite to each other in a peculiarly independent way. The Reformation explanation of the relationship between grace and works started anew with Paul and Augustine. While scholasticism expected renewing grace from the sacraments alone, and assigned the proclaimed word merely the preparatory significance of a call to receive the sacraments, the Reformers, following Augustine, believed in God’s justifying action of grace through word and sacrament. While in high scholasticism grace and the Holy Spirit were distinguished, and above all a new habitus and a new qualitas in human beings were expected as the effects of grace, the Reformers taught (with Augustine) that God’s action of grace is the effect of the Holy Spirit through word and sacrament. In the place of scholastic systematics, which inserted the preparatory work of human beings between prevenient and renewing grace, the Reformers taught that God works faith and justifies sinners through the gospel and the sacraments. Good works were in no way regarded as a condition but only as the fruit of justification and as a demand placed upon the justified. The coming judgment according to works was to be encountered with ever-new repentance and an ever-new reception of justification by faith. By contrast, the Council of Trent maintained the scholastic systematization of the sequence of prevenient grace, preparatory human action, renewing grace, and growth in grace through good works. Thus the council’s decree on justification—in the statements concerning the preparation for justification (chap. 6), but especially in the chapters about growth in justification (10) and about the final justification at the Last Judgment (16)—adds human works to faith.3 Indeed, the decree explicitly rejects the understanding of faith as mere trust in God’s mercy, which forgives the sinner for Christ’s sake.4 Although, compared to the teaching of high scholasticism, the Tridentine doctrine again strongly asserted the Thomistic doctrine of grace, the council’s interpretation still gave greater significance to human works in the attainment of salvation than had been the case with Thomas. Thus, in the statements concerning justification, the aspect of growing in righteousness received special weight. The Reformers, too, spoke of a growth in faith and love, but these statements were embraced by the eschatological justification of the whole person that takes place through the gospel. At the Council of Trent, the gospel was discussed again only in the context of prevenient grace, while renewing and justifying grace was taught only as the effect of the sacraments.

3 [See the Decree on Justification, Session VI of the Council of Trent (13 January 1547), Tanner, 2.672–673, 675, 677–678. –Ed.] 4 Canons 12–14. [Tanner, 2.679–680. –Ed.]

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The gospel is only the call to receive the sacraments, but not, like them, the instrument of renewing grace itself. Interestingly, the issue of defining the relationship between God’s working of grace and human action was not then put to rest also within the separated churches of the West. This is true, e. g., of the intra-Lutheran synergistic controversy between Strigel and Flacius (ca. 1560).[vi] Similar cases are found in the Roman Catholic Church, e. g., the Molinist-Thomist controversy (ca. 1600) and the discussions about Jansenism (mostly in the seventeenth century).

For all the differences in these dogmatic definitions of the relationship between God’s action of grace and human action, all churches reject, on the one hand, a thoroughgoing determinism that denies human decision-making in the attainment of salvation. On the other hand, they all reject an understanding of human freedom that renders superfluous the assistance of forgiving and renewing grace. But between these two excluded extremes a multitude of incessant thetic-antithetic variations have been advocated in history. The expressions monergism of grace and synergism of grace and human action are too ambiguous to describe the different positions. The fact that these differences have led to divisions in the West but not in the Eastern Church has to do with the fact that the latter has not defined a dogma on this issue. How is the historical fact of these unfinished efforts to define the relationship between divine grace and human action to be understood? What is the real reason for the duality of the answers, which are broken up into ever-new variations? Which perspectives can be asserted for overcoming the church divisions that have resulted from this? Evidently, the issue is closely related to that of the doctrine of sin, which centers on the question of the relationship between sin as deed and sin as dominion. Thus, in a systematic inquiry into the deeper origins of the “thesis/antithesis” peculiarity of the doctrine of grace, it makes sense to utilize the methodical perspectives that have been elaborated in the ecumenical exploration of the doctrine of sin (cf. above 255ff.). (a) The ecumenical dialogue about the relationship between God’s action of grace and human action cannot be satisfied with merely comparing the various dogmas and doctrinal statements with one another, explaining the terms used, and then elaborating about the existing commonalities and differences. Here, too, one needs to consider that doctrinal statements are only one form of faith-statement amid many other forms. One needs to ask, therefore, what role this topic plays in the entire life of the church and what utterances about this topic might be found in the act of worship and in piety. It could be that doctrine and dogma contain only partial aspects of that which is expressed in the liturgy, in proclamation, and in personal prayer and the struggle against sin. Thus, in Augustine’s Confessions we encounter the story of a highly intensive struggle for truth and purity, even though he intensively taught the sole effectiveness of grace that was already at work in his

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searching and struggling. On the other hand, we encounter in the witnesses to the Eastern Church’s piety impressive testimonies that grace alone saves, even though the freedom of the will is so strongly emphasized. Thus, in the piety of Eastern monasticism, the experience of the Divine Light is over and over described as the free work of God’s grace, even though this tradition teaches in great detail the steps of the ladder that an ascetic must take in order to partake of this experience. (b) If one inquires about the reasons for these mutually opposing extremes in the doctrine, one will have to consider the historical front in which people reflected upon and taught about God’s action of grace and human beings. The same antiGnostic and anti-naturalistic front, in which the Eastern emphasis on sinful deeds and the abiding freedom of the will took place, works itself out in a “synergistic” teaching about grace. Augustine, on the other hand, developed his doctrine of grace, which was decisive for Western history, in the front against such an understanding of free will that thought that human beings are able to live a sinless life without redeeming grace. In formulations and doctrinal statements, the manner in which God’s renewing and empowering grace is experienced by a particular human being also plays an important role. Here the psychological processes differ greatly. According to the tradition in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul experienced the certainty of salvation in Christ quite suddenly in the midst of his struggle against the Christians. Others attained this certainty after much searching, questioning, and investigating, as a kind of fruit of these efforts. Thus differences in doctrine also developed when such subjective experiences of an individual or a community were generalized and established as binding doctrine. This has also happened repeatedly throughout the history of theology, not only in Eastern monasticism but also in modern Protestant charismatic movements, especially in the doctrine of conversion. (c) The various ways of defining the relationship between God’s grace and human action are generally secured by using other articles of doctrine to justify and attempt to prove the logical consistency and non-contradictory character of the represented formula by means of overarching connections. Such reassuring coherence is sought above all in statements about God and about human beings. If our question is initially concerned with the relationship between God’s action of grace and human action, then behind the historical divine action we must inquire about God’s eternal decree and God’s being and essence. Accordingly, Augustine and his successors, Luther and Calvin, taught double predestination, in the sense of a decision of the divine will that was determined from eternity, which excludes the position that the reception of salvation depends on the human will. By contrast, those who have asserted that human action is a condition for attaining salvation have generally secured their positions by pointing to God’s general will to save and by limiting predestination merely to the divine foreknowledge of people’s good and evil deeds and of the wages that are due to them. At the same time, systematic security has also

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been sought in teaching about human beings. If our question is primarily about human action in its relation to divine action, then the statement about human actions was justified with statements about human abilities, be it freedom of the will or its bondage. (d) The deeper and real reason why the question of the relationship between God’s action of grace and human action does not come to rest is probably to be found in the fact that, in both the old covenant and in the new, God encountered and is encountering human beings in a twofold address: promising and commanding, bestowing and demanding, saving and judging. Thus the gospel encounters sinners as a justifying and renewing word, and at the same time exhorts them to live a new life in righteousness. It acquits the sinner without any meritorious works, solely out of grace, and at the same time announces that one day everyone will be judged according to their works. This contradiction is not resolved in the New Testament letters. In contrast to this highly existential twofold event, a very significant shift in the structure of theological thinking and theological statements takes place in the questions about the relationship between divine grace and human action, in two respects: In the question about the relationship between divine and human action, we step out of being personally struck by God’s address and adopt an imaginary standpoint from which we think we are looking at God and human beings, comparing them, and in a sense weighing the action of the one against the action of the other. In the existential act of being struck, however, I am overwhelmed and challenged by God’s love. Here my gaze is directed entirely toward Christ, who died for me and calls me into discipleship. A structural shift also takes place in that, in place of being existentially struck by God’s judgment and acquittal, by his killing and making alive—and thus in place of the human acknowledgment of one’s own fallen condition under God’s judgment and of the need to trust in God’s grace—there is an effort to resolve in one formula the contradictions in God’s action as well as the contradictions in the responses demanded of and neglected by human beings. (e) Because reflection about the relationship between divine grace and human action is triggered by the twofold address of God, and has a twofold focus for its object, namely, the saving and judging action of God, the question of the relationship between the divine action of grace and human action cannot be answered in one dogmatic formula. Instead, because of the differences in the various historical fronts, different answers necessarily arise. For example, God’s saving promise, his commandment, and his threatening warning must be given different weight when proclaimed to a congregation that is being persecuted, compared to one that is despairing, or is listless, or is threatened by apostasy from the faith. Such differences in the dogmatic definition of the relationship between God’s grace and human action need not exclude one another if they remain within the boundaries of the

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extremes, i. e., understanding grace in a deterministic way, which excludes the freedom of those who receive grace, and understanding human beings in a Pelagian way, which equates grace with the natural freedom of the human being. Within these boundaries, different dogmatic definitions of this relationships can very well complement one another. Of course, every dogmatic one-sidedness that is conditioned by an historical front is dangerous. For example, the Augustinian doctrine of grace, as southern Gallic monks already feared in his time, can lead to quietism, and the Lutheran doctrine of justification could have the same effect. On the other hand, a stronger emphasis on human responsibility in the relationship between God’s action of grace and human action can lead to a moralism that ultimately no longer requires grace. As historical circumstances change, a definition of the relationship that provides important protection for orthodox proclamation of the gospel at one front, can become a formula behind which human beings hide from God’s actual assurance and claim. It is possible that such a shift was the reason for the criticism of the Pauline teaching on justification in the letter of James. After all, the justification of the sinner may also be used as a formula in such a way that its possession or its promulgation takes on the quality of a human work. (f) It is of critical importance for ecumenical dialogue about this controversial topic of the relationship between grace and works to keep in view the current essential statements about proclamation and the administration of the sacraments, through which God encounters human beings in the here and now. For it is not possible to arbitrarily substitute one of the various structures of the theological statement for another. The particular structures are coordinated with the particular content of the statements (cf. above 115ff.). The more the structure of the dogma is removed from the original structure of the theological statements about a given topic, the more new problems arise, which attain a special weight they did not originally have. That is why dogmatic statements about the relationship between grace and works must be related to the concrete action of God toward human beings and to the existential response of human beings, and they must be formulated in the greatest possible structural proximity to them. Dogmatic statements must therefore leave open a space in which God, in his freedom, both accepts the whole human being and challenges the whole human being. This openness to the freedom of the twofold address and the twofold action of God does not mean acknowledging an insoluble antinomy within the action of God, but rather acknowledging that God prepares and leads his people through his bestowing and his demanding. It also does not mean acknowledging a dialectic in which both sides are opposed to each other with equal strength, but rather a dialectic of historical progression that is directed toward the end-time consummation of history. The contradiction between God’s giving and demanding, saving and judging, is embraced by God’s love, which, in Jesus Christ and through the

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Holy Spirit, wants to draw humanity to itself and glorify it. Therefore, the tensions and contradictions within God’s speech and action are not resolved through a theoretical definition of the relationship. Rather, we are called by both addresses to move toward the coming Lord as those who are both gifted and challenged. Let us recall once more the Pauline sentence, which is not a single, isolated sentence but a concentration of his proclamation of God’s assurance and claim: “[W]ork out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2.12f.). For someone thinking about the definition of the relationship between divine and human action, this sentence signifies a contradiction. In the existential hearing of the word, however, the clauses that contradict one another are inseparably connected. In other words, both must be proclaimed as God’s address: “Seek me, and you will find me” and “You will find me, for I have already sought and found you beforehand.” (g) The structure of the question about the relationship between God’s action of grace and human action is similar to the structure of the question about the concursus divinus, i. e., the relationship between God’s action of creation and the self-functioning of creatures (cf. above 203f.). Here also, two theories are opposed to each other, one in which the individual actions of creatures are explained as mere effects of divine action, and one in which the creatures are given a certain independence between the possibility for self-functioning that is given by the Creator and his participation in their self-functioning. Just as in the question about the concursus divinus, it is impossible in the question about the divine action of grace to occupy a standpoint from which it would be possible to view God and humanity as two opposing forces, to compare them, and to calculate their relative effects. God and human beings cannot be described as causes in the same way. In the doctrine of creation this is already made impossible because God faces creatures not only as the transcendent one but also as immanently present with them—thus not only as affecting them from the outside but as working within their self-functioning. As the Redeemer, God is likewise not only transcendent vis-a-vis humanity but also immanent, albeit in a different way: he became human in Jesus. Here we are speaking not only of the general omnipresence of God in all his creatures but also about the saving work of God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Characteristic for this particular way of God’s in-dwelling in humans and their in-dwelling in him are, e. g., the following Pauline sentences: “I live, yet not I, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2.20 [S]). “I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Cor. 15.10). “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. … for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12.9f.). In the internal contradiction of these words: I—not I—Christ; or: I—not I—grace, the contradiction in the twofold address of God is reflected, which both destroys through his law and makes alive through the gospel.

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Such sentences exist beyond the contrast between the monergism of grace and the synergism of grace and human action, for the work of the apostles in the power of Christ takes place in the apostles’ powerlessness, indeed, in their having been brought to nothing by God. This is precisely how they became instruments of God. And yet, this utilization is not the end of the apostles’ decision-making, but precisely the liberation into the spontaneity of their sacrifice and their action. From the New Testament witnesses about life in Christ and the Holy Spirit, one can derive an understanding of Augustinian “monergism” and Eastern Orthodox “synergism,” in which neither needs to cancel out the other. Indeed, from this New Testament perspective, one can understand Augustine’s statements about the free will of those under grace, not as something inconsistent with his monergism of grace but as a necessary component of the latter. At the same time, it becomes clear that the Eastern Church’s synergism is not essentially about the contrast between two causes and the calculation of their effects, but about the interrelatedness of divine and human action. Here the concept of merit, typical in Western synergism, is decisively rejected. The Eastern Church’s defense of human freedom cannot be separated from the deification of the human being, which takes place through the Holy Spirit. In the interrelatedness of divine and human action grace is the sustaining power.5 Editor’s Notes to the Summary of Parts A and B [i]

[ii] [iii] [iv]

[v]

For background on the extant Pelagian texts and controversy, see Gerald Bonner, God’s Decree and Man’s Destiny (London: Variorum, 1987). For Augustine’s antiPelagian writings, see WSA, I/23–26. For a helpful, brief analysis of the controversy between Augustine and Pelagius, see Carol Harrison, Augustine: Christian Truth and Fractured Humanity (London: Oxford University Press, 2000), 101–114. See Denzinger, 370–395. For Bonaventure’s teaching about grace, see Breviloquium, chap. 5 (“On the Grace of the Holy Spirit”), 169–210. For Aquinas’, see ST, II/1.109–114. In late-medieval theology, “merita de congruo” (lit. “merits of congruity,” i. e., merits that were not truly deserving of grace) were to be distinguished from “merita de condigno” (lit. “merits of condignity,” i. e., merits that are deserving of grace). The phrase “facere quod in se” (lit. “to do what is in you,” i. e., “to do your best”) is often used to summarize the Ockhamist position on grace.

5 Evidence for this is also found in modern Orthodox theology. See, e. g., Per Erik Persson, Glaube und Werke in der Ostkirche [Faith and Works in the Eastern Church] (Bensheim: Materialdienst des konfessionskundlichen Instituts, 1962), 81f.

God’s Action of Grace and Human Action

[vi]

Viktorin Strigel (1524–1569) strongly defended Melanchthon’s teaching about the freedom of the human will to cooperate with divine grace. Such cooperation in this context is called “synergism” (lit. “working with” or “cooperating with”). Other Lutheran theologians vehemently disagreed with the position of Strigel and other students of Melanchthon. This dispute, which raged in the late 1550s, is called the “Synergistic Controversy.” In 1560 Strigel and Matthias Flacius debated the issue at Weimar. Strigel “argued that the Holy Spirit initiates conversion by means of the Word, whereupon the human will cooperates with God’s grace in salvation” (Gerhard Bode, “Strigel, Viktorin,” in Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions,” ed. Timothy J. Wengert [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017], 706). Against Strigel, Flacius stressed the Augustinian doctrine of original sin but, in the course of the debate, also made the controversial statement that sin is the “substance” of the human being. The first two articles of the Formula of Concord (1577), on original sin and the human will in conversion, negated elements taught by both theologians.

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Chapter XV: Baptism

1. The Foundation of Baptism From the beginning, the proclamation of the gospel was not only a call to repentance and faith but also a call to baptism. The exhortations of the New Testament letters call to remembrance the baptism that had been received—namely, that which God had done through it to the members of the church—as the basis for the new obedience.[i] (a) The church baptizes on the authority of the command of its Lord: “Go and make disciples of all nations by baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit (and) teaching them to keep all I commanded you” (Mt. 28.19f.; cf. Mk. 16.15f. [S]).[ii] This command has been handed down as the word of the risen one, to whom “all authority in heaven and on earth” has been given (v. 18 [S]). While the earthly Jesus had spoken of the coming Son of Man as if of another person, these words of the risen one now correspond to the announcement of the Son of Man coming in glory: “To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed” (Dan. 7.14). In every way this command to baptize concerns the whole: “All authority” is given to Jesus, “all nations” must be made disciples, “all” that Jesus commanded is to be taught and kept, and Jesus will be present “all the days until the end of the world.” In obedience to this command, the church baptizes—either by referring to him in the baptismal instruction or by referring to him in the baptismal liturgy. (b) For the time being, we will set aside the problem that this command presents to historical research—which is essentially the same problem that is presented by all New Testament reports of the appearances and words of the risen one—and first consider that Christian baptism also has other historical presuppositions, the consideration of which clarifies its special character. (1) The Old Testament law contains many commandments of cleansing by water and sprinkling. Cases in which those were to be done are described in detail in the collections of Lev. 11–15 and Num. 19, as well as in other scattered passages. The aim of cultic washing is the removal of cultic pollution, which can arise in various ways. The insufficiency of such ritual washings, however, emerges from the prophetic preaching of repentance: “Wash yourselves, cleans yourselves! Take your evil deeds away from my eyes! Stop doing evil!” (Isa. 1.16 et passim).

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Prophetic preaching, however, was not restricted to the call for repentance. Rather, it announced a future, genuine washing, both as judgment (Isa. 4.4) and as an act of salvation that created anew: “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you…” (Ezek. 36.25ff.). The prophetic announcement of a purifying spring, bursting forth in Jerusalem, also belongs in this context (Ezek. 47.1, 12; Zech. 13.1). In postexilic Judaism, ritual washings became progressively more important. In the context of radicalized efforts to fulfill the law and to be purified as a condition for the expected divine act of salvation, washings were no longer restricted to specific cases expressly mentioned by the law, but they were asked of all Jews, and their frequent repetition was demanded. Increasingly, the submersion of the whole body was required as well. The baths were not for forgiveness but for the removal of ritual impurity. This was likely also the case in the great multiplication of baths among the Essenes. It is also unlikely that the baptism of proselytes was understood as an act of forgiveness of sins beyond the establishment of ceremonial purity and entry into the cultic community. (2) John the Baptizer confronted the Jewish people as an individual, not as the member of a Jewish movement of sanctification. With an unheard of radicality of imminent expectation, he renewed the prophetic preaching regarding the day of Yahweh’s wrath and the judgment by fire, and he proclaimed a baptism of repentance. The coming one, the “one who is stronger” (Mk. 1.7), whose forerunner John believed himself to be, was announced by John as the executor of divine judgment. At the same time, John expected him to be the fulfillment of the prophetic promises of the Spirit’s outpouring: “I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mk. 1.8). What did this “baptism of repentance” mean? In any case, it was not merely about the external cleansing of the body, nor merely about a cultic-ceremonial purification. Instead, it was about the preparation of the whole human being for encountering the coming judge. Certainly, it does not mean merely that repentance was demanded as a condition for the reception of this baptism. Rather, through baptism the sinner was placed into the repentance in which the people of God were to encounter the coming one. The baptism of John demands repentance, places into repentance, and confirms repentance as eschatologically valid. In this sense it can be described as the effective sealing of repentance for the future forgiveness and salvation in the coming judgment. In contrast to all other Jewish baptismal baths and washings, the baptism of John was a novum in a decisive way. Despite various similarities, it cannot be derived from that which preceded it. Disregarding the baptism of proselytes for the moment, the baptism of John is different from other Jewish baptismal baths and washings in that it was not repeatable. It claimed an eschatological finality. In addition, it was not a self-administered baptism but was performed by John upon the person

The Foundation of Baptism

baptized. Above all, it was different from the rites of ritual purification in that it was connected with the proclamation of the immediately imminent judgment, and it was done “for repentance.” While John’s baptism is like proselyte baptism in that both were done only once, it is distinct from the latter in that it was not a self-administered baptism. (3) Jesus’ baptism by John. Before his public appearance, Jesus, too, came to John in order to receive the baptism of repentance. All the Gospels report that a unique event took place with Jesus’ baptism, whereby it became profoundly differentiated from all the other baptisms done by John. Although John did not baptize Jesus differently from the others, in this baptism the Holy Spirit descended on the one being baptized. What the Baptizer had announced as the act of the coming one, namely, baptism by the Holy Spirit, is what happened to Jesus, according to these traditions. Therefore, the baptism done by John was changed when Jesus received it. This was not merely an eschatological sealing of repentance. Since the outpouring of the Holy Spirit took place here upon Christ, the baptism by John now became a Christian baptism in the true and proper sense. That is why, in the course of church history, it has again and again been taught that Christian baptism was established through Jesus’ baptism. According to the Synoptic tradition, a “voice from heaven” was heard: “You are my Son, my Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mk. 1.11 [S]). By letting himself be baptized by John, Jesus entered into solidarity with sinners who required repentance. (4) What had begun in the baptism of Jesus was completed in his death and in his resurrection. If Jesus, through the baptism of repentance, entered into solidarity with sinners, he proved this solidarity by suffering the death of a sinner on the cross. It is in this context that we are to understand the saying of Jesus from the source unique to Luke: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” (Lk. 12.49f.). In the figurative speech of this saying the connection between Jesus’ baptism and death, indeed, the meaning of baptism as dying, is attested. Above all, it was Paul who taught that Jesus’ death was the basis of baptism (Rom. 6). But in another way, this connection is also taught by the Gospel of John and 1 John. When the Johannine passion narrative refers emphatically to the outflowing of water and blood from Jesus’ side after it was opened with a spear (Jn. 19.34), this bears witness not only to the reality of Jesus’ death but at the same time to the origin of baptism and the Lord’s Supper in the death of Jesus. In addition, 1 John probably intends to signify the connection between Christian baptism and Jesus’ baptism when it says: “This is the one who came by water and blood…” (5.6 [E]). (5) The common presupposition of all the New Testament Scriptures is that after Jesus’ death and resurrection, God’s Spirit was given to his own, and since that time has been active in the church. Of course, God’s Spirit had already been at work in

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the old covenant, in kings, prophets, and other members of the people of God. But now he is poured out in fullness: Every member of the congregation receives the Spirit and is taken into servant ministry through the Spirit of the exalted Christ. Through every member of the congregation, the Lord is dealing with the world, judging and saving. (c) Like proselyte baptism and the baptism by John, Christian baptism is different from the other Jewish baptismal baths and washings in that it is done only once. It is different from the baptism of proselytes in that, like the baptism by John, it was not done as a self-administered baptism but was done by a baptizer. In addition, however, it is different from the baptism by John in that it is done on the (in the) name of Christ, viz., “in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6.3; cf. Gal. 3.27), and that by it the Holy Spirit is received. What happened only once in the baptizing of John, namely, in Jesus’ baptism, is now the effect of Christian baptism upon all believers. According to the New Testament witnesses, from the beginning the post-Easter community baptized in the name of Christ and with the experience of the reception of the Holy Spirit. The earthly Jesus, in contrast to John the Baptizer, did not baptize (the statement to the contrary in Jn. 3.22 and 26 is corrected in 4.1f.; but there is also no mention anywhere in the older Synoptic traditions of a baptism done by Jesus’ disciples during his earthly ministry). Moreover, there is no indication in any of the New Testament Scriptures of a gradual origin of baptism in the name of Christ and with the reception of the Spirit. Thus the risen one’s command to baptize remains the most plausible explanation for the early Christian practice of baptism, even though, like the appearances of the risen one, it eludes all historical analogies. Here the formula “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” is an appropriate interpretation of the name of Jesus Christ.1 (d) To be sure, in baptism a human being acts upon the one baptized, but the focus of the New Testament statements is on what God is doing through this human being. To be sure, those baptized also act in baptism by coming to baptism and letting themselves be baptized, but the entire weight of the statements lies upon what God is doing to the baptized. This is true of the recollections of baptism in the New Testament letters, of the call to baptism, and of the reports about baptism in the Acts of the Apostles. Most New Testament statements about baptism are found in the structure of New Testament paraklesis, specifically in the assuring remembrance of that which has happened to the addressees of the paraklesis once and for all in baptism. In the New Testament Scriptures there is no reproduction of an order of baptism. They are not concerned with the description of the rite of baptism as such, nor with its symbolic interpretation, but again and again they

1 For a more detailed discussion of the historical problem of the New Testament traditions of the resurrection, see above 549ff. and Schlink, LvT, 26–31, 73–75. [SÖB, 3.26–31; 73–75. –Ed.]

The Foundation of Baptism

focus on the witness to what God has done to the members of the church through baptism and what he is doing to the one who is newly joining. This salvific action of God is attested to by a great multiplicity of statements about the effect of baptism: Forgiveness of sins (e. g., Acts 2.38), washing, sanctification, and justification (1 Cor. 6.11), cleansing (Eph. 5.26), cleansing of hearts from an evil conscience (Heb. 10.22), salvation from divine judgment (e. g., Acts 2.40, 47), destruction of the body of sin (Rom. 6.6), dying and being buried with Christ (Rom. 6.3ff.), indeed, resurrection with him (Col. 2.12ff.), putting on Christ (Gal. 3.27), birth from above (Jn. 3.5), rebirth and renewal (Titus 3.5), etc., whereby many statements about the beginning of being a Christian, which do not expressly mention baptism, should also be considered. In these New Testament statements, it is impossible to separate the immersion of the baptized in water (or, as the case may be, by washing or sprinkling), the pronunciation of Christ’s name upon them, and the salvific action of God. Instead, these events all together are attested as one divine act. Thus one can speak of baptism both as the means of the divine action (e. g., Rom. 6.4) and as the subject of the saving action (1 Pet. 3.21), and as the forgiveness through the name of Christ (Acts 10.43). In the New Testament statements, salvation through God does not stand next to salvation through baptism, nor does forgiveness through the name of Christ stand next to washing, but they are intertwined. Their subject matter is not the definition of the relationship between water and the word, the water bath and the forgiveness of sin, immersion and dying, emerging and being renewed, etc. These familiar questions, which developed in the subsequent history of theology, are not addressed in the New Testament. Neither do we learn about an abstract doctrine of baptism as such, which claims a validity regardless of whether baptism has been administered and received in faith or unbelief, or, aside from that, if God gives grace through it or not. This question, too, which would become so important later on, is not immediately answered in the New Testament. The New Testament does not assume a standpoint of observation, as it were, beyond the divine and human action. Rather, the structure of the New Testament statements on baptism is determined by the fact that, by faith in God’s act of salvation, which takes place through baptism, they call for baptism, report about baptism, and recall the baptism received. In light of the differences and conflicts between the churches’ teachings on baptism, the following section will begin with the basic structure of early Christian statements on baptism concerning the divine act received by faith.2

2 Toward this end in detail, cf. my book, LvT, 31–92. [SÖB, 3.31–92. –Ed.]

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2. Baptism into Christ[iii] The New Testament Scriptures speak of baptism upon the (in the) “name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 2.38; 10.48), “the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 8.16; 19.5), or “the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 6.11), as well as of baptism “upon Christ” (Gal. 3.27 [S]) or “upon Jesus Christ” (Rom. 6.3 [S]). The change in prepositions cannot be unequivocally explained, either from the Hebrew or secular Greek usage, or from the Septuagint. In the New Testament, the predominant formulation is to baptize “upon the name,” more precisely, “in the name,” or “in Christ.” Baptism in the name of Christ, which has to be presupposed also in 1 Cor. 1.13ff., is identical with baptism “in Christ” (Rom. 6.3). This prepositional connection is most often understood in the sense of a transfer of ownership. Through baptism “in the name of the Lord Jesus” there is a transfer of ownership to the Lord Jesus. The transfer to him, the submission to his present reign, is bestowed to the baptized as an event. Just as Christian baptism is not a self-administered baptism but a being baptized, so the baptized do not become Christ’s property by placing themselves under Christ, but rather they are made Christ’s own through baptism. Because Jesus died on the cross for sinners, the forgiveness of sins is bestowed with the transfer of property to him. Of course, this connection between baptism, forgiveness of sins, and death on the cross is not stated in all the New Testament statements about baptism. And yet, the death of Jesus is the de facto precondition for all baptizing upon the name of Jesus, for the person and the history of Jesus cannot be separated from one another. The forgiveness which is bestowed through Christian baptism is therefore a change of dominion. Through baptism a person is taken out of the dominion of sin and placed under the reign of Christ. It is not only the forgiveness of sinful deeds that takes place through baptism but also the liberation of a person from the compulsion to keep on sinning—liberation to a life in purity, righteousness, and holiness. The fullness of the gifts that are bestowed through baptism are grounded in Jesus Christ. Thus, through Christian baptism, salvation in the Last Judgment is not merely promised, not even merely guaranteed, but actually accomplished, so that the baptized are able to face the parousia of Jesus Christ as those who will be saved on that day. Paul understood baptism not only as a transfer of ownership to the person of Jesus Christ but also expressly as a transfer of ownership to the history of Jesus. Baptism into Christ is baptism into his death. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Rom. 6.3). To be transferred to Christ is to be delivered into his death on the cross. While the event of baptism takes place at a temporal distance from the death of Jesus, through baptism a person is delivered over to the death which Jesus Christ has died once and for all. Now it is true: “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death” (Rom. 6.4). “[O]ur old self was crucified with him” (v. 6) “[W]e

Baptism into Christ

have died with Christ” (v. 8). Paul had received and handed on the summarizing tradition “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that he was buried…” (1 Cor. 15.3 [S]), the same verbs return here as statements about that which has happened to the baptized. By being “crucified, put to death, and buried” with Christ, the death penalty which the sinner deserves is both executed and suspended. “The body of sin is destroyed” (v. 6), a new life is opened up. The presupposition for all statements about our having died with Christ in baptism is the incomparable uniqueness of Christ’s death for us (cf. Rom. 5.17–19). The focus of the Pauline statements is on the togetherness, indeed, the intertwining of these two events. Thus Paul does not speak of baptism as a re-experiencing of the fate of Jesus Christ’s death, nor of a following of Christ that takes place in baptism, nor of baptism as a confession of that which has taken place in Jesus’ death. Paul is also not concerned with interpreting the act of baptism as a symbolic representation of Christ’s death. Instead, he is concerned with the fact that we are crucified, have died, and are buried with Christ “by baptism.” Despite the temporal distance between Christ’s death and our baptism, both events are decisively one event. To be sure, in baptism something happens which was not there before baptism. Prior to baptism the person was under the dominion of sin; but in baptism this dominion is broken. Nevertheless, baptism is decisively no separate act of salvation that is different from the one carried out on the cross. Thus the temporal distance to Jesus’ death loses its significance in the act of baptism. As the exalted one, the crucified one is purely and utterly the Lord, not only over the universe but also over the temporal and spatial structure of the universe. As uninterested as Paul is in a theoretical solution to the problem of bridging the temporal distance, he is all the more concerned with the consequences that result from having died with Christ. Through baptism, our history is so conclusively connected to his history that it is no longer our own history but a history with him and in him. By being delivered over into his death, we are taken into his way through death into life. “[W]e have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead …, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6.4). “But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (v. 8). Because being delivered over into Christ’s death guarantees resurrection, the baptized already participates in the future life as one who has died with Christ. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the letter to the Colossians speaks not only of the burial of the baptized but also of their resurrection as an event that happens in baptism: In Christ “you were also raised with him by faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead” (2.12f. [S]). “[Y]ou have been raised with Christ (3.1 [S]). Yet it is impossible to ignore that the admonition of the letter to the Colossians also directs the baptized to the future: For now, “your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (3.3f.). On the basis of our being handed over into the

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historical way of Jesus Christ, the letter to the Ephesians draws a further conclusion. Since God “raised [Christ] from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (1.20), it is now also true that God has “made us alive together with Christ … and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (2.5f.).

3. Baptism through the Holy Spirit[iv] That baptism on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is at the same time baptism through the Holy Spirit is self-evident if one presupposes that through baptism on the name of Christ a transfer of ownership to Jesus Christ takes place, for the exalted Christ works through the Holy Spirit, and his reign over his own is an action of the Spirit. When we are transferred to Christ through baptism, we are placed into the Holy Spirit’s efficacious realm. The connection between the reign of Christ and the work of the Spirit is unfolded differently in the Scriptures of the New Testament, but it is always a close connection. To “be in Christ” and “be in the Spirit,” e. g., is one and the same thing for Paul; both statements are interchangeable (Rom. 8.4; cf. 14.17f. et passim). Because God’s Spirit is at the same time the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8.4), the Spirit of the Son (Gal. 4.6), and the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. 3.17), it is impossible to belong to Christ without being led by the Spirit. “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (Rom. 8.9b). Baptism in the name of Jesus Christ is at the same time baptism through the Spirit. That the Holy Spirit is granted in baptism was the common conviction of early Christian congregations: “[Y]ou were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6.11). All this happened to the baptized person in one act. The statements about the sealing and anointing by the Spirit may also refer to the singular and foundational act of baptism: “But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us, by putting his seal on us and giving us his Spirit in our hearts as a first installment” (2 Cor. 1.21f.; cf. Eph. 1.12f.; 4.30; and 1 Jn. 2.20, 27). Titus 3.5f. also speaks of the action of the Spirit in baptism: God “saved us according to his mercy through the bath of rebirth and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he has poured out on us rightly through Jesus Christ our Savior” [S]. All human action is excluded in this salvation (v. 5a). It happens solely through God’s action, namely, through the one act of the baptismal bath and the action of the Spirit, in whom rebirth and renewal take place. The unity of the act of baptism and the action of the Spirit is also presupposed in Jn. 3.5. Water and Spirit belong together in the act of rebirth. There is no distinction here between “water baptism” and “Spirit baptism.” The Holy Spirit transfers believers through baptism to Christ the Lord. He grants them participation in Christ’s righteousness, holiness, life, and glory. By transferring

Reception into the Church

human beings to Christ, the Spirit makes them into children of God, makes them alive. Thus the Holy Spirit not only influences people [wirkt… ein], but enters into them [geht … ein], inhabits them, is alive in them, and leads them, gives himself to them as a gift, and places them into service. The outpouring of the Spirit is at the same time the beginning of a life in expectation of additional gifts of the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit is thus the “pledge of our inheritance” (Eph. 1.14), the “first fruits” of the coming redemption of our body (Rom. 8.23), a “guarantee” of mortality being swallowed up by life in the future (2 Cor. 5.4f.). This deliverance of the baptized into Christ’s death and life and therefore into the Holy Spirit’s efficacious sphere, is attested by a number of statements (cf. above 725). New Testament statements about the working of the gospel here return in those about baptism. Thus one speaks of a rebirth through baptism and through the word.

4. Reception into the Church[v] Through baptism in the name of Christ and through the Holy Spirit the believer becomes a member of the church. Just as the church did not arise simply because people came together and by so doing founded the church, human beings have never had the power to become members of the church. The church is called “church of God,” not because human beings acquired this name when they came together but because here God has gathered human beings and brought them together. Just as the creation of the church was an act of God, so too each membership in this church is the result of God’s action. Individuals do not make themselves members of the church, but they are made into members. It is in this sense that Paul spoke of being “baptized into one body” (1 Cor. 12.13), and Luke spoke of being “added” to the church through baptism (Acts 2.41). By binding the gathered to himself, God also connects them with each other; in the sharing of the word, of the Lord’s Supper, and of prayer, the community of the baptized grows. “Communion of saints” means community in the reception of the holy gifts, but as this community, it is at the same time a community of those who are with one another sanctified by God. Although the reception into the church is always a specific adding to a specific worshiping assembly, there is more happening here than merely the reception into the local congregation. In the New Testament the same word ekklesia describes both the local church and the entire church on earth. The local church is not merely a part of the global church, and the global church is not merely the sum total of the local churches, but in every local church the entire global church is manifested on account of the presence of the one Lord. Hence, through baptism the reception into the “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church” (Constantinopolitan Creed) takes place. Thus, in baptism, believers cease to be individuals. They are individuals when

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they approach baptism, for they follow a call that pulls them out of the ties of their previous life. But as baptized persons, they are no longer individuals but members of the people of God, in whom God unites believers of all ages in Christ through the Holy Spirit.

5. The Presuppositions for Infant Baptism[vi] The focus of the New Testament statements about baptism is on God’s action upon the baptized through baptism. Since this divine action is attested to by a great number of statements about the effect of baptism, the church’s teaching is confronted with a choice as to which concept should be used to summarize this multiplicity dogmatically. Thus the Eastern Church tends to emphasize the pneumatic new creation, while the West emphasizes the justification of the sinner. Yet every one of these concepts signifies, albeit with a different accentuation, the whole of the New Testament witness, and furthermore, with respect to this issue of a comprehensive and overarching dogmatic concept, there have been no church divisions. The New Testament statements about baptism speak of the administration of baptism and the forgiving and renewing salvific action of God as one act. This was also not called into question by the difference between the Eastern designation of baptism as a mysterion and the Western designation of it as a sacramentum—nor was this single act called into question by the Eastern designation of the submersion into the water as a symbol. After all, in contrast to Jewish baptismal baths, Christian baptism was understood as a symbol effecting salvation, which not only points to dying with Christ but the deliverance into his death that takes place here. Even such differences in the terminology of baptism had no church-dividing significance. (a) A profound difference, however, emerged when Pope Stephen I recognized the validity of a baptism administered by heretics, and Cyprian of Carthage, in agreement with most of the Eastern churches, rejected it.[vii] This controversy continued when the Donatists rejected the validity of Catholic baptism. However, Augustine, as a bishop in the African Church, now represented the same position as Rome. He thus distinguished between a valid baptism, which is also administered by heretics, and baptismal grace, which is only bestowed within the Catholic Church. In this assessment of the baptism of heretics, the administration of baptism and God’s salvific action through baptism were separated, and as a result, through Augustine, there arose the fundamental distinction between sacramentum tantum [the sign of the sacrament in itself] (word and element) and virtus sacramenti [the power of the sacrament] (grace), between sacrament and the forgiveness of sins, between the sacrament as a sign of salvation and salvation itself. The believer receives both, the unbeliever only the external sign. Of great importance was the fact that Augustine distinguished between the sacrament as sign and the action

The Presuppositions for Infant Baptism

of grace, even within the Catholic Church. The sacrament is the sign and pledge of grace, but not grace itself. The external sacramental event and God’s action of grace are in a certain sense independent from each other, even though they are connected for believers, and fully so for the predestined. In Augustine’s definition of the relationship between sacrament and grace, an important structural shift took place compared to the New Testament statements about baptism. If the structure of these statements was defined by the act of receiving baptism in faith, Augustine’s statements are made from a standpoint from which he reflects on the reception of baptism in faith and in unbelief, and he uses terminology according to which both processes were to be comprehended. If by starting with the act of faithful reception and faithful remembrance, the New Testament Scriptures did not arrive at a theoretical definition of the relationship between word, water, and God’s grace, this needed to happen the moment one’s thinking stepped outside of the act, and fully so once the baptism of heretics had become an issue and then was subsequently acknowledged as valid. Augustine’s distinction between sacrament and grace, sign and thing, determined the further history of the Western doctrine of baptism in its various possible interpretations, depending on whether one started with the fundamental separation of the sacrament from the reception of grace or with the unity of both in the faithful reception. But the differences which arose from this in the understanding of baptism—e. g., between Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, between the Thomist and Franciscan schools of Scotism and Ockhamism, and in other but fundamentally similar ways between Luther and Calvin—did not become the cause of church divisions, even though both sides appealed to Augustine in very different ways. If in the past the Roman Catholic Church, following Augustine, had recognized merely the validity of baptism administered by the separated churches, but not the baptismal grace received through it, at the Second Vatican Council it took a major step beyond this understanding in that it no longer understood baptisms administered beyond its borders as mere signs without grace but instead spoke of the action of God’s grace even outside of the Roman Catholic Church.3 Since from the beginning, the churches of the Reformation had recognized the baptism of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches as a means of divine grace, and, in the course of ecumenical encounters, the Orthodox did not maintain their objection to the validity and effectiveness of the baptisms of the churches separated from them, this disagreement has been largely resolved. (b) The divisions that persist today have arisen through the denial of the validity of infant baptism and the repetition of baptism upon those who had received it as children, as this was practiced in the Anabaptist movement in the sixteenth century

3 Cf. Lumen gentium, 15. [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Tanner, 2.860–861). –Ed.]

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and continues to be practiced by the Mennonites and then especially by the Baptists, who have grown into large communities in America. In this dispute, it is important to keep in mind that the phrase “infant baptism” is too general and therefore leads to misunderstandings, for it refers here only to the children of baptized parents, who are brought by them to baptism, as well as to children of unbaptized parents who desire baptism for themselves and for their children, and occasionally children without parents who were accepted and raised by Christians as their children. We are not, therefore, speaking of the baptism of children in general, but only of those who are growing up within the environment of the church. The earliest clear witnesses to infant baptism are found around AD 200 in Irenaeus, Tertullian, in the church orders of Hippolytus, and in Origen.[viii] It cannot be known for certain whether infant baptism was already customary in all the churches by that time. But apparently this custom had already arisen before the year 200, for nowhere in the texts of this time does one find the counterargument that this was an innovation. Indeed, Tertullian did voice some trepidation about infant baptism due to the inability of children to know themselves and to decide for themselves. Yet infant baptism was apparently widespread in the African church of that time, and he did not deny its validity. The baptism of children in the earliest congregations can be neither proven nor ruled out on the basis of the New Testament Scriptures. The question remains whether the fact that clear witnesses to infant baptism are extant only from AD 200 onwards is due to the later development of this practice, or to later reflection about it, or to the randomness of the preserved sources. That children of Christian parents were not generally baptized even in the second half of the third century, has been handed down from Byzantium and Cappadocia. It seems that here, in contrast to the widespread practice of infant baptism, the reception of baptism was deferred for fear of being particularly guilty of sin after the reception of baptismal grace. Against such a postponement, the great Cappadocians asserted that baptism was not a threatening gift but an aid in the struggle for virtue.[ix] In the dispute between Augustine and Pelagius, the baptism of infants was already a presupposition that was acknowledged by both sides. Infant baptism soon became commonplace in both the Eastern and the Western Church. There are also no clear indications from the Middle Ages that certain groups had rejected the baptism of children. The fundamental rejection of infant baptism and the denial of its validity, with the result that believing adults were baptized again, likely did not arise until the sixteenth century in connection with the emergence of a new understanding of the individual person and of the individual’s responsibility for sanctification. Again and again the most important reason that has been asserted for rejecting infant baptism has been that faith must precede baptism—also that the reception of the Spirit and the experience of being born again are necessary preconditions for

The Presuppositions for Infant Baptism

the reception of baptism. These preconditions, however, were not deemed possible for infants. A closer look at the Anabaptist movements, however, reveals that it was about more central differences: (1) The fact that infant baptism spread with such self-evident ease in the ancient church and, as far as we can glean from the sources, was nowhere deemed invalid, is above all due to the certainty that God is at work in the baptized through baptism and that they are merely recipients of the divine act of salvation. This unity of baptism and the divine act of grace, however, is dissolved in the Anabaptist understanding. By separating baptism from God’s act of salvation, it is turned into a human action, which confesses the already received salvation by stepping forward for baptism. (2) A further reason for the spread of infant baptism was undoubtedly the understanding of the church as the pneumatic sphere of power of the reign of Jesus Christ, which is given to the individual, and as the community of believers in which one person strengthens and supports the other through intercession and witness. In this sense the church is the mother of the faithful. However, if the salvific action of God is separated from baptism, and baptism is understood as an act of commitment on the part of those who are already born again, then joining the community takes the place of being passively incorporated into the body of Christ through baptism. Being gathered and united through the divine salvific action in baptism is replaced by gathering oneself and uniting oneself through the act of confession of baptism. Sinners then no longer encounter the church as the mother who gives birth to them through baptism, but believers unite themselves to the church through their baptismal commitment. (3) Against the background of these two differences, it becomes clear that the issue of the temporal sequence of faith and baptism is more complex than is generally apparent in the rejection of infant baptism. For through his salvific action in baptism, God is already able to bring even an infant into the efficacious realm of the Holy Spirit, even if the awareness of this action of the Spirit only becomes known later on through a reflective faith. Besides, even the baptism of infants does not happen without preceding faith, since this baptism is preceded by the faith of the church, which accompanies and supports the children with intercession and instruction, so that the children will be able to make their own confession of Christ once they have grown. Together with the Baptists, all churches teach the necessary connection between faith and baptism. But this connection cannot be restricted to a specific temporal sequence. Faith can precede baptism, and it can emerge through baptism as well as after baptism, and in the remembrance of baptism faith is reassured and confirmed throughout the whole of one’s life. It is ecumenically significant that today, among those Baptist theologians who have rediscovered the New Testament witness of the salvific action of God through

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baptism, a tendency is developing to forgo the repetition of baptism for those who were baptized as children.4 Then again, among the great churches in some places, the serious question is being contemplated whether infant baptism should still be administered when the interceding and teaching accompaniment of children in their development through parents and sponsors, and through a teaching and supporting community in the local congregation, is no longer present.5 Editor’s Notes to Chapter 15 [i]

[ii] [iii] [iv] [v] [vi]

This chapter follows the basic outline of Schlink’s earlier study of baptism, LvT (SÖB, 3 [ESW, 3]). Sections of the chapter also echo emphases he made in the fifth chapter of TLB. See SÖB, 4.123–133 and 152–157. Throughout the following chapter, Schlink included material from these earlier works, especially LvT (either verbatim or paraphrased). See also his essay, “Gottes Handeln durch die Taufe als ökumenisches Problem” [God’s Action through Baptism as an Ecumenical Issue], Kerygma und Dogma 24 (1978): 164–180. Cf. Schlink, LvT, SÖB, 3.13–36, and 75. For this section, cf. LvT, SÖB, 3.39–49. For this section, cf. LvT, SÖB, 3.53–56. For this section, cf. LvT, SÖB, 3.63. For this section, cf. LvT, SÖB, 3.79–82, 99, 109–139, 168. See also Schlink’s essays, “Zur Frage der Kindertaufe,” Ökumenische Rundschau 18 (1969): 460–468; and “Das Verhältnis von Taufe, Glaube, und christlicher Kindererziehung,” Zeitschrift für evangelisches Kirchenrecht 21 (1976): 114–118.

4 Cf., e. g., George Beasley-Murray, Gesichtspunkte zum Taufgespräch heute (Kassel: Oncken, 1965), 86f. [Cf. George Beasley-Murray, Baptism Today and Tomorrow (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966), 145ff. –Ed.] 5 For the history, doctrine, and practice of infant baptism in detail, cf. LvT, 109–138.

The Presuppositions for Infant Baptism

[vii]

[viii]

[ix]

Pope Stephen I (d. 257) became engaged in a long and bitter dispute with Cyprian (d. 258) about the validity of baptisms received by heretics. Cyprian, who rejected their validity, was supported by three African synods and by Firmilian, the bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. Stephen’s position was that persons who had been baptized in schismatic bodies and who later sought reception back into the Catholic Church should be restored as penitents by the laying-on of hands, a practice that implied their baptism was valid. Cyprian took the view that since the Holy Spirit is only bestowed in the Catholic Church, the temple of God’s Spirit, such people had not been baptized at all. Both Stephen and Cyprian died before their disagreement could be settled. The North African churches continued to follow Cyprian’s position, which became a problem during the Donatist controversy. See Williston Walker et al., A History of the Christian Church, 4th ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985), 108, 130–131, 134, and 201–203. Cf. Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, II.22.4 (ANF, 1.391); Tertullian, De baptismo, 18 (Tertullian’s Homily on Baptism, trans. Ernest Evans [London: SPCK, 1964], 36–41); Hippolytus, The Apostolic Tradition, XXI.4 (Paul F. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson, and L. Edward Phillips, eds., The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary, Hermeneia, ed. Harold W. Attridge [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002], 112–113); and Origen, Homilies on Leviticus, 8.3.5 (FOTC, 83.158); idem, Commentary on Romans, 5.9.11 (FOTC, 103.367). During the fourth century, the Roman province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor was the center of significant theological reflection by three great Christian leaders, the so-called “Cappadocians”: Basil the Great (ca. 330–379), his younger brother Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus. For their reflections on baptismal regeneration, see, e. g., Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration on Holy Baptism, XXIII, XXVII–XXVIII (NPNF 2 , 7.367, 369–370); Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, I.22 (NPNF 2 , 5.62); idem, On the Holy Spirit (NPNF 2 , 5.322–325); idem, On the Baptism of Christ (NPNF 2 , 5.518–524); and Basil the Great, On the Spirit, X-XV (NPNF 2 , 8.17–23).

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Chapter XVI: The Lord’s Supper

1. The Foundation of the Lord’s Supper[i] In all churches the center of the Lord’s Supper is the report about Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples before his arrest. (a) By reciting this report, the church is not only remembering but also continuing to do what Jesus did on that evening. This means that it understands Jesus’ Last Supper as an institution [Stiftung] of the Lord’s Supper which it celebrates, and it understands the gifts and the words of institution that Jesus gave and spoke to his disciples as the words and gifts which the exalted, present Christ promises and gives to the participants in the Lord’s Supper of the church. It is striking that the words of institution in the church’s liturgies do not match the New Testament accounts in many details, just as there are indeed differences between the New Testament’s accounts of the Lord’s Supper themselves. Apparently, the liturgical use of the report of Jesus’ Last Supper had an effect on the tradition of the Lord’s Supper even before it was fixed in writing in the Synoptic Gospels and in First Corinthians. By comparing the liturgical texts, Joseph Andreas Jungmann has distinguished three lines of development: first, making adjustments to gain greater symmetry in the statements about the blessing and distribution of the bread and cup; second, adaptations to the biblical formulations; and finally, expansions that interpret and embellish the biblical formulations.1 Since the first and the third tendency can also be seen when comparing the New Testament accounts to each other, it is likely that they too underwent changes in liturgical use or catechetical instruction.

(b) Just as the gospel and baptism have their basis not only in a special commission of Christ but in the whole of his history and, beyond that, in God’s Old Testament acts, promises, and requirements, so also the inquiry into the foundation of the Lord’s Supper cannot be restricted to the accounts of Jesus’ Last Supper. (1) In the New Testament’s accounts of the Lord’s Supper there are several references to the Old Testament acts and words of God. This is the case with the exodus from Egypt and the remembrance of it in the annual Passover meal, which is associated with the sacrifice of a lamb. In Jesus’ words of institution themselves, specifically in the giving of the cup, there is a reference to God’s covenant at Sinai

1 Joseph Andreas Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Vienna: Herder, 1949), 2.237. [ET: The Mass of the Roman Rite, 2 vols., trans. Francis A. Brunner (New York: Benzinger, 1951–1955), 2.195. –Ed.]

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and to the blood of the covenant sacrifice. At the time of Jesus, the covenant sacrifice was likely understood as most sacrifices were, as a sacrifice of atonement. In the Synoptic accounts of the institution there are also echoes of the statements in Isaiah 53 about the vicariously atoning suffering of the Servant of God “for many.” In addition, the various domestic Jewish meal celebrations that were celebrated without a bloody sacrifice should be considered. The liberation from Egypt and the covenant at Sinai opened up Israel’s future, which was certainly put into question again and again by its apostasy from Yahweh. All the more important was the prophetic promise of the new covenant and the forgiveness that took place through it (Jer. 31.31–34), as well as the promises of a future joyful feast (Isa. 25.6) and the future satiation of hunger and thirst (Isa. 65.13)—promises which were further unfolded in the apocalyptic Jewish expectation of a messianic meal (e. g., Enoch 62.14f. and the Apocalypse of Baruch 29.3ff.). (2) In the Gospels it is reported multiple times that during his public ministry Jesus ate communal meals with his disciples, with the people who followed him, and also with tax collectors and other outsiders. Like his proclamation, these meal celebrations were also defined by the inbreaking reign of God. They were not only like many other Jewish meals that were shared in the expectation of future salvation but were meals celebrating the joy of salvation that had already been present in Jesus’ words and deeds. “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they?” (Mk. 2.19). Here began the fulfillment of the prophetic promise of the future joyful meal. Jesus’ Last Supper was distinct from these celebrations because of the word of farewell and the words of institution. (3) Between Jesus’ Last Supper and the Lord’s Supper of the church events took place which entirely changed the situation of those gathered. At the Last Supper, Jesus’ death was imminent. The Lord’s Supper, however, is celebrated by looking back on Jesus’ death. If the disciples had formerly resisted Jesus’ announcement of his death, the Lord’s Supper was preceded by the appearances of the risen one, on the basis of which the salvific significance of his death became known. The participants in the Lord’s Supper see Jesus’ death on the cross not as a refutation but as the fulfillment of his work. If on the evening before his arrest Jesus had ended the meals he had shared with his disciples to that point, according to multiple traditions in the Gospels, he took it up again in a new way as the risen one, and even after the last of his Easter appearances he remained present in their midst as the exalted one. The Lord’s Supper not only recalls the one who approached death but the one who is the victor over death, the crucified one, who lives and continues to give himself. (4) In addition to the ascension of Jesus, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper presupposes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who awakens faith in the present Lord, and through whom the exalted one grants participation in his grace and places people into the service of his grace.

The Foundation of the Lord’s Supper

Thus, not only does Jesus’ Last Supper belong to the presuppositions of the Lord’s Supper of the church but so do Jesus’ death and resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The full meaning of that which Jesus said and did during the Last Supper before his death was only revealed after his Easter appearances and after the outpouring of the Spirit. This knowledge could not but have an effect on the traditions of the Last Supper in the New Testament accounts of the institution and in the liturgies of the ancient church. (c) In contrast to baptism, in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper the churches do not appeal to a command of the risen one but to one of the earthly Jesus. As an action of the earthly Jesus, this meal is not exempt from historical investigation, which is also the case with the risen one’s command to baptize, which disrupts all historical analogies. The historically most important investigations have been initiated by the fact that, according to the Synoptic accounts but not according to Paul, Jesus’ Last Supper was a Passover meal; that the words of institution, especially the word about the cup, and the statements about the salvific significance of these gifts do not fully agree; and that Paul pointed out the eschatological limit transmitted in the Synoptic Gospels, not with a saying from Jesus but in Paul’s own words. Added to this is the fact that the command of Jesus to keep celebrating the meal after his death has only been handed down by Paul and Luke. As important as all these questions are for an historical understanding of the Last Supper, they are not important in the same way for understanding the Lord’s Supper. According to the Synoptic tradition, Jesus’ Last Supper was a Passover meal. According to the Gospel of John, however, Jesus had already died on the day on which the Passover meal was celebrated in the evening. The tradition about the Lord’s Supper that was handed down by Paul mentions no Passover meal, and his designation of Christ as a “Passover lamb” (1 Cor. 5.7 [NIV]) is not found in connection with remarks about the Lord’s Supper. The question of whether Jesus’ Last Supper was a Passover meal, or whether it was only later placed into that context, is much debated. But it is clear that this question is of secondary importance for understanding the Lord’s Supper, for in none of the New Testament accounts of the Lord’s Supper do Jesus’ words of institution refer to the Passover lamb. In addition, the transmitted words of institution have a different structure from the symbolic words by which the special features of the food in the Passover meal, e. g., the unleavened bread, are explained. Even if Jesus held his Last Supper in the context of a Passover meal, he went beyond this context and said and did something altogether new. What is incomparably more important for understanding the Lord’s Supper is inquiring into the oldest New Testament tradition of the words of institution. The oldest scriptural tradition is without doubt contained in 1 Cor. 11.23–25. This letter was written in the year 54 or 55, thus at least 15 years before the oldest Gospel. There is some evidence that the Pauline account also transmits the oldest oral tradition. After all, according to this account,

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the blessing of the bread took place before the meal and the blessing of the cup afterwards, in agreement with the Jewish rite, while according to the Gospels of Mark and Matthew the two blessings took place immediately, one after the other, as in the later celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In addition, the words of institution handed down by Paul also differ in their structure: “This is my body!”—“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” In the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, however, they are formulated in a parallel manner: “This is my body”—“This is my blood of the covenant.” It is more likely that both versions of the words of institution were made to agree with each other in their structure rather than having subsequently received a different form. On the other hand, however, the accounts of the Lord’s Supper in the Gospels are closer to the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke. In addition, Jesus’ final eschatological saying, which is missing in Paul, has been handed on with minor variations in detail (cf. 746f.). Instead, Paul added his own words to the tradition of the Lord’s Supper: “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11.26). Obviously, this addition is later than the Synoptic tradition of Jesus’ saying. It is thus debated whether the older tradition is found in Mark-Matthew or in Paul. The Lukan account of the Lord’s Supper agrees with the Pauline one in terms of the words of institution, yet it is different from all the other accounts in that Jesus offered the cup twice, and two eschatological statements were spoken. Did Luke have access to an old special tradition that he then combined with the Pauline one, or did he attempt to place the Pauline tradition into the context of the Passover meal in an historicizing manner? These few indications make it clear that it is not possible to describe any one of the four New Testament accounts of the Lord’s Supper in its totality as the oldest tradition in comparison to the others. Rather, one needs to inquire about the age of the individual statements. A particular historical problem is the so-called command to repeat: “Do this for the remembrance of me.” It is only handed down by Paul and Luke. The history-of-religions school has traced the origin of this command back to the influence of Hellenistic remembrance meals for the dead. Today, however, we recognize the great significance that the “remembrance” of God’s act of salvation has had from the oldest times in Israel’s worship and piety, and more and more voices consider this command to be original. That it was only formulated later to justify the Lord’s Supper and was added to the tradition of the Lord’s Supper, is less likely than the fact that it is not mentioned in Mark and Matthew because the church was certain that it was doing Jesus’ will when they celebrated the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of his Last Supper. It is difficult to imagine that the post-Easter community would have continued Jesus’ Last Supper without his instruction to do so. That Jesus’ Last Supper had the character of something being instituted—even without an explicit command to repeat it—could of course also have resulted from the fact that it was at once about Jesus’ farewell, his gift of himself, and the promise of being together with him in the kingdom of God, and that the risen one had resumed eating communal meals with the disciples again. The combination of these words and deeds suggested that the meal should continue to be celebrated in remembrance of Jesus’ Last Supper and in expectation of the eschatological meal.

The Foundation of the Lord’s Supper

As important as these historical investigations are, the Lord’s Supper of the church is not grounded in one of the many more or less persuasive attempts at historical reconstruction but in the New Testament accounts of the Lord’s Supper. For only on the basis of the appearances and the self-offering of the risen one was the salvific significance of his death recognized, and thereby the gift which he had extended and promised to his own in the Last Supper. Even if it were possible historically to reconstruct the exact course of the Last Supper down to every last detail, it would be anachronistic for the church to celebrate the Lord’s Supper by appealing exclusively to Jesus’ Last Supper and not by witnessing at the same time to his death and the presence of the exalted Lord in its midst. The precise investigation of the differences between the New Testament accounts of the Lord’s Supper, and the question about their origin, is nevertheless significant for recognizing the tendencies that would lead to doctrinal differences already in the early church and then more fully in the later history of dogma. This is true not only of the understanding of the words of institution but also of the later often neglected eschatological saying. Although the agreements between the New Testament accounts of the Lord’s Supper are far more noticeable than the differences, these latter have to be given more attention in ecumenical dialogue than is commonly done. If one understands the differences between the New Testament traditions of the Lord’s Supper as differences in the apostolic tradition of the same Last Supper of Jesus with his own, then they are encountered as a positive unfolding of what happened that night in a majority of the witnesses. Seen from this point of view, the differences between the transmitted words of institution interpret one another and protect one another from misunderstandings. The same is also true of the eschatological saying that has also been handed down differently. (d) The basic structure of the speech and actions of Jesus in his Last Supper and in the post-Easter shared meals of the church is, according to all the New Testament accounts, a self-offering to the gathered, or, more precisely, the offering of the bread and cup blessed by him with the words: “This is my body,” “This is the new covenant in my blood,” or “This is the blood of the covenant.” This offering is the center of all other statements of Jesus, his thanksgiving to God, his eschatological word of farewell and promise, and the command to repeat. As in baptism, so also in the Lord’s Supper, the New Testament statements are focused on God’s salvific action for human beings. Here, too, the New Testament accounts about Jesus’ Last Supper or, in certain respects, the Lord’s Supper, lack any reflection about the relationship between the bread and Christ’s body, or between the wine and Christ’s blood, or between the eating and drinking of the bread and wine and the reception of Christ’s body and blood, as well as many other related questions that in part took on an antithetical life of their own in the later history of theology. If the center of the Lord’s Supper is Christ’s giving of himself, the appropriate attitude in which the church’s doctrine about the Lord’s Supper is expounded is that of reception, and the

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basic structure of the statements that teach about Christ’s gift in the Lord’s Supper is one of giving thanks. Many dogmatic differences arose later because theological reflection departed from the basic eucharistic structure of the statements about the Lord’s Supper.

2. The Gift of Jesus’ Body and the Blood of the Covenant In keeping with the preceding considerations, we will begin with the New Testament traditions about Jesus’ words of institution. The structure of the words with which Jesus offered the bread and cup in the Last Supper is different from the structure of the words about the bread and cup in the Jewish Passover meal in that he did not interpret the unique symbolism of the foods offered. He did not go into the origin of the bread and wine, nor did he discuss their significance for human life. He also did not mention any analogies, such as, e. g., between the fate of the grains and of the grapes in the making of the bread and wine and his own fate. The structure of Jesus’ words in the Lord’s Supper is also different from that of his parables, for the latter have a characteristic beginning: “The kingdom of heaven is like…,” following which there is then narrated an occurrence, such as, e. g., the invitation to a wedding meal. The words with which Jesus offered the bread and the cup declare to the recipients directly that he is offering them his body and his blood of the covenant. They do not explain the correspondence between the earthly food and the gift of his body and blood but are fully focused on the fact that in the offering of the bread and cup Christ’s body and blood of the covenant are offered and received. Strictly speaking, therefore, they cannot be described as words of interpretation [Deuteworte] but words of gift [Spendeworte].[ii] Over against this emphasis on this special structure of Jesus’ words of institution, it cannot be argued that, based on the Old Testament and Jewish presuppositions of Jesus, only parables or parabolic actions could have been expected. Elsewhere, too, Jesus went beyond the framework of Jewish presuppositions. This structure of the words of institution has often been overlooked because theology’s interest in the interpretation of these words has been concentrated one-sidedly on the word is contained within them, and was therefore directed toward the question of how the relationship between the bread and Christ’s body, as well as between the wine and Christ’s blood, must be defined. Now the Greek word ἐστίν [estin] can be translated both as “is” and as “signifies.” But when this question is raised and discussed, there is already a structural shift in relation to what is taking place in the Lord’s Supper itself, for by framing the question in this way, one’s thinking already begins to depart from the attitude of reception. Besides, it is known that in the Aramaic original of the words of institution a verb corresponding to “is” would most likely have been missing. The weight of the words of institution so rests on

The Gift of Jesus’ Body and the Blood of the Covenant

the gift of Christ’s body and blood that one could almost have translated: “Here—my body” and “Here—the new covenant of my blood,” or “Here—my blood of the covenant.”

This special structure of the words of institution must be kept in mind when inquiring about the gifts that are promised to those gathered for the meal. Here one must consider the most important differences between the New Testament accounts of the Lord’s Supper: (a) Since in the tradition received by Paul the words of institution were separated by the meal, each of them expresses in its own way the totality of the gift. “Body” here does not mean body as distinct from blood, or even body as distinct from soul, but it designates the whole human being. The Aramaic word gufa [‫]גּוָּפה‬, which is probably underlying the Greek word σῶμα [sōma] here, designates the human being itself, the human person as the totality of psychophysical, historical human life.[iii] The same is true if the Greek σῶμα translates the Aramaic word bāśār [‫]ָבָּשׂר‬. After all, in Hebrew thought bāśār does not mean “flesh” as distinct from soul but the whole human being. Thus the Lord gives himself to the gathered with this word of gift. If Jesus’ self-sacrifice, his giving of himself into death, is not expressly stated in the first word of institution, it does appear in the word about the cup: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11.25). “In my blood” means “in my dying.” The “new covenant” had been announced by Jeremiah and promised in the name of God (Jer. 31.31–34). If God’s institution of the old covenant took place with a sacrifice, with the sprinkling of sacrificial blood and with a meal (Exod. 24.5–11), God now institutes the new covenant in Jesus’ blood. With the gift of the cup Jesus thus gives participation in the historical event of the new covenant in his death and therefore in the event of his death, which at the time of the Last Supper was still imminent, but which underlies the church’s Lord’s Supper as having been accomplished once and for all. (b) In the Gospels of Mark and Matthew the wording of the first word of institution is the same as in Paul and Luke (apart from the so-called interpretive addition [Interpretament]).[iv] Thus it makes sense that the first word of institution should likewise be interpreted: Jesus here offers himself in his personal totality. The second word of institution, however, is different from the Pauline-Lukan tradition, namely: “This is my blood of the covenant…” As with Paul and Luke, this is about granting participation in the unique event of Jesus’ death. But the emphasis here is less on God’s act, i. e., God’s institution of the new covenant, and more on Jesus’ self-offering as a covenantal sacrifice. The fact that the “covenant” here is not expressly called a “new covenant” likely does not imply any substantive difference. In contrast to the Pauline tradition, the offerings of the bread and cup in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew are not separated by the meal between them, but rather they follow immediately, one after the other. Given this closer connection

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between the two actions, it makes sense also to interpret the content of the two words of institution less in terms of the independence of the two words and more in terms of their complementarity. That would mean that with the offering of the bread, not only was a sharing in the whole of the person of Jesus given, and that with the gift of the cup, not only was a sharing in the historical event of the new covenant given, but that the separation of the body and blood in Jesus’ sacrificial death was expressed through the close juxtaposition of both words of institution. This could imply a relatively significant shift in the understanding of the gift of the Lord’s Supper, namely, a shift away from the person and history of Jesus toward the materiality of his body and blood. It is not possible to prove whether such a shift had already begun in Mark and Matthew. Nevertheless, this parallelism of body and blood in the first two Gospels facilitates the kind of shift that emerged more fully in the course of the later history of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Here it should be noted that the dogmatic statements in the Western Church are focused more intently and often one-sidedly on the substance of Christ’s body and blood as two constituents of the human organism, while the focus of the Eastern Church is directed more intently at sharing in the historical event of Jesus’ sacrificial death. Even though the gift of the Lord’s Supper in the liturgy and in the doctrine of the churches is most often described in parallel formulations as the gift of Christ’s body and blood, one needs to remember that these gifts are about the self-offering of the bodily person of Jesus Christ and about participation in the one-time event of his death, through which God established the new covenant with humanity. If in the New Testament words of institution greater emphasis is sometimes put on Jesus’ gift of his complete person, and at other times it is put on sharing in the historical event of his death, and at still other times it is put on the gift of his body and blood, these differences do not cancel each other out but mutually interpret one another. This is clear in Paul’s theology of the Lord’s Supper. Although he knows himself to be obligated to a tradition, according to which each word of institution is structured differently in terms of content, he can also speak in a strictly parallel fashion of Christ’s body and blood as the gifts of the Lord’s Supper: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10.16). “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord” (11.27).

(c) The parallelism in the words of institution also returns in the Gospel of John, in Jesus’ fourfold invitation to eat his flesh and drink his blood (6.53–56). Yet even here the complete context of vv. 26–63 makes it impossible to see in Jesus’ invitation to eat his flesh and drink his blood a one-sided emphasis on the materiality of his flesh and blood, for in John’s Gospel “flesh”— just as “body” in the other traditions—refers to the totality of the human being; “the living bread that came down from heaven”

The Gift of Jesus’ Body and the Blood of the Covenant

(v. 51; cf. v. 58) is Jesus Christ himself. If Jesus bore witness to himself, in the totality of his person, as the “bread of life” (6.48; cf. v. 51 and 58), then he offers himself up in his flesh and blood, namely, as the one who gives his life into death for the world. What follows also contradicts a merely material understanding of “flesh” and “blood”: “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless” (6.63). The gift of the flesh must be separated neither from the person of Jesus nor from the word by which he offers himself as the bread of life. In all four New Testament traditions, the words of institution are attached to interpretive assurances, namely, the word about the cup in the Synoptics, the word about the bread in Paul, and the word about the bread in addition to the word about the cup in Luke. With the words “shed for many” that were added to the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, a formula was adopted that strongly emphasizes (four times!) the witness of Isa. 52.14f. and 53.11f. to the vicariously representative and atoning significance of the Suffering Servant of God, not only for the members of the people of Israel but also for the nations. The Pauline and Lukan assurance “for you” is probably an application of the older “for many,” which had arisen through liturgical usage. Because of the appeal to Exod. 24 and Isa. 52f., Jesus’ death has often been understood as a sacrifice of atonement, and the gift of his body and blood as a sharing in this sacrifice of atonement. However, the dogmatic interpretation of the assurance “for many,” “for you,” will also have to take into account the whole variety of statements with which the salvific significance of Jesus’ death is attested to in the New Testament—namely, not only as a sacrifice but also, e. g., as a penal suffering, as a ransom, as reconciliation. The “for you” is the fundamental New Testament formula by which the salvific significance of Jesus’ death is expressed, emphasizing at times his death in our stead and at other times his death for our sake. Only Matthew adds “for the forgiveness of sins.” This corresponds to the reference to Isa. 53 and to Jer. 31. Here, too, dogmatic interpretation cannot restrict itself to these terms, but must develop the effect of the death of Christ with the same diversity of statements that is used in the New Testament, thus, e. g., for justification, sanctification, glorification, eternal life (Jn. 6.46–63). Finally, it should be particularly emphasized that all the interpretive additions to the words of institution are given in the plural “for you,” which corresponds to the plural in the address of the words of institution: “take,” “eat,” “drink.” The Lord’s Supper is not only to have an effect on the individual recipient but also on the community—changes in the relationship of recipients to one another. The “for you” has ecclesiological significance. In this sense Paul spoke of building up the church as Christ’s body through the reception of the body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. The words “for many” direct our focus beyond the circle of the gathered. The mission of Christians in the world is contained in these words.

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The so-called interpretive additions [Interpretamente] to the words of institution urge a dynamic unfolding of the assurance of the death of Jesus Christ that advances into humanity.

3. The Promise of the Meal in the Kingdom of God In all four New Testament traditions of the Lord’s Supper there is an eschatological perspective: in the Synoptic Gospels, as a saying of Jesus; in 1 Cor. 11.26, as a word that the apostle Paul added to the tradition he quoted about Jesus’ Last Supper. The eschatological saying of Jesus is less disputed than the transmitted words of institution. It corresponds to Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God and to his announcement of the meal in the kingdom of God. This announcement, in turn, corresponded to the Old Testament prophetic and Jewish-apocalyptic expectations of the future meal of celebration. The words of institution, however, are structurally new, both in comparison with the Old Testament and Jewish rites and in comparison with the rest of Jesus’ proclamation.

Even the differences in the tradition of the eschatological word are important for the dogmatic teaching about the Lord’s Supper: (a) The eschatological word is found in the Synoptic Gospels in a fourfold form, each time in connection with the word of the cup, and in Luke it is also found at the beginning of his account of the meal. The structure of this word is the same in all the traditions: From now on I no longer eat or drink, until… (followed by an announcement of the kingdom of God). In the first half of the sentence, the eschatological word is a farewell word. In the second half of the sentence, one finds noticeable differences. In the Gospel of Mark, it is a word of expectation from Jesus in itself: “until I drink it (the fruit of the vine) anew with you in the kingdom of God” (14.25b). In the Gospel of Matthew, the eschatological word is at the same time a word of promise for the disciples: “until that day when I drink it (the fruit of the vine) anew with you in my Father’s kingdom” (26.29b). In the formulations of the second half of the sentence in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus speaks solely of the coming kingdom of God (22.15, 18). Yet implicitly these statements, too, contain an expectation of Jesus for himself and a promise for the disciples (cf. Lk. 22.30). Therefore, in all the traditions, the structure of the eschatological word is one of farewell, of expectation, and of promise. The differences in formulation in the second half of the sentence may appear minor, but they become significant for the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper when one inquires whether and in what sense the eschatological announcement has been fulfilled. This is true regardless of the question about which of the formulations is deemed to contain the oldest tradition.

The Promise of the Meal in the Kingdom of God

(b) In the tradition passed on by Paul, Jesus’ words are interrupted after the command to repeat, following the word about the cup. With his own words Paul adds, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11.26).

Jesus’ resurrection and presence in the Holy Spirit also had consequences for understanding the eschatological word. The question about its fulfillment is to be answered differently with regard to Jesus than to his disciples. We may say with many ancient and later interpreters, the expectation of Jesus for his own “drinking anew in the Kingdom of God” has been fulfilled. By his exaltation to the “right hand of God” he has been established in the reign of God. For his disciples and the church, however, even after Easter, the fulfillment of the eschatological promise is still to come: They are not yet “drinking of the fruit of the vine” in the kingdom of God together with Jesus. They are not yet visibly reunited with him. Nevertheless, the situation of the disciples was different now than it had been, for the risen one had appeared to them, and even after his appearances had ended he remained in their midst through the Holy Spirit. The exaltation of Jesus is the guarantee of the consummation of God’s reign, and in the presence of the exalted one the guaranteed consummation is present. Thus the Lord’s Supper is no more a farewell meal like Jesus’ Last Supper, but rather a meal of communion with the exalted crucified one who will come again, a meal of joy and of jubilation in the Holy Spirit. The promise of the Johannine farewell discourses has been fulfilled: “your pain will turn into joy” (Jn. 16.20). By offering his body and his blood of the covenant, the exalted one, to whom the reign was given by God, also grants community with him in the kingdom of God to those gathered. Thus, in the Lord’s Supper, there is a participation in the future “great supper.” This participation in the fulfillment does not suspend its futurity. The fulfillment is present in expectation. But the expected community with the coming Christ is already experienced in the Lord’s Supper. If the Lord’s Supper is the offer of participation in the future meal in the kingdom of God, it is at the same time communion with the glorified who have gone before us in the faith—the devout of the old covenant and the glorified members of the church from all times and nations. The Lord’s Supper is the common celebration of the church militant and church triumphant. To be sure, we are still sojourning and not yet at the destination. But we must still prove ourselves in the midst of the temptations of this world. Yet the sojourning and the glorified people of God are not separated from one another. Both of the following must be maintained in the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper: the presence of the kingdom of God and what is still to come of the kingdom of God. The Lord’s Supper is participation in the end-time

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community in the expectation and certainty of its presence still hidden beneath earthly signs. The absence of Jesus’ eschatological word in the Pauline tradition of the Lord’s Supper is perhaps to be understood from the fact that the apostle Paul, in view of the Corinthian enthusiasm, which one-sidedly emphasized the presence of the fulfillment, had to point out the eschatological boundary “until he comes” in a decisive fashion.

It is a strange state of affairs that Jesus’ eschatological word is almost completely absent from the liturgical orders of the churches. One must not ignore, however, that the eschatological dimension is expressed in other ways in most liturgical orders. Thus, in some proper prefaces, God is also praised for Christ’s return, and the Benedictus is sung not only in commemoration of Jesus’ earthly advent, nor merely in expectation of his coming in the Lord’s Supper, but also in the expectation of his parousia. Indeed, the early Christian “marana tha” pleads and confesses both the coming of the Lord at the end of time and his coming in the gathering for worship. Nevertheless, it needs to be acknowledged that the eschatological dimension has played only a minor role in dogmatic statements about the Lord’s Supper. Still, it is clearly attested to in the WCC document Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry.2 But eschatological jubilation and the remembrance of Jesus’ death do not contradict each other, for faith in the exalted one recognizes Jesus’ death on the cross as his victory.

4. The Eucharistic-Anamnetic Recognition of the Present Christ The church thus celebrates the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of Jesus’ Last Supper and in expectation of the future meal in the kingdom of God, in remembrance of Jesus’ death and in expectation of his parousia. The celebration must not be done solely in remembrance of his death, as has often been the case, nor solely in expectation of the future reign of God. The remembrance of Jesus’ death and the expectation of his parousia belong inseparably together in the Lord’s Supper. This is not merely about human beings re-envisioning a person who has left them, or about that person’s fate which belongs to the past. Rather, this is about the presence of Jesus and his history. Even the memory of the liberation from Egypt in the Old Testament was more than a mere backward-looking recollection. Rather, it took place in the certainty of the enduring validity of this foundational act of

2 Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, “The Eucharist,” par. 22–24. [Growth in Agreement, ed. Meyer and Vischer, 479–480. –Ed.]

The Eucharistic-Anamnetic Recognition of the Present Christ

salvation and in the invocation of God as the enduring Savior of his people. In the remembrance (anamnesis) of the New Testament people of God, the crucified Christ is fully present, for the Holy Spirit, who recollects Jesus’ words and deeds, is here poured out.[v] In addition, the expectation of the future community is not only about an attempt at imagining and orienting oneself toward that which is to come, but rather the coming one is made present in the Lord’s Supper. The remembrance of Jesus’ words of institution and promise in the Lord’s Supper is therefore not just the hurrying backwards and forwards of human longing but a being taken into the way of Jesus toward the cross and from the cross toward the parousia. The mystery of the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper is inexhaustible. The entire history of salvation is concentrated in it. The following three perspectives must be emphasized here: (a) In the Lord’s Supper the exalted Christ is present. The one exalted to be the Lord does not cease to be the same one who died once and for all on the cross. The identity of the crucified one and the exalted one is decisive in all confessions of the Christian faith. Although his death belongs to the past, the exalted one remains defined by his self-sacrifice for the world. After he sacrificed himself once on the cross, he is “a priest forever” (Heb. 5.6). Similarly, Revelation describes the exalted one as the “lamb that has been slaughtered” (Rev. 5.6 [S]), standing before the throne of God. At the same time, the exalted one is the same one who will come and complete the reign of God. Even now, he lacks no power to break the uproar of the world, redeem those waiting for fulfillment, and gather them from all times into the eternal community. Thus Jesus Christ is present as the one who died once and for all and who will bring about the new creation. Above all, however, the exalted one is encountered in the Lord’s Supper as the one who died on the cross for us. In all the New Testament accounts of the Lord’s Supper, the words of institution are emphasized in a special way compared to the eschatological word of farewell, for in them Jesus not only announces but gives himself in direct assurance. He grants participation in his death. Although this difference does not justify ignoring, during the liturgy of Holy Communion, Jesus’ announcement of the future meal in the kingdom of God, the Lord’s Supper is above all defined by the remembrance of his death. Of course, the presence of the crucified one has a significance here that was unknown to the disciples during the Last Supper and during Jesus’ arrest and execution. The dying of Jesus is now no longer an occasion for despair. The post-Easter community knows that the crucified one lives. He enters as the victor into the midst of his community. (b) Since the exalted Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper as the crucified and returning one, his death on a cross and his parousia are likewise present in it. In the Lord’s Supper not only is the person of the exalted one present but so too is his history. This presence of the action accomplished in the past is most apparent in the Pauline tradition of the second word of institution: “This cup is the new

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covenant in my blood.” The unique historical event of the divine institution of the new covenant in Jesus’ death is present here. The recipients of the meal participate in it; they are taken into this covenant. But the same may also be said of the eschatological event of his parousia. As unusual as this is within the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, and as surely as one must distinguish between the fulfilled action of the death on the cross and the consummation of God’s kingdom still to come, there is no reason to lag behind what is said about baptism and the message of justification when interpreting the eschatological word in the Lord’s Supper: Although our resurrection is still ahead of us, we have been raised with Christ in baptism, and although we are moving toward the future final judgment, we are already acquitted by the message of Christ. In the Lord who once was crucified, his cross is present; in him who will come one day, his parousia is present. Thus both events draw close to the one celebrating the Lord’s Supper. The events between the present moment and the past lose their significance, and the incalculable time that lies between the present moment and the future loses its suggestive, threatening power. We are embraced by Jesus’ death and by the consummation of God’s reign. Above all, however, the Lord’s Supper is defined by the presence of the death of Jesus. Once again, one must consider the peculiarity of the words of institution by which the Lord, in a direct promise, grants participation in his dying. This corresponds also to the emphasis with which Paul described the whole meal as the proclamation of the death of Jesus (1 Cor. 11.26). This proclamation does not merely belong to the celebration since the administration of the celebration is itself this proclamation, and yet the presence of his death in the Lord’s Supper does not signify the repetition of the disciples’ sadness after Jesus’ arrest and death. The presence of his death is for the believer the presence of the rupture that has taken place in his death. This rupture is final. In Jesus’ death on the cross the future consummation is disclosed and decided. By participating in his death, we participate in the future glory. (c) The presence of the Lord and his actions is his self-giving presence. Not yet the presence of his person as such but his present self-giving is the center of the Lord’s Supper. Not yet the presence of his accomplished and future actions but the participation in them is the center. For he comes here to the gathered not only in order to be present but in order to offer himself to them. The “for you” of the presence of Christ is more than merely a witness to the significance of past and future events for those gathered. This “for you” is the Lord’s caring commitment to us in self-sacrifice with his history and future. Although caused by us humans, Jesus’ death is not present as suffered by us but for us. Although we have deserved God’s judgment, Christ’s return is present to us, not as our condemnation but as our acquittal, not as our reprobation but as our salvation.

The Eucharistic-Anamnetic Recognition of the Present Christ

Just as the Lord’s Supper is above all the proclamation of Jesus’ death, so his gift is above all the forgiveness of sins. We require it daily. But just as Jesus’ death was the breakthrough to the fulfillment of God’s reign, so forgiveness opens up access to God, communion with him, life in future glory. The statements made through these three perspectives on the presence of the exalted Christ, his death, his parousia, and his self-offering belong inseparably together in the doctrine of his presence in the Lord’s Supper. In this togetherness one or another of the three perspectives may be emphasized more strongly. More attention may be given to the presence of the person of Jesus Christ, or to the presence of his death and his parousia, or to that of his body and blood. Thus, in the Western disputes about the Lord’s Supper in the Middle Ages and the Reformation era, attention was often given one-sidedly to the issue of the presence of Christ’s body and blood. This presence has been called the real presence, both in Roman Catholic and in Reformation teaching. Only in this century, through research on the Eastern church fathers and through Odo Casel’s theology of the mysteries, did the presence of the death of Jesus Christ move more into the foreground within Roman Catholic theology.[vi] In Evangelical-Lutheran theology, this happened especially through Peter Brunner’s teaching about “effective representation.”3 It makes sense not to restrict the term real presence to the presence of the body and blood of Christ, but to use this term to summarize the whole event of the Lord’s making himself present [Selbstvergegenwärtigung]: the presence of his person, his history, and the giving of himself “for us.” Naturally, the doctrine of the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper may also be unfolded through other terminologies. Thus, e. g., Johann Metz distinguished between the “principal actual presence of Christ” and “the memorial presence of the sacrifice of Christ” and “the substantial real presence of the body and blood of Jesus.”4 But even he emphasizes the coherence of these three modes of presence, and he notes that the term real presence was only put on the same level as the other two kinds of presence for traditional reasons.

In whatever way these three perspectives are designated or accentuated, the work of the triune God takes place in the real presence of Jesus Christ. In the exalted Christ, God the Father is present. In the Lord’s Supper he grants us participation in the new

3 Cf. Peter Brunner, Zum Lehre vom Gottesdienst der im Namen Jesu versammelten Gemeinde, in Leiturgia, vol. 1, ed. Karl Ferdinand Müller and Walter Blankenburg (Kassel: Stauda, 1954), 229–232. [ET: Worship in the Name of Jesus, trans. Martin H. Bertram (St. Louis: Concordia, 1968), 168–171. –Ed.] 4 Johann Baptist Metz, “Eucharistie als zentrales Mysterium” [The Eucharist as a Central Mystery], in Mysterium Salutis: Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik [The Mystery of Salvation: Outline of a Salvation-Historical Dogmatics], 5 vols. in 7, ed. Johannes Feiner and Magnus Löhrer (Einsiedeln/ Zürich/Köln: Benziger, 1965–1976), IV/2.267ff.

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covenant that he has established in the death of Jesus. At the same time, the Holy Spirit is also present in the exalted Christ. “The Lord is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3.17). Wherever the Lord gives himself, the Holy Spirit is also at work. In the Lord’s Supper he unites the gathered with Christ and makes them into the instruments of his reign. Just as through the message of Christ and through baptism, so also through the Lord’s Supper the triune God acts as the one reconciling and creating anew. The structure of the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper is not identical with the structure of the liturgical statements by which it is attested to in the celebration of the meal itself. This takes place above all in the thanksgiving that is offered in the remembrance of Jesus’ Last Supper. Here we give thanks not only for Jesus’ Last Supper but also for his death and his resurrection, and for his entire work, from his participation in the act of creation to his appearance at the end of history. This thanksgiving is offered to God for sending the Son and for the acts accomplished by the Son. In giving thanks for these acts God is worshiped as the Holy One. But the thanksgiving is also offered to Jesus Christ. One may assume that some of the Christ hymns and acclamations handed down in the New Testament were voiced in the celebration of the meal. In the later liturgy, too, Christ is greeted as “benedictus” and called upon as “agnus Dei.” If, in the course of history, the liturgy took on an order in which the Preface, the Sanctus, the recitation of the words of institution, and the anamnesis follow one another sequentially, it cannot be ignored that even in this sequence thanksgiving and anamnesis permeate each other. The words of institution stand in the center of this thanking, worshiping, and proclaiming as the foundation of the church’s eucharistic-anamnetic speaking, and as Christ’s promise that he would make himself present again and again in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and offer himself to the gathered. Because of the richness of this gift, the eucharistic prayer has an aspect of exuberance and inexhaustibility. It is thus easy here to understand why, in the formulation of this prayer, freedom was originally given for pneumatic spontaneity, and that its wording was settled only later in the history of the liturgy as a framework for the celebration. This aspect of doxological plērophoria [certainty] is more pronounced in the liturgy of the Eastern Church than in the concentrated, terse formulations of the Western churches.[vii] Yet one must not overlook the fact that the richness disclosed with the real presence in the Western liturgies is expressed in the multitude and variety of proper prefaces, which change in the course of the church year, and in which thanks is given for the special act of salvation that is commemorated on the day in question, while the wording of the eucharistic prayer in the Eastern Church has remained unchanged to a greater degree. This eucharistic-anamnetic praise is offered to God in the Holy Spirit and is sustained by the knowledge that the prayer for the Holy Spirit has been heard.

The Eucharistic-Anamnetic Recognition of the Present Christ

The task of dogmatic teaching about the real presence is to keep the eyes of believers open to the richness of the dimensions in which God is offered eucharisticanamnetic adoration and in which the self-giving Christ is attested to human beings. In the course of the history of theology, however, doctrinal statements about the real presence have moved further and further away from the structure of the statements made in the celebration itself. Although the subject matter of the doctrine remained the same Lord’s Supper that is celebrated, there was a change of perspective from which the statements about the Supper were made. In reflecting on the meal, thinking stepped out of the immediate events of thanking, offering, and receiving, and took a vantage point outside of them, from which it seemed possible to observe these events and to determine their connections and details more precisely. Thus, through such reflection, individual aspects were isolated within the total event of the Lord’s Supper, and problems of determining their relationship arose, about which there was hardly any awareness in the celebration itself. The most important problematic areas that arose through such reflection are as follows: (1) The spatial problem of the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. In the reception of the meal, believers are certain that Jesus Christ offers his body and his blood of the covenant to each person, wherever the Lord’s Supper is celebrated. If we depart from the posture of reception, the problem arises about how this is possible, since Jesus rose bodily and, as the exalted one, has remained an embodied human being. Physical embodiment, however, according to our experiences, signifies a spatial limitation and therefore a presence in one particular place. But how can the exalted one be simultaneously present in the many places in which the Lord’s Supper is celebrated? Does this assumption not mean the dissolution of his human nature? Answers to this question have been sought from opposite starting points: Thus, in the Middle Ages, there were numerous attempts to connect a spatial understanding of Christ’s reigning “at the right hand of God” with the real presence of his body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. An especially important theory, still found today in Roman Catholic dogmatics, teaches that the substance of the body is spatially present only in heaven, but in the Lord’s Supper it is present without the accident of location.[viii] The difficulty with this theory consists in the fact that, on the one hand, it teaches the presence of the body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, namely, in the form of the bread, thus in a specific location, but on the other hand, the accident of location is assured only of the exalted body of Christ in the heavenly place. By contrast, Luther assumed the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper and taught from this premise the ubiquity of Christ’s body and blood, and he refused to understand heaven, in which the exalted one reigns, as a place. He supported the possibility of this omnipresence of Christ’s body by appealing to the participation of his human nature in the omnipresence of his divine nature, to which it is united through the incarnation of

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the Son of God. Against Luther, it has been argued that accepting the ubiquity of Christ’s body violates the full equality of Christ’s human nature with ours. Calvin, on the other hand, in agreement with the overwhelming majority of thinkers in the scholastic tradition, understood Jesus’ “sitting at the right hand of God” as the reign of the bodily exalted one at a specific place in heaven. Thus, in the Lord’s Supper, Christ’s body is not locally present, but believers have to lift their hearts to the exalted, embodied Christ. He is in their midst not according to his human nature but according to his divine nature, not bodily but spiritually. Against Calvin, it has been argued that he dissolves the real presence of Christ’s body and blood by spiritualizing it.

In the history of theology, when discussing this spatial problem of the real presence, too little consideration has generally been given to the fact that the body of the exalted Christ is identical with his earthly body but is at the same time different from the latter in a way that confounds our understanding. Paul thus spoke of the “spiritual body” of the risen one in contrast to the “physical body,” and of the “heavenly human being” in contrast to the “earthly human being” (1 Cor. 15.44ff.). Since the time of the anti-Gnostic struggle, the resurrected body has largely been understood rather one-sidedly as the awakened earthly body. This is connected to the fact that the reign of the exalted one over the universe has been understood too narrowly as a reign over all the things existing in space but not also as a reign over the structure of space. If he is seated at the right hand of God, then he participates in God’s supremacy over space. The omnipresence of the exalted one, like the omnipresence of God, in no way means an extension throughout all space, but rather his freedom as Lord over the space to become present wherever he wants. The presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper suspends neither his supremacy over space nor his human nature. His bodily advent in every Lord’s Supper and the “sursum corda” [“Lift up your hearts”] of the congregation belong together. (2) The temporal problem of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper. In the reception of the meal, believers are certain that Jesus Christ is present as the one who is dying and is returning. In his presence, his death and his parousia are thus present. Granted, his death happened once and for all, and his parousia is likewise expected as a unique and final event. And yet, in the meantime, the Lord’s Supper is celebrated again and again between these two events. How is it possible that a one-time historical or eschatological event becomes present again and again in the course of history? Here, too, an answer has been attempted from opposite starting points: If one proceeds from the uniqueness of Jesus’ death, it then makes sense to speak only of the presence of the effects and fruits of this past event, which the exalted one grants in the Lord’s Supper. As the one who died once and for all on the cross, he grants participation in his glorified body, which is indeed identical with the body of the one who died on the

The Eucharistic-Anamnetic Recognition of the Present Christ

cross, but, since the resurrection, it has been taken out of earthly modes of existence. The remembrance of Jesus’ death would then be a mere memory of a past event, and the reception of its effects, but not the certainty of the presence of this event. This would correspond to a one-sidedly futuristic expectation of Christ’s return, instead of the certainty of the presence of the coming one. If one proceeds from the presence of Jesus’ death in the Lord’s Supper, it then makes sense to speak of the “repetition” of Christ’s sacrifice in the Lord’s Supper. Of course, one can distinguish the sacrifices of the mass from the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as “bloodless repetitions.” In the late Middle Ages, however, this distinction did not prevent the spread of the misunderstanding that Jesus’ death needed to be supplemented by the subsequent sacrifices of the church and that in its uniqueness it was not yet the final, fully sufficient sacrifice for God’s reconciliation with humanity for all time.

In addition, when discussing this temporal problematic of the real presence, there has generally not been sufficient consideration given to the fact that the exaltation of Jesus “to the right hand of God” means more than merely reigning over everything that happens in the course of this world’s time. If he is placed into God’s reigning, then it is not enough to imagine his reigning as taking place in an other-worldly parallel to the temporal processes of this world. Instead, like God, he is Lord also over the structure of time. In his lordship over the temporal structure of the sequence of past, present, and future, he gives himself in the Lord’s Supper to those assembled and grants them participation in his death and his return, which—although distinguished as past and future from the present of the meal’s celebration—are nevertheless present in the presence of the one who has overcome the world. (3) The issue of the relationship between the bread and the body of Christ and between the wine and the blood of Christ’s covenant. In celebrating the Lord’s Supper, believers are certain that Christ offers himself to them in the offering of the blessed bread and cup and that they receive what the words of institution promise them: his body and the new covenant in his blood, or his blood of the covenant. When theological thinking steps outside of the action of offering and receiving, and makes these gifts the object of reflection, then the problem of the relationship between the bread and Christ’s body as well as between the wine and Christ’s blood arises. By concentrating on these questions, theological reflection pauses, as it were, in the midst of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, lifting the problem of this relationship from the totality of the meal, and making it an object of contemplation by seeking to define the relationship between the bread and Christ’s body and between the wine and Christ’s blood. This question is inseparable from the spatial and temporal problems of the real presence, but it has been investigated more thoroughly in the course of the history of theology and debated more vehemently than the other two. Our task here is not to depict the history of how this relationship has been defined. We must restrict ourselves to

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pointing out the most important basic types, each of which in turn has a number of variants. The terminology used by the ancient church to discuss this problem involved the distinction between the visible and invisible gifts, the earthly and heavenly gifts. Thus bread and wine were described by Greek theology as typos, antitypos, symbolon, and homoioma [likeness, image, form], and by Latin theology as signum, figura, and imago of the gift of Christ’s body and blood. Defining the relationship between the visible and the invisible gifts was not done consistently, and it varied greatly in the ancient church. One finds here some statements that can be understood in the sense of a unity between sign and thing (thus, e. g., Ignatius of Antioch, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and Ambrose)—while others distinguish the sign more clearly from the invisible gift, and still others connect them in the sense of the Platonic participation of the visible in the invisible and the manifestation of the original image [Urbildes] in the created image [Abbild].[ix] The strongest distinction between sign and thing is found in the early Alexandrian school (especially in Origen, who gave preference to the spiritual reception of the Logos, which he distinguished from the bodily reception of the bread and wine).[x] At the same time, despite these distinctions, the use of the term symbol did not connote a symbolical understanding of the Lord’s Supper in the sense that here one receives only a symbol of an absent reality. While sign and thing had previously been largely distinguished within the concept of mysterium, or sacrament, Augustine turned this connection between the two into a problem by distinguishing sacrament and thing. Similar to his teaching on baptism, Augustine also developed his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper within a systemization that proceeded not from the unity but from the distinction between sacrament and the gift of grace, leaving open both the possibility that the two are connected and that they remain separated from each other. This systemization also allowed statements to be made about the fact that some people might receive not only the sacrament but also Christ’s body and blood, while others would receive only the sacrament. Through this distinction he reflected on the presupposition that heretics and unworthy Catholics receive only the sacrament in the Lord’s Supper but not Christ’s body and blood. Thus one finds in Augustine both traditional statements about the real presence and sharp distinctions between sacramentum tantum [the sign or rite of the sacrament in itself] and res [the thing (of the sacrament)].[xi] Overall, in contrast to the Greek fathers, he probably emphasized the Platonic distance between created image [Abbild] and original image [Urbild] more than the Platonic participation of the created image in the original image. As a response to one-sided representatives of the Augustinian distinction between sacramentum and res, the recognition of the identity between the bread and Christ’s body as well as between the wine and Christ’s blood became more and more widespread in the medieval West, including even the idea that the substance of the gifts given in the Lord’s Supper are solely Christ’s body and blood, while the bread and wine are mere forms under which the substance of the body and blood of Christ are offered and received. The doctrine

The Eucharistic-Anamnetic Recognition of the Present Christ

of transubstantiation, which was made into a dogma by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), was not merely about the dynamic use of bread and wine by the self-giving Christ, as the ancient church conceived of the change—not merely about the elements in the Lord’s Supper being permeated by Christ’s body and blood, just as metal glows when heated by fire—in other words, not merely about how bread and wine are no longer just ordinary bread and ordinary wine in the Lord’s Supper but are Christ’s body and blood. Instead, going beyond this, it taught the substantial cessation of bread and wine. Appealing to the ancient church fathers, the Eastern Church has repeatedly rejected this dogma. For Luther’s definition of the relationship, the “est” [“is”], in the sense of the identity of the visible and invisible gifts, remained decisive, but he was reluctant to define this relationship more precisely. So even in the midst of his struggle against Zwingli, he left open the following possibility: “It can be said that he (Christ’s body) is in the bread, he is the bread, he is where the bread is, or however you want. Let’s not fight about words. Only let the meaning remain that it is not mere bread that we eat in Christ’s Supper, but the body of Christ.”5 Luther’s rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation was not aimed against the real presence but at the dogmatization of the attempt to define it by philosophical means. Thus he also had no interest in the opposing concept of consubstantiation. It is indeed the case, however, that the Greek Church’s much more expansive concept of change was accepted in the Lutheran confessional writings.6 The Augsburg Confession teaches “that the true body and blood of Christ are truly present under the form of bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper and are distributed and received there.”7 In Calvin’s definition of the relationship, the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper are signs, figures, symbols, a depiction of Christ’s body and blood, but not the gift itself. This is true both for unbelievers and for the believing recipient. It is the case, however, that the latter, in contrast to the former, does receive them, not as empty signs and figures but as a participation in the “thing” signified by them. The bread and wine are not identical with the “thing,” but they are an assurance and pledge of the spiritual communion with the bodily deceased and risen Christ. In this sense, believers, in contrast to unbelievers, share in Christ’s body and blood. Thus, in the Heidelberg Catechism, these two processes, the visible and the invisible, are put in relationship to each other through the repeated formula, “as certainly as—just as certainly also,” or “just as—so,” in a way that the first process provides the meaning of assurance for the second. Christ “wants to assure us by this visible sign and pledge that we

5 Luther, Dass diese Wort Christi, “das ist mein Leib” noch feststehen, wider die Schwämgeister (1527), WA, XXIII.145.29ff. [That These Words of Christ, “This Is My Body,” etc., Still Stand Firm against the Fanatics, LW 1 , 37.65 (trans. modified). –Ed.] 6 See Apol. X.2. [BSELK, 424–425 (BC, 184). –Ed.] 7 AC X. [German. BSELK, 104 (BC, 44). –Ed.]

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are sharing in his true body and blood through the working of the Holy Spirit as surely as we are receiving these holy signs with our physical mouths in remembrance of him….”8

These various ways of defining the relationship have not only remained separate doctrinal opinions but have taken on the meaning of church-dividing dogmas. That said, all parties in the disputes about the Lord’s Supper in Western Christendom appeal to Augustine, while Eastern Christendom has not seen any comparable divisions over this topic. In the painful history of these disputes, especially about this (third) question, one finds the reason why the convergence theses about the eucharist in the Lima text (see above) avoid more precise statements about the gifts of Jesus’ body and the new covenant in his blood that are offered with his words of institution. For ecumenical dialogue about these differences, it is not enough merely to compare the traditional formulas directly with each other. Rather, it is necessary—as in every comparison of differing dogmatic statements—to take into consideration the historical presuppositions of their emergence, the historical fronts of the defense in which they arose, the biblical arguments and arguments from the history of dogma by which these statements were supported, the philosophical concepts with which they were formulated, as well as the subsequent history of their interpretation. At the same time, it is self-evident that the New Testament traditions of the words of institution are of fundamental importance. Ecumenical dialogue about the relationship between the bread and Christ’s body, as well as between the wine and Christ’s blood, must return again and again to them. Furthermore, it is necessary that the words of institution are not isolated but rather interpreted within the context of the total action of the Supper, from the blessing of the elements through the offering of them and to their reception. Even if individual aspects of the total action are isolated in reflection, it must not be forgotten that the action of Christ in the bread and wine during the implementation of the meal is not an end in itself, but that the bread and wine are utilized by him for his action upon the church. It should also be noted that the words of institution do not have the structure of “statements about…” but that of offering and assurance. They are about the offering and the reception of Christ’s body and blood in the distribution of the consecrated bread and wine. This means at the same time that the posture with which a person hears and interprets the words of institution adequately is primarily one of believing reception, namely, eating and drinking in the belief that one is receiving what the words

8 Answer to Question 79, The Heidelberg Catechism (1563). [In Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century, ed. Arthur C. Cochrane, trans. Allen O. Miller and M. Eugene Osterhaven (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966), 320 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

The Eucharistic-Anamnetic Recognition of the Present Christ

of institution promise. In the various theological definitions of the relationship between “sign” and “thing,” however, reflection has largely been separated from the existential act of offering and receiving, all the more so to the extent that the relationship between signum and res has become the dominant topic of teaching about the Lord’s Supper. If one intends to bring the varying definitions of the relationship into an ecumenical encounter with one another, it is therefore necessary to insert them back into the actual administration of the Lord’s Supper, and to ask what they mean for offering and receiving in this celebration. Several important observations result from this: When we consider in the act of faithful reception what the words of institution promise us, and when we attempt to translate the various definitions of the relationship between “sign” and “thing” back into this act, then we discover on the one hand that what is distinct in reflection is interrelated in the act. There was an important reason why Augustine not only differentiated between “sacrament” and “thing” but also separated them in some statements in the systematization of his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, namely, he denied that unworthy and heretical participants received communion with Christ’s body. This view then had consequences for the systematic construction of his doctrine of the sacraments. In the faithful reception of the Lord’s Supper, however, one’s focus is directed no longer toward the relationship between sign and thing but entirely toward the thing, namely, toward Christ who is giving himself in the meal. In the act of faithful reception—even on the basis of Augustine’s presuppositions—the reception of the sacrament and the reception of Christ’s body and blood are identical. This explains the apparent contradiction between his “symbolical-spiritual” and his “ecclesial-realistic” statements. Something similar also results from retranslating Calvin’s systematic separation of the visible and invisible events in the Lord’s Supper. In the act of faithful reception both processes are not separated from one another, but they are connected to each other by the “as certainly—so certainly.” In receiving the bread and wine, faith participates in communion with Christ’s body and blood. The distance between human beings here on earth and Christ in heaven is not only mediated by the Holy Spirit, but Christ himself steps into the midst of the congregation by the power of the Spirit. Even if theoretical systematic theology distinguishes between the oral reception of the bread and wine and the spiritual reception of Christ’s body and blood, both receptions are nevertheless connected to each other in the act of faithful reception. If, on the other hand, we begin with the act of faithful reception, we encounter the fact that, in the same medieval time period in which dogmatic interest was concentrated so one-sidedly on the presence of the substance of Christ’s body and blood, there are testimonies of deep devotion to the Lord’s Supper that bear witness to an intimate relationship with the person of Jesus Christ and his passion. That which could not be adequately addressed in the structure of dogmatic statements was expressed in the structure of prayer and preaching. If, at the Roman Synod

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of 1059, Berengar had to sign a statement written by Cardinal Humbert, which stated that “…the true body and the true blood of our Lord Jesus Christ… cannot sensibly, except in the sacrament alone, be touched or broken by the hands of priests or ground by the teeth of the faithful,”9 late scholasticism rejected such a “Capernaitic” understanding of the substances of Christ’s body and blood and declared that the substance of the body and blood of Christ is not spatially contained in the form of bread and wine but is present “by means of the Spirit” (per modum spiritus).10 The spiritual experience of receiving the sacrament and the reluctance to bite Christ’s body with one’s teeth resulted in a certain spiritual loosening of the material understanding of the gift of Christ’s body and blood. Corresponding to this is that fact that alongside a robust sacramental realism some acknowledged the possibility of receiving Christ’s body spiritually without eating it orally. If in ecumenical dialogue one takes as a starting point the words of institution as a liturgical action and the faithful reception of the gifts promised in the words of institution, then the formulas with which the relationship between the bread and Christ’s body, as well as between the wine and Christ’s blood, have been defined become dynamic and attain a certain permeability. The joint reference to the same meal and the same gifts becomes much clearer than when one compares the various dogmatic formulas to each other in isolation from the event of the meal. At the same time, the limits that constrain each of these definitions of the relationship between “sign” and “thing” become clear. They have a secondary character in relation to the basic statements of the celebration of the eucharist. Indeed, formulas that once protected the Lord’s Supper against certain dangers can later become a threat themselves. A legitimate rejection of a symbolic dissolution of the real presence can turn into a massive way of taking control over Christ’s body and blood, and a legitimate rejection of such a way of controlling can turn into a symbolic emptying. Thus it is no coincidence that a careful investigation of the history of the interpretation of the individual formulas frequently reveals a peculiar expansion and reigning in of the interpretations. The fact that these formulas are set in motion when they are translated back into the event of the meal in no way means that all definitions of the relationship can be recognized as accurate. But it is indeed the case that many of them belong more closely together than is widely assumed. Many oppositions between the traditional formulas turn out to be historically necessary mutual corrections and complementary additions. In addition, one must not forget

9 Denzinger, 690. 10 [For references to the use of the phrase “per modum spiritus” in late-medieval scholastic eucharistic theology, see Bernard Bartmann, Précis de théologie dogmatique [Summary of Dogmatic Theology], 2 vols. (Mulhouse: Salvator, 1935, 1941), 2.342–347 (§182). Cf. Aquinas, ST, III.75–77. The term Capernaitic is derived from the literal interpretation of Jesus’ discourse on the bread of life, which he gave at Capernaum (Jn. 6.26–58). –Ed.]

The Eucharistic-Anamnetic Recognition of the Present Christ

in all this that these definitions of the relationship revolve around a mystery that finally defies any doctrinal definition, namely, the mysterium of the self-giving presence of the crucified and returning Christ. Within the limits of these “basic features” of an ecumenical dogmatics only a few examples could be given to explain the ecumenical approach that is called for here. But they are easily multiplied. The fact that more joint statements result from the joint reflection on the actual implementation of the Lord’s Supper than from an immediate comparison of the controversies related to the dogmatic formulas is also attested to by the document of the Commission on Faith and Order regarding the eucharist, which was formulated by representatives of all the church bodies at Lima in 1982.[xii] Next to the doctrine of the Trinity and christology, probably the most subtle considerations in the history of theology have been made in the discussion of the above-mentioned three problematic areas relating to the doctrine of the real presence. These considerations have fundamental significance beyond the understanding of the Lord’s Supper, since, in light of the mysterium, they advanced into ever greater distinctions in the knowledge about the limits of what can be uttered. By utilizing and rupturing philosophical concepts, they also resulted in important starting points for a new philosophical understanding of space and time, as well as of substance and person. Nevertheless, the history of the discussion of these three problematic areas is one of the saddest chapters in the history of dogma, especially in Western Christendom. No blame should be assigned for pursuing these reflections. But it has indeed been disastrous that the definitions about this relationship, which were a result of reflections on these problem areas, were made into the content of dogmatic definitions that had the same weight and binding obligation as the basic acknowledgement of the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, the dogmatic formulations of these definitions of the relationship have in fact attained an even greater weight, in that they have led to church schisms where the Lord’s Supper was celebrated by both sides in acknowledgment of the real presence. Thus the opposition between such definitions has covered up the truth of the real presence for many people and has shaken the certainty of faith for a lot of others. One should not forget that for many centuries the church lived in unity without having settled the three above-mentioned problems by means of a dogmatic decision. For a long time, there was space within the unity of the church for reflection on these questions, and this space was not as small as it was for many other differences that were later held to be church dividing. One thinks, e. g., of the differences between Origen and Chrysostom, or between Ambrose and Augustine. The Eastern Church has remained closer to the basic structure of the event of the Lord’s Supper than the Western Church in that it derived its teaching about the eucharist primarily from the liturgy, and it has refrained from making a dogmatic definition about those

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relationships. It could refrain from doing so because it celebrates the eucharist with greater awareness of the epiclesis of the Holy Spirit than do the Western churches, and it understands the actualization [Vergegenwärtigung] and self-giving of Christ in the Lord’s Supper more strongly as an action of the Holy Spirit.[xiii] The rational solution of the three problems mentioned above has therefore not attained the same weight. This does not mean that the Eastern Church has refrained from discussing this question theologically. However, these questions were not settled by means of a dogmatic definition. The obligating authority remains the statements of the liturgy. It is of decisive importance for the unity of the churches that they give primacy to the eucharistic praise of the presence of Jesus Christ in their ranking of the statements about the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.

5. The Edification of the Church The Lord’s Supper is celebrated by appealing to Jesus’ command: “Do this in remembrance of me.” It is, therefore, an action of human beings. What are they to do in this celebration? The same things that have been handed down as Jesus’ action and as the action of his disciples at the Last Supper: the preparation of the meal by setting aside bread and wine, the gathering together, the thanksgiving (blessing) over the bread and cup, the distribution of the bread and cup with Jesus’ words of institution, and the reception of these gifts to eat and drink together. If all of this is to be done “in remembrance of me,” then this means not only in remembrance of the Last Supper but, beyond that, in remembrance of the person and the entire history of the one who celebrated this meal with his disciples prior to his death. This action of the church in the Lord’s Supper is an odd action. As a spectator, one may see and hear and describe it, but this already presupposes an observational distancing from the action. The existential administration of the Lord’s Supper, however, is not about the action of the participating human beings but about the action of Christ and the working of the Holy Spirit: In the Lord’s Supper, human beings are directed through all their words and deeds toward the coming and self-giving of the Lord. Both in their eucharistic praise and in their anamnesis, people look away from themselves and toward God’s action in Jesus Christ. In carrying out these actions that are commanded for the Lord’s Supper, it is not human action but Christ’s action that is the object of contemplation. For this reason, too, leaders of the celebration, in their action, look away from themselves toward Christ, who makes himself present in the Lord’s Supper and offers himself to those assembled. The action of the leader is an action of selfforgetfulness. Leaders know themselves to be used by Christ. They act “in the place of Christ” (2 Cor. 5.20 [L]). Through their action the Lord himself wants to act in the congregation by the power of the Holy Spirit. Even of the unworthy adminis-

The Edification of the Church

trators of the sacrament it is the case that: “… repraesentant Christi personam, non repraesantant proprias personas” [“…they represent the person of Christ, not their own persons”].11 The Lord’s Supper, therefore, is an action of human beings, and yet in essence it is not the action of human beings but the action of the Lord through the action of human beings. Their action must take place with the utmost care in obedience to the command to repeat, but at the same time their action is crossed out in a way that is similar to the life of the Christian in general: “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2.20 [L]). What is Christ’s action in the Lord’s Supper? He enters into the midst of those gathered. He turns the words and deeds of the people who remember him into his words and deeds. He utilizes the bread and cup in order to give participation in his body and the blood of the covenant. He makes present his sacrifice that was fulfilled once and for all. He grants participation in the coming meal in the kingdom of God. Beyond what has been said above, it should be noted that Christ assembles the gathered into a unity through this gift, and builds them up as a unity. Through his gifts he opens them up to one another for their mutual service of love and for their joint service to the world. The participants are built up as church, not by being assembled together but by receiving the body of Christ. At the same time, this means that through the gift of the body of Christ the church is built up as Christ’s body by the Holy Spirit. For good reason the invocation of the Holy Spirit (the epiclesis) has retained a fixed place in the Lord’s Supper in many churches. As the Lord unites participants in his meal, this unity does not remain limited to the local assembly, but he takes them into the unity of all believers on earth. Participation in the Lord’s Supper of the local church is always at the same time becoming one with the universal church. The unity given in the Lord’s Supper is not restricted to the believers living at the same time on this earth, but it overcomes the distance between the earthly church and the community of the glorified. These references are not meant to anticipate the doctrine of the church, but we need to investigate the question of how to define the relationship between the action of Christ and the action of the church in the Lord’s Supper. This question has played a role in the history of theology, especially in the use of the concept of sacrifice: How are the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the church related to one another in the Lord’s Supper? As is well known, the opposing answers to this question were one of the most important reasons for the church schism in the sixteenth century. Ultimately, the acknowledgment of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was not disputed, but there was disagreement regarding how and in what sense one may

11 Apol. VII.28. [BSELK, 411 (BC, 178). –Ed.]

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speak of a sacrifice on the part of the church in the Lord’s Supper and how to define its relationship to the self-sacrifice of Christ. Even the history of this problem is not easily explained since it is not possible to ascertain clearly in many old liturgical and doctrinal statements whether they are speaking of an offering of bread and wine by the church or of its sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ. Moreover, it is obvious that in the post-Tridentine period, both in the Reformation’s rejection of the sacrifice of the mass and in the Roman Catholic’s precise defining of the theories of the sacrifice of the mass, a severe hardening of these opposing positions took place, which has only begun to soften in the last few decades through numerous ecumenical dialogues.12

Within these basic features of a dogmatics, it is not possible to go into the history of the statements about the sacrifice of the church in the Lord’s Supper. We will restrict ourselves merely to highlighting the most important meanings that this terminology can have, based on the biblical presuppositions: (1) The eucharistic prayer as a sacrifice of the church. While the terms εὐχαριστεῖν [eucharistein] and εὐλογεῖν [eulogein] are not found in the New Testament texts about the Lord’s Supper, they have a broad foundation in the Old and New Testament statements about the sacrifice that is offered to God in words of praise and thanksgiving.[xiv] Thus it made sense to use the terminology of sacrifice to refer to the offering of thanks in the Lord’s Supper. (2) The surrender [Hingabe] of the church to Christ as a sacrifice. This term, too, is not found in the New Testament texts about the Lord’s Supper, but it is suggested by Rom. 12.1 and other New Testament statements. When, however, the surrender of the church in the Lord’s Supper is described as a sacrifice, this term cannot be restricted to the celebration. The whole life of Christians is to be a surrender of the self into Christ’s death, after having been delivered into his death through baptism. Here the sacrifice of praise and surrender are closely interconnected. Worship of God is quintessentially the surrendering of the self to God. (3) The offering of bread and wine as a sacrifice of the church. In the New Testament accounts of the Last Supper, the setting aside and the blessing of bread and wine are nowhere described as a sacrifice. Indeed, one finds hardly any indication in the New Testament Scriptures that the offering of things could be described as a sacrifice. What stands entirely

12 Cf. the joint theses of the German Protestant and Russian Orthodox theologians in Das Opfer Christi und das Opfer der Christen [The Sacrifice of Christ and the Sacrifice of Christians], ed. Kirchlichen Aussenamt der EKD, Studienheft 10 (Frankfurt/Main: Otto Lembeck, 1979); and the joint theses of the German Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians in the collection of essays, Das Opfer Jesu Christi und seine Gegenwart in der Kirche: Kontroversen und Klärungen zum Opferverständnis, as well as the literature mentioned in the preface to this book. [For the bibliographic information, see editor’s note 1 at the end of this chap. –Ed.]

The Edification of the Church

in the foreground is the description of the self-surrender of the person as a sacrifice. There are, however, attestations in the Old Testament Scriptures to the fact that it was common to describe the offering of certain gifts as sacrifices. This usage of the word later spread in the church, especially as used for the offering of bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper and for donations to the poor. (4) The offering of the sacrifice of Christ by the church. Between the third and the fourth meanings there are also found many fluid transitions in the ancient church. In liturgical and doctrinal texts it is often difficult to distinguish whether the offering of the bread and wine or of Christ’s body and blood is meant. Thus, e. g., the phrases “bread of life” and “cup of salvation” can describe the bread and cup which are offered to God so that he might use them for our life and salvation. But these phrases may already be referring to Christ’s body and blood. A clear distinction first came about after the whole of the eucharistic-anamnetic action was no longer understood as a consecration (as in the ancient church), but instead the consecration was equated with the speaking of the words of institution or with the epiclesis. In this way, a point in time was established before which the bread and wine were merely bread and wine but after which they are Christ’s body and blood that are then being offered. Yet even when the offering of the sacrifice, or as the case may be, the offering of Christ’s body and blood by the church, is taught, this can mean very different things: (a) It can mean that, indeed, Christ’s sacrifice is present. By appealing to this present sacrifice, we come before God and present this sacrifice to him. Such a presenting-to-God also happens elsewhere in prayer. In the wrestling of prayer, the promises that God has made to us are held up to him. His acts of salvation that he has done for us are also held up to him. Prayer “in the name of Jesus” also contains the dynamic of invoking Jesus before God and presenting to God that which he has done for us in Jesus’ death. Although such an invocation of Christ’s sacrifice has its basis in the New Testament Scriptures, there is nevertheless no description of such an action as the sacrificing of Christ by the church, neither in the statements about the Lord’s Supper nor elsewhere. (b) The action of the church in the Lord’s Supper, however, has been interpreted not only as a claiming of the unique sacrifice of Christ but also as the sacrifice of Christ by the church in the Lord’s Supper. This sacrifice of Christ has been described in the Roman Catholic Church as the bloodless repetition of the once-and-for-all bloody sacrifice on the cross. There is a significant difference between lifting up the sacrifice on the cross that has been accomplished once and for all and the repetition of the sacrifice of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. This becomes clear, e. g., in the issues that have dominated the post-Tridentine theories about the sacrifice of the mass. Proceeding from the general understanding [of sacrifice] in the phenomenology of religion, namely, [sacrifice] as an offering and destruction of what is offered, the question has been asked, through which liturgical action in the sequence of the mass is the destructio of Jesus Christ depicted and executed? As is well known, the answers have varied. For example, according to Suarez, the destructio took place through the separated presence of the body and the blood. According to Cano, it took place through the breaking of the host, while

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according to Bellarmine, it happened through the eating of Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion, etc.[xv] The idea of human beings sacrificing Christ, even if it be through the church, is foreign to the New Testament. God is the one who sacrificed his Son, and Jesus Christ offered himself to God as sacrifice. But neither in the statements about the Last Supper nor elsewhere in the New Testament is there any mention of the sacrificing of Christ by human beings.

If we now inquire about the structure of the dogmatic statements that describe the action of the church in the Lord’s Supper as the sacrifice of the church, this question can be answered in different ways. If the eucharistic prayer and the surrender of the gathered believers are described as a sacrifice, this is a designation for speaking and acting in the Lord’s Supper, which results immediately from the command to repeat. This also applies to the description of the offering of bread and wine as a sacrifice. But a structural change already begins in these statements, which comes to the fore in the statements about the sacrifice of Christ by the church. The root of these statements is not the command to repeat as such but reflection about that which is done in obedience to this command. In this reflection, thought is directed not only toward the employment of the church’s action by Christ, but this action of the church has itself become the object of contemplation and interpretation. Here the interpretation is done by way of syllogisms from the premise of the sacrificial death of Christ and his presence in the Lord’s Supper, on the one hand, and from Old Testament sacrificial actions and general ideas about sacrifice, on the other—in addition to inferences from acknowledging the gift of the body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper and the self-understanding of the church as the body of Christ. Such syllogisms do not arise immediately in the administration of the Lord’s Supper since in it the focus of the congregation is directed not toward its own action but toward the Lord who is giving himself. Such syllogisms presuppose a reflecting pause and a stepping outside of the basic context of the action of the eucharist, namely, its administration and its reception. The results of this reflection found expression in the doctrinal statements about the Lord’s Supper, and then they also found entry into the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper. Must such reflections and interpretations be rejected as a matter of principle? No. But they must be described as secondary over against the basic statements in the Lord’s Supper and about Lord’s Supper. In terms of content and structure, they are more or less distanced from the original event of the meal. This applies with respect to matters of church history, for their content is secondary compared to the New Testament’s and, in part, even to statements from the early church. Statements from church history are also secondary in view of their structure, for they are removed from the structure of the command to repeat and the basic posture in which believers obey it.

The Edification of the Church

Designating a dogmatic statement as secondary does not mean it is false. But it must be related back to the basic statements and interpreted by them. When this secondary character is not sufficiently appreciated, there emerges a threat to the Lord’s Supper in that the action of the church could take on a weight of its own and that the sovereignty of Christ’s self-sacrifice to the church could be covered up by statements about the action of the church or, as the case may be, by the priest—namely, that the sacrifice of Christ for the church is covered up by the sacrifice of Christ by the church. If, however, the statement about the sacrifice of the church is strictly and consistently referenced back to the New Testament statements, then the insight is inevitable that the use of sacrificial terminology to describe the action of the church in the Lord’s Supper is not a necessity but merely a possibility. The commission “to do this for the remembrance of me” can be carried out without using sacrificial terminology to describe and interpret the action of the church in the Lord’s Supper, for according to the New Testament witnesses, the Lord’s Supper was originally celebrated and taught without using this terminology to describe the action of the church. But the term sacrifice may be used as a designation for the Lord’s Supper and also for the action of the church that is celebrating the meal in such a way that it does not create a conflict with the New Testament traditions. Thus Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians in Germany have arrived at a joint formulation: “Our sacrifice, as members of his body that is given, is the sacrifice of the self with Jesus Christ, which is offered to the Father.” “Thus the sacrifice of the church does not mean offering to God a holy gift that is facing us on the altar, and is offered by the hand of a human priest; rather, it means the church’s entering into the surrender of Jesus Christ, i. e., offering ourselves through, with, and in Jesus Christ as living sacrifices.”13

13 Das Opfer Jesu Christi und seine Gegenwart in der Kirche, 237.

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Editor’s Notes to Chapter 16 [i]

[ii]

[iii] [iv] [v]

This chapter echoes emphases that Schlink made in several of his earlier writings, including the fifth chapter of TLB. See SÖB, 4.123–126 and 133–161. Cf. also the following essays by him, which he freely drew upon to construct this chapter: “Herrenmahl oder Kirchenmahl” [Lord’s Supper or Church’s Supper], Der christliche Student, no. 24 (1950): 10–20; “Kult—Opfer—Abendmahl: Theologische Überlegungen über ihren Zusammenhang” [Worship—Sacrifice—Lord’s Supper: Theological Reflections on Their Relationship], Zeitwende 46, no. 2 (1975): 86–98; “Das Problem der Abendmahlsgemeinschaft zwischen der evangelisch-lutherischen und der römisch-katholischen Kirche” [The Issue of Intercommunion between the Evangelical-Lutheran Church and the Roman-Catholic Church], in Evangelischkatholische Abendmahlsgemeinshaft? Veröff. des Ökumensichen Arbeitskreiss Evangelischer und Katholischer Theologen [Protestant-Catholic Intercommunion? A Publication of the Ecumenical Working-Group of Protestant and Catholic Theologians], with a foreword by Lorenz Jaeger and Hermann Kunst, ed. Gerhard Krems and Reinhard Mumm, 143–187 (Regensburg: F. Pustet; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971); and “Struktur und Rangordnung der dogmatischen Aussagen über das Herrenmahl” [The Structure and Hierarchy of Dogmatic Statements concerning the Lord’s Supper], in Das Opfer Jesu Christi und seine Gegenwart in der Kirche [The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His Presence in the Church], Dialog der Kirchen 3, 2d ed., ed. Karl Lehmann and Edmund Schlink, 138–175 (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986). The German word Spendeworte is the common technical term that Germans use to refer to Jesus’ “words of institution.” That is how this word has normally been translated throughout this chapter and book. However, given the contrast that Schlink was making here, we have translated Spende literally, i. e., as “gift.” Cf. TDNT, 7.116, 1058. For the “words of interpretation” in the words of institution, cf. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, 164–173. The Greek term anamnesis means “reminder” or “a remembrance of something” (BDAG, 68). Cf. 1 Cor. 11.24f. and Lk. 22.19: “Do this in remembrance of me…” In liturgical studies, anamnesis and its adjectival form, anamnetic, have become technical terms. In the early church, anamnesis was done when the bread and cup were “taken in remembrance of Christ’s death and resurrection and offered in an act of thanksgiving” (Senn, Christian Liturgy, 79).

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[vi]

[vii] [viii]

[ix]

[x] [xi] [xii] [xiii]

[xiv]

[xv]

Odo Casel (1886–1948) was a Benedictine monk and liturgical scholar who did significant work on the theology of “the mysteries,” i. e., in Western terminology, “sacraments.” For many years he served as the editor of the Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft (Journal of Liturgical Studies). The Greek term plērophoria (“state of complete certainty, full assurance, certainty”) occurs at Col. 2.2; 1 Thess. 1.5; Heb. 6.11; and 10.22. See BDAG, 827. According to the philosophy of Aristotle, a distinction may be made between the “substance” (ousia) of a thing and the “accidents” (symbebēkoi) of a thing. The substance of a thing is the essence or form of a thing. The accidents (also called “categories”) of a thing may or may not be or belong to a thing. For Aristotle, the categories of a thing include quantity, quality, relation, location, at some time, being in a position (e. g., lying, standing, sitting, etc.), possessing (or having), acting, and being acted upon. See Aristotle’s Categories and Propositions, ed. and trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinnell, Iowa: The Peripatetic Press, 1980), 2–3, 139–141, and 150. Cf., e. g., Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 21; Athanasius, Letter V (NPNF 2 , 4.518–519); Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, IV.2, in Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 114–119 (cf. Against Nestorius, IV.3–7 [167–174]; and Festal Letter X [FOTC, 18.191]); and Ambrose, On the Mysteries, VIII-IX (NPNF 2 , 10.323–325). See, e. g., Origen, Contra Celsum, VIII.57 (Chadwick, 495). Cf., e. g., Augustine, Homily 26 (CCSL, 36.265 [WSA, III/12.458ff.]). Cf. the section on “The Eucharist,” in Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, in The Ecumenical Movement, ed. Kinnamon and Cope, 183–189. In the liturgies of the early church, the epiclesis (literally “the calling down”) of the Holy Spirit on the gifts of the church, the bread and the cup, typically followed the anamnesis (remembrance) and oblation (offering) in the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper. See Senn, Christian Liturgy, 79. The Greek verb εὐχαριστεῖν principally means “to express appreciation for benefits or blessings, give thanks, express thanks, render/return thanks” (BDAG, 415), while the verb εὐλογεῖν means “to say something commendatory, speak well of, praise, extol,” as well as “to bless” or “to consecrate” (BDAG, 408). Cf. Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), De sacramentis (1593–1603; Paris: Vives, 1877); Melchor Cano (1509?–1560), De locis theologicis, XII.11 (1563; Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Christianos, 2006), 790–868; and Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), De controversiis, III.1.27 (1593; ET: On the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, trans. Ryan Grant [Post Falls, ID: Mediatrix, 2020], 154–157). For additional theories, see The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology, ed. Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 353ff.

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Conclusion to Chapters XIV–XVI: The Richness of God’s Action of Grace and the Number of Sacraments

Gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper are founded on Jesus’ victory on the cross. They proclaim not only Jesus Christ since he, the proclaimed Christ, is also acting through them as the present Lord. Through proclamation and baptism and the Lord’s Supper, God justifies and sanctifies sinners, takes them through the Holy Spirit into the life of his Son, and transforms them into his image. In this way, the triune God builds up the church. This divine action happens in various ways: In the gospel God acts through the word; in baptism through word and water; in the Lord’s Supper through word, bread, and wine; in the gospel through the message about Christ; in baptism through the word of transference into the name of Christ; and in the Lord’s Supper through Christ’s words, “this is my body,” “this is the new covenant in my blood.” Through the gospel, Christ’s death and resurrection are proclaimed to us as having happened for us. Through baptism, we are given into Christ’s death and resurrection. In the Lord’s Supper, the risen one gives us his body and blood of the covenant that was offered up on the cross. The differences in word and action are obvious. Thus, in baptism, there are no words of institution that correspond to the words of institution in the Lord’s Supper. These differences correspond to the particular manner in which human beings receive forgiveness and life: through the gospel, by faithful hearing; through baptism, by faithful hearing and by being immersed or sprinkled; through the Lord’s Supper, by hearing and oral eating and drinking. Of course, if we consider the gift that God bestows in these various ways, we recognize at the same time that gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper not only belong together, but they uniquely permeate each. After all, the gospel is not merely the report of a past event but an effective word in which God promises and gives us what he has given to the world in Jesus’ death and resurrection. As a transference into Christ, baptism is at the same time being given into the historical event of his bodily death. The person of Jesus Christ, his embodiment, and his historical fate cannot be separated, neither in the Lord’s Supper nor in the gospel nor in baptism. Thus, in these various ways of divine action, human beings encounter the richness of divine grace, which embraces the life of the person in manifold ways and places it into the life of Jesus Christ. This richness would be misunderstood if one attempted to distinguish the gifts from one another in an exclusive way, and entirely so if one were to abstain from one of them for the reason that God grants participation in Jesus Christ through the others as well.

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Indeed, all churches have attested to the richness of grace through further signs, and have assured it to their members for special tasks and life situations. Handed down from the earliest period has been the practice of the laying on of hands when sending people into the ministry of founding and leading congregations (cf. 888ff.). The laying on of hands also became common in the granting of absolution. Baptism was elucidated through additional signs, such as chrism, the laying on of hands, the sign of the cross, the gift of salt as well as of milk and honey. This laying on of hands and this chrism were then increasingly understood as independent actions, which not only elucidate the event of baptism but also complete it, whereas the Eastern Church put more emphasis on chrism and the Western Church did so for the laying on of hands. While the latter action remained connected to baptism in the Eastern Church, in the Western Church it was separated from baptism, also temporally, as the sacrament of confirmation. Exorcism was carried out through manifold signs, such as breathing, the stretching out of hands, the laying on of hands, and the sign of the cross, partly as independent actions, partly within the rites of the catechumenate and in baptism. The assurance of the gospel was then concretized with the blessing of Christian married couples, which is connected to the laying on of hands, and through the intercession for the sick and dying, which is connected to the anointing with oil. Ordination came to be more and more differentiated in accordance with the levels of the church’s ministerial offices, whereas the laying on of hands was complemented with other signs, such as, e. g., the giving over of the chalice and paten or the ring and staff. In the blessing of water and oil, individual moments in the act of baptism were temporally separated. Numerous other actions upon human beings and objects, through words and signs, were added. All this took place in a great multiplicity of forms. This is true both of the formulations of the words, whose assurances the signs served (as, e. g., the deprecative and the indicative forms of the baptismal and absolution formulas), as well as of the signs. Such differences existed not only between different churches (so, e. g., in confirmation), but they also emerged within the history of the liturgy of one and the same Church. That the church unfolded the gospel through further actions, and did not restrict itself to early Christianity’s traditional signs of the laying on of hands and chrism (Mk. 6.13; James 5.14), is basically justified. Such an unfolding is an expression of the freedom given to the church with the commission of the gospel. In this freedom, it may bear witness to the salvific action of God with additional signs beyond baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Even the fact that the church employed the rituals of its cultural environment is basically unobjectionable. This process is not finished. As the gospel advances into new regions, traditional signs may lose their meaning and new signs can be utilized. So, too, actions attested to by early Christianity that have receded into the background, such as the healing of the sick through prayer and anointing or the laying on of hands, may move into

The Richness of God’s Action of Grace and the Number of Sacraments

the foreground again (as, e. g., today in Africa). The diversity of such signs need not call into question the unity of the church. In fact, already in the ancient church there were various signs in use beyond baptism and the Lord’s Supper. One cannot overlook, however, that the piling up of such rites may also result in an obscuring of God’s salvific action through gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Thus, e. g., the various signs connected to baptism could at times cover up that which mattered most in the act of water baptism, when they were understood not only as indications and elucidations of baptism but as additional means of divine grace. Then they suggested the notion that these actions mediated something that could not be bestowed through water baptism alone. Of course, a proper understanding of the actions accompanying baptism need not necessarily lead to an obscuring of baptism if one disregards the temporal sequence of these actions, whether before or after water baptism, and understands these signs as if they were circling around water baptism, united with it, much as the ancient church did not determine a temporal moment of consecration in the sequence of the liturgical components of the eucharist. But an emptying out of baptism takes place when, e. g., one takes the position of Tertullian, namely, that baptism only gives the forgiveness of sins but that the Holy Spirit is given, not through baptism, but through the laying on of hands.1 The threat of an emptying out of the baptismal event also exists when some accompanying actions, such as exorcism and chrism, are repeated multiple times. Beyond the example of baptism, when signs are used more frequently, there is a danger that the signs might distract from the word whose assurance they are intended to serve and might take on an independent salvific significance, especially when the liturgical language does not match the vernacular, and the word of assurance is not understood by a large portion of the church’s members. Thus the signs that the church uses need to be tested again and again according to how well they serve the purpose given to them, i. e., if they serve the elucidation and unfolding of God’s gracious salvific action through the gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, as well as the witness to Christ’s victory on the cross in the various tasks and life situations of Christians. In this sense, the sign actions have been repeatedly reduced in the course of the history of the liturgy in order to focus on the core of Christ’s mission. The dogmatic task thus entails ranking such actions and coming up with summarizing concepts for them. In the New Testament there is no concept that summarizes baptism and the Lord’s Supper. But since these two actions have been designated in the Eastern Church as mysteries and in the Latin Church as sacraments, these concepts were so broad that numerous other actions could be called by these terms.

1 Tertullian, De baptismo, 6 and 8. [Tertullian’s Homily on Baptism, 15, 17. –Ed.]

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While in the New Testament the term mysterion signified above all God’s decree of salvation and its realization in Christ and the church, other actions came to be designated as mysteries, which represented this mystery and granted participation in it. While the term sacramentum originally signified an act of consecration, such as, e. g., the pledge of allegiance to the flag, this term was now used to designate the inviolable obligation to be accountable to the revelation. Thus, e. g., Tertullian also designated the doctrine of the Trinity as a sacrament, and John of Damascus also designated burial customs as mysteries.[i] But baptism and the Lord’s Supper have always had a special status as the principal sacraments. Into the early Middle Ages, the concept of sacrament was so undefined that, e. g., tonsure and the blessing of a cemetery could be described as sacraments. To be sure, there were already some attempts to group them according to their effect, their uniqueness or repeatability, and their significance for the individual and for the church, but the number of sacraments that was given varied into the twelfth century. The decisive turning point occurred when sacraments were differentiated from sacramentals and were limited to the number seven. This took place among the great scholastics of the thirteenth century and was confirmed by the Council of Florence (1439). The number seven was also adopted by the Orthodox Church. Here the sacramentals were subordinated to the sacraments as their elucidation and as a preparation for their reception. The general concept of sacrament, in its various definitions, naturally remained vaguer than the statements about the individual sacraments. It also proved difficult to apply the old framework of verbum [word], signum [sign], and res [thing], as well as the later, more common Aristotelian framework of form and matter, to all seven sacraments in the same way, given that, e. g., in absolution it was not the combination of a word and an external sign but of the word and contrition that was understood as the sacrament, while in a wedding it was not the blessing with the laying on of hands that was understood as the sacrament, but the consent and consummation of the couple. The Reformation reduced the number of the sacraments. Of course, the Lutheran confessional writings also describe absolution and ordination as sacraments alongside baptism and the Lord’s Supper.2 But generally this concept was limited to baptism and the Lord’s Supper without thereby diminishing the significance of absolution and ordination. The fact that the number of the sacraments has remained disputed has its main reason in the varying understandings of their institution. While Peter Lombard still traced ordination and extreme unction to the apostles and the old covenant, and others understood confirmation as an ordinance of the church, Thomas Aquinas taught the institution of all seven sacraments by Christ.[ii] This opinion became

2 Apol. XIII.4 and XIII.7. [BSELK, 512 (BC, 219–220). –Ed.]

The Richness of God’s Action of Grace and the Number of Sacraments

prevalent in the late Middle Ages and was explicitly confirmed by the Council of Trent.[iii] For the Reformers, too, the institution by Jesus Christ was constitutive for their concept of sacrament, but they could not overlook the fact that in the New Testament Scriptures neither an instruction to practice confirmation and extreme unction nor an institution of marriage by Jesus has been transmitted. Indeed, ordination and absolution are, like baptism and the Lord’s Supper, founded on an explicit instruction by Jesus to the disciples. Yet in contrast to baptism and the Lord’s Supper, ordination and absolution are not connected to a sign instructed by Jesus. For the ecumenical dialogue about the number of the sacraments, it is decisive that it is not begun with the general concept of a sacrament but—as corresponds to the course of the history of theology—with the individual sacraments. Thus, e. g., it is important in evaluating absolution and ordination that they are taught as God’s act of grace. Not the human being but God is the one who forgives. Not the human being but God calls people into the ministerial office. The called and forgiven person is merely the instrument of God. In addition, the blessing that is given at confirmation and in a wedding in the churches of the Reformation is given according to the biblical understanding, not merely as a pious wish but as an assurance of the gift that is requested of God in the words of the blessing. Let us further assume that the differences that exist between the churches in the theoretical definition of the relationship in the individual sacraments between signum and res, as well as between divine and human action, lose their importance when translated back into the act of administering and receiving the sacraments. We should also consider that today even Roman Catholic theology largely no longer teaches the direct institution of all the sacraments by Christ, but rather understands them as directives of the apostles, or of the church, on the basis of the saving work of Christ. Thus the question of the number of the sacraments becomes a terminological question and loses its church-dividing significance. Basically, various ways of conceiving and counting the sacraments are possible within the unity of the church, as was the case in the ancient church and in the early Middle Ages. Those decisions are made in the understanding of the individual sacraments. By contrast, the general concept of a sacrament is secondary. Thus the Apology of the Augsburg Confession dared to utter the following sentence: “No intelligent person will argue much about the number or the terminology, as long as those things are retained that have the mandate and promise of God.”3 Much more significant is the relationship between word and sacrament. First, this is true of the relationship between the word and sign within the sacrament. Is the word here first and foremost understood as a formula through which the

3 Apol. XIII.17. [BSELK, 516–517 (BC, 221). –Ed.]

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element becomes a sacrament, or is the word here above all the assurance of that to which the word and sign attest together? In addition, it is very significant to define the relationship between the oral message of Christ and the sacraments. Here certain imbalances have emerged in church history, which have led to deep divisions. It is inconsistent with the statements in the New Testament to understand the gospel as merely an invitation or command to receive forgiveness and life in the sacrament. Thus, in the Council of Trent’s decree on justification, the gospel wholly recedes behind baptism as causa instrumentalis [the instrumental cause] of justifying and sanctifying grace. But according to the New Testament witnesses, the gospel is also a justifying, sanctifying, vivifying action-word of God. God brings about through the gospel that which it promises. It also does not correspond to the statements in the New Testament when, conversely, in contrast to medieval sacramentalism, the sermon is understood one-sidedly as God’s act of salvation, while the sacraments are mere signs added to it that attest to and confirm the justifying and vivifying action of God in preaching. For example, the Heidelberg Catechism made such a distinction in the answer to question 65 about the origin of faith: “The Holy Spirit creates (faith) in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments.”4 In both of these onesided understandings, word and sacraments are coordinated in a way that does not communicate the richness of God’s action of grace. Such one-sided understandings have had quite dire consequences in the life of the church. There were times when the gospel was almost only heard as a Scripture reading but hardly ever as living proclamation in the worship services. There were also times when the Lord’s Supper had become a rare and barely noticed addendum to the service of the word. The gospel as living, saving assurance belongs together with the sacraments. Through the gospel and through the sacraments, God lets believers participate in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Undoubtedly, it is of great importance that the Second Vatican Council has emphasized once more the action of God through the word of Holy Scripture, and that the reform of the liturgy in the churches of the Reformation has once more connected the Lord’s Supper more closely with the service of the word.5

4 The Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 65. [Cochrane, Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century, 316. –Ed.] 5 See, e. g., Dei verbum, 21. [Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Tanner, 2.979; cf. Denzinger, 4228). –Ed.]

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Editor’s Notes to the Conclusion to Chapters 14–16 [i]

[ii] [iii]

Tertullian, Adversus Praxeas, 2 (Tertullian’s Treatise against Praxeas, ed. and trans. Ernest Evans [London: SPCK, 1948], §2 [91]: “οἰκονομίας sacramentum” [“the mystery of that (divine) economy”]). Aquinas, ST, III.65.1. Council of Trent, Session 7 (3 March 1547), Tanner, 2.684.

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Summary of Chapters XI–XVI: The Distinction between Law and Gospel[i]

All churches acknowledge the Old Testament and the New Testament Scriptures of the Bible as the normative basis for their speaking and acting. Interpretation of the Old Testament and the New Testament Scriptures, and preaching that is based on those texts, is voiced in the worship services of all the churches. The same is true within catechetical and dogmatic instruction. It is therefore a question of great importance—as has already been emphasized—to ask how the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament Scriptures is to be defined. This problem is centered in the question about the distinction between law and gospel, whereby both a unity and a difference between law and gospel is presupposed. In view of the central importance of this question, it is striking that it has not been treated as a special article of doctrine in the dogmatics of all the churches and has hardly been answered explicitly in the form of a defined dogma. This question is widely regarded as a special subject of Reformation theology. (Luther even referred to it as the subject of theology.)[ii] However, at least in the Western Church, there is a prestigious tradition of reflecting on this question. Particularly noteworthy are Augustine’s De spiritu et littera and Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae.1 It is all the more surprising that the Council of Trent did not deal with this subject, but only touched on it. In our time, the Catholic fundamental theologian Gottlieb Söhngen has especially drawn attention to this ancient tradition and to the central importance of this topic for the Catholic Church as well.[iii] Through his own in-depth reflections, he has helped to clarify the issue further. He concluded that the church of Jesus Christ is “the church of the gospel and of the law, but it is not yet the church of the gospel if and when it is the church of the law, and it is always just as much the church of the law if and when it is the church of the gospel.”2 This particular emphasis on the gospel corresponds in an important way to the Reformation teaching. But even if this topic has not been reflected upon in the form of a special article of doctrine in dogmatics, it has been de facto present in all the churches when they interpret any Old Testament scriptural text, and it would undoubtedly be worthwhile to work out the various,

1 Augustine, De spiritu et littera [CSEL, 60.155–229; On the Spirit and the Letter, WSA, I/23.150–197. –Ed.]; and Aquinas, ST, II/1.106–108. 2 Gottlieb Söhngen, Gesetz und Evangelium: Ihre Analogie Einheit [Law and Gospel: Their Analogical Unity] (Munich-Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1957), 118f.

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often unconscious hermeneutical principles of the divided churches that determine how they distinguish between law and gospel.3 If one examines the question of this distinction more closely, then it becomes understandable why (apart from Article V, “On Law and Gospel,” in the Lutheran Formula of Concord of 1580)[iv] it has not been defined in dogmatic decisions, for this question can neither be answered in the traditional and basic structure of the ancient church’s creeds nor in the form of a descriptive doctrine, but rather, as will be shown in the following, it always entails the task of making the distinction between the assurance and the claim of God’s word in each present moment. The issue then is about the task of proclamation and pastoral care. In the following sections we restrict ourselves to summarizing the remarks on this topic that are contained in the previous chapters and to pointing out the existential significance that this topic has for the situation of Christians in a time of spiritual crisis and tribulation [Anfechtung].[v]

1. The Issue of Distinguishing between Law and Gospel In God’s address to the sinner the following are to be distinguished: (a) The word of the Old Testament law and the word of the New Testament gospel. After the broken old covenant God made the new covenant. After Moses came Jesus Christ. “Law” is, according to Paul, the quintessence of the commands revealed by God through Moses and, since Moses, to the Old Testament people of the covenant. “Gospel” is the message of Jesus Christ, decisively the word of the cross, which is, however, always at the same time the word of the risen crucified one (cf. chaps. 11 and 14). (b) On the other hand, in God’s Old Testament law one must make a twofold distinction, namely between God’s assurance and God’s claim, between God’s electing call and God’s commanding call, that is, between the Old Testament promise and the Old Testament demand of the law (cf. chap. 11.A and B). (c) In the New Testament gospel, we must also distinguish between assurance and claim, between God’s gift and God’s command, that is, between gospel and exhortation [Mahnung]. The gospel encounters people as the assurance of righteousness and as the calling to serve righteousness (Rom. 6.19), as the power which creates new life, and as the command to walk in a new life (cf. chap. 14.A and B). These three fundamental distinctions contain two further ones:

3 For the current state of the formulation of this issue in the theology of the churches of the Reformation, cf. Albrecht Peters, Gesetz und Evangelium [Law and Gospel], Handbuch der systematischer Theologie, vol. 2 (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1981).

The Law in the New Testament Gospel

(d) The Old Testament promise must be distinguished from the assurance of the New Testament gospel, for the gospel proclaims the one who is promised in the old covenant as the one who has come in Jesus Christ. It proclaims the dawn of the promised time of salvation in him and the completely new thing that God has done and is constantly doing through the Holy Spirit for his people (cf. chap. 11.A and chap. 14.A). (e) The Old Testament demand of the law must be distinguished from the command of the new covenant, the paraklesis, and with the same precision the Old Testament promise must also be distinguished from the assurance of the New Testament gospel.[vi] Here the following does not apply as it once did under the law, namely whoever does these works will live; but rather, because the new life has been given to you, walk in a new life. Just as law and gospel are distinguished, so also are law and paraklesis. Paraklesis participates in the sin-destroying and renewing power of God, which works through the gospel (cf. chap. 11.B and chap. 14.B). The problem of this fivefold distinction is made more acute by the fact that Christians also encounter the gospel in the Old Testament law, and the law also comes to them in the New Testament gospel.

2. The Gospel in the Old Testament Law As members of the church, we can no longer read the Old Testament Scriptures as the Jews do, for by faith in Jesus Christ we recognize the Old Testament law as fulfilled. Because the Old Testament promise is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, we no longer perceive it as promise but as gospel, as the good news of the salvation that has come. Because the Old Testament demand of the law is fulfilled by Jesus, and we have died to the law by faith in Jesus Christ, we no longer perceive the Old Testament demand of God merely as the law which puts to death but as the comforting exhortation of the gospel (cf. esp. chap. 13.A.4).

3. The Law in the New Testament Gospel The gospel proclaims God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ. God placed Jesus under judgment on the cross, a judgment which befits the sinner, and God revealed him in the resurrection as the one who knew no sin and who by suffering and dying took the sins of the world upon himself. Thus the gospel is by its very nature at the same time the proclamation of the judgment which the sinner deserves. The New Testament gospel proclaims not only the acquittal of believers on the basis of the judgment suffered by Jesus, but it also announces the coming day of judgment when God will judge all individuals according to their works. This verdict

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of judgment will be twofold, depending on the work. For some it will be acquittal to life, for others the sentence to perdition. Paul announced this judgment not only to the world but also to the church [Gemeinde], and in so doing expressly included himself (cf., e. g., 2 Cor. 5.10), that is, he announced the judgment to the same ones to whom by the gospel he announced the verdict of justification and thereby the eschatological acquittal. In the expectation of the coming judgment, the exhortations of the New Testament regarding sins in the church can become not only an imploring and warning but also a threatening, judging, and punishing. This warning finds its sharpest intensification in the anathema (cf. esp. chap. 14.B.8).

4. The Unity of Law and Gospel Thus, in the Old Testament law we at the same time encounter the gospel, and in the New Testament gospel we at the same time encounter the law. The distinction between law and gospel is thus not merely a distinction between the Old and the New Testaments, but rather it goes right through the Old Testament word of God and right through the New Testament word of God. It is a distinction not only in the historical sequence of God’s dealings with humanity but also in their being simultaneously together in God’s dealings with every human being. But in view of such simultaneity and intertwining, how are law and gospel still to be distinguished? In fact, they will be properly distinguished only by the person who knows about their belonging together, indeed, about their unity, for the fact that law and gospel belong together is itself grounded in the unity of their origin in the triune God who speaks and acts through both words. Through law and gospel the Redeemer speaks and acts. God’s commanding and bestowing, God’s judging and redeeming address, God’s old and new covenants—all are free acts of one and the same divine love, acts of God’s merciful condescension to sinners. In fact, the same God speaks and acts through law and gospel, the same God who in the beginning created humankind in God’s image and has placed human beings under the promise and command of God’s image. The same love that he commands through the law, he works—through the good news of the act of love on the cross—as the fruit of the Holy Spirit in those who believe in Christ. Law and gospel have their unity in Jesus Christ, in whom God has come to us sinners. Law and gospel together bear witness to Jesus Christ: as a promise of the one who is coming and as a message of the one who has come, as an exhortation to obedience and as a message of the one who was obedient. Through the law, God drives the sinner to the same Christ, into whose life the sinner is transferred through the gospel. Law and gospel are the work of the one Holy Spirit. Even if God does not bestow the Spirit—who renews the heart—through the law but only first through the gospel,

The Distinction between Law and Gospel

the law is nevertheless still “spiritual” (Rom. 7.14). Thus, even though God does not create the new person through the law, he nevertheless drives the sinner through the law to the beckoning pleas of the renewing work of the Spirit. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit produces in the believers the fruit which the law had previously demanded in vain, that is, what it had demanded but had not produced. Where the fruit of the Holy Spirit—love, joy, peace, and so on—is present, there the saying is valid, “Against such there is no law” (Gal. 5.23 [S]).

5. The Distinction between Law and Gospel Despite the divine origin of this unity, law and gospel cannot be dissolved into one another. The distinction between law and gospel does not consist solely in distinguishing between unbelief and believing, as if the same word saves the believer and judges the non-believer. The distinction between law and gospel also does not consist merely in that, through his one word, God deals in a twofold manner with each human being, uncovering and covering, judging and acquitting. The effect of this twofold working is not a miracle hidden behind the one word, but rather it takes place through the twofold address [Anrede] of God: Through the law God requires everything of us; through the gospel he grants us everything. Through the law God commands what we are to offer to him; through the gospel God offers himself in Christ for us. Through the law God announces judgment upon sinners; through the gospel he proclaims to them that the judgment suffered by Christ means acquittal. Through the law God uncovers the reality of the sinner; through the gospel he covers the sinner with the righteousness of Christ. These are not only different effects of the same word of God, but they are different words through which God carries out the acts of judging and acquitting, of putting to death and making alive, which are proclaimed by them. Law and gospel are to be distinguished as long as we are on our journey in this world, for the whole human race—whether it knows about it or not, whether it recognizes this or denies it—is journeying toward the day when Christ will come in his glory and will judge all the living and the dead. Then he who is the one Word of God will speak two different words. To some he will say, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father,” and to the others, “You that are accursed, depart from me” (Mt. 25.34, 41). The church is hastening toward this coming day. For now, both words are still to be proclaimed to every human being. But some day both words will stand separately so that only one of the two will be addressed to each and every human being.

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6. The Gospel as God’s Proper Word Now it is of course absolutely crucial not to stop with the observation about the succession and intertwining of law and gospel, and about their unity and difference. Law and gospel are, after all, not timeless ideals but rather the ever-new, most concrete, historical event of God’s commanding and bestowing, judging and saving, putting to death and making alive. Is it not in fact here all about the very existential question, Is God gracious to me, or is he angry with me? But how can a person carry out this distinguishing? How can one grasp this distinction completely in a dogmatic formula? Is this distinguishing not precisely altogether concrete and thus to be carried out again and again anew? In fact, one may not ignore for a moment that this concerns the speaking and acting of God in two different ways: God himself is the Lord, who has distinguished between law and gospel and does so ever anew. The dogmatic statement has to point to God’s own actual activity of distinguishing, but it cannot replace it. Dogmatic thinking here changes into a hastening, a pleading, a stooping down, and a grasping. Neither through a dogmatic formula nor through ethical casuistry can the concrete distinguishing between God’s two words be pre-empted. Dogmatics stands here at the limit of what it can grasp in formulas. There is, of course, one thing that dogmatics has to teach most steadfastly above and beyond the sequence and intertwining of law and gospel, and beyond their unity and difference. What is more, absolutely everything depends on dogmatics teaching this clearly: God’s proper word is the gospel, not the law.[vii] God’s proper judgment is the acquittal, not the sentence of condemnation. God’s proper work is making alive, not putting to death. “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (Jn. 3.17). As long as the age of grace lasts, as long as humanity still is waiting for the arrival of the Judge of the world, the last decisive word has not been spoken, but God works on—through all of his commanding and judging—toward salvation by faith in the gospel. The Judge of the world is still the Christ who died for us. In this sense the law is God’s alien work and the gospel God’s proper work. The distinction between law and gospel is thus by no means the acknowledgment and proclamation of a timeless dialectic of two equally weighted contradictory statements, but rather the urgent proclamation of the glory of the gospel—so superior to the law—which presses forth ever anew into the most varied of historical situations, hastening to the sinner. Distinguishing between the law and the gospel thus takes place when, under the announcement and proclamation of the law that puts to death, the Christ who was put to death is preached and praised above all. No magnitude of sin, no abyss of forsakenness, no hopelessness of despair may keep the preacher of the gospel from distinguishing between law and gospel in this way and not otherwise.

Being Tested in Anfechtung

7. Being Tested in Anfechtung The distinction between law and gospel is learned and has to prove itself in Anfechtung. What does Anfechtung mean?[viii] It is called an Anfechtung when people attack the church [Gemeinde] of Jesus Christ and persecute the believers, take them prisoner, and even kill them. Such sufferings, which people bring upon the church, is by no means to be underrated, and yet they are, as such, not really Anfechtung, for in this suffering Christians can know themselves to be completely secure in the hand of their Lord. It is similarly called an Anfechtung when unseen powers of corruption surround and attack the church, elicit desires and anxieties to tempt it to fall away and to awaken enmity against it. The attacks of devilish powers are likewise not to be underrated, and yet they too are not the real Anfechtung of the church. The promise has surely been given to it, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt. 16.18 [L]). Real Anfechtung begins where we consider that neither people nor powers can attack, tempt, or torment the church if God had not given them the power to do so. Real Anfechtung arises for the church not through antagonistic people and powers but through God’s word, namely, when the church in its need sees itself measured against God’s holy commands and recognizes itself as delivered up to God’s righteous judgment. That is the true Anfechtung, when the same God who has given his promise to the church reveals its sins, when through his exacting claim he strikes from its hands the promises behind which it hides its failures, and when he leaves no doubt that he is the deadly enemy of sin. If the decline of the church is revealed, then Moses and the prophets, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and cross, and even the comforting, exhorting apostles become enormous, threatening figures who take one’s breath away. Then only sin instead of grace, only wrath instead of love, is shown by God. Then sins are glaringly apparent, and not one deed remains of which we could boast or which we could even excuse. In the Anfechtung Christians may not deny God’s judgment that is rendered against them, but they must acknowledge it as righteous judgment. They must humble themselves under God’s mighty hand and say, “We have indeed deserved his judgment.” But at the same time, they may and should faithfully plead God’s promise over against God’s judging word. If God says to you, “I hate your sins,” then you say to him, “Yes, but you made your Son to be sin.” If God says to you, “I forsake you,” then you implore him, “That is not true, for you have forsaken Jesus Christ. Indeed, you yourself have taken our God-forsakenness upon yourself in your Son.” By bowing in repentance beneath the word of the judging God and by clinging in faith to the word of the cross, the Christian is distinguishing between law and gospel. This is the distinguishing: in knowing God’s righteous law, to hasten to the

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gospel; in acknowledging God’s deserved judgment, to grasp the righteousness of Christ in faith. In this daily hastening of the believing sinner from God’s deserved wrath to God’s undeserved love—in this daily fleeing away from God’s “No” to God’s “Yes” in the daily petition, “Forgive us our sins”—the sequence returns in which God has first revealed in history the Old Testament law and then the New Testament gospel. The succession of the twofold divine address in world history is at the same time the direction in which the church is going toward its returning Lord and Redeemer. From all this it follows: The church’s teaching may not isolate the gospel. The good news of the gospel would no longer be proclaimed if the demand and judgment of the law were denied. The church’s teaching may also not isolate the law. God’s exacting claim would not be taken seriously if God’s mercy in Christ’s death were concealed. Law and gospel, however, may not also be taken as equal. Even this can only end in hubris and despair. The church must distinguish law and gospel in that it proclaims the gospel as God’s proper word by keeping open and pointing salvation’s way of rescue from the law’s judgment of condemnation to the gospel’s judgment of justification. Editor’s Notes to the Summary of Chapters 11–16 [i] [ii]

An earlier version of my translation of this summary chapter was published as “The Distinction between Law and Gospel,” Lutheran Quarterly 36 (Spring 2022): 27–38. “Therefore, whoever knows well how to distinguish the gospel from the law should give thanks to God and know that he is a real theologian… The knowledge of this topic, the distinction between the law and the gospel, is necessary to the highest degree; for it contains a summary of all Christian doctrine” (Luther, Galatervorlesung [1531/1535], WA, 40/1.207–210 [Lectures on Galatians, LW 1 , 26.115, 117]).

Being Tested in Anfechtung

[iii]

[iv] [v]

[vi]

[vii] [viii]

Gottlieb Söhngen (1892–1971) taught at Munich, where he had a significant influence on the theological development of Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). Söhngen delivered several papers at meetings of the German ecumenical working group in which Schlink was a leading figure. For example, already in March 1947, at the third meeting, both Schlink and Söhngen delivered papers on “the image of God in human beings.” Later, at the twenty-first meeting, in April 1960 (at Heidelberg), both theologians delivered important papers on “law and gospel.” Söhngen’s essay from this conference was published as “Gesetz und Evangelium” [Law and Gospel], Catholica: Jahrbuch für Kontroverstheologie 14 (1960): 81–105. It was then included in his book, Grundfragen einer Rechtstheologie [Basic Questions of a Theology of Law] (Munich: Karl Alber, 1962), 87–105. Schlink’s essay from this conference was published as “Gesetz und Evangelium als kontroverstheologisches Problem,” in Kerygma und Dogma 7 (1961): 1–35. It was then included in KC (see SÖB, 1/1.126–159 [ESW, 1.176–210]). FC SD V (BSELK, 1430–1443 [BC, 581–586]). The following sections of this chapter are based (often verbatim) on Schlink’s essay, “Gesetz und Evangelium als kontroverstheologisches Problem,” which was published in 1961. See editor’s note 3 above. The five-fold distinction that Schlink analyzed in this chapter of the dogmatics had already been developed by him in an earlier essay, “Gesetz und Paraklese,” in Antwort: Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag Karl Barths am 10. Mai 1956, ed. Ernst Wolf et al. (Zollikon-Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1956), 323–335. In this earlier essay Schlink provided many New Testament references (cf. 324ff.) that were not included here in his dogmatics. This earlier essay from the Festschrift for Barth was reprinted in Gesetz und Evangelium: Beiträge zur gegenwärtigen theologischen Diskussion [Law and Gospel: Contributions to Contemporary Theological Discussion], 2d ed., ed. Ernst Kinder and Klaus Haendler (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1986), 239–259. Paraklesis entails “the act of emboldening another in belief or course of action, encouragement, exhortation” (BDAG, 766). According to Frederick Danker, the term can also refer to “lifting up another’s spirits, comfort, consolation” (BDAG, 766). The German terms that Schlink used throughout his writings to translate this Greek word include Zuspruch (assurance) and Mahnung (exhortation). This assertion is a key emphasis in Schlink’s analysis of law and gospel in his study of the Lutheran Confessions. See TLB, SÖB, 4.66–122, esp. 120–122. This section is taken directly from Schlink’s earlier essay, “Gesetz und Evangelium als kontroverstheologisches Problem” (cf. SÖB, 1/1.141–143). I have made a few minor changes and stylistic revisions vis-à-vis my earlier translation of the original essay (cf. ESW, 1.191–192).

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Chapter XVII: The Confession of God the Redeemer

1. Jesus the Redeemer How do we respond to God for his act of redemption? By confessing “one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God” (the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed), “Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord” (the Apostles’ Creed), to be the Savior.1 (a) When, in obedience to the divine mission and by the authority of the Holy Spirit, the earthly Jesus announced the approaching reign of God, it broke into this world. God’s salvation came to human beings in Jesus’ beatitudes. God’s forgiveness was given to those whom Jesus forgave. Through Jesus’ healings, God destroyed the dominion of the powers of corruption. In Jesus’ eating at table with others, God lets people participate in the future meal in the kingdom of God. God reconciled the world to himself in Jesus’ death. The exalted Jesus also acts in God’s mission after God had confirmed him through his resurrection and revealed him to be the Christ, the Son, and the Lord. In Jesus’ sending out the apostles, God sent them out. Through the gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s power is at work. Through baptism, God has transferred people to life in Jesus’ death. Through the Lord’s Supper, God builds up his people, the church. He has made all things subject to the exalted one so that the latter might subject all things to God. To expect the exalted one to be the coming judge is to expect God to be the judge. Jesus thus works in lowliness and in exaltation as the chosen instrument of the redeeming God. Regarding his speaking and acting, the following is applicable: “The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works” (Jn. 14.10). All churches confess Jesus to be the Son sent by God, through whom God has accomplished redemption and will fulfill it. (b) The earthly Jesus did not speak as the Old Testament prophets did. They passed on the words that they had previously heard from Yahweh. In Jesus’ preaching the wording for authorizing and justifying the prophet, “thus says the Lord…,” is missing. Jesus also did not speak as the scribes did, whose teaching was primarily the interpretation of the law. Compared to them, Jesus acted with an extraordinary authority, for he interpreted the Old Testament law by contradicting it at the same time and by replacing some of its requirements with new commandments.

1 [See Tanner, 1.24; BSELK, 42–43, 50 (cf. BC, 21–23); and Denzinger, 10–30; 150. –Ed.]

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Nor did Jesus teach as apocalyptic-wisdom teachers did, who, under the pseudonym of a figure long past (e. g., Enoch), dealt in their writings with relationships within a future expectation that went beyond Israel and encompassed world history. He did not teach by elaborating or calculating about the future, nor did he write anything. Instead, he addressed people directly and announced the future decision to them in the present moment. Jesus did not heal as an exorcist who used special formulas and invoked God’s power. He healed through his powerful word, in response to which he called for the sick and their loved ones to have faith. He also did not speak as an ecstatic, or in the way someone possessed by a deity would, whose I would have been wiped out and whose mouth would have involuntarily become the voice of a foreign power. Rather, he himself spoke. With his phrase, “But I say to you…,” his speaking is profoundly different from that of the prophets and scribes as well as of apocalyptic and ecstatic figures. Even if the earthly Jesus pointed away from himself to God in a unique manner, he himself was the one speaking and acting with unparalleled and immediate authority. In this way he also called people to follow him, without giving them any further reasons, and he encountered them with an ultimate claim. The hidden authority of the earthly Jesus was revealed in the appearances of the risen one and in the reign of the exalted one. Now he no longer points away from himself but presents himself to people. By being established “at the right hand of God,” Jesus was not put to a new use by God, but rather he was established in the divine power to reign over the universe. His reign is not merely a governorship but is his own reign or, as the fathers of the ancient church put it, his “self-rule” (αὐτοβασιλεία [autobasileia]).2 He now encounters people no longer merely as a witness and instrument of God but with his own authority and with his own claim. He thus works not only as the one filled with the Holy Spirit but as the exalted one who sends the Spirit. It is true: “[J]ust as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself ” (Jn. 5.26f., cf. v. 21). Consequently, the churches confess the earthly and exalted Jesus to be not only the agent of the redeeming act of God the Father but the Lord, who himself accomplished, accomplishes, and will accomplish redemption. (c) The “self-rule” of Jesus Christ does not take place in competition with the reign of God the Father. Rather, Christ’s reigning and God’s reigning are one reigning. Although Jesus’ speaking and acting are his own speaking and acting, they nevertheless do not contradict God’s speaking and acting. Rather, the speaking and acting of both are one speaking and action. This is also true even if in the passion, especially in the cry of dereliction of the one dying on the cross, God’s

2 [Cf., e. g., Origen, The Commentary of Origen on the Gospel of St. Matthew, XIV.7 (1.165–166). –Ed.]

Jesus the Redeemer

action upon Jesus and Jesus’ comportment toward God seem to break apart. But Jesus offered himself up to the God who had offered him up. Jesus offered up his life out of love for “the many” whom God loves in the offering up of his Son. God’s and Jesus’ forgiving, healing, saving, and judging are one forgiving, healing, saving, and judging. The act of redemption of God the Father and the act of redemption of the Son are one and the same act. Beyond the unity of acting redemptively, the New Testament Scriptures attest in manifold ways to the unity of those who accomplish these acts. To begin with, there are the statements of the Johannine Christ, the content of which recurs in similar language in other New Testament Scriptures: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (Jn. 10.38 [S]; cf. 14.10f.). This reciprocal being-in-one-another has its basis in the unique origin of the Son in the Father. The indwelling of God’s being in Christ is of fundamental importance for salvation. Luther especially emphasized this point in his translation of 2 Cor. 5.19: “God was in Christ and reconciled the world with himself.” In fact, this is about more than merely stating that God has reconciled the world with himself through Christ. Colossians 2.9 attests even more explicitly to this indwelling of God’s being: “In him (Christ) the whole fullness of the Deity dwells bodily” ([L], cf. 1.19). Because of this being-in-one-another, God the Father is revealed in Jesus Christ. “Whoever sees me sees him who sent me” (Jn. 12.45); “Whoever sees me sees the Father” (14.9 [L]). Designating Jesus as the image of God is also about the revelation of God in him. God the Revealed One and Jesus the Revealer cannot be separated from one another. If God is “seen” in Jesus Christ, then this statement holds true: “I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10.30 [RSV]), and it was inevitable that Jesus would be called upon, praised, and proclaimed with divine attributes. With respect to the name kyrios, it must not be forgotten that the name of Yahweh was rendered with this name in the Greek translation of the Old Testament Scriptures. Even if a distinction is made, especially by Paul, between “God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” and “our Lord Jesus Christ,” the New Testament Scriptures, especially in connection with quotations from the Old Testament, also refer to God as kyrios, and Jesus is referred to as God in individual passages. Applicable here is not only Jn. 20.28 but probably also the witnesses that refer to the “glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2.13 [NIV]) and to the “righteousness of our God and Savior Christ Jesus” (2 Pet. 1.1), as well as of the certainty that “we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life” (1 Jn. 5.20). In such statements, the basis for knowing about Jesus’ unity with God are the appearances of the risen one. It is not by chance that a disciple’s adoration of Jesus, “My Lord and my God,” is found in one of the accounts of these appearances (Jn. 20.28). On these occasions when Jesus appeared, it was not a question of offering an invocation to God but of adoring the appearing Jesus himself.

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2. The Eternal Son The unity of the Son with God the Father cannot be confined to his historical action. On the basis of his resurrection and lordship, the early Christian community recognized that God’s Son did not first originate in Jesus’ birth, but that in Jesus’ birth God’s eternal Son became a human being and in his baptism was proclaimed by God to be his Son, which he already was from his eternal origin. (a) It was now recognized that the Old Testament Scriptures had promised not only Jesus as the Messiah, but that he was present and active already in the history of the old covenant. “The Spirit of Christ” thus spoke in the Old Testament prophets (1 Pet. 1.11). As “the spiritual rock,” Christ accompanied the tribes on their wandering in the desert and gave them drink (1 Cor. 10.4). Indeed, the word of Christ goes back beyond the patriarchs: “Before Abraham was born, I am” (Jn. 8.58 [NIV]). In numerous formulas, some of which are pre-Pauline, the pre-existing Christ was confessed to be the mediator of creation. Paul thus confessed, “There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor. 8.6; cf. Col. 1.16). “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (Jn. 1.3). Beyond mediating the creation of the universe (Heb. 1.2), this also is true of the Son: “In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands” (Heb. 1.10, quoted from Ps. 102.26). These statements presuppose that the Son existed already before the creation and thus exists independently of created time. In this sense, the prologue of the Gospel of John praises the Logos, who “was” “in the beginning,” that is, before the creation of the universe (Jn. 1.1). The statements about Christ as the mediator of creation have their parallels in Jewish wisdom literature. The decisive factor, however, is not the parallel, as such, but the question of why precisely these parallels were adopted in the confession of Christ. This usage arose with the praise of him who, on the basis of his exaltation, had been recognized as the Eternal One, who had always belonged to God and is with God. It is no coincidence that the New Testament statements about Christ as the mediator of creation are found especially in hymnic texts. In this way, all churches confess Jesus Christ as God’s eternal Son, who is different from all that is created. Just as God did not first become the Lord and Father through his act of creation, but accomplished the act of creation because he is the eternal Lord and Father, so also God’s Son did not first become that through Jesus’ birth, his baptism, or his resurrection from the dead, but he accomplished the act of redemption by the fact that he, the eternal Son, became human and died for our redemption. (b) If God’s Son is eternal like God the Father, then his procession from God has no beginning. To be sure, the New Testament statements about the Son being “begotten” or “born” by God the Father suggest the idea of an event in the aftermath

The Eternal Son

of which the Son is with the Father, but our thinking and imagining are determined by the structure of the temporal sequence that is given with creation. This structure is ruptured when the eternal origin of the Son is understood not as an event prior to temporality but as an eternal event, namely, as the eternal procession of the Son from the Father. In this way, the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son is not limited to an instrumental relationship, as is often the case in the interpretation of the New Testament statements about the Son as the mediator of creation. Rather, one should think of a reciprocal, personal relationship between the Father and the Son, in which each is related to the other and for the other. Such a relationship is expressed, e. g., in Christ’s “High Priestly Prayer”: “Glorify me with you, Father, with the glory that I had with you before the foundation of the world” (Jn. 17.5 [S]). “[Y]ou loved me before the foundation of the world” (v. 24). The eternal relationship of the pre-existing Son with the Father is attested to in the New Testament Scriptures in other terms as well: He is the Word that has always “been with God” (Jn. 1.1). He is the “image of the invisible God” (Col. 1.15). He is “the reflection and imprint of his being” (Heb. 1.3). Before his incarnation, he lived “in the form of God” (Phil. 2.6). If one takes these terms into account, then it becomes clear that the term eternal Son cannot be understood properly if one were to proceed from the relationship between an earthly son and father and transfer it to the pre-existing Christ and his heavenly Father. What the various terms that depict the relationship between the eternal Son and the eternal Father have in common is that they set forth a perfect parallel. Earthly sons, however, are always only more or less similar to their fathers, and, in their speaking and acting, they always only partially agree with them if they do not generally contradict them. Understanding the relationship between the eternal Son and the eternal Father does not arise from the relationship between earthly sons and fathers. Rather, in the communion between God the Father and the Son, we encounter the archetype and corrective for the relationships between fathers and sons as they exist in the creaturely realm, in the succession of human generations. (c) Because Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, God the Father has never been without the Son, and the eternal unity of the Son with the Father is to be praised. If God has become manifest in his unity with Jesus Christ—manifest in the appearances of the risen one and in the lordship of the exalted one through the Holy Spirit—then this revelation is only acknowledged when the same God who has revealed himself in history to be one with Jesus Christ is praised as the Father who from eternity is one with the Son. The divine titles of honor with which the Christian community soon glorified, invoked, and proclaimed Jesus would be meaningless decorations if they merely praised the historical unity of Jesus with his Father but not the eternal unity of the Father and the Son. The statement of Christ, “I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10.30), cannot be restricted to the earthly Jesus. The

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hymnic prologue to the Gospel of John thus praises the eternal Logos as God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn. 1.1). Believers praise the power of God the Father and the Son as one and the same divine power, and they praise the love of the Father and the Son as one and the same divine love. None of the perfections of God can be excluded from the praise of the Son. The perfection of the Father and the Son is immeasurably the same, and its praise by the church has no end. The New Testament statements that have been summarized here under the title of the eternal Son did not remain undisputed in the early church, and it was only after difficult struggles that the confession of the essential unity of the Son with God the Father—and of the difference between the Son and all creatures—came to be widely established. Opposed to the eternal divine Sonship of Jesus were, e. g., the Adoptionists, according to whose teaching Jesus, who was born merely as a human being, was accepted by God as God’s Son through the resurrection or already through baptism; and Paul of Samosata, who taught that Jesus was a human being upon whom God’s Logos acted as an impersonal force without entering into him or becoming one with him. Much more nuanced was Origen’s christology, in which, on the one hand, formulas of later Orthodoxy can already be found: The Son was “always with God”; “there was not a time when he was not”; “he is not even from the Father but rather is eternally begotten”; “he is begotten from the being of the Father”; he is therefore “of the same being” (ὁμοούσιος [homoousios]) with him.3 On the other hand, Origen already understood the Son as the first step in the transition from God to creation, from the one to the many. Adolf von Harnack interpreted this contradiction as follows: “Only in relation to the world is there complete similarity between Son and Father…; but, from God’s standpoint, the Son is the hypostasis appointed by and subordinated to him.”4 Arius detached the second series

3 [These quotations from the extant fragments of Origen’s writings, including especially Περί ἀρχῶν (On First Principles), which was written around the year 225, are also found in Adolf von Harnack’s textbook on the history of dogma, which Schlink drew upon for this paragraph. See Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 1.671ff. (History of Dogma, 2.354ff.). As Schlink himself noted, the precise meaning of the Greek term οὐσία (ousia) varied with the philosophical and theological context in which it occurred. It can be translated as “being,” “essence,” “reality,” or “substance.” Cf. the analysis of Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 243–245. While Kelly (and also Tanner) translated this term as “substance,” I am here following Schlink’s lead by translating it as “being” or “essence,” which also accords with how it is translated in Denzinger (125). Cf. BC, 23 (footnote 23). –Ed.] 4 Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 1.673. [History of Dogma, 2.357. Harnack’s footnote on that page indicates that this quotation from Origen was falsified by Rufinus (ca. 345–411), when he translated Origen’s writings into Latin and attempted to vindicate Origen’s orthodoxy. For support, the footnote cites the letter of Jerome (ca. 345–420) to Avitus. See Jerome’s Letter CXXIV (NPNF 2 , 6.238, 244). Rufinus’ translation of De principiis, which is the only complete extant text, is quite free. –Ed.]

The Eternal Son

of Origen’s statements from the first, and he coarsened them. His basic theses included the following sentences: The Logos, like all other creatures, was created out of nothing; “there was a time when he was not”; he has not existed eternally with the Father; he cannot be conceived by the Father to have the same being because that would mean a change and division in God. Nevertheless, the Logos is above all created creatures, he already existed before Jesus was born, and he assumed a position superior to all other creatures.

Since our task here is not to set forth the history of theology that led to the Council of Nicaea, we will restrict ourselves to the christological statements in the Nicene Creed. The structure of this creed agrees with the older Eastern creeds that were used at the conclusion of the catechumenate and thus in connection with baptism. This was also the case with the Old Roman Creed. The statements in the first part of the Nicene Creed regarding the person of Jesus Christ have been expanded in comparison to the older creeds. The second part, which contains statements about the history of Jesus from his birth to the parousia, is introduced with the confession of the soteriological significance of the incarnation: “for us humans and for our salvation” he “came down from heaven and became incarnate.” This soteriological concern is based not only on statements in the second part but also in the first. The confession of the person of Jesus Christ takes place above all in the interpretation of his title “the Son of God.” At that time, the statements “born from the Father” and “only-begotten” were undisputed. But the Arians objected to the elaborative clauses, “that is, from the being of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God.”5 These three identically structured statements confess both the Son’s unique origin from God and the unity of the Son with God. “God from God” is confirmed and affirmed by “true God from true God.” Because of his origin from God, the Son is not only called God, but he is God. With these statements, the Son is at the same time distinguished from all creatures. This is also explicitly confessed with the words, “begotten, not made.” As a summary of everything that has been said so far, the formula “of the same being with the Father” (ὁμοούσιος τῷ πατρί [homousios tōi patri]) then follows. This formula, which later became the hallmark of orthodoxy, was extremely ambiguous at the time. J. N. D. Kelly, who has set forth the very different philosophical preunderstandings and quite varied theological interpretations of this term ὁμοούσιος in the various theological currents at that time, assumes that the emperor decided to include this unbiblical formula in the Nicene Creed—despite the reluctance of many council fathers—precisely because of its desired ambiguity and the expectation

5 The Nicene Creed (325). [Denzinger, 150; Tanner, 1.5. For the following paragraphs, cf. Schlink’s 1956 essay, “Die Christologie von Chalcedon im ökumenischen Gespräch,” SÖB, 1/1.80–87 (ESW, 1.127–134). –Ed.]

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that the church would be unified by adopting this formula.6 The history of the difficult theological and political conflicts after the council cannot be presented here. However, it should be emphasized that, in the decades that followed, the initially ambiguous term ὁμοούσιος was clarified in the struggle between the various parties. It was increasingly interpreted in the sense of the preceding christological statements of the Nicene Creed, and, to ward off attempts to distance the Son from God the Father, it spoke specifically against those who considered the Son to be “unlike” the Father (the Anomoeans), against others who merely declared him to be “like” the Father (the Homoeans), and against still others who merely declared him to be “of similar essence.”7 In addition, there were differences between those who interpreted the term homoousios in the sense of “of one being” [“wesenseins”] (Athanasius) and those who feared a modalism behind this understanding that would call the Trinity into question and who emphasized the peculiarity of the three hypostases of the one divine essence (the Cappadocians).[i] These latter interpreted the ὁμοούσιος in the sense of “of the same being” [“wesensgleich”]. The mutual recognition of the Alexandrian-Roman interpretation and the Cappadocian interpretation then became decisive for the implementation of the unequivocally anti-Arian formula. The victory of Nicene christology over the Arian position was confirmed by the creed of the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 381, which was explicitly affirmed at Chalcedon in 451 and is now the authoritative text of the Nicene Creed. It is not a revision of the creed of 325; rather, it has its own textual basis. But in the statements about the Son, it essentially agrees with the Nicene Creed. Even if, e. g., the Nicene Creed’s words “that is, from the being of the Father” and “God from God” are missing in the Constantinopolitan Creed, nevertheless that same teaching is attested to in both creeds, in words that are common to both, namely, “true God from true God” and “of one being with the Father.”8 The confession of the eternal Son of God as “true God from true God,” who is differentiated from all created things and who is of one being with the Father, is of such central importance for the Christian faith that its rejection would render obsolete the proclamation of the redemption effected by Jesus Christ. Whether one prefers to set forth the doctrine of redemption by proceeding from the incarnation and concluding that what was not assumed by God was also not redeemed, or

6 Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 242–250. 7 [The Anomoeans (from the Greek term ἀνόμοιος [anomoios], “unlike” or “dissimilar”), were a fourthcentury group that held a view similar to the Arians, namely, that the Son was in essence dissimilar to the Father because he was “begotten.” The Homoeans (from the biblical term ὅμοιος [homoios = “like” or “similar”; cf. BDAG, 706], led by Acacius, bishop of Caesarea (d. 365), defended a view that was close to Arianism, when they insisted that the Son was merely “similar to” or “like” the Father. –Ed.] 8 [The Exposition of the 150 Fathers at the Council of Constantinople in 381 (Tanner, 1.24; Denzinger, 150; BSELK, 49–50 (BC, 22–23). –Ed.]

The Eternal Son

whether one prefers to proceed from the cross of Jesus and conclude that if God, in his Son, had not taken upon himself the judgment we deserve, then we would still be under the dominion of sin and death—in whichever way redemption is proclaimed, the presupposition is always that, in Jesus’ coming, God has come to us, indeed, that the eternal Son of God is “God from God.” The confession of the eternal Son of God by the Constantinopolitan Creed is common to all churches and is purely and simply the ecumenical confession. These christological statements were maintained even when the Monophysite and Nestorian churches separated from each other after the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The same was true even when the Byzantine and the Roman churches separated from each other in the eleventh century, and when the Roman Church and the churches of the Reformation separated from each other in the sixteenth century. The Arians, however, increasingly lost their existence as separate churches soon after the first three ecumenical councils. Since the Enlightenment, the statements of the Nicene Creed and the Constantinopolitan Creed about Jesus Christ have been more and more perceived to be strange, and they have been dismissed as “metaphysical.” Henceforth, the use of the term οὐσία in the statements “from the being of the Father” and “of one being,” as in “of one being” with the Father, came only from Greek metaphysics. But increasingly since the eighteenth century, and fully in the existentialist theology of the twentieth-century, the rejection of what is metaphysical not only applied to terms and concepts in ancient metaphysics but even to all statements about the eternal being and essence of God. But the latter is in fact the central concern in the christological statements of these creeds from the ancient church. Even if they speak of a procession of the Son from the Father, the concern here is about an eternal procession that did not begin or take place at a certain point in time. That concern is thus about an eternal being of the Son in unity with the Father. Here, too, it must be remembered that all structures of theological statements are concentrated in the structure of the credal confession: addressing God in prayer and worship, and addressing people in witness and teaching. Within the credal confession, the statements about God’s eternal being, essence, and attributes are expressed above all in the structure of doxology. It is not as if the eternal being of the Father and the Son would be produced through doxology. Rather, in doxology the being of the Father and the Son, which is always presupposed in the theological statements of all the structures, comes to be properly stated explicitly. As noted earlier, with respect to doxology, it makes sense also to place philosophical terms and concepts of being, essence, and attributes in the service of the creed. In view of the thin use of such philosophical terms in the Nicene Creed and the Constantinopolitan Creed, the strangeness that many people feel today about these creeds can be attributed primarily to the fact that, for many, doxology has become strange, and the glorifying adoration of God and Jesus Christ is regarded only as a task of

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the liturgy but not as a topic for dogmatics. The statements of the Nicene Creed and the Constantinopolitan Creed about the person of Jesus Christ, however, have an unmistakably hymnic-doxological character to them. The recovery of doxology as a structure of dogmatic speaking and thinking is of great importance for the unification of the separated churches.

3. “Truly God and Truly a Human Being”[ii] The more clearly Jesus Christ became known as the eternal Son of God, the more the question arose as to whether Jesus was truly human. Disputes about the incarnation of Jesus Christ are already indicated in 1 John (4.2f.). Docetism taught that God’s Son only took on the appearance of a human being, or that he had already left the man Jesus before his passion. Diminished acknowledgment of the humanity of Jesus has, however, also taken place among those who acknowledge the incarnation and death of the incarnate one. For example, Apollinaris of Laodicea taught that God’s Son did indeed have a human body but not a human soul, or, according to a later formulation, that he had assumed a human body and a soul but not a human mind, a conception that also finds echoes in the teaching of Athanasius.[iii] In yet another way, Eutyches explained it by using an erroneous interpretation by Cyril of Alexandria: “To this day I have not said that the body of our Lord and God is of the same being (ὁμοούσιος) with us.”9 By contrast, Nestorius championed the full humanity of Jesus, but he encountered contradictions with his understanding of the unity of the eternal Son of God and the man Jesus. These arguments were not only about different conceptions of Jesus’ humanity but also about the question of how one could reconcile that Jesus was at the same time both the eternal Son of God and the man born of Mary. The Council of Chalcedon replied to this question in 451.[iv] It has already been pointed out that the structure of the Chalcedonian Definition differs from that of the Nicene Creed and the Constantinopolitan Creed. It does not begin with the words, “we believe”; instead, it begins: “So, following the saintly

9 [Eutyches, as quoted by Reinhold Seeberg, Textbook of the History of Doctrines, 2d ed. (1898), 2 vols. in 1, trans. Charles E. Hay (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1952), 1.267–272 (here 267 [trans. modified]). Eutyches (ca. 378–454), who was an archimandrite of a large monastery in Constantinople, made this statement at a synod in that city in 448. He opposed Nestorianism but was accused of maintaining an opposite position, namely, of confounding the two natures of Christ (often called “monophysitism,” i. e., in the person of Christ there is but a single, divine nature after the incarnation, not two natures [divine and human], as confessed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451). Eutyches’ christology was explicitly condemned by Pope Leo I, in his letter (“Tome”) to Bishop Flavian of Constantinople, and by the Council of Chalcedon. See Tanner, 1.77–87; and Denzinger, 290–295; 300–302. –Ed.]

“Truly God and Truly a Human Being”

fathers, we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ….”10 This introduction expresses that, contrary to the emperor’s urging, the council fathers did not formulate a new confession but merely wanted to interpret confessional statements that were already valid. In fact, the Nicene Creed and the Constantinopolitan Creed presupposed the humanity of Jesus as self-evident. Now, however, one was faced with the task of defining more precisely the relationship of Jesus’ human being to his divine being. Even if the Chalcedonian Definition is not a creed but doctrinal teaching about the creed, the structure of the statements in its first part unmistakably follows the Constantinopolitan Creed’s doxological statements about the person of Jesus Christ. In a formal parallel, the statements about the divinity of Jesus Christ are added to those about his humanity: The same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, truly God and truly a human being, [consisting] of a rational soul and a body; of the same being with the Father as regards his divinity, and of the same being with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except for sin [because of this difference, ὁμοούσιος (homoousios) is replaced by ὅμοιος (homoios) in this sentence]; begotten… from the Father as regards his divinity, and from Mary, the Virgin God-bearer, as regards his humanity.11

These statements are doctrinal statements that are intended to serve doxology, and for that reason they too bear the characteristic features of doxology. If in the act of confessing the faith these statements are vocalized, then they do not signify any irreconcilable contradiction with one another; rather, they are the appropriate response of one who has heard God’s address in the message of Jesus Christ—the same Jesus Christ who is working through this message—and has recognized God’s historical act of salvation in Jesus Christ, and has received it. The unity between the contrasting statements regarding Jesus Christ as God and human being arises so naturally for faith that, e. g., the Evangelical-Lutheran Church lets even children learn the Apostles’ Creed by means of Martin Luther’s interpretation: “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father in eternity, and also a true human being, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who redeemed me, a lost and condemned human being….”12 The cited antitheses in the Chalcedonian Definition bear witness to the mystery of the person of Jesus

10 [Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith (Tanner, 1.86; cf. Denzinger, 301). –Ed.] 11 [Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith (Tanner, 1.86 [trans. modified]; cf. Denzinger, 301). The bracketed words were inserted by Schlink for the sake of clarity and exposition. –Ed.] 12 Luther, SC (the Creed). [BSELK, 872 (BC, 355). –Ed.]

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Christ—not as a mystery that is unknown but as one that is revealed, proclaimed, and praised. The second part of the Definition does not trace the history of Jesus Christ, as earlier confessions from the ancient church do (the Chalcedonian Definition only mentions his birth from the Virgin Mary), but rather it offers a didactic, abstract summary and interpretation of the statements from the first part. In contrast to these earlier confessions, it takes place in a completely different structure of statements. In the first part, the doxological statements about Jesus’ divinity, his essential unity with the Father, and his eternal generation from the Father are summarized in the concept of divine “nature,” and those about his humanity, his essential unity with us, and his birth from Mary, in the concept of human “nature.” The statements about the identity of Jesus Christ in both natures (“one and the same”) are taken up into the concept of the one “person” of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the interpretation of the doxological statements from the first part does not follow from God’s historical act of salvation in Jesus Christ, on which those statements are based and to which they respond; rather, it arises by combining doxological statements that use two concepts, φύσις [physis] (natura [nature]) and πρόσωπον-ὑπόστασις [prosōpon-hypostasis] (persona-subsistentia [person-substance]). The interpretation thus arose not from an existential concern about the God who encounters us in Jesus Christ but from a theoretical determination of the relationship between the divine and human nature and of both to the unity of the person. This determination of the relationship took place in a logical consistency that again and again arouses our admiration, for in it is taught both the abiding difference between the two natures (“no confusion, no change”) and their indissoluble unity (“no division, no separation”) in their coming together in one person and in the unity of that one person. Both a change in the two natures through the union and the emergence of two persons from the union of the two natures are strongly rejected. It is insufficient and misleading to describe the Chalcedonian Definition as a “doctrine of the two natures,” for it is about the complete integrity of the two natures in their difference from one another and about their belonging together in the one person—and thus about the unity of the person in the complete integrity of the two natures that remain different from one another.[v] The descriptive phrase, “a doctrine of the two natures,” is also misleading because the Chalcedonian Definition is not primarily about the terms nature and person but about praising Jesus Christ as “perfect in divinity” and “perfect in humanity,” and the term and concept of nature has only been used to summarize the four doxological antitheses from the first part.13 Not the two natures, but Jesus Christ is the subject of this text. Of

13 [The Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith (Tanner, 1.86 [trans. modified]; Denzinger, 301). The German adverb that Schlink used here (vollständig) can also be translated as “complete,” e. g.,

“Truly God and Truly a Human Being”

course, the paradox of the first part’s statements, which emerges automatically to a certain extent in the doxological response to God’s coming to us in Jesus Christ, as a positive witness to the mystery of revelation, has become strangely formal and less vivid in the theoretical statements of the second part. Just as the mystery of the eternal Trinity threatens to become a mysterium mathematicum (1 = 3) if the acts of God are disregarded, the same happens to the doctrine of the person of Jesus Christ when the second part of the Definition is isolated from the first, or is overemphasized. In another way, that doctrine too then becomes a mysterium mathematicum (1 = 2). For this reason, it is crucial to keep in mind what is taught at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the Definition, namely, that “the one Son, our Lord Jesus Christ” is to be confessed, “one and the same Christ, Son, only-begotten Lord,” “one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Logos, Lord Jesus Christ.”14 The weight of all the Definition’s statements rests on this teaching. The terms person and nature are employed as temporally conditioned explanatory concepts for confessing Jesus Christ.

The confession that Jesus Christ is “truly God and truly a human being,” which became doctrinally explicit in the Chalcedonian Definition, is of central importance for all statements about the salvation that has come to humankind in Jesus Christ. As rich and varied as are also the statements about the salvific significance of Jesus in the writings of early Christianity and the later church, what is decisive for our salvation in each of them is that God came to us in his eternal Son and became one of us. “Overcoming the originator of sin and death would be beyond us, had not he whom sin could not defile, nor could death hold down, taken up our nature and made it his own.”15 The emperor sought to use the Chalcedonian Definition as a formula for union. On closer analysis of its statements, one will also notice that there was room in it for some of the concerns that Monophysite christology stressed as well as for some that Nestorian christology held. Nevertheless, the Nestorians were suspicious that the Chalcedonian Definition represented Monophysitism, while the Monophysites were suspicious that it represented Nestorianism, and so it was rejected by both. That rejection also had political and ecclesio-political reasons, but one should

“complete in divinity,” “complete in humanity.” It is a cognate of the noun form Vollständigkeit, which appears in the first sentence of this paragraph and is translated there as “complete integrity.” –Ed.] 14 [The Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith (Tanner, 1.86; Denzinger, 301). Schlink translated “onlybegotten” as an adjective (“one and the same… Son, only-begotten Lord”), whereas, in the most ancient editions of the Greek text, it is used as a substantive (“…υἱὸν κύριον μονογενῆ” [hion kurion monogenē = “Son, Lord, Only begotten…”]). Cf. Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 1, 2d ed., trans. John Bowden (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975), 544; and R. V. Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon (London: SPCK, 1953), 210f. –Ed.] 15 From Pope Leo I’s Letter to Flavian, patriarch of Constantinople in 449. [Tanner, 1.77; Denzinger, 291. –Ed.]

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not overlook that the terminology that was used—hypostasis-physis or personanatura—had not been sufficiently clarified either before the council or in the council resolution itself. However, while the post-Nicene conflicts over homoousios merely led to a temporary split in the church, the conflict over the Chalcedonian Definition led to the establishment of independent Monophysite and Nestorian churches that are still separated from those that teach the Chalcedonian Definition as mandatory dogma. Of these independent churches, the Nestorian Church, which is but small today, was at times larger than the Byzantine Church, reaching as far as India, while the Monophysite churches in Egypt and Ethiopia, which were once widespread in Syria and Armenia, still have an indigenous character. Byzantium tried to end the post-conciliar conflicts by means of compromise formulas, which were especially favorable to the Monophysites. While maintaining the Chalcedonian formula, it first attempted to overcome the scandal of the duality of the natures by the doctrine of “one energy” and, when this formula failed, by the doctrine of the “one will” of the incarnate Son of God. However, both formulas were rejected by the representatives of the Chalcedonian Definition, for from the complete integrity of the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ there logically developed also a distinction between a divine and human energy in him, as well as between a divine and human will. A genuine convergence took place that was theologically well-grounded and extremely important for soteriology when the imperial church adopted the Theopaschite formula (“one of the Holy Trinity suffered in the flesh”).16 The doctrine of the anhypostasis of the human nature and the enhypostasis of the divine hypostasis in the human nature, which was advocated by Leontius of Byzantium in the first half of the sixth century and which spread throughout the Eastern and Western churches, was also interpreted as an accommodation to monophysite christology.[vi] This meant that the humanity of Jesus had no human hypostasis of its own, but that its personal existence was solely in the divine hypostasis of the Son of God. However, at Chalcedon, Jesus Christ himself was taught as one hypostasis. But now, if the eternal Son of God alone was acknowledged to be the person of Jesus Christ, and at the same time a distinction was made between a divine and a human will in Jesus Christ, then more and more difficulties had to arise in statements about Jesus’ human self and consciousness—difficulties which then, as the modern understanding of history and psychology developed, made access to the conceptuality of Chalcedonian

16 [This formula was first defended in Constantinople by a group of early sixth-century “Scythian monks.” While it had been rejected by John II (“the Cappadocian,” d. 520), patriarch of Constantinople, who thought it reflected Monophysitism, it was treated more favorably, but still with some reserve, by Pope Hormisdas (450–523), since he thought the Definition and Leo’s Tome were sufficient statements of orthodox christology. The formula, however, did gain the support of the emperor, Justinian (482–565), and it was later accepted by Pope John II (470–535) and formally affirmed in the tenth canon (one of the anathemas) at the Second Council of Constantinople (553). Cf. Tanner, 1.118. See also Walker et al., A History of the Christian Church, 175–177. –Ed.]

“Truly God and Truly a Human Being”

christology extremely difficult, something that was also true for the Chalcedonian Definition as a whole.

Although the different christological formulas of the Chalcedonian, Monophysite, and Nestorian churches have experienced a certain fossilization in the course of their separation, which has now lasted for fifteen hundred years, the unification of these churches is not hopeless. This was also made clear by the dialogues between the separated Eastern Churches, which the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches initiated in 1964 in Aarhus.[vii] Toward that rapprochement, the following factors should be highlighted: (1) Most likely, joining together with one voice in glorifying Jesus Christ as God and human and thus reaching consensus about the doxological statements of the first part of the Chalcedonian Definition can be achieved, for here the controversial philosophical concepts in the second part have not yet been used, and no theoretical explication of the recurring “and” in the pair of doxological statements has been undertaken. (2) It should be noted that doxology is always the response to God’s historical acts. The doxological statements are based both on the unique act of God’s coming in the incarnation of the Son and on God’s constant speaking and acting through the proclamation of the words and deeds of the incarnate Son in the church. In the faith about this salvific action of God in Jesus Christ there is far-reaching agreement among the separated churches. It has already been pointed out in the doctrine of the incarnation (cf. 455f.) that in the early church the paradox of simultaneous contrasts came to the fore later than the contrasts in the historical succession, but that in the existential encounter with the gospel, when one is struck by it, the statements about the paradoxical simultaneity do not fall apart but are heard as a unity. (3) The more precise clarification of the terms φύσις and υπόστασις-πρόσωπον that was lacking before and at Chalcedon must be remedied.[viii] No doubt, e. g., Leo I of Rome and Cyril of Alexandria did not have the same understanding of φύσις, and the statements of Nestorius were misunderstood by both.17 (4) The attributes of the two natures of Jesus Christ are likely to have been understood antithetically to each other in an unbalanced manner, as was customary at the time: the divine attributes were viewed as superior in contrast to the human attributes, e. g., divine infinity and human finitude, divine eternity and human temporality, divine impassibility and human suffering. By distributing the attributes

17 Cf. Alois Grillmeier, “Das Scandalum oecumenicum des Nestorios in kirchlich-dogmatischer und theologie-geschichtlicher Sicht” [The Scandalum Oecumenicum of Nestorius in Ecclesial-dogmatic and Theological-historical Perspective], in Mit Ihm und in Ihm: christologische Forschungen und Perspektiven [With Him and in Him: Christological Research and Perspectives] (Freiburg: Herder, 1975), 245ff.

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and human actions between the two natures that are not to be mixed, the unity of Jesus Christ seems to elude historical understanding. However, these static antitheses were decisively broken through with the adoption of the Theopaschite formula by the Chalcedonian Church. There should be scrutiny to see what follows from this for an understanding of the other divine attributes. (5) It must be remembered that the Chalcedonian Definition differentiated only between the attributes of the divine and the human natures, but within its statements concerning the human nature it did not differentiate between the attributes of the earthly and the exalted human Jesus Christ. According to the Easter accounts, however, the risen one was no longer under the same conditions as the earthly Jesus, e. g., with respect to being bound by the limits of space as the earthly Jesus was. (6) Like the older christological credal statements, the Chalcedonian Definition, as a teaching about the creed, is a response to God’s salvation in Jesus Christ. Since the earliest church, however, this salvation has been proclaimed in an inexhaustible multiplicity of soteriological statements. Such differences were pointed out, e. g., in the doctrine of the salvific significance of Jesus’ death (“death for the world,” “victory over the world”) (see chap. 12.C.4–5). What needs investigating is the extent to which such differences have resulted in different statements about the relationship between the two natures of Jesus Christ. The more consistently Jesus’ salvific act was taught as a vicarious obedience to God and as a vicarious suffering of divine judgment in our place (as was taught especially in the West), the more strongly the human nature of Jesus Christ, which was different from the divine nature, had to be emphasized. But the more Jesus was understood as an epiphany of God and his death as God’s victory over the world’s powers of corruption (as in the East), the more obvious it was to express the assumption of the human nature of Jesus Christ into the divine nature and of their interpenetrating unity. That the interpretations of the cross as “death for the world” and as “victory over the world” do not exclude but complement one another, has already been shown. Since the statements about the person of Jesus are presupposed by statements about his history, one has to examine which understanding of soteriology underlies the various pro- and anti-Chalcedonian statements about the person of Jesus Christ, and whether differences, which in soteriology do not have any church-dividing significance, can rightly be given such a significance in the doctrine of the person of Jesus Christ. (7) The discussion of the christological differences between the Chalcedonian and the non-Chalcedonian churches must not be restricted to the different dogmatic formulas they represent but must also take into account the christological statements that play a role in the other expressions in the life of the churches concerned, e. g., in personal piety. In the East, for example, the human Jesus is more important for the efforts to follow Jesus Christ than the Monophysite formulas lead one to expect

“Truly God and Truly a Human Being”

regarding the one nature of the Son of God who became flesh. Conversely, in the experience of dealing with Jesus in the West’s piety of prayer, notions of Jesus as God have recurred again and again that come close to the Monophysite position. In no way can one exclude the possibility that the wide space that, from the beginning, the Chalcedonian Definition left open for the various christological concerns of the Monophysites and the Nestorians—although the council did not succeed in making these concerns understandable to the others—becomes credibly visible in the course of efforts to find a common interpretation of the decisive doxological statements in the Definition’s first part that could be implemented in a new conceptuality. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 17 [i]

[ii]

[iii]

[iv] [v] [vi]

See especially Athanasius, Orations against the Arians, ed. Bright (Four Discourses against the Arians, NPNF 2 , 4.306–447); Gregory of Nyssa, Concerning We Should Think of Saying That There Are Not Three Gods, in The Trinitarian Controversy, ed. and trans. William G. Rusch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 149–161; and Gregory of Nazianzus, Third Theological Oration concerning the Son (NPNF 2 , 7.301–309). This phrase, “wahrer Gott und wahrer Mensch” (Grk: θεόν ἀληθῶς καὶ ἄνθρωπον ἀληθῶς [theon alēthōs kai anthrōpon alēthōs]; Lat: Deum vere et hominem vere]), is taken from the Chalcedonian Definition. See Denzinger, 301; and Tanner, 1.86. This phrase is echoed in Luther’s explanation to the second article of the Apostles’ Creed (see BSELK, 872 [BC, 355]), which is quoted later in this section. Apollinaris (ca. 310–ca. 390), who was a rigorous opponent of Arianism, became bishop of Laodicea around the year 360. He had been a close friend of Athanasius. While his teaching was not viewed as problematic early on, it was later condemned by synods at Rome (374–380) and by the Council of Constantinople in 381. Cf. Schlink, “Die Christologie von Chalcedon,” SÖB, 1/1.83 (ESW, 1.130–31). Cf. “Die Christologie von Chalcedon,” SÖB, 1/1.84 (ESW, 1.131). In the christological disputes of the sixth century, Leontius of Byzantium (485–543) established the distinction between the enhypostasis (personal union of the two natures) and the anhypostasis (the impersonal union). The unity of the man Jesus with the Second Person of the Trinity was expressed in post-Chalcedonian christology with the enhypostasis of Jesus in the Logos. The human nature is enhypostasized by the Logos because it is possessed, used, and manifested by the Logos. Anhypostasis refers to the notion that Jesus, the man, is distinct from the Logos, or that the Logos recedes into the background (anhypostasis = “lacking the hypostasis of the Logos”). Cf. “Die Christologie von Chalcedon,” SÖB, 1/1.80–81 (ESW, 1.128).

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[vii]

[viii]

This initial “unofficial consultation” between individuals from the Eastern Orthodox churches and individuals from the Oriental Orthodox churches (Egypt, Syria, Armenia, India, and Ethiopia) took place in Aarhus, Denmark, 11–15 August 1964. For the details of this meeting, see Does Chalcedon Divide or Unite? Towards Convergence in Orthodox Christology, ed. Paulos Gregorios, William H. Lazareth, and Nikos A. Nissiotis (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1981), ix-xii, 3–4, 19–20. The term φύσις (physis) had a range of meanings in the early church, e. g., “condition or circumstance as determined by birth, natural endowment/condition, nature,” “the natural character of an entity, natural characteristic/disposition,” “the regular or established order of things, nature,” “an entity as a product of nature, natural being, creature (BDAG, 1069). The term ὑπόστασις (hypostasis) could mean “the essential or basic structure/nature of an entity, substantial nature, essence, actual being, reality (underlying structure, often in contrast to what merely seems to be),” but also “situation, condition, …frame of mind” (BDAG, 1040–1041). The term πρόσωπον (prosōpon) literally means “face” or “countenance,” but it could also refer to “personal presence or relational circumstance” or to an “entire bodily presence, person,” “the outer surface of something, face=surface,” or “that which is present in a certain form or character to a viewer, external things, appearance” (BDAG, 887–888). For the respective understandings of these terms by Leo I (d. 461) and Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444), cf. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 1.416–17, 447–87, 504–39. Grillmeier here included research from his earlier essay that was cited by Schlink in footnote 17 of this chapter.

THIRD PART The Doctrine of the New Creation

Chapter XVIII: The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit

1. The Event of Pentecost When the time had been fulfilled, God sent the Holy Spirit. The sending forth of the Holy Spirit was the free act of God, as was the sending of his Son. It was not based on the conduct of human beings but solely in God’s will to save and to fulfill. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit was promised already in the old covenant (e. g., Ezek. 36.27; 37.14; Joel 2.28ff.). Yet it was not the expectation of the devout, but God who sovereignly determined the point in time and the manner of its fulfillment, just as he sovereignly had determined the time and the fulfillment of the messianic promise. In this sense, the concept of fulfillment in the christological statement of Gal. 4.4 and that at the beginning of the account about Pentecost in Acts 2.1 are the same. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost stood in the closest connection to God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ. After God had raised Jesus, the crucified one, from the dead, and set him at his right hand, he sent forth the Holy Spirit. Indeed, as the one seated at God’s right hand, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit, the Spirit from the Father. Through the Holy Spirit, the exalted Christ rules in divine power. His earthly visibility having ended, Christ is present through the Holy Spirit and is completing in humanity the work that he accomplished on the cross. God himself acts through this work in order to complete that which he has begun in his initial act of creation, in spite of all human opposition. Despite all their connections, the sending of the Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit were not one and the same sending. The coming of the Spirit was another coming of God which separately followed his coming in the Son. The Holy Spirit came as “the other Helper” (Jn. 14.16 [S]) and, as one distinct from Jesus, presented his witness to him (e. g., Jn. 15.26). After Jesus Christ had died for sinners and had been raised, the Holy Spirit opened their hearts to Jesus Christ and made them members and instruments of this exalted Lord. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit is thus God’s act of salvation that supplements the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and through which God brings human beings into the kingdom of the exalted one. That God has poured out the Spirit after the resurrection of Jesus Christ is especially emphasized by Luke, for here—in contrast to Jn. 20.22—there is a distinct time of waiting between the cessation of the appearances of the risen one and the sending of the Spirit. No matter what position one takes with regard to the historical questions that the Lukan account presents, it is the witness of the New Testament as a whole that the outpouring of the Spirit followed Jesus’ death and

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resurrection. That is so, whether it appears in the farewell discourses of the Gospel of John, in Paul’s reference to “the service of the new covenant” (2 Cor. 3.3, 6, 8 et passim), or in First John, which speaks of “the anointing that has been received” (1 Jn. 2.20, 27 [S]). In each of these instances we have to do with an historical, saving act of God that presupposes that the earthly activity of Jesus has been concluded. This does not deny that God’s Spirit was also already at work in the old covenant. Nevertheless, it remains true to say concerning the time before Christ: “The Spirit was not yet there, since Jesus had not yet been glorified” (Jn. 7.39 [S]). As the one sent from the Father through the Son, the Spirit has come into the world in order to perform a particular work there. Distinct from the Father and the Son, the Spirit has come in order to give witness within the world to the Father and the Son. At the same time, the Spirit stands apart from the Father and the Son, working within human hearts to bring about our calling upon the Father and our confession of the Son. The Holy Spirit thus encounters the world in its conflict with God as the advocate of God and the vicarious representative of the exalted Christ. The Spirit at the same time works as the helper and vicarious representative of the human being in God’s lawsuit with humanity. He intervenes for human beings, who do not know how they are to stand before God. The sending of the Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit also differ in another respect. In distinction from the incarnation of the Son of God, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit did not take place as a one-time event, but as an initial event. The Son of God became a human being, died, and rose again once and for all. “We know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, shall not die again . . . for that which he has died, he has died to sin, once and for all” (Rom. 6.9–10 [S]). The Holy Spirit, however, was poured out at Pentecost in order to be poured out again and again. The humiliation of the Son of God was fulfilled decisively on the way from birth to death on the cross. The descent of the Spirit, however, is not only the event of Pentecost but the beginning of a pouring forth of the Spirit that spreads itself over the entire earth in the following time. The same Spirit of God is thus poured out again and again on new people (e. g., Acts 2.38 on the three thousand; 8.17 on the Samaritans; 10.45 on Cornelius and his house; 19.6 on the disciples of John). The Spirit, however, comes not only rushing forth on those who had not yet received him, but he again and again fills afresh those upon whom he already has been poured out. The book of Acts reports again later concerning the same ones who received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with joy” (4.31 [L]). Likewise, it is later reported concerning Paul, who at his conversion had been filled with the Holy Spirit (9.17), that he “was filled with joy and the Holy Spirit” (13.52). The coming of the Holy Spirit is an ever-new divine coming and working. The outpouring of the Spirit may not be restricted to Pentecost, nor to the beginning of the Christian life in baptism. On the basis of Pentecost, we have to expect and ask for the outpouring

The Event of Pentecost

of the Holy Spirit again and again. The reception of the Holy Spirit drives human beings forward to the reception of the ever-new gifts of the Spirit, all the way to the complete transformation of their transitory nature into the new creation. What does the Holy Spirit do in his being poured out on those to whom he is granted? In view of the great multiplicity of the New Testament statements concerning the working of the Spirit, who lays hold of and creates anew the whole of human existence, we must not for a moment lose sight of the fact that all early Christian testimonies are about more than merely the effect of the Spirit on those who receive the Spirit, but are always also about the effect of the Spirit on the world through those who have been filled by the Spirit. The reception of the Spirit is always God’s placing of the human being into service by the Spirit. The unity of the action of the Spirit on the human being and the action of the Spirit through the human being on the world is so indissoluble that the reception of the Spirit would be called into question where servant ministry in the Spirit is lacking. While the New Testament Scriptures agree that the effects of the Spirit are not restricted to the recipients themselves, the book of Acts also shows that it is almost entirely uninterested in that which the Spirit brings about in those who receive him. Instead, all the interest of its numerous statements about the effects of the Spirit is focused on what God’s Spirit does through those who have received him for those who stand at a distance and have not yet received the Spirit. On this basis, it is obvious in the Book of Acts that coming to faith and being grasped by the Spirit are different processes. Hermann Gunkel especially pointed out that, while indeed, only the believer can receive the Spirit, the one who has faith, nevertheless, is not yet in possession of the Spirit on this basis.1 The same applies concerning the community of love. Thus the book of Acts places already at the beginning of its narrative, before the account of Pentecost: “They were all together of one heart,” even before the Holy Spirit had been poured out on those that were gathered. Since in the course of church history—not only through the influence of mystical ideas—there has often taken place a displacement of pneumatological interest in the experiences of the Spirit by the one who has received the Spirit, we shall begin here precisely with the question about what God’s Spirit does in this world through those to whom he has been given: (a) The outpouring of the Holy Spirit is more than simply the establishing of faith. It is also more than the establishing of a community of believers. The work of the Spirit—not only according to the accounts in the book of Acts—goes far beyond the arising of faith, love, and hope, and beyond the salvation of individual 1 Hermann Gunkel, Die Wirkungen des Heiligen Geistes nach populären Anschauungen der apostolischen Zeit und die Lehre des Apostels Paulus, 3d ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1909). [ET: The Influence of the Holy Spirit: According to the Popular View of the Apostolic Age and the Teaching of the Apostle Paul, trans. Roy A. Harrisville and Warren Quanbeck II (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979). –Ed.]

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believers as well as beyond the community of the saved with one another. The Holy Spirit works the praise “of the mighty deeds of God” before the world (Acts 2.11 [S]). This means, above all, that the Holy Spirit works the public proclamation of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus and his establishment by God as Christ and Lord (e. g., Acts 2.14–36; 4.8–12; 4.31; 13.52). The effect of the Holy Spirit is parrēsia [boldness],[i] the courage and the boldness to attack the world, to publicly proclaim the victory of the cross of Jesus, and to do so without questioning and worrying about the adverse consequences that such a revolutionary message would bring to the witnesses. The work of the Holy Spirit is the liberation of the believers from themselves for the joyfulness of self-surrender in service as witnesses. The Holy Spirit thereby also works to bring about the breakthrough of this message in being heard and understood by those who stand at a distance from it. In whatever manner we are to interpret the marvelous “speaking-in-tongues” (glossolalia) of the Lukan account of Pentecost—whether as a miracle of speech, or as a miracle of hearing, or as both—in any case, the witness and the reception and hearing of that witness belong together as the work of the Spirit. Here, too, however, what takes place has to do not only with the hearing and the coming-to-faith of the hearers. They themselves are taken into service by the Holy Spirit so that they too proclaim salvation to the world through the name of Christ and therewith give forth the same witness through which they came to faith. The New Testament statements forbid reducing the work of the Holy Spirit to the introduction of the subjective possibility of the knowledge of God and the development of faith. They forbid, likewise, dreaming of a quiet possession and enjoyment of the gift of the Spirit in the private interiority of the believer. The Holy Spirit is much more the advance of the exalted Christ into the public space of this world. The gift of the Spirit is by its very nature “service” (1 Cor. 12.4–11). The one who has been grasped by the Spirit is the instrument of the kingly rule of Christ as it breaks into the world. (b) Already in the old covenant God’s Spirit awakened public witnesses. This applies especially to the Old Testament prophets, but also to individual kings, and before that to Moses and other charismatic leaders of the people in the earliest period. The newness of the outpouring of the Spirit after the exaltation of Jesus Christ consists in the Spirit now being poured out “upon all flesh” (Acts 2.17 [SCH]); the Spirit is given to all the assembled. In distinction to the old covenant, the spiritually gifted witnesses and leaders do not stand over against the people. Instead, God’s Spirit is given to all the members of the New Testament covenant-people for public witness. The Old Testament promises have now been fulfilled: “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and daughters shall prophesy…, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days I will pour out my Spirit” (Joel 2.28f.; cf. Acts 2.17–21). “No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest, says the Lord” (Jer. 31.34; cf. 1 Jn. 2.20, 27). Notwithstanding

The Event of Pentecost

the diverse manner in which the witness of the individual members of the people of God comes to expression, every member has received God’s Spirit and has been placed into service through God’s Spirit. To each one the Spirit has been given “for the benefit of all” (1 Cor. 12.7 [L]). It would be an anachronism if after Pentecost the church came to understand that only certain ones of its members, driven by the Spirit, praised God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ. The New Testament community is “the temple of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 6.16 [S]), in that each of its individual members (1 Cor. 6.19) and all of its members together (1 Cor. 3.16) are the temple of God and of his Spirit. The “spiritual building” of the entire people of God and all its members, out of which it is fitted together as from “living stones,” is to serve the proclamation of the mighty deeds of God who has called humanity out of darkness into his light (1 Pet. 2.5–10). (c) The outpouring of the Holy Spirit removed the barriers between Israel and the Gentiles. In fact, already in the old covenant God aimed beyond the borders of Israel in the promises for the other peoples. But at that time, the promise was made known only within Israel. Now, however, God’s Spirit created the New Testament people of God from Jews and Gentiles for their common praise of the mighty deeds of God. Thus, according to the Pentecost account, the witness from the very start went forth not only to the Jews gathered from the Diaspora but also to the proselytes. God’s Spirit did not stop with them. Instead, God’s Spirit reached further, far beyond them, to those who stand still further away among all the peoples of the earth. That is the theme of the book of Acts and, beyond it, of the history of the church until the end of the world. The Holy Spirit takes in those who have been divided from one another into the freedom that Jesus Christ has established. Every division of the church on the basis of ethnic or racial perspectives, and especially the division into Jewish and Gentile communities, would be a denial of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has come as a wind of the storm that overturns these walls of division, and as the fire that consumes these dividing enclosures. In everything, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit demonstrates itself to be an event that reaches deeply into the existence of this world and shatters its accepted foundations. After all, what is more understandable for getting one’s orientation in this world than the recognition of the differences of the peoples, the races, the languages, and, therewith, the firm and immovable results of the history of the world? What is more understandable in this world than the differences between servant and master, poor and rich, foolish and wise? All these differences are swept away by God’s Spirit. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit is thus the dawn of the “last days” (Acts 2.17)—the end of the world in a radical new beginning. The Spirit does not forgivingly cover over the past so that the human being may remain at home in this world. Instead, the Spirit takes hold of human beings, tears them out of the bonds of this world, and creates a new people that is not of this world. The Spirit unveils this earth as a field full of dead bones out of which he causes the new people

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of God to arise (Ezek. 37.1–14).[ii] In the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the end of the world and the all-encompassing new creation that began in the resurrection of Jesus Christ have broken through into the world. On this basis, the word of Scripture becomes understandable: “the Spirit was not yet there, since Jesus had not yet been glorified” (Jn. 7.39 [S]). This saying is remarkable because God’s Spirit was, in fact, already at work. He was already the authenticating power of the earthly Jesus. He was already the awakener of the Old Testament prophets and leaders. He was already at work where and when there ever arose true fear of God and true knowledge. Furthermore, he was at work from the beginning wherever any created life stirred: “when you send forth your Spirit, they are created” (Ps. 104.30). Nevertheless, it is also true that the Spirit was not yet there, for only at Pentecost did the Spirit break into the world as the New Creator, as the one who transforms, from the ground up, the existence of this old world that is characterized by decline and death. The Spirit’s work before was a preserving and guiding, and in this guiding a limited work in contrast to that which then began at Pentecost. The Old Testament promise of the Spirit was not yet fulfilled in the old covenant, even if the prophets had proclaimed it in the power of the Spirit. In this sense, the Spirit of God was at that time not yet there, even if he was already there, just as the glory of the old covenant had shown itself to be negligible, indeed nothing, in view of the surpassing glory of the new covenant (2 Cor. 3.10). God’s Spirit was not yet poured out in fullness. Now, however, there flow “streams of living water” (Jn. 7.38 [L]).

2. The New Creation through the Holy Spirit When the Holy Spirit takes human beings into his service, he changes them. He acts upon them and in them when he acts through them: (a) The Holy Spirit liberates the human being for faith. He breaks through the blindness that regards the gospel as a mere human word and the sacraments as mere earthly events—the blindness for which the word of the cross is foolishness. The Spirit causes the gospel to be understood as God’s address and God’s act, and the foolishness of the word of the cross to be recognized as the revelation of God’s wisdom. The Holy Spirit breaks through the enslavement in which sinners are imprisoned before God and gives them freedom to live for God. The Holy Spirit thereby enables faith. The one who believes, however, will not stop with this statement. It is not as if the Spirit had worked only the possibility of faith, but then human beings had produced such faith themselves! Faith is precisely the end of all human doing and working, even if the battle of faith is carried out with an intense engagement by human beings. Believers will always confess that God’s Spirit has given to them not only the possibility of believing, but that he has given and

The New Creation through the Holy Spirit

preserves faith itself. Certainly, it is not the Spirit who is believing within me. It is I who believe. And yet it is true that “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith.”2 (b) Through baptism the Holy Spirit transfers believers into the ownership of Christ the Lord. The Spirit nourishes and edifies believers as members of the body of Christ through the gift of the Lord’s Supper. Through the gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, he causes believers to share in the righteousness, holiness, life, and glory of Christ. The Spirit disempowers the distance in time that separates us from Jesus’ death and resurrection. He also disempowers the time that still separates us from the parousia of the exalted one. The Spirit thus transfers the believer into the reign of Christ that is at the same time community with Christ. Indeed, he transfers us into Christ, who is at once both our Lord and our brother. Jesus Christ, through the Spirit, is present as Lord over us, for us, in us, and with us. The Holy Spirit determines our existence as life under him, from him, in him, and with him. The Holy Spirit thus works as the Spirit of Christ, in that he transfers the believer into Christ, and in that Christ lives in the believer through the Holy Spirit. (c) In that the Holy Spirit transfers us over to Christ by faith, he makes us into the children of God. “For those who are driven by the Spirit of God are the children of God” (Rom. 8.14 [L]). That is so since Christ is the eternal, incarnate Son of God, and since the Holy Spirit does not make us servants but brothers and sisters of Christ. The Spirit makes believers adopted children of God in Christ, the incarnate “only-begotten” Son. “You are now children of God by faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 3.26 [S]). Indeed, we are not only “called” the children of God, but we “are” such children of God. And we not only shall become God’s children, but we are so already (1 Jn. 3.1). That we are the children of God and that we may live as the children of God is the work of the Spirit. For it is he who awakens in the hearts of believers the prayer of the children that calls to God as Father. “You have not received a spirit of slavery so that you again must fear; instead, you have received a spirit of children through which we call: ‘Abba, dear Father!’” (Rom. 8.15 [L]; cf. Gal. 4.6). It is true that in prayer people reach out and call out, and often enough it is a struggle in which those praying confront God with his promise and hold him to it with their last strength. Nevertheless, everyone who prays will confess that it is not only the hearing of prayer, but rather even the praying itself that is given by God. God’s Spirit has worked in us the impulse to pray, to struggle, and to persist in prayer—we who are not able to pray in our own power. We are at a loss and incapable of prayer, and in our weakness we lie defeated. But God’s Spirit “helps our

2 Luther, SC (Explanation to the Third Article of the Creed). [BSELK, 872 (BC, 355). –Ed.]

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weakness” and “represents us best with inexpressible sighing” (Rom. 8.26 [L]). Thus the Holy Spirit “bears witness to our spirit that we are God’s children” (Rom. 8.16 [SCH]). He works as God’s Spirit by making believers God’s children and by calling upon God the Father in their hearts. (d) In that the Holy Spirit transfers sinners to Christ through faith and makes them God’s children, he makes them alive (cf. 1 Cor. 15.45; 2 Cor. 3.6; Jn. 6.63), for he delivers sinners into Jesus’ death, he gives them a share in the life of the risen one. In that Christ lives in them, they have participation in the life of God that has appeared in Jesus Christ and into which they have been brought. The Holy Spirit thus tears away human beings from transience, death, and decay, and transfers them into eternal life with Christ in God. This vivification is not only the reestablishment of the promise of life, which from the very beginning God had given to the human being. Much more than this, the Holy Spirit transfers the human being into the eternal life that once had been promised and that the human being fell short of, which now, however, has appeared in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Thus, the Holy Spirit not only awakens individual impulses in the human being but also gives new birth (Jn. 3.5–8). He creates a new existence [Sein] of the human being: existence in the Spirit (Rom. 8.9a), existence in Christ, the existence of the children of God. The Holy Spirit, in his outpouring on the human being, comes as the New Creator. Now the statement applies: “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creature. The old has passed away, behold everything has become new” (2 Cor. 5.17 [S]). To be sure, this new life is still hidden by transience. Nevertheless, the truth holds: “Your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3.3 [E]), “it has not yet appeared what we shall be” (1 Jn. 3.2 [L]). The gift of the Spirit is only the “guarantee” of the swallowing-up of the mortal by life (2 Cor. 5.4–5); “the first fruits” of the coming redemption of our body (Rom. 8.23); “the deposit of the inheritance” (Eph. 1.14 [S]) that has been opened up for us in Christ’s death and resurrection. Presently, this life still encounters us as an imperative: take hold of life, wrestle and battle in order that you may attain the crown of life! Threatened by death and pressed by angst, we are commanded to believe and not to become weary in prayer. But the Holy Spirit, poured out into our hearts, guarantees—as a pledge and gift of the first fruits—the coming totally new creation, namely, the coming transformation of our “body of humiliation, that it might be conformed to the glorious body of Christ” (Phil. 3.21 [S]). Because the Spirit is the deposit and first fruits, he is the Spirit of hope who validates the expectation of the coming consummation. “If, however, the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he will also make alive your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom. 8.11 [S]). If the Spirit has transferred us into Christ, the heavenly, spiritual human being, he will also transform our earthly body so that it will become similar to his “spiritual body.” “A natural body is put to death and will be raised in a spiritual body”; “If we have born the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly

The New Creation through the Holy Spirit

one” (1 Cor. 15.44, 48 [S]). The Holy Spirit does not work once here and there, once in one way and then in another. In his freedom, in which he “blows where he wills” (Jn. 3.8 [E]) and gives to each one gifts “just as the Spirit chooses” (1 Cor. 12.11), he will complete that which he has begun. Through the Spirit, God “seals” the believer and “gives firmness in relation to Christ” (2 Cor. 1.22 [S]). Thus, in his work, the Holy Spirit encompasses the entire human being: the person’s decisions, bodily nature, present, and future. The outpouring of the Spirit is the vivifying event that determines the entire future of the human being. Admittedly, one can deny this event in a falling away from faith, but one cannot undo it even when it results in judgment. (e) “The fruit of the Spirit” is love, joy, peace, patience, meekness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5.22 [S]), “goodness, righteousness, and truth” (Eph. 5.9 [NIV]). The Holy Spirit thus brings about the new community in which all who believe in Jesus Christ are bound to one another. This community of the Spirit is a community of mutual service. Individuals do not receive a gift of the Spirit simply for themselves but for service to the community (cf. 1 Cor. 12.7). The gift of the Spirit and the awakening for service are one and the same. Therefore, this exhortation holds: “strive for love” (1 Cor. 14.1 [L]). Love is the gift of the Spirit that permeates and encompasses all the others. Because God’s love in Christ is directed to the world, the church cannot retain any gift of the Spirit for itself. Through his gifts, the Holy Spirit places them in service to the world. The witness to Christ before the world is utterly decisive. All the statements of the book of Acts concerning the effects of the Spirit are for this reason concentrated on this public witness. Paul, therefore, when he lists the many effects and gifts of the Spirit, names the prophetic witness in the first place, after the apostolate (1 Cor. 12.29; cf. 14.1). In bringing about the testimony to the mighty deeds of God in the world, the Holy Spirit causes the reign of the exalted Christ to break into the world. In the course of the history of theology, the work of the Holy Spirit directed to the world through believers has often retreated behind reflection concerning the action of the Spirit in believers, and it has been more or less restricted to the church’s ministerial office. This took place more strongly in the Roman Church than in the Eastern Church, as is made clear, e. g., in their differing understandings of the reception of conciliar decisions by congregations and in the differing structures of their monastic orders. But even in the churches of the Reformation, despite their teaching about the priesthood of all believers, not much room was permitted for the public action of the Spirit through believers outside of the church’s ministerial office. Such room had to be fought for by Pietistic movements of spiritual awakening. An important event is therefore being signaled today by the fact that across all church boundaries the task of bearing witness to Christ, which has been given to

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all Christians, is increasingly recognized, and this recognition need not interfere in any way with the special task of the church’s ministerial office. If we look back over the first two sections of this chapter, it becomes clear that in the actions of the Holy Spirit there recurs in a new way what was emphasized in the doctrine of creation as the threefold purpose of the human being in the image of God (chap. 5). If God created humans to be the response of love that is in his image and to give this response to the one who first loved them and called them into life through his word, the Holy Spirit brings about this response in the cry to God as Father by those upon whom he has been poured out. If God created humans to be the community that is in his image in which love rules, the Holy Spirit brings about this community among those who have received him. If God created humans to be his representative in exercising the dominion that is in his image, dominion over the earth, the Holy Spirit breaks through the boundaries of the countries and the walls that divide peoples, and brings believers into this movement of a cosmic breakthrough. This truth is valid: “everything is yours,” for “you are of Christ, Christ, however, is of God” (1 Cor. 3.22 [L]). The Creator had promised eternal life vis-à-vis obedience to this threefold purpose to be in his image. Through the outpouring of the Spirit, however, God gives the life that had been promised to the disobedient. Out of free grace, he makes the dead alive in Jesus Christ. Through the action, the gifts, and the fruit of the Holy Spirit, God himself transforms the human being into his image that the sinner failed to be, but which has appeared in Jesus Christ.

3. The Holy Spirit as Power The Holy Spirit as God’s Spirit is distinct from the created human being and the human spirit. Indeed, as the Holy One, he stands utterly in opposition to the sinner, to the “flesh.” As the Wholly Other, he comes upon the human being, “fills” human beings (e. g., Acts 9.17, 31), “dwells” in them (Rom. 8.9, 11; 1 Cor. 3.16). The place of his dwelling is the human “heart,” the center of human existence (Rom. 5.5; 2 Cor. 1.22; Gal. 4.6). As “power from on high” (Lk. 24.49; cf. Acts 1.8), he comes upon human beings and is at work in them in manifold impulses and “deeds of power” (1 Cor. 12.6, 10 [S]). As power, he fills human beings, drives them by his impulse (Rom. 8.14), and takes them into his service. The Scriptures of the New Testament speak with the same words concerning the effect of the “spirits,” the powers of corruption that enslave the sinner. They, too, permeate human beings, take up dwelling in them, driving them with their impulses, and taking their mouth and members into their service. They are actively at work in them with their powerful effects. The entire history of religions is full of such experiences.

The Holy Spirit as Power

The Holy Spirit, however, who takes possession of human beings and dwells in them, makes human beings free. He does not come upon the human being as a power that assaults. He does not eliminate the human I. And he does not use human members for words and for deeds which the human rejects. The comparisons with conceptions of compulsion and compulsory acts and also with the psychopathological phenomenon of possession, must be rejected here. The Holy Spirit liberates human beings for the purpose that has been given to them by the Creator. He opens them to live in a free “Yes” to this purpose. The Holy Spirit takes into his service human speaking and doing, in that he makes the human being into a free witness and co-worker with God—and that is true even where there is mention of being hindered (Acts 16.6) and being bound (Acts 20.22) by the Spirit. The divine inspiration of the New Testament people of God is not a compulsion to express words we do not affirm. It is, instead, the gift of courage, of joyfulness, and of fearlessness to praise the mighty deeds of God in our own words. “You have not received a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption” (Rom. 8.15). “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3.17). The working of the “spirits” and “powers” thus differs from the working of the Holy Spirit, just as death differs from life, and darkness differs from light. For here it is God who is at work, the Creator, Redeemer, and the New Creator, who opens afresh to human beings the life in freedom that they failed to live in and lost. There, however, in the rejection of the purpose that God gave to the human being, creaturely forces are at work. They are at work in that they assault the I of the sinner. They alienate sinners from their own voice and their own members for other purposes. They cause human beings to fall into corruption. The new being in Christ that is created through the Holy Spirit is therefore not the dissolution of the human I. Certainly, human beings who are governed by God’s Spirit live no longer for themselves. The “I, myself,” as it is constituted in the “No” to the Creator, and as it imagines itself to be free, is consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit and delivered into the death of Christ. But through this dying with Christ, the believer receives life and becomes God’s Thou and a new I in communion with Jesus Christ. Certainly, Christ lives in the believer through the Holy Spirit, and the believer lives in him. But this life in Christ is the end of the self-chosen, arbitrary life, in that it is at the same time the beginning of a new life for God. It has to do here with the redemption of human beings from living entirely on their own, which is death. It has to do with a redemption through Christ in whom life has been made manifest. All notions of the dissolution of the human being into God, which have again and again penetrated the history of the church from its religio-historical contexts, must be held at a distance here. If Christian theology speaks of a unio mystica [mystical union], it does not mean the dissolution of the human I into God, but instead, the mystery of communion with God. “The unio mystica does not consist in a unio personalis or in a union of two differing entities joined into

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one person, such as is the union of the divine and human nature in Christ; so that the believer, united to Christ, could say, ‘I am Christ.’”3 “Christ and the believers remain mystically united divided persons.”4 These Lutheran statements may be supplemented by corresponding ones from the theology of the Eastern Church and the Roman Catholic Church—cf. Calvin’s doctrine of “implantation into Christ through the Holy Spirit.”5 In the Pauline sentence, “I live, but no longer I myself, but rather Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2.20 [S]), every clause is to be taken with the same seriousness as the other. In that I die with Christ and Christ lives in me, I live. That is my freedom. Because the Holy Spirit liberates the human being in whom he dwells, it is not only true that the Spirit has the believer, but it is also conversely the case that the believer “has” the Spirit (e. g., Rom. 8.9; 1 Cor. 7.40; 2 Cor. 4.13). It is not only true that the human being has been given the Holy Spirit, but it is also conversely the case that the Holy Spirit is “given” to the believer (e. g., 1 Cor. 12.7; 2 Cor. 1.22; Acts 5.32). The believer has “received” the Holy Spirit (Acts passim). Indeed, the Holy Spirit, who breaks into this world as a power over the human being is expressly described as “gift,” on the basis of which the believer is at work in a way similar to a natural gifting, even if the gift of the Spirit differs from natural human capacities. The paradox of grace may not be weakened: the Spirit who conquers the human being is also a gift granted to the human being; the powerful effects of the Spirit that impel the human being are also gifts on the basis of which the human being acts in freedom. Indeed, the Spirit is the ground upon which the believer is to “sow,” and from which the believer is to “harvest” (Gal. 6.7). Because human beings become free by God’s Spirit entering into them, it is therefore the case that two things are true at once. The Spirit cries in our hearts, “Abba, dear Father” (Gal. 4.6 [L]), and we call through the Spirit, “Abba, dear Father” (Rom. 8.15 [L]). The Spirit works through believers, and the believers are at work through him. The Spirit fills the believer, and it is the believer who, full of the Holy Spirit, speaks. Thus the Holy Spirit—in contrast to possession—places the human beings, whom he takes into possession, as free witnesses of Jesus Christ alongside himself: “the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness of me and you will be witnesses” (Jn. 15.26 [S]). Because God’s Spirit brings freedom, those driven by the Spirit may say, “we are his witnesses as is the Holy Spirit…”

3 So the Lutheran dogmatician Johann Quenstedt, Theologia didactico-polemica [Didactic-Polemical Theology] ([1685] Wittenberg: Schumacher, 1691), III.624. [Schmid, 310 (ET: 486 [trans. modified]). –Ed.] 4 David Hollaz, Examen theologicum acroamaticum (1707) [Examination of University-Level Theology], 2 vols., ed. D. Romanus Teller (Leipzig: B. C. Breitkopf & Son, 1763), 2.939. Cf. Schmid, 306–310. [ET: 480–486. –Ed.] 5 Calvin, ICR, III.1.1ff. [1.537ff. –Ed.]

The Holy Spirit as Lord

(Acts 5.32 [S]). On the same basis, the church can say with the words of the decree of the Apostolic Council: “It pleased the Holy Spirit and us…” (Acts 15.28 [S]).

4. The Holy Spirit as Lord Although the Holy Spirit has been poured out, he nevertheless remains the coming one. Although he lives in the hearts of believers, he remains at the same time the one who encounters and encompasses them. Indeed, the dwelling of the Spirit of God in the human being demonstrates itself precisely in that such a one longs for the Spirit, reaches out for the Spirit’s gifts, and strives for them (1 Cor. 12.31). In his self-giving the Spirit does not transform himself into a created power but remains the Spirit of God and of Christ, who dwells in the human spirit and renews human powers and transforms them. As a gift, the Spirit remains the counterpart to the human being. As a power that has been received, the Spirit remains the Lord of the human being. He remains the one who gives himself in the freedom of his will: “The Spirit blows where he wills” (Jn. 3.8 [S]). The believer never becomes lord over the Spirit of God. Word and sacrament have been assigned by Christ to human beings for proclamation and dispensation. They may thereby trust that, through this human action, God’s Spirit performs his works. The human being does not thereby become lord over the Spirit. Rather, the Spirit works in his freedom through human action. It is he who sovereignly determines when the breakthrough into the hearts of the hearers takes place through the message, and when great repentance and the awakening of faith arise. We may trust that God’s Spirit is bestowed through baptism to the believer and that this bestowal takes place again and again after baptism. But the human being does not receive lordship over the Spirit through baptism and the laying on of hands. The Spirit does not give the same gifts to all believers. “He allots to each one, just as he chooses” (1 Cor. 12.11). That the Spirit who dwells in the human being does not cease to be Lord of the human being, stands out most clearly in that he encounters the human being upon whom he is bestowed as leader, teacher, helper, and warner. To the promise of “another Paraclete” [helper, comforter], who “shall guide into all truth” (Jn. 16.13), there corresponds the great number of statements in the New Testament that bear witness to the concrete directives of the Spirit. According to the account in the book of Acts, the Spirit sent Philip to the chariot of the Ethiopian (Acts 8.29) and gave Peter instruction concerning his conduct in response to the representatives of Cornelius (Acts 10.19). The Spirit spoke to the prophets and teachers gathered together in Antioch: “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them,” and they “were sent out by the Holy Spirit” (Acts 13.2, 4). And then again Paul and Silas were “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia” (Acts 16.6). The letter to the

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Galatians, too, refers to a speaking of the Spirit in the heart (Gal. 4.6). The letters in the book of Revelation intend to be heard as a revealing, warning, and instructive word of the Spirit: “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches” (Rev. 2.7, 11, 17 etc.). Because the Spirit of God dwelling in the human being manifests himself as the commanding Lord, believers are warned against “deceiving” the Spirit (Acts 5.3), “resisting” him (Acts 7.51) or “despising” him (Heb. 10.29). These and other similar statements would be meaningless if the Holy Spirit had been understood simply as a power. The horrible possibility of sin against the Holy Spirit (Mt. 12.31) presupposes the freedom given by the Spirit, over which the Spirit retains a claim to lordship. The Holy Spirit does not only give life and righteousness, but he also punishes and judges unbelief (Jn. 16.8; 1 Cor. 14.24). This speaking, leading, and governing of the Spirit is so self-evidently presupposed and fundamentally attested to in the New Testament Scriptures, that to want to limit this work of the Spirit to the earliest Christian congregations is just as impossible as it would be to limit the outpouring of the Spirit and the multiplicity of the gifts of the Spirit to them. Corresponding to the promise that the Holy Spirit will lead and direct the church are the many testimonies from the later history of the missionary advance of the church in the world. They attest to experiences similar to the direction of the Spirit as it appears in the accounts contained in the book of Acts. In such leading, exhorting, and warning, the Holy Spirit demonstrates himself to be the Lord. He is the power of God, for God governs believers through him. He is the power of Christ, for through him the exalted Christ takes believers into his service and through their witness carries out his triumphal procession through the world. And yet he is not only the power from Christ, but, as “the other Paraclete,” he is the witness who points to Jesus Christ as the one who is distinct from him, as the one who came before the Spirit, and as the one who is the present exalted Lord. The Spirit is not only the power of God but also the counterpart to God the Father, for he addresses God as “Father” in the hearts of those who believe. After the Father’s work of creation and after the sending of the Son, the Holy Spirit performs his own special work as the one sent by the Father through the Son. The statements concerning the Spirit as gift and as Lord thus belong most closely together. The Holy Spirit is not in the human being without also acting vis-à-vis the human being. God’s Spirit is not a divine power without at the same time being a willing, commanding, acting divine Person. One cannot set the personal pneumatological statements of the New Testament as “animistic” over against the “dynamic” statements and devalue them.6 In that the person of the Spirit works in us as power, in that the Spirit, the Lord, gives himself to us as gift, God fulfills his

6 So Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testamentes, 1.153ff. [ET: 1.153–155. –Ed.]

The Holy Spirit as Lord

self-giving in love. Because God’s Spirit is at once both gift and Lord, the church responds to the saving act of the outpouring of the Spirit by calling upon the Spirit as a divine “you,” and appealing in prayer, “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your believers!” Even if prayer to the Spirit is not found within the Scriptures of the New Testament, it is the appropriate response to the witness of the New Testament to the Spirit as Lord. After all, this is the very meaning of the outpouring of the Spirit: God, the Lord, has condescended to us in Jesus Christ and enters into us by his Spirit. He does not thereby cease to be Lord of heaven and earth, but as our Lord he is our servant. Indeed, he is the gift that has been given to us in order that we might live through him, under him, and in him. He takes hold of believers from without by the word and from within by the Spirit, in order to bring them into the divine life. Within the framework of these “basic features” of an ecumenical dogmatics, it is not possible to delve further into the remarkably incomplete investigation of the history of pneumatology, in which both the history of the experiences as well as the history of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in their interplay must be taken into account. Within the framework of an ecumenical dogmatics, however, one may not neglect to point to the various answers that have been given to the question of the relationship between the personal and the dynamic statements concerning the Holy Spirit, between the statements about the Holy Spirit as Giver and as gift within the Western and Eastern churches of the Middle Ages. These differences played a considerable role in the division between East and West, and then again in the divisions within Western Christendom in the sixteenth century. In the patristic period there was no difficulty in understanding the Holy Spirit as the Giver of grace as well as understanding the grace that was received as a working of the Spirit. Paul, too, had taught that the Holy Spirit was not only the source of the charismata but also was at work in them (cf. 1 Cor. 12.4–11). It was therefore a momentous decision when, in the Middle Ages, in contrast to Peter Lombard (who equated grace and the indwelling Spirit), scholasticism made the doctrine of grace and the doctrine of the Spirit largely independent of one another.[iii] Under the influence of Aristotelian philosophy, theological interest concentrated less on the work of the Spirit than it did upon the new, supernatural state, which was granted to the human being through grace as a qualitas inhaerens [inhering quality]. This ontological shift brought with it the differentiation of various types of preparatory and sanctifying grace, which in a decidedly different way were requisitioned for bringing precision to the relationship between divine grace and human activity. The further development of the doctrine of merits within high scholasticism was connected to this ontological shift. This scholastic positioning of thought remained intact through the following centuries in the Roman Catholic Church until the new approaches of the French “Théologie nouvelle” in the twentieth century (cf., esp., Henri de Lubac).[iv] A very different shift in the understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit took place about one hundred years after Lombard, in the Byzantine Middle Ages, through the interpretation

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of hesychiastic piety by Gregory Palamas.[v] This piety had to do with a union with God that did not follow the path of philosophical contemplation on the world or the self, nor did it involve primarily the study of biblical or ecclesiastical traditions. Instead, it focused on the incessant use of “the Jesus Prayer,” through which God’s appearance in “the Tabor Light” was experienced (i. e. the Light of the transfiguration of Jesus). Palamas did not explain this experience of unmediated unity with God in visions of Light as taking place through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the human being, but instead through the energies proceeding from God. These energies are one with God’s being in a way that is similar to that of the three hypostases of the Trinity. His statements concerning the Holy Spirit remain limited, however, to trinitarian immanence. Those concerning the salvation-historical work of the Spirit are replaced by the doctrine of the energies.[vi] The doctrine of Gregory Palamas was recognized in 1341 by two Orthodox synods. Ten years later, he was declared to be the official Teacher of the Orthodox Church. Palamas’ doctrine of energies was sharply rejected by Western and especially Thomistic scholasticism, just as Palamas conversely rejected scholasticism. The issue had to do in the first place with a controversy between differing types of mystical experiences of God. It also had to do with the question of the application or the rejection of philosophy in mystical theology. Both of these positions were represented in both the West and the East. The difference between the scholastic doctrine of grace and Palamas’ doctrine of energies, with its consequences for and against the doctrine of merits, may be regarded as the most far-reaching difference between the two positions. Nevertheless, one should not overlook that on both sides—even if in very different ways—the repression of the recognition of the unmediated indwelling of the Holy Spirit in believers was at work. In the West, this took place through the extensive development of the doctrine of grace, in the East, through the doctrine of the divine energies. With great emphasis, the Reformers rejected the scholastic doctrine of grace with its consequences for the relationship between grace and human works, as well as for the evaluation of human works. Before all else, they had in view the late scholastic doctrine and its effects on church practice. In these controversies, they in no way understood grace as merely a gracious disposition of God. It was instead God’s act of forgiveness and renewal that took place through the Holy Spirit. Thus the Holy Spirit, who comes to human beings and who takes up his dwelling in them, again took his central place in reflection. But it cannot be overlooked that in defending against the excesses of the “enthusiasts” in the sixteenth century, the New Testament statements concerning the personal leading, instructing, and warning of the Holy Spirit were taken up only with reluctance. A debate of the Reformers with the doctrine of Palamas did not take place, for it was unknown to them. Today, however, in view of the spreading revival of Palamas’ doctrine in the Eastern Church, it is unavoidable. The dialogue about these questions between the Orthodox Church, the Roman Church, and the churches of the Reformation would probably be a failure if one merely lifted out the conceptions of grace in all three churches, compared them with one another, and sought commonality on this basis. The dialogue would likewise end in failure if one compared the

The Recognition of the Spirit’s Action

concepts of divine energy and divine grace in a similar manner. The actual issues here only become apparent when one examines not merely the statements about grace or about the divine energy but also those about the work of the Holy Spirit, and when one does not take the terminology of Western scholasticism and of Gregory Palamas as they stand on their own, but instead seeks to interpret them by means of the statements of the New Testament and of the ancient church concerning the Holy Spirit, in which they also ultimately have their roots. Ecumenical dialogue in no way requires here a simple retrospective translation in order to get behind the very different conceptualities about the matter, be it to the question regarding to what extent the scholastic concept of qualitas inhaerens can be interpreted as a witness to the steadfastness of the free, personal working of the Spirit, or be it to another question, namely: To what extent might the problematic distinction between the Holy Spirit and the divine energies not be understood as a corrective to the very strongly emphasized hesychastic experience of the unity of the human being with God in the Light of Tabor?

5. The Recognition of the Spirit’s Action The action of the Holy Spirit is manifest before the world in the public witness of believers and in their conduct, in their service to one another and to the world. Nevertheless, this takes place in a hidden way under certain ambiguities. The knowledge of the Holy Spirit is by no means self-evident. (a) Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, appeared to his companions as if he were insane (Mk. 3.21), and to the scribes as if he were possessed by the devil (Mk. 3.22; cf. Jn. 7.20; 8.48). At Pentecost the assembled members of the church appeared to those present as if they were drunk (Acts 2.13). Paul appeared to Festus, the procurator, as if he were raging mad (Acts 26.24). Often enough the courage given by the Spirit appeared to be presumption. The power of the Spirit appeared to be contradicted by the unimposing appearance of those through whom the Spirit was at work. Often enough the Spirit of love appeared to be a Spirit of severity and controversy. In a manifold way, the action of the Spirit is hidden within the world: hidden beneath the weakness and suffering of those through whom he works, hidden under the ambiguity of being confused with the spirits of the world. One is always able to interpret the Spirit’s action in another way. The recognition of the Spirit is possible only by faith and thus only by being grasped by the Spirit. To be able to distinguish the spirits is itself a gift of the Spirit. (b) The revelation of the Holy Spirit is, however, also again and again hidden to the self-examination of those who believe, indeed hidden often enough under its opposite. The certainty with which the witnesses in the New Testament speak of “having” the Spirit must not be allowed to deceive us in this matter. Thus the power of Christ was at work in Paul, hidden under the weakness and the humiliation of this one who suffered the blows of the powers of corruption (2 Cor. 12.7–10).

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Paul spoke of the life given by the Spirit in a highly dialectical manner: “We show ourselves to be the assistants of God, . . . as the dying, and behold, we live; as those who are disciplined, and yet not put to death . . .” (2 Cor. 6.4, 9 [S]); “always bearing the seal of the death of Jesus in our body, in order that the life of Jesus may be manifest in our body” (2 Cor. 4.10 [S]). He likewise speaks of joy, which is the fruit of the Spirit, in a highly dialectic manner: “We, who are sorrowful, yet always rejoicing . . .” (2 Cor. 6.10 [S]). Those filled by the Holy Spirit are “the poor who make many rich, those who have nothing and possess everything” (2 Cor. 6.10 [S]). The praying of the Spirit is thus often hidden beneath radical human helpless perplexity and “sighs too deep for words” (Rom. 8.26). It is not as if God’s Spirit has no clue as to what is needed, but that is precisely the case for the human being in whom and for whom God’s Spirit cries, “Abba, dear Father!” Precisely as a new human being, human beings have become a puzzle to themselves. The new I is the same one that must confess that it is “not I” (Gal. 2.20). In surrendering the self into the death of Christ, so that this one might live in oneself, the I is new. In that this one longs for the coming day of Christ and for the transformation of our mortal, bodily state, it is a new I. The new I is a reality in its movement away from itself and in its ever-new reception of life, which is opened to it in Christ by the Spirit. The dialectic of the hiddenness of the Spirit’s action penetrates into the core of the believer’s self-experience. The new is paradoxically present in the experience of the passing away of the present and in the suffering that is present under the “not yet.” The hiddenness of God in the word, which has been discussed in the first chapter, finds its counterpart in the hiddenness of the action of the Spirit. At the same time, however, the Scriptures of the New Testament are full of certainty concerning the action of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit has been poured out on us. He dwells in our hearts. He impels and leads us. We have the Holy Spirit. That is the jubilation of the community of the New Testament. And, in fact, these statements concerning the manifest work of the Spirit stand in just as little opposition to those concerning its hiddenness, as those in chapter one concerning the revelation of God in the word stand in opposition to the hiddenness of God in this very word. The action of the Spirit is manifest precisely in its hiddenness. This hiddenness should not be confused with the spiritless inactivity that overtakes so many Christians. By contrast, revelation in hiddenness means that in the powerlessness of the human being the power of God is mightily at work, that in the dying of the human being the resurrection-power of Christ is manifest, and in the perplexed helplessness of the human being the Spirit leads and directs. Here, too, the dialectic of hiddenness and revelation is not an equally balanced dialectic of hiddenness and revelation. Rather, it is much more the case that joy, freedom, and life have the victory in the midst of fear, slavery, and defeat. Because God’s Spirit is revealed in hiddenness, the Scriptures of the New Testament are uninterested—in a way that is alien to

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modern thinking—in the psychological processes of “pneumatological experience.” They do not allow any psychological description of speaking in the Spirit or of the experience of “joy” in the Spirit, since “joy” is a spiritual reality that takes place even within feelings of sorrow, and the speaking of the Spirit takes place even within the experience of abandonment and perplexity. The course of experiences cannot be the object of theological interest, even when they certainly are given to believers in the most diverse ways. The pneumatological dialectic of living and dying, wealth and poverty, joyfulness and sorrow, instead direct the Christian to faith. The action of the Spirit does not make faith superfluous, for it does not set seeing in the place of believing. It is instead in faith alone that the action of the Spirit is discerned, and this applies not only to its recognition by outsiders but also by those who believe. (c) Admittedly there are enthusiastic experiences in which people suppose that they have left weakness behind them and no longer have need of faith. In “enthusiasm” faith seems already to have been replaced by sight, and the new creation that presently remains hidden appears already to have been fulfilled. The forms of fanatic movements [Schwärmereien] are many. They have accompanied the history of the church, from Gnosticizing spiritualism in Corinth, to Montanism, the spiritualists of the Middle Ages, the “swarming spirits” [Schwarmgeister] at the time of the Reformation, all the way up to the present. And they have led to many divisions that have been quite diverse. Precisely because they have appealed to the action of the Holy Spirit, the following question is decisive: “In what way can one know that it is God’s Spirit who is the one making demands, and that it is not other spirits, or the desires and fears that arise from the subliminal realm of the soul and that appear to the conscious mind as a directive from without?” Is the action of the Holy Spirit to be recognized in the overwhelming power and compelling force of the experience with which it breaks in upon the human being? The history-of-religions school interpreted the New Testament statements in this way.7 But the experience of the overpowering cannot be the criterion of truth if the essence of the Spirit’s work is not assault but liberation. Or is the speaking of the Spirit to be recognized with certainty in its results, which arise with those who obey the Spirit’s directives? Even if the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love and community, the truth of his speaking is not guaranteed in that the one who listens to it has outward success and finds adherents. The Spirit often enough leads into the deepest loneliness, and the love of God disturbs the communal bonds of this world. The guidance of the Holy Spirit may not be recognized with certainty in that the one who listens to him receives experiences of peace and joy. Although it is certain that the Holy Spirit is a Spirit of peace and joy, he often leads into trials and suffering.

7 Cf. Gunkel, Die Wirkungen des Heiligen Geistes, 11–14, 20. [ET: 17–21, 39–40. –Ed.]

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Instead, God’s Spirit—as the decisive criterion—is to be recognized solely on the basis of his witness, namely, that he brings Jesus’ words to remembrance (Jn. 14.26) and glorifies Jesus (Jn. 16.14). It is characteristic of the speaking of the Spirit that he “does not speak of himself,” but points away from himself to Jesus’ word and work: “He shall take what is mine (namely, that of Jesus) and announce it to you” (Jn. 16.13 [SCH]). God earlier had spoken through the Old Testament law and the prophets. Now he does so finally and decisively through his Son. The Holy Spirit adds nothing additional or new to this decisive conclusion. Instead, he confirms it and makes it known to the world. “The whole truth” into which he leads (Jn. 16.13a) is nothing other than the truth that has appeared in Jesus Christ. “That which is coming,” which he announces (Jn. 16.13b), is no other future than that which has broken into the world and been revealed in Jesus Christ. The work of the Spirit through the gospel does not mean that he has founded the apostolate, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, but that he works through them, in that he brings to remembrance what Jesus Christ gave and commanded them, as the one who went to the cross and as the one who was raised from the dead. In bringing to remembrance the word and work of Christ, the Holy Spirit does nothing other than bring the once-and-for-all salvific act of God in Christ into the present, and thus make the later generations contemporaneous to the saving event. Over against the Corinthian “enthusiasts” Paul thus preached the crucified Jesus and taught them to recognize the action of the Holy Spirit in the confession of the crucified one as Lord. The instruction of 1 John correspondingly says, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God” (1 Jn. 4.2). The warning, “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 Jn. 4.1), is therefore the command to test all words uttered with an appeal to the authority of the Holy Spirit against the tradition of God’s historical act of salvation in Jesus Christ. From this peculiar way in which the Holy Spirit points away from himself to Jesus Christ, we may understand how it was that in the history of the theology of the ancient church the first concern was to clarify its christological confession, and then the concern was to clarify its pneumatological statements. Of course, the Holy Spirit was recognized from the earliest period, together with the Father and the Son. But reflection concerning the Spirit remained for a very long time merely tentative and full of contradictions. If it is characteristic for the action of the Holy Spirit that he does not take up himself as his subject matter but instead Jesus Christ and God the Father, it comes as a natural consequence that the Spirit’s essential unity with the Father was not attested to with full awareness at Nicaea in 325—at the same time as the confession of the essential unity of the Son with the Father—but only at Constantinople in 381.

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In bringing Jesus Christ to remembrance, the Holy Spirit does much more than merely call to mind the words of the historical Jesus. He makes them concrete and unfolds them in the ever-new historical situations that call for decision from the believer. He reminds people of Jesus’ work by making it present today and unfolding its meaning for believers in their particular contexts. The history of the Synoptic tradition and the alterations of the words of Jesus that may be demonstrated there, and even more so in the Gospel of John, may be understood as a witness to this concretizing and contemporizing “reminding” of the Spirit. The speaking of the Spirit, according to the witnesses in the book of Acts, was not merely an historical remembering but a concretizing and contemporizing of the commission that Jesus had given to his own. Even if the disciples of Jesus had been commissioned with the message of salvation, it does not follow of itself that Paul and Barnabas should be sent forth, or to where they had to go (Acts 13.2). To take a further example, the Pastoral Letters, in their statements concerning the witness of the Spirit that precedes the laying on of hands, also reckon with a commissioning that concretizes the fundamental commission of Jesus Christ in the continuing history of the church (cf. 892). Thus the words of the Spirit do not match Jesus’ original words in a one-toone manner, even if they bring Jesus’ words to remembrance. Even if they say nothing different and nothing new, they say the same with substantially other and new words. The Spirit unfolds the words that Jesus said and, in this sense, says “much” that Jesus had not yet said before his departure from his own (Jn. 16.12). We may not ascertain the truth of the Spirit’s guidance simply by means of an historical comparison with the words and deeds of the earthly Jesus, even if many pneumatological presumptions can be exposed and judged by this means. In the end “the distinguishing of the spirits” is, once again, a gift of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12.10). The dangers are not small that arise with the acknowledgement of the concretizing action of the Spirit. That is completely so in the case of the appeal to a spiritual circle for the continuity of apostolic succession and thus for the identity of the church. The church, however, cannot remain the same on its course through the historical fronts that are constantly changing around it if God’s Spirit does not actualize again and again anew the founding, historical act of salvation and the apostolic witness to it in the present concrete situation. In any case, despite the danger of a wild, spiritual defection in his congregations, Paul nevertheless warned: “Quench not the Spirit” (1 Thess. 5.19), “be zealous for the gifts of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 14.1; cf. 12.1). He trusted that the church would never be without the gift of the distinguishing of the spirits.

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Editor’s Notes to Chapter 18 [i]

[ii] [iii] [iv]

[v] [vi]

Παρρησία (parrēsia) can be translated as “outspokenness, frankness, plainness,” but

in this context it means “a state of boldness and confidence, courage, confidence, boldness, fearlessness, esp. in the presence of persons of high rank” (BDAG, 781). Cf. Schlink, “Die Auferstehung des Gottesvolks” (“The Resurrection of God’s People”), SÖB, 1/1.272–275 (ESW, 1.332–335). See Peter Lombard, The Sentences, I/2, dist. 17 (chap. 60), 88–89. The “new theology” in French Catholic theology emerged in the 1940s and 1950s. Henri de Lubac (1896–1991), a professor at the Jesuit school at Lyon-Fourvière, wrote an influential work (published in 1946) that became a centerpiece for this new direction in theology: The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Crossroad, 2018). See Palamas, The Triads, 41–58. See, e. g., Palamas, The Triads, 71, 82, 86–87, 93–111.

Chapter XIX: The Church

Introduction to Chapters XIX–XXII: The Starting Point for the Doctrine of the Church[i] The community of those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord is described with many terms, metaphors, and analogies in the New Testament Scriptures.1 Most of them have their source in the old covenant, such as, e. g., people of God, assembly, building, bride, flock, and vineyard. Hellenistic influences were far less significant. Thus, e. g., the description of the church as the body of Christ was taken up from Hellenistic sociological concepts but considerably altered by Paul on the basis of the reception of the body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. The German word Kirche (English: church; Swedish: Kyrka) is not a direct translation of any description of the community of believers in the New Testament, but is instead a substantivizing derivation from κυριακóς [kuriakos], “belonging to the Lord.”2 Although the designations for the early Christian community in the New Testament have an origin that is older than the community itself, they received their specifically Christian meaning through that which took place in the Christian congregations. Here one should consider not only descriptions of church life (such as, e. g., Acts 2.42–47; 4.32–37), but above all the whole variety of events that took place, such as, e. g., in the thanksgivings at the beginning of the New Testament letters; in exhortations to recall the renewal that took place through baptism and to live accordingly; in the calls to exercise the charismata in servant ministry; to love and to honor those who give themselves to the service of the congregation; as well as in the remaining manifold witnesses to the “we” of the churches and the familiar address of “you” [plural] to the believers that were expressed. The self-designations of the church have their basis in this entire event with all its diverse aspects. The life of the church is so manifold in its nature that it is impossible to summarize it in merely one term or picture. To take an example, the farewell discourses in the Gospel of John contain a deeply grounded ecclesiology, without employing a substantial description of the church (aside from the analogy of the grapevine and the grapes). Similarly, the Pauline “in Christ” is generally an ecclesiological formula, which does not speak directly of the church in the contexts in which it appears.

1 Paul Minear has collected more than eighty of such designations, Images of the Church in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960). 2 [See BDAG, 576. –Ed.]

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There appears in this relationship between the life of the church and the descriptions of it a certain correspondence to the relationship between the history of Jesus and the honorific titles given to him. Just as Jesus’ history is the presupposition for his titles of honor, the life of the church is the presupposition for the designations of the church. It is only from the life of the congregation that the designations of the church taken over from the Old Testament received their specifically Christian meaning. A certain correspondence also exists in that Jesus is praised with many names, honorific titles, and predicates, and likewise the church is described with many terms and analogies. But just as the relationship between Jesus and his disciples is not subject to inversion, so is that between Jesus and the church. He is the basis of the church. He is the one in whom the many are brought into unity in the church. He is the “only begotten” Son of God, in whom the many are accepted by God as “children.” He is the one human being, in whom the new humanity has dawned. Given these fundamental differences, it is self-evident that the New Testament Scriptures only contain prayers to God and to Jesus, the Lord, but not prayers to the church. Doxological attributions of glory to the church are also lacking, in contrast to numerous attributions of glory to God and to Christ. This observation corresponds to the fact that Rufinus and then especially Augustine emphatically pointed out that in the Apostles’ Creed and in the Latin text of the Constantinopolitan Creed the church indeed confesses that it believes in God the Father, in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit; but it does not confess that it believes in the church, only that it believes the church. After all, the church differs from God as God’s work. When believers confess the church, their focus is not primarily on the church but on the one who awakens faith and has gathered the church. It is therefore understandable that in the text of the Nicene Creed of 325 the church is not yet mentioned. Because the church is a community of human beings, one cannot believe in it in the same way that one believes in the triune God who is at work in it. Because the church fundamentally exists in its members looking away from it to Jesus Christ, and thus to God the Father and the Holy Spirit, it is understandable that in the course of the history of dogma, christological and trinitarian dogmas were the first to arise. Efforts toward developing a dogmatic definition of the church began only later. In the confessions of the ancient church—despite the statements that were added about the church’s attributes and the divine gifts that were given to it (such as baptism, the forgiveness of sins, eternal life)—the church is only named rather than defined with a completeness and precision that is comparable to the christological and trinitarian dogmas. In a way, this is still true today. Article VII of the Augsburg Confession, e. g., is more a confessional statement concerning the marks of the indestructible church than it is a comprehensive definition of its essence.[ii] Even the much more comprehensive Constitution on the Church

The Starting Point for the Doctrine of the Church

(“Lumen gentium”) that was adopted at the Second Vatican Council may not claim the authority of a solemn, dogmatic definition.[iii] Naturally, the ecclesiological statements of sermons, catechisms, doctrinal writings, and letters always have been more fully developed than the brief statements of the confessions. But we do not find ecclesiology among the Apostolic Fathers or, beyond that generally, in independent statements concerning the church. Rather, e. g., we find it in statements of thanksgiving to God, who has saved and united believers, and in the exhortation to live in unity. The statements concerning the community of the called, the believers, the saints do not have to do primarily with human beings but rather with God, who loved them, called them, awakened them to faith, and sanctified them, and who calls for a life together that corresponds to God’s calling. In the history of the theology of the ancient church we do not find any effort at a definition of the church, but very much instead a great variety of pictures that exceeds that of the New Testament, such as that of the church as a woman, as an ark, as a ship with the cross as the mast, as the waning and waxing moon, and so on.3 More precise ecclesiological statements then arose in discussions and debates about contested questions concerning the divine salvific action from which the church lives. Thus, as is clear already from 1 John, the christological discussions and debates were also about the boundaries of the church. Ecclesiology received further clarification in the controversies concerning readmission of those who had fallen away in the time of persecution and concerning the validity of the baptism given by schismatics. In connection with this, the controversies about the church’s ministerial office also began, not in the sense of mere questions of order but as questions about the validity and effective administration of the divine means of grace. These questions were also behind the later discussions and debates among the patriarchates regarding primacy, and behind the conflicts between pope and emperor, as well as those between pope and council, even if here the ecclesiological question concerning the means of grace was masked by questions of power. Thus finally, after the schism between East and West and the one that happened five hundred years later between the Church of Rome and the churches of the Reformation, there stood over against one another the ecclesiologies of the divided churches, with—in contrast to the earliest church—an entirely one-sided emphasis on the differences in the ordering of ministerial offices, especially with respect to the question of hierarchy. From the unique structure of the theological statements concerning the church, namely, the common directedness of the members of the church in looking away from themselves to the Lord of the church, one comes to perceive that in the summarizing presentations of Christian doctrine in the early

3 Cf. Hugo Rahner, Symbole der Kirche: Ekklesiologie der Väter [Symbols of the Church: The Ecclesiology of the Fathers] (Salzburg: Müller, 1964).

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church (such as, e. g., those of Origen and John of Damascus) a special article of doctrine on the church is lacking. The same applies to the large, comprehensive presentations found in scholasticism, e. g., in the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas. While one can indeed find statements about the church scattered in the treatment of christology and in the doctrinal sections on grace and the sacraments, there is no special section on questions about the church. In the West, there began a flood of independent tractates concerning the church, occasioned by the controversies between Pope Boniface VIII and the French king, Philip “the Fair” (Philip IV).[iv] But these had to do with a particular issue, namely, the governing authority of the pope. In order to assess the differences and opposing positions that have arisen in church history, the fact that a great multiplicity of forms of church life has already been handed down in the New Testament Scriptures is of great importance. This applies, e. g., to the confessions, doctrinal traditions, and kerygmatic formulas, as well as to prayers and doxologies. This also applies to the ordering of congregations, their services of worship, the relationship between charismata and ministerial offices, as well as the forms of church leadership. It further applies to the various ways and means by which the unity of the church was preserved, and to the widely differing degrees to which the church reflected upon itself. There exist considerable differences between the ecclesiologies of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, of Paul and the letter to the Hebrews, as well as of the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation. The working out of these differences in a clear historical manner is of the greatest importance for the question of the unity of the church today since all churches recognize the apostolic doctrine and ordering that have been handed down to us, whether in an unmediated or mediated way in the Scriptures of the New Testament, as having a fundamental and abiding authoritative significance. In the first centuries, there took place among the various local congregations and church districts a certain mutual accommodation of confessional formulas, liturgies, and ordering of church offices. At the same time, however, with the advance of the church into new cultures, and with the discussions and debates with new fronts of opposition, the differences between the churches grew, and the forms of church life experienced further changes. That the churches were concerned to retain apostolic doctrine and order as a binding basis within these changes comes to expression, e. g., in references to “the apostolic confession of faith,” the “Apostolic Constitutions,” etc., even though it is clear that neither “the Apostles’ Creed” nor the “Apostolic Constitutions” was composed by the apostles. It has become fundamentally clear instead that the acknowledgment of apostolic authority by the later church cannot be restricted to the recitation of apostolic doctrine and the retention of apostolic directives. Rather, in new historical situations the church must maintain apostolic doctrine also in new words, and the apostolic ordering of the church’s activity in further directives. Changes of this nature are found, yes, even already within the

The Starting Point for the Doctrine of the Church

Scriptures of the New Testament themselves. Not only the content of the apostolic doctrine and ordering of the church, but also the historical act of apostolic teaching and leading is of fundamental and obligatory significance for the church of all times. However, it was unavoidable that, in defending against various dangers to the doctrine and order of the church in the various regions of the church, different forms of church life arose. These differences in no way needed to have churchdividing significance. Nevertheless, with the development of differences, it became ever more difficult to recognize the identity of the one church and to maintain unity. In other words: it became increasingly difficult to maintain the boundaries that lie between unity in diversity and the dissolution into irreconcilable differences. The difficulty in clarifying this central ecumenical issue, on the one hand, is that already in the apostolic traditions that are contained directly and indirectly within the New Testament Scriptures there exist considerable differences in the doctrine and ordering of the church—and, on the other hand, that adhering to apostolic doctrine and order takes place not merely in the recitation of received apostolic teachings and instructions but in acts of further teaching and ordering in following the apostles. The question that is set before us here is inescapable for any ecclesiology. Dogmatic teaching concerning the church cannot content itself with the apostolic presentation of the form of a particular Church that is realized within history, of which one is a member. Even if every Church appeals to the apostolic basis on which it stands, the apostolic legitimation of the historically conditioned form of liturgy, dogma, piety, and church law is to be distinguished from dogmatic reflection on the basic space that exists for the various possibilities of the form of the church within the framework of church unity. In view of the difficulties that have been sketched, an attempt will be made here to take a step back behind the various forms of the church in order to inquire about the basic structures of church life that are recognizable within these various forms. We shall therefore distinguish between abiding, foundational structures and mutable historical forms of the church. The basic structures are at work within the historical forms of the church, but they are not always immediately apparent within them. Often they are obscured by one-sidedness. The question of these structures—in contrast to the description of the change in church forms that has become historically apparent—has to do with abiding structures, which again and again make themselves apparent with a certain determinative force. They are not consciously present in all churches with the same clarity. But they nevertheless press to expression, even where a one-sided, established, historical form of the church makes these expressions difficult, or at least hinders them. If we inquire about the unity of the church, the Scriptures of the New Testament do not point us to a single form of church life, nor to a common conception of the church, nor to the same formulas and confessions, nor to the same order of worship and of

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offices, but instead to faith in the same Christ who presently acts in the power of the Holy Spirit through word and sacrament. They thus point to the basic structures of church life that are determined by this center. In this sense, they may serve as an aid in understanding the diversity of forms and in keeping us from being content with using the historically developed form of one’s own Church in the dogmatic definition of the church. Even if every Church appeals to the apostolic basis upon which it stands, the apostolic legitimation of the historically conditioned forms of liturgy, dogma, piety, and church law is to be distinguished from the dogmatic reflection on the basic space that exists for the various possibilities for the form of the church.[v] This distinction allows—and this is important for the ecumenical issue here—the identity of the church to be recognized within the spatial and temporal diversity of its historical existence. The distinctions among the various theological statements, namely, the responses of faith to the gospel, already have to do with basic ecclesiological structures, for prayer and worship, witness and doctrine, as well as confession as the concentration of these statements, are located fundamentally in the center of church life, in the worship assembly. In the doctrine of the church, reflection on the theological structures of these statements is to broaden out to the entire life of the church, as well as to its service, its suffering, its growth, and its preservation in space and time. Just as the gospel of God’s acts of salvation in Jesus Christ provides the basis for the analysis of theological statements, so this act of salvation—its assurance and claim in the gospel, the participation in it through baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the manifold gifts of the Spirit—is also the presupposition for a doctrine of the basic structures of the church that may work themselves out in very many historical forms of the life of the church. Here, too, one must proceed from the texts of the New Testament, to which belong an abiding binding significance not only for the content of the Christian message, but also for the service of believers to one another, and for the advance of the church into ever-new regions of the world. This advance remains ever one and the same in its origin and direction, despite all change in historical situations. What is intended here may be briefly elaborated in this introduction by reference to three groups of examples. Each of the structures presented here may for now be characterized by a single thematic statement: (a) Basic salvation-historical ecclesiological structures (1) The church is the people of God that has been called out from the world through the message of the gospel. (2) The church is the people of God that has been sent forth in order to direct the message of Christ into the world. (3) The worshiping assembly of believers is—through the presence of the selfgiving Christ and the work of the witnessing Holy Spirit—the center of this twofold

The Starting Point for the Doctrine of the Church

movement of the church that has been called out of the world and sent into the world. (4) From its basis as the worshiping assembly, the church is the growing, new creation in Christ and in the Holy Spirit. (5) On the basis of the appearances of the risen one, the church goes forth in the midst of this world to meet the coming Christ and the completion of the new creation. All these examples have to do with the historical-eschatological salvific action of God upon the church and, through the church, upon the world. In a more differentiated presentation, within these basic structures of salvation-history, one would have to address, e. g., the connection between the church and Israel, as well as their relationship to the original creaturely purpose of the human being. (b) Basic ecclesiological structures of servant ministry (1) The church is the community of believers who confess their sins to God and ask for forgiveness in Jesus’ name. (2) The church encounters believers as the instrument through which God forgives them, renews them, and edifies them. (3) The church is God’s instrument in the unity of diverse ministerial offices and charismata, or more precisely, in the unity of diverse charismata, which in part are bestowed through a special commissioning, and in part emerge spontaneously. (4) Amid all the differences of the ministerial offices and the freely emerging charismata, every member of the church has been appointed by God for service to the other members. (5) All members of the community confess that the fruit of their service are brought about by God and do not come from themselves. All these examples have to do with personal relations. Already in the preceding discussion concerning the basic structures of theological statements, emphasis was given to various personal relationships that come to expression between the human being and the God whom they address, as well as between the human being and the other human beings whom they address. The element of personal relationship is even more in view when we direct our attention to the entire life of the church. Beyond the examples that have been named, we must also discuss, e. g., the question of the ranking of spontaneous charismata and the relationship between them and the church’s ministerial offices. In all these matters, it is to be noted that every member of the church stands in a manifold, indeed seemingly contradictory relationship to God, for, together with all the members of the church, individual members of the church confess their sins to God. They receive God’s forgiveness through the absolution proclaimed by the church. In the service of God, the members of the church pronounce God’s forgiveness. In their commission by God, their word is God’s word, their forgiveness, God’s forgiveness. It is thus not they who speak but God who speaks through them to the church.

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(c) Basic structures of universal unity (1) Because Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is bodily present and gives himself in the worship of every local church, the universal church does not merely come into being by adding up all the local churches. It is already a reality in each local church. (2) The unity of the universal church does not consist in the sameness of confessional formulas, of the same ordering of worship and church offices, but rather in the fact that every local church serves the one Lord of the church with its confession and in its ordering of worship and offices. (3) The universal unity of the diversity of local churches is to be tested and established through their mutual recognition of one another’s confessions, worship services, and offices. (4) The unity of local churches comes to expression in their maintenance of community through letters and visits, in joint worship services and consultations, through mutual consolation, exhortation, warning, and acts of assistance. (5) The structure of the ministry of Simon Peter and his relationship to the other apostles, especially to James and to Paul is of fundamental importance for the leadership of the universal church, as is the structure of the “Apostolic Council.”4 These theses, too, point only to examples from a great diversity of basic structures. For example, the structures of preservation of the universal church, which gained importance with increasing temporal distance from the generation of the apostles and their unmediated followers, requires special discussion. It is otherwise to be noted that with each of the three groups of structures described above, all of the structures permeate one another. In all of the above, we are not dealing merely with sociological principles of human community in their contemporaneity and in the succession of generations, but instead with the effects of believers being saved and being called together by God. Just as the structures of the theological statements cannot be understood in their linguistic uniqueness if the divine act of salvation is left out of view, the same applies to the basic structures of the church in their sociological uniqueness, for they have their basis in God’s unique, historical act of salvation in Jesus’ death and resurrection, and in the initial outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost. Their continuation lies in the steadfastness of this saving grace of God. One must thus reflect on the particularity in which God the Father, through the Son and the Holy Spirit, and these in turn in their relation to the Father, accomplish their saving action upon humanity. Since this action is directed to eternal life and thus to participation in the eternal communion of the divine life of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, not only do God’s acts of salvation come into effect within the basic

4 [Cf. Acts 15. –Ed.]

The Starting Point for the Doctrine of the Church

structures of the church but so do the eternal, inner-trinitarian relations of the divine life. If we understand the three preceding groups of theses in this trinitarian context, it becomes evident that the church lives in a great richness of relations that can only be suggested here in the preceding theses. Of course, there is usually only partial awareness of these basic structures of the church. One might compare the life of the church in this respect with the life of the human being. The human being cannot live without breathing. But the human does not need to know about the function of the lungs and the circulatory system in order to live. The church cannot live without faith in Christ. But for its life it does not require an encompassing, reflective knowledge of the functions in which its life is carried out. Just as individuals first become aware of some of their organs when they become diseased and cause pain, so the church first becomes aware of some of the structures of its life when they are hindered in their dynamic effect, and the life of the church thereby suffers. Since the threats to the church in the course of its history take place in entirely different ways, the forms of its defense differ considerably. The church’s reflection concerning itself is then always pushed in a certain direction. Its self-understanding then quite easily lands in a one-sided settled definition. The danger then arises that things that are basically connected to each other come to be divided, and false alternatives arise, as, e. g., between the church as a community of faith or a church as a community of love, between the church of love or the church of law, between a personalistic understanding of the church or a collectivistic understanding, between the movement of the church away from the world and its movement into the world, between a christological understanding of the church and a pneumatological understanding of it, between a church of the word and a church of the sacraments, and so on. Of particular relevance today is the danger of an independent conception of the caring commitment of the church to the world in contrast to its renunciation of the world. The two belong inseparably together. It is the task of ecclesiology to bring as much awareness as possible to the basic structures of the church in their distinctiveness and coherence. Just as the structures of theological statements belong inseparably together, despite their differences, and a one-sided, or even isolated emphasis upon one of them would lead to the diminishing of a comprehensive expression of theological statements as a whole, so also the basic structures of the church belong together. A disturbance to this overall arrangement would work itself out negatively for the whole of church life. Certainly, in the history of the church, as in the past, so also in the future, there may be one-sided accentuations in certain historical confrontations, which will have their effects on the life of the church. The doctrine of the basic structures of the church should display the breadth and the boundaries within which the church may live in identity with the apostolic church and the earliest period of the church,

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despite the multiplicity of the forms of the church that historically have developed and that are still developing. Within the framework of these “basic features” of an ecumenical dogmatics, we have to restrict ourselves to the most significant, basic ecclesiological structures and to the personal relationships that are contained within them.

1. The Origin of the Church The church is not the work of human beings, but rather it is God’s work. It did not arise because human beings banded together, but rather God called them together and united them. Thus the church is based, e. g., not on a covenant that believers have established with one another—as some supposed in the time of the Enlightenment in analogy to the contractual conception of the state—but instead in the new covenant that God established in Jesus Christ. In whatever manner the church is regarded and treated within the framework of secular, public law, it is no corporation constituted by human beings. Just as the origin of the church is the work of God, so too is its preservation. Whatever believers do to preserve and spread the church, all such human activity has its foundation in the preserving and edifying action of God. These basic statements concerning God as the founder of the church are recognized today by all churches. At the turn of the century, this consensus was still not self-evident.5 Through which acts did God create the church? (a) The first answer voiced in all churches is: by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Thus, in the Apostles’ Creed and in the Constantinopolitan Creed, the church is named immediately after faith in the Holy Spirit, and, in the liturgies, Pentecost is celebrated as the birth of the church. According to the Lukan account, the disciples and the women were indeed gathered in faith and in prayer prior to Pentecost. But they became public witnesses to “the mighty deeds of God” through the outpouring of the Spirit. That the church received its life through God’s Spirit is attested to in many other New Testament texts. (b) If the church has its origin in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who awakens human beings to the joint praise of the mighty deeds of God, then it has its basis in these very deeds of God. Thus all churches confess Jesus Christ as the basis upon which God has built and continues to build the church through the Holy Spirit. “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3.11). If in some New Testament passages, the apostles are

5 Cf. Olof Linton, Das Problem der Urkirche in der westeuropäischen Forschung [The Problem of the Early Church in West-European Research] (Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksall, 1932).

The Origin of the Church

named as the foundation of the church (Mt. 16.18; Eph. 2.20; Rev. 21.14), no other foundation alongside Jesus Christ is thus intended. The apostles instead are the foundation of the church as the called eyewitnesses to Jesus Christ, who is the one foundation of the church. In what way is Jesus the foundation of the church? It is quite striking that the earthly Jesus did not gather as the true Israel, the holy remnant, those human beings who had faithfully accepted his message about the dawning kingdom of God and had been healed by him, and then order and lead them as a separated community. It was only the small group of the Twelve that he called and set apart to follow him, to be with him, and to learn from him. To this group there were added other men and women who accompanied him. But the many others, who awaited the reign of God on the basis of his message and his healings, he allowed to remain in their previous locations. Nor did he commission his disciples to gather them together. Jesus added no new special grouping to the many inner-Jewish groupings that already existed at that time. He understood himself as having been sent to the whole of Israel. The choosing of the Twelve also bore Jesus’ claim upon the twelve tribes of Israel. He turned to Gentiles only rarely, and only on the basis of the insistence of their faith. It is indeed the case that Jesus announced the future gathering of the dispersed, namely, the great banquet in the kingdom of God. Then the elect from Israel and from the Gentiles would be gathered together with Abraham and the patriarchs, and he himself would recline with all of them at one table. Through the judgment by the Son of Man, the future people of God would be separated out and gathered together. In place of the boundary between Israel and the Gentiles there would then be a boundary between those accepted and rejected by the Son of Man from among all peoples. And the locally limited presence of the earthly Jesus would be replaced by the universal presence of the Son of Man in his glory, transcending the spatial-temporal limitations of the world. The earthly Jesus did not undertake the comprehensive separating and gathering. Only the future Son of Man would carry it out in his glory. Furthermore, Jesus’ following, both narrower and broader, fell apart with his arrest and execution. After his death, Jesus’ followers were like dead bones, lying scattered upon a field (Ezek. 37). On the basis of the appearances of the risen one, it was revealed that God exalted the earthly Jesus and installed him as Christ and Lord—not only as Lord of Israel but as Lord of all peoples. If the earthly Jesus on his pilgrimage could be spatially surrounded by only a few people, the exalted one has been removed from the limitations of an earthly form of existence and is present in all places where human beings are gathered in his name and break bread in remembrance of his death. If he received the Holy Spirit as the earthly one, as the exalted one he sends forth the Spirit to awaken human beings to faith and to unite them for the praise of the mighty deeds of God. In this way the church has its foundation in Jesus Christ.

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The appearances of the risen one took place in the presence of those who—with the exception of Paul—had already been his followers earlier. The risen one did not appear to all Israel, not to mention all of humanity, as he had announced when he spoke of the coming of the Son of Man. And yet he encountered the women and the disciples with a glory, an irresistibility, and a finality that gave his appearances the character of the parousia. He was recognized as the one whom he announced in advance as the coming Son of Man. While the kingdom of God had dawned already in the work of the earthly Jesus, through the reigning of the exalted one and through the re-creating work of the Holy Spirit it became more pressing, nearer, and more fully present. Yet even still, the reign of God is hidden beneath the dominion of the powerful of this world. The church still prays, “Your kingdom come!” Did the earthly Jesus intend to establish the church? This much-discussed question cannot be decided because of the very infrequent passages in which the word ἐκκλησία [ekklēsia = “church”] appears in the words of Jesus in the Gospels (Mt. 16.18 and 18.17). There is no dispute that Jesus’ proclamation was oriented toward community in the kingdom of God. It is also clear that an existential waiting for the coming kingdom of God does not exclude statements concerning its presence, the near expectation of it, and the later expectation and lack of knowledge of the time of its coming (cf. above 478ff.). Much speaks in favor of concluding that Jesus reckoned with a temporal distance between his death and the consummation of the reign of God. But his focus was not directed to this intervening period as such. It was directed instead to the coming of the reign of God. The church serves this reign by proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord. Consequently, Jesus is the foundation of the church both as the earthly one and as the exalted one. (c) The coming Messiah and the outpouring of the Spirit had been promised to the people of Israel. The church of Jesus proclaims the coming of Jesus and the event of Pentecost as the fulfillment of these prophetic announcements. Since they long before had been given to Israel, and first were fulfilled with Israel, the election of this people of Israel also belongs to the founding of the church. When the Jews in their majority rejected Jesus as the Christ and those witnesses to him that had been awakened by the Holy Spirit, the message of Christ went forth to the Gentiles and the outpouring of the Spirit was granted to them. There thus arose a church of Jews and Gentiles. But it was not only the members of the church from Judaism who understood Abraham to be their father. It was also those who came from among the Gentiles who so understood him (cf. Rom. 4.11) and who regarded themselves as “children of Abraham” (Gal. 3.7, 29). How is the church related to the Old Testament people of God? This question can be answered in no other way than in terms of the relationship between the old and new covenants, the law of the Old Testament and the gospel of the New Testament. Having already discussed both the unity of the Scriptures of the Old Testament and the post-Easter message of Christ and the difference between them in the treatment

The Origin of the Church

of the doctrine of Jesus’ resurrection, we may summarize the matter here briefly (see above 569ff.): (1) According to many witnesses in the New Testament, the church is identical with the covenant people of the Old Testament, elected by God. The church is “the Israel of God” (Gal. 6.16). It is the people, whom God first addressed: “you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples… you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exod. 19.5–6; cf. 1 Pet. 2.9). The church has the same root and the same trunk as Israel. The Gentiles who believe in Jesus Christ have been ingrafted as alien branches into the same trunk. Israel and the church are one and the same tree (Rom. 11.17–24). The Old Testament people of God and the church are one and the same flock, one and the same bride of God, one and the same people of God. Thus both the New Testament people of God and the Old Testament people of God may be designated by the same word, ekklesia (cf. Acts 7.38). The church lives on the basis of the election by which God created Israel. It lives by the fulfillment of the promises that God has given to Israel. It lives by faith in Christ in communion with the patriarchs, the prophets, and all the faithful of the people of the old covenant. It maintains the Old Testament Scriptures as the word of God that remains valid for it as the church. These Scriptures have been disclosed to it as a witness to Christ. (2) At the same time, the church differs from the Old Testament people of God. It is the people of the new covenant, which God established in Jesus’ death in place of the old covenant that had been broken by Israel. The same Christ who had been announced in the Old Testament as the coming one, hidden behind many broken clouds, and behind God’s challenging of the people of Israel through law and judgment, is proclaimed by the church as the one who has come and who is bodily present. The same Spirit who had been promised to the Old Testament covenant people of God as the power of God which creates anew, now has been poured out. The dead bones of the Old Testament people of God who had been judged now have been made alive to the praise of God. Now the Old Testament shadows and signs of the coming Christ and his coming reign have been done away with: the sacrificial cult, the Jerusalem temple, the earthly boundaries of the Promised Land, and the political-national expectation of the Messiah. The church is now the new people of God from among Jews and Gentiles that everywhere on earth gives thanks to God for the once-and-for-all offering of Jesus Christ, that confesses Jesus as the universal, eternal Lord, and which thus is the new temple of God. (3) In contrast, the identity of the Jews who rejected Jesus Christ with that of Old Testament Israel is called into question by many statements of the New Testament. Paul thus renders the judgment: “For not all Israelites truly belong to Israel, and not all of Abraham’s children are his true descendants” (Rom. 9.6–7). Not all the bodily descendants of Abraham, but only “the children of the promise are

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counted as descendants” (Rom. 9.8). It is not the entire covenant people of the Old Testament who will be saved, but only “a remnant” (Rom. 9.27; 11.5), namely, the Jews who confess Jesus as Christ. The others, however, “have stumbled on Jesus the stumbling stone,” because they seek righteousness on the basis of works of the law and not by faith in Jesus (Rom. 9.31–33 [S]). They have “stumbled” (Rom. 11.11); through their misstep (Rom. 11.11), their “sin” (Rom. 11.12 [S]), their disobedience (Rom. 11.30–33), they have become God’s enemies (Rom. 11.28), and a “hardening” (Rom. 11.25; cf. 11.7–8) and a “rejection” (Rom. 11.15) have come upon them. They are branches that have been “broken off ” from the “precious olive tree,” namely, from the Old Testament people of God (Rom. 11.17–24). The sharpest denial that the Jews are Abraham’s children appears in the Gospel of John. The divine preference for the Jews above all other peoples is not mentioned much in this Gospel. Instead, the Jews are characterized as the embodiment of the “world,” i. e., as humanity in its rebellion against God. Just as the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple by the Babylonians was announced by the prophets of the Old Testament as a judgment that came forth from God because of Judah’s turning away from him, so now in the repeated destruction of the temple and city and the repeated exile of its inhabitants by the Romans, God’s judgment appeared on those who rejected the Messiah whom God had sent. (4) It is especially Paul who bears witness that God holds fast to the covenant he made with Israel and to the promises that he has given to them (Rom. 9.1–5; 11.29), even if, in their rejection of Jesus, Jews have turned away from the covenant and the promises. Even if they, through their refusal to believe in Jesus as the Christ, are no true descendants of Abraham, but instead lopped-off branches, Paul maintains that “they are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, … to them belong the patriarchs” (Rom. 9.4–5). “They are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors” (Rom. 11.28). God has not disowned his people (Rom. 11.1–6) and has not hardened and rejected them forever. Paul announced their “reacceptance” (Rom. 11.15), their “re-implantation” (Rom. 11.23–24), their future salvation. Their hardening will endure only “until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11.25–26). In the context of the Pauline proclamation, this “mystery” can mean nothing other than that at that time all Jews will recognize Jesus as the Christ. The church stands closer to the synagogue of the Jews than to any other religion. Both of them have the same origin, the same promises, the same Old Testament Scriptures. At the same time, however, synagogue and church are deeply divided. The church proclaims Jesus as the Messiah who is promised in the Old Testament Scriptures. The synagogue denies him as the fulfillment of this promise and waits for the still-absent Messiah. Of course the church also awaits the coming Christ, but it awaits Jesus as the coming one who already has come and who has been established by God as Messiah. It regards the time between Jesus’ death and his future return

The Origin of the Church

as already enclosed within Jesus’ reign. This difference is so profound that the Sanhedrin persecuted, arrested, and put to death not only Jesus but also those who proclaimed Jesus as the Christ, and it sought them out in the communities of faith that had arisen in Jerusalem and in the Diaspora. Admittedly, the persecution did not remain one-sided. When Christendom had become strong and had become the imperial church (Reichskirche), it persecuted Jews many times in many lands with no less severity. Christians cannot in any way excuse the persecution of Jews by referring to the persecution of Christians at the beginning of the history of the church. Jews acted in the assumption of obedience to the law of the Old Testament. But to confess Christ means to follow him who allowed himself, without resistance, to be arrested, condemned, tortured, and put to death. Paul had warned the Gentile Christians that they could again be lopped off from the trunk of the people of God, just as had taken place with unbelieving Jews (Rom. 11.17–22). In view of the mass extermination of Jews in the twentieth century, this threat bears an unheardof urgency, even if it was not a Church but instead the anti-Christian, nationalsocialistic rule, under which the churches also had to suffer, that organized this crime. The church, however, did not sufficiently reflect on the unique and abiding setting-apart of the Jews as a witness to God’s faithfulness. Only in the shame of the terrible crime perpetrated against this people did it become fully conscious of this reality. Not only for the sake of love toward one’s neighbor, but also if it had listened to the words of Paul concerning the common origin and the common future of church and synagogue, the church would have had to step in much more strongly for persecuted Jews than what actually took place. However, it will not be possible to atone for this guilt by understanding God’s plan of salvation as if the path to God for the Jewish people leads past Jesus. The confession of Jesus that Peter set forth before the Sanhedrin remains in force for all times and for all peoples: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4.12). (d) Was the church there already before the creation of the world? The Shepherd of Hermas pointed in this direction already in the earliest post-apostolic period. The church “was created first, before anything else. That is why she is elderly, and for her sake the world was created.”6 If we understand the church as the community of human beings who praise God in the midst of the universe, one cannot speak of a pre-existent church before the creation of the universe. It is indeed the case, however, that already before its genesis the church was the goal of the Creator’s decree of love. “Before the creation of the world” God elected the church in Christ for holiness and predestined it to be his children to the praise of the glory of his

6 The Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 2.4 [8]; cf. 2 Clement, 14.1–3. [Holmes, 467–469; cf. Osiek, The Shepherd of Hermas, 58–59; cf. Holmes, 154–157. –Ed.]

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grace (Eph. 1.4–6). From the very beginning, the creative action of God was aimed toward the community of human beings, who, in love for him, love one another after he had first loved them. If the question of the genesis of the church is to be answered, the following must be seen together as a whole. From the very beginning, the goal of the divine act of creation was the community of the brothers and sisters of his Son. God retained this goal even after human beings had fallen short of it. In the election of Israel, in the sending of his Son, and in the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, he grounded the church as an assembly for the eternal communion in the kingdom of God. None of the above-given answers to the question may be left out. A Church may very much demonstrate “pneumatic” [“spiritual”] phenomena, but if it does not confess the crucified and risen Jesus as its foundation, it has only the appearance of a Church. A Church may speak very much of Jesus Christ, but if it has departed from the Old Testament word of God and has ceased to believe the promise that remains for unbelieving Jews and ceased to hear it as a warning, it has then the mere appearance of a Church. And even if a Church recognizes Jesus as the Redeemer, but not God as the Creator of the human being in his image, it would not be the church. In the founding and preserving of the church, the deeds of God the Creator, the Redeemer, and the New Creator are concentrated.

2. The People of God Called Out from the World In the doctrine of the reign of the exalted Jesus, we have pointed out that this reigning “at the right hand of God” takes place as a calling and a sending (cf. above 586). The church exists in this twofold movement of being called and being sent by God. The “world” out of which God calls the church and into which he sends it is the humanity that with guilt has turned away from him, a world that has come under the dominion of sin and the powers of corruption, and which cannot free itself from this enslavement. It lives by being tossed back and forth between the images it makes of God and the disintegration of those same images, between utopian projections of the world’s future and the destruction of those hopes, between encompassing interpretations of history and the experience of their meaninglessness. It lives in the community between husband and wife, parents and children, peoples and races, which, however, again and again turns into enmity. Likewise, the non-human environment that has been entrusted to humanity, and which superabundantly offers what it needs for life, is being destroyed more and more by human beings. Through the gospel, God calls human beings out of this world that has fallen under judgment and opens up for them the entrance into freedom from their enslavement by setting aside that which separates them from God. Whoever in faith accepts the message of the gospel and receives baptism is transferred into the ownership of Jesus Christ, delivered into his death, given a share in his life,

The People of God Called Out from the World

and renewed through the Holy Spirit. Those who believe are given everything that is promised and offered through the proclamation of the gospel: salvation, justification, vivification, sanctification, and acceptance as the children of God (cf. above 652ff.). Called out of the world, the one who believes thus receives a new origin in Christ through the Holy Spirit, who is not of this world. In the decision for faith in Jesus Christ, and thus by turning away from the world that comes with it, the human being is an individual. No one can take this decision from that person. When, however, individuals subject themselves to the reign of Christ, they do not remain an individual but instead become a member of the community of believers, the church. Through its origin, the church is distinguished from all other formations of human community. It finds its basis in God calling all its members through the gospel, in the Holy Spirit awakening them to faith and gathering them, and in their jointly confessing Jesus, the crucified and risen one, as Lord. This community consists not only in the vertical identity of having its origin in God’s call and work but also in the horizontal identity of its members being with one another and for one another. Thus, e. g., 1 John instills in ever fresh variations: “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (1 Jn. 4.20). The church can be described as the new family of God, whose members are connected straight across physical family ties. In the church there is also a paternity and maternity of those who have no children of their own. Paul thus understood himself, e. g., as the father of the believers whom he had engendered and nourished by the gospel. In the church there is a brotherhood and sisterhood of those who do not have siblings, or who have been shunned by them because of their faith. This new family of God has its basis in the love of God. Through his delivering up his Son, God made human beings who were hostile to him to be his children. The Son made them his siblings and friends. And the Holy Spirit placed within their heart the cry, “Abba, dear Father,” and the confession of the Lord. Through the gospel, God thus creates a new “race,” a new “people” [“Volk”]. It is not founded on a relationship of blood and the possession of an earthly homeland but in Jesus’ death and resurrection.[vi] Its existence lies in the joint confession of Christ that is worked by the Holy Spirit. This people of God extends straight across and through divided peoples, who battle one another. It is the community of those who have been called out of this conflict to reconciliation and love for one another. The riches of the testimonies to faith emerge in many languages and through the use of many concepts and rituals. The rivalries of the peoples and their history find their abolition in the people of God—that is true of even the most profound conflict, namely, the one between Israel and the other peoples. In that believing Jews and believing Gentiles have been united in the church to be one people, to be the true Israel, the chasm between the covenant people of the Old Testament and

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the Gentiles has been overcome. Peace between them has been established through Jesus Christ: “For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity” (Eph. 2.14–15). From now on, “there is no longer Jew or Greek” (Gal. 3.28), for “you are all children of God by faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 3.26 [S]). Is the church, however, no longer in the world if it follows the call of God? Here it is to be kept in mind that the world is not only the realm of the dominion of sin and the powers of corruption. It is before all else God’s creation, which, despite its insurrection and its coming under judgment, God patiently preserves and governs. Beyond and through the sinful disfiguration of the creation, faith recognizes the benefits God grants to sinful humanity through his self-witnessing as Creator, through his commandments as its Preserver, through his ordering of secular justice and just political governance. The call to come out of the world therefore includes within itself a call out of the misrecognition of God to the recognition of the Creator and Preserver, and the recognition of the time of his patience that he has granted. And yet, the call has to do with much more than this. Called out of the world, the church is to live as a people who are “aliens and sojourners” (1 Pet. 2.11 [L]). The members of the people of God, even if they are in the world, are no longer of the world (Jn. 17.11, 14). Their “citizenship” is in heaven (Phil. 3.20). “Here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Heb. 13.14). As the citizens of a new homeland, they are sojourning to meet the fulfillment of the reign of God, the resurrection, the new earth and the new heaven. Along this way, the exhortation applies: “Love not the world” (1 Jn. 2.15 [L]). Those who believe possess the things of this world in such a way that they no longer possess them. Paul therefore urges, for the present time, that “those who purchase [should do so] as if they could not possess [what they purchase], and those who lay claim to the world for themselves, as if they had nothing from it, for the nature of the world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7.30–31 [S]). The new creation is to determine the relationship of the church to the world. The call out of the world goes forth not only at the beginning of faith and at the formation of the church. It goes forth again and again anew to every Christian and every church body. Even though believers have been transferred into the ownership of Christ through baptism, they are still threatened by the temptation of sin and the danger of becoming its slave again. So, too, the church remains in danger of becoming weary in its sojourning out of the world, of forgetting its radical otherness, and of conforming to the world. The New Testament letters are full of warnings against relapsing into the nature of the world, warnings which are directed not merely at individual Christians but also at congregations.

The Prophetic, Priestly, and Royal People of God Sent into the World

Becoming weary in the sojourning out of this world entails the church again being drawn into the differences and conflicts of this world. The controversy between Jewish-Christian and Gentile-Christian communities in the apostolic period was already concerned with the consequences of the call out of the previous reality and with the endangerment of church unity. The temptation to fresh accommodation to the world out of which the church has been called has emerged in many forms in the history of the church. Not infrequently, some churches have succumbed to it. Such dark events arise, e. g., by equating the boundaries of the church with the boundaries of a people or an empire. They arise as well when, within a congregation, the differences between rich and poor, those ruling and those serving, or other differences of standing and calling are allowed to play a determinative role. An especially glaring denial of obedience in view of the calling of the church and the denial of its origin—which is not of this world—takes place where belonging to the church is made dependent upon belonging to a certain race. All of this has to do with church divisions. Such division is not in every instance an external breaking-away. There are also divisions within the dogmatic and institutional-legal unity of the church, which likewise are incompatible with the sending of the church.

3. The Prophetic, Priestly, and Royal People of God Sent into the World God has called the church out of the world in order to send it into the world as his conscripts. He has given his people an origin that is not of the world in order to send them into the world from this origin. He did not free the members of the people of God from their bonds in order that they might withdraw and enjoy their redemption in isolation, but instead that they, as liberated Christians, might go forth into the world and proclaim Christ to the world in word and deed. This sending of the church into the world belongs to its very nature and existence. Its mission is not limited to love for believers but goes well beyond it. The words of the Sermon on the Mount apply to the church: “You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth.” You are “the city set on a hill” that cannot remain hidden (Mt. 5.13–14). The church is the light as a witness to Jesus Christ, who has been sent by God into the world as its light. Just as Jesus Christ took to himself sinners and the sick in order to serve them, the church should also thus serve them. Just as Jesus Christ has given himself for the world, so those who are his own should give themselves by participating in his suffering. The love of God the Father for the world wants to be effective in the love of the church for the world. Since the sixteenth century it has been customary to summarize the work of Jesus Christ in the doctrine of the threefold office (see above 621ff.). The church has been sent into the world by the Lord, who governs the world and intercedes for it in the threefold office of prophet, priest, and king. The church receives an

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image-bearing participation in this office through God’s Spirit. It is the prophetic people that praises the mighty deeds of God (Acts 2.16–18); “the royal priesthood…, in order that you may proclaim the mighty deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2.9 [S]). If in the old covenant individual persons were prophets, priests, or kings, who faced the people and one another, now the New Testament covenant people as a whole is a prophetic, priestly, and royal people. Everything that is to be said in the following chapter concerning the spiritual gift of New Testament prophecy and the church’s ministerial office stands within the reality of the Holy Spirit, who encompasses and carries all the members of the church. It is the Spirit who makes the entire church into prophetic witnesses and a royal priesthood. It is thus to be observed that in the Scriptures of the New Testament an individual member of the church is never characterized as a priest or king. Instead, the church—with its prophetic, priestly, and royal mission—is sent as a whole into the world. This mission is no demand of the law, nor is it merely a promise. It is a reality that has been given through the Holy Spirit. Through the servant ministry of the church in the world, the exalted Christ himself, as prophet, priest, and king, wills to be present in the world. It is self-evident that with this threefold description of the sending of the church not everything has been said about its mission, just as the concept of the threefold office of Christ is merely a concentration of a much richer variety of his actions. But the concept of the church’s threefold mission points from the outset to its origin in Christ and to both the continuity and difference between the Old Testament people of God and that of the New. (a) The church is the prophetic people that is sent to proclaim to all people the reign of the one who on the cross died for the world. The church thus serves the world in that it calls persons out from it into the realm of Jesus’ reign and that of the Holy Spirit. Everything that has been presented earlier concerning the proclamation of the gospel (see above 69ff. and 645ff.) belongs to the clarification of this prophetic mission. But just as the benefits of God given to the world as its Preserver—which are hidden beneath the disfigurements of sin and corruption—become evident for the church through the call of God out of the world, so the church’s prophetic sending into the world is not limited to proclaiming salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. The community of Jesus Christ, like the prophets of the Old Testament, must expose the world’s injustices, which are inflicted again and again upon the weak and disenfranchised. With a vision sharpened by the love of Christ, the church is also to look upon that which is hidden, what sorrow is inflicted upon others, and by the power of the Spirit it is to call it by its name, without consideration of the prevailing opinion. In prophetic authority, it is to expose all acts of disregard for human worth, to awaken consciences, and to point out the threatening results of the destruction of the human image. Above all, however, the church is to proclaim salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, for where this faith arises there will also arise

The Prophetic, Priestly, and Royal People of God Sent into the World

an awareness of the paradox of the divine preservation of the world and the coresponsibility of Christians for the preservation of the life of those who reject faith in Christ. (b) The church is the priestly people that has been sent to pass on the forgiveness and reconciliation that have been bestowed in Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross. Consequently, the community itself may not only approach God in boldness and trust but must also open the way for others through its liberating word, and lead the despairing to God. Wherever people are separated from God and from one another through their guilt, the church shall proclaim the joy of reconciliation and shall show those who are resigned to their alienation from God the open door to the kingdom of God. The church is to invite all human beings to join the eucharistic praise of the once-and-for-all accomplished atoning sacrifice. In calling upon Jesus’ decisive sacrifice, it enters into intercession for all people before God. Beyond all this, the priestly sending of the church consists in its members surrendering themselves to God entirely and presenting their life to God as a sacrifice of praise. Just as the prophetic ministry of the church is not limited to calling people to faith in Christ, so also its priestly ministry is not limited to inviting people to the Lord’s Supper and interceding in prayer for believers. The priestly ministry of the church obligates it as well, in obedience to the command of God, the Preserver of the world, to serve those who are disenfranchised, those who hunger, the sick and the dying, even when such persons do not accept the proclamation of the cross of Christ. In its intercessory wrestling for human beings, the church strives for peace between parties and peoples, and it seeks to mediate where hatred and division exist. Above all, however, the church’s servant ministry must be aimed at calling people to receive the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. (c) As the effect and the tool of the royal reign of Christ, the church is the royal people. If the kingship of the earthly Jesus already was a paradox, in that he did not allow himself to be proclaimed as a king but instead pointed away from himself to God the Father, the designation of the church as a royal people is also a paradox. Just as Jesus appeared without worldly power, so also the church, from its very origin, lacks worldly power. Its weapons are faith, the word, and prayer. In addition, it indeed has been announced that the members of the New Testament people of God shall judge and reign with Christ: “Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?” (1 Cor. 6.2). “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” (1 Cor. 6.3). “I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2.10; 3.11). “They will reign with Christ a thousand years” (Rev. 20.6). It is significant, however, that all these statements announce a future reigning. For the present time of the church, Jesus’ saying applies: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you” (Lk. 22.25–26). The royal authority of the church is placed under the call of discipleship to Jesus. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Mt. 5.5). Those who suffer with him will

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share in his glory. But already now they may be certain: “This is the victory that conquers the world, our faith” (1 Jn. 5.4). Just as the call of the church out of the world takes place anew again and again, so does its being sent into the world. It goes forth until the message of Christ has been brought to all peoples and until the end of world history. The church has been sent by God to struggle for those at a distance, so long as there still is time. The church is not allowed to stand still, to rest, to be silent. The mission is no accidental undertaking of the church but belongs to its essence. There are times, indeed, in which it is powerfully hindered in the carrying out of its assignment, in which its servant ministry is limited to its worship, and this itself is limited to a small space, or entirely prohibited, so that it finally consists only in petition and suffering. If, however, the sufferings of the church are the most impressive manifestation of the suffering Christ, a church that has become comfortable and contently looks backwards on its history presents a contradiction to that which it has to proclaim to the world. If the church refuses its service to the world, it finally ceases to be the people of God called out of the world. No matter how resolutely a church may have followed the call out of the world, it will become petrified if it does not continue to make new advances into the world. The church thus lives in a twofold movement: it lives as the people of God who are called out of the world, a people that through baptism has received a new origin in Jesus, who are liberated from the bonds of this world and the judgment into which the world has fallen. And at the same time, the church lives as the prophetic, priestly, royal people who are sent into the world, who are authorized by God to proclaim to the world the liberation that has taken place through Jesus Christ, and to intercede for the world. These two basic structures of the church belong inseparably together, just as Jesus’ withdrawal for prayer and his public ministry belonged together, and just as the post-Easter prayer and waiting together of the secluded disciples and the women belonged together with the beginning of the public proclamation that took place after the storm of the outpouring of the Spirit (Acts 1.13f.; 2). Only when the church lets itself be called out of the world again and again to the church’s origin will it have a liberating and healing effect on the world, and only when the church lets itself to be sent into the world to serve it will the church remain freed from the bonds of the world. But if the church does not let itself be called out of the world again and again to the church’s origin, which is not of this world, it ends up having nothing to say to the world that the world does not already know, and it merely becomes a loudspeaker for the world’s voices. It again becomes a part of humanity alienated from God, torn back and forth between utopia and hopelessness. In Western Christendom at the present time, this second danger is likely the greater one.

The Worship Assembly

4. The Worship Assembly As the people of God called out of the world and sent into the world, the church has the center of its life in the worship assembly. In it human beings are called out of the world through the gospel, and from it they are sent forth into the world. What takes place in this gathering? If we take our start with the New Testament Scriptures, we find in them important statements concerning the early Christian worship service. But they are incomplete and do not allow a reliable reconstruction of the entire course of the worship service. Many liturgical formulas have been discovered with the help of form-criticism, but their place in the course of the worship service for the most part cannot be determined. In any case, nowhere within the New Testament has there been handed down to us a complete order of worship. It is certain that worship services were celebrated in manifold forms and that orders of worship, in the sense of a more or less fixed liturgy, first belong to a later period. Without a doubt, there were considerable differences between the worship services of the Jewish-Christian congregations, which had been influenced by the temple and synagogue, and those of Gentile Christians, e. g., the ones that took place in Corinth, where an astonishing amount of freedom was maintained for the spontaneous contributions of the individual members of the congregation (cf. esp. 1 Cor. 14.26–31). Admittedly, the question remains open as to what extent these indicators may be extended to all the Gentile-Christian congregations. Significant differences thus appear, e. g., between the Christian psalms appearing at the opening of Luke’s Gospel, which emerged in connection with the Old Testament Psalter (Lk. 1.46–55 [the Magnificat]; Lk. 1.68–79 [the Benedictus]), and the Christ-hymn of Philippians (Phil. 2.6–11), as well as the Johannine Prologue (Jn. 1.1–18). If we leave out of consideration the participation of Jewish Christians in temple worship in the earliest period, it is highly likely that, as a rule, teaching, the breaking of the bread, and prayer were bound together in the Christian service of worship (Acts 2.42, 46; 20.7–12). The Pauline statements in First Corinthians correspond to these late Lukan summaries, in that the instructions in 1 Cor. 11–14 concerning the Lord’s Supper, the charismata, love, the contributions of the charismatics in the gathered congregation, and the reaction of those gathered are to be understood as representing one context and indeed as one exhortation to the proper celebration of the worship service, even if the course of the service is not described in detail. It is clear, however, that the bread was blessed and distributed at the beginning of the meal, and the wine at the end, and not, as later, the one immediately after the other. Furthermore, that which is characterized as “teaching” in Acts 2.42, is unfolded in First Corinthians in a multitude of types of faith-statement: teaching, revelation, speaking in tongues, and their interpretation (1 Cor. 14.26–33), words of wisdom, words of knowledge, prophetic speech, distinguishing the spirits, etc. (1 Cor. 12.8–11). It cannot be assumed that a service of the word and a service of the Lord’s Supper were joined together into a unity only later, as Justin’s First Apology attests to as the existing order in

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about the year 150.7 It may well have been, however, from the very beginning, that along with the assembly for the proclamation of the word, the breaking of bread, and prayer, other special assemblies took place, defined by the task of missionary proclamation, in addition to special baptismal services and prayer meetings. In the framework of these principal features of a dogmatics, we cannot and need not enter into the various hypotheses concerning the forms of the early Christian worship services. But in our reflections, we cannot be content to present and justify that form of worship that the Church to which we belong is accustomed to celebrating in its worship today. We must instead press on, by means of the diversity of the forms that may be hypothesized or that may be traced in history and in the present, to see the basic structures of the Christian worship service that are recognizable in the traditions of the New Testament, and which reappear, even in differing form and accentuation, in the orders of worship of most churches today. What already has been presented concerning the basic structures as they appear in gospel and exhortation, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the riches of the divine means of grace, as well as in the teaching concerning prayer, need not be repeated here.

(a) The Service of God to the Congregation[vii] In the Christian worship service there takes place the remembering of God’s mighty deeds and of the promises that God has given. This remembering refers to all of God’s acts: to the creation and preservation of the universe, to the election and guidance of Israel and the church, but, above all, to his act of salvation in the death and resurrection of Christ. It likewise refers to all the promises of God, above all to the promise of the parousia of Jesus Christ. This remembering takes place on the basis of the oral apostolic tradition and the Old Testament Scriptures, and later, above all, on the basis of the New Testament Scriptures: as doctrine and proclamation. In this remembering, expression is given to the claim and the assurance, the demand and the gift that are contained in the acts and promises of God for the gathered congregation. But, above all, it takes place in the assurance: Christ was given into death for you! He was raised for you! You are God’s children and Christ’s brothers and sisters! In this remembering of the act of God’s salvation, God himself is present and is saving. Through the proclamation of his act of salvation he gives salvation. The New Testament expression, “the gospel of Christ,” says not only that the gospel proclaims Christ but that it proceeds from him; and again, not only that it proceeded from him historically but that he is working as the present Lord through the gospel. As was explained earlier (649ff.), the gospel is God’s active word, “God’s power.” Thus it is not merely the message of God’s act of reconciliation on the cross, but rather through the gospel God makes us the reconciled ones. God’s gracious judgment is

7 Justin, First Apology, 67. [ACW, 56.71–72. –Ed.]

The Worship Assembly

at the same time God’s word that creates anew in the power of the Holy Spirit—a word that is simultaneously declarative and effective. In the remembering of Jesus’ Last Supper, the bread and the cup are blessed and distributed to the congregation to eat and to drink. With this action, too, the death of Christ is proclaimed. At the same time, there is reflection on Jesus’ promised, future feast that he will celebrate with his own in the kingdom. Jesus Christ is present in this meal of remembrance. He himself, the exalted one, invites the congregation to the table. He himself gives to it what his word of distribution says: his body and the new covenant in his blood. He himself, the Lord, is here at once as the Giver and the gift for the forgiveness of sins and for the new life. Giving himself, he takes the community into the new covenant. The remembrance of Jesus’ promise of the coming feast in the kingdom of God does not remain mere remembrance or expectation. The Lord, by giving himself to the congregation as the one who has been sacrificed, gives to it participation in his victory and his coming in glory. God thus serves the congregation through word and meal. Through both he makes it possible for us to participate now in Christ’s victory on the cross and in his parousia, and through the Holy Spirit he takes us again and again into his salvific action. On the basis of this present action of God, the Christian service of worship is decidedly not the service of human beings toward God, but rather it is the service of God toward human beings. God here gives the congregation a participation in that which Christ has accomplished for them. As the one who has been sacrificed on the cross, he is present in the worship service as the eternal high priest, who represents his own before God. (b) The Service of the Congregation toward God The service of the congregation consists above all in that it accepts this service by God and so receives his inexhaustible gift in a way that corresponds to the majesty of the divine giver. How does it receive the Lord “truly, rightly, and worthily” [wahrhaft würdig und recht]?8 In no other way than in the complete surrender of the individual to the one who gave himself for us and who gives himself to us again and again. This surrender takes place in our turning away from ourselves, repenting of our past sins, in the renunciation of self-chosen plans and ways and, at the same time, in the surrender to God, in clinging to his word of forgiveness, and partaking in the meal of the new covenant. For both of these—the turning away from ourselves and turning to him—we can also say: the service of the congregation in the presence of God is above all faith. Faith is not without repentance. At the same time, however,

8 [These are the traditional words that begin the Proper Preface in the Service of the Lord’s Supper. –Ed.]

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faith is certain of salvation, not because of our repentance but entirely because of God’s grace taking hold of us. This reception of grace in faith cannot remain silent. God has after all created humankind in his image and thus created the human being as his “Thou” who gives a response to him that corresponds to his address: The congregation thus serves God by confessing its sins. It confesses itself unworthy to receive the Lord in its midst. The congregation serves him further with the praise of his grace. It thanks him for all his mighty deeds, above all for the act of salvation in Jesus Christ, for his acts in the past and for his action now in the worship service itself. It thanks God for his act of salvation for us and for the whole world. The congregation serves God still further with intercessions in the name of Jesus for the church and for the world. Praying to God in the name of Jesus means that while we pray we hold up to God the sacrifice that Jesus offered on Golgotha, and we trust that God hears such prayer. In its service, however, the congregation does not content itself with the thanksgiving for the historical act of salvation and the prayer for the further acts of salvation, but rather, on the basis of these acts, the congregation glorifies God as the one who he is from eternity unto eternity. In doxology the congregation glorifies the eternal sameness of the divine being and essence in which the truth of the promises and the steadfastness of his action are grounded. All of these responses and others as well, such as those that come to expression in acclamations, hymns, and testimonies of one’s personal experience of salvation, are concentrated in the confession of faith. In the creed, in the knowledge of one’s own sin, praise, adoration, and public witness are concentrated. In the multiplicity of these responses, the church expresses the truth that it lives solely by the grace of God. (c) God’s Action through the Service of the Worship Assembly How are God’s service to the congregation and the service of the congregation in the presence of God related to one another in the Christian worship service? Is it possible to distinguish between them at all? God’s service to the congregation takes place through the service of human beings. God speaks to and acts upon the congregation by means of human speaking and acting. Not merely the response of praise and prayer but also the proclamation and the thanksgiving over the bread and cup take place by the members of the congregation. Here again the congregation’s service in the presence of God in praise, worship, and confession is at the same time God’s action. This service is not only a response to God’s action but is effected by God’s action, for it is the sacrifice of praise that God prepares for himself through the Holy Spirit. God’s service to the congregation and the service of the congregation in the presence of God not only belong together, but they interpenetrate one another in a single spiritual event.

The Worship Assembly

Thus the sequence of “God’s service” and “the congregation’s service” cannot be understood as the sequence of words and actions in the arrangement of the worship service. Nor does this distinction mean that God’s service and the congregation’s service can be neatly assigned to different parts of the worship service. But certainly, this distinction and this sequence of God’s service and the congregation’s service mark an irreversible inner order of the worship service, a basic structure which corresponds at the same time to the order of salvation history on which Christian worship is based and in which it exists. Prior to the worship service of the church, God’s act of salvation took place in Christ: the sending of the Son into the flesh, the surrender of Jesus on the cross, and the proclamation of Jesus’ victory of the cross in his resurrection from the grave. Prior to the worship service of the church there was Jesus’ commission to remember him and to proclaim him to the world. This order in salvation history, on which the worship service is based, is at the same time the inner order which needs to occur in the Christian worship service. All human action through which God wants here to serve the congregation is once and for all determined by God’s historical act of salvation and the mission and promise of the Lord that are connected to it. The spiritual spontaneity of the witnesses, through whom God acts in the congregation and upon its surrounding world, has only to serve the realization of the historical mission that Christ has given and which has been handed down to us by the apostles. It is, after all, the nature of the Holy Spirit that he “does not speak of himself ” (Jn. 16.13), but “reminds” us of all that Jesus Christ has said (Jn. 14.26). All that the Spirit makes present, every unfolding and concretizing of the Lord’s words by the Spirit, confirms the finality of what Jesus Christ has said and done once and for all. The human speaking and doing by which God serves the congregation are thus enclosed within God’s doing and brought into the one great movement of God’s condescension into the depths of humanity, brought into a great movement of his self-abasement, from his incarnation to the distribution of Christ’s body and blood to the congregation in the Lord’s Supper. This one continuous movement of divine mercy aims at the assurance, “given for you.” This movement reaches its fulfillment in the reception of his gifts by the congregation. The person through whom God serves his congregation is thus merely the instrument of God’s caring commitment to human beings. That person does not reconcile God to human beings. God has already reconciled the world to himself in Christ (2 Cor. 5.18–19). The person has only to proclaim this act of reconciliation and to admonish, “Be reconciled to God!”—and in this way those doing the proclaiming may be certain that God is exhorting through them (v. 20). The one so serving does not need to bring any atoning sacrifice for sin. After all, Christ has already made that sacrifice on the cross once and for all. Christian theology must therefore practice reservation over against all of the obvious history-of-religion possibilities for a symbolically or a realistically intended interpretation of the human act of blessing

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and gift-giving, through which God serves the congregation. The Scriptures of the New Testament themselves are famously reticent in their statements exactly on this point. (d) The Unity of the Local Congregation with the Church of All Places and Times By serving the people assembled in the Christian worship service, God unites them with himself and with one another. Since God is the one Lord, who gives himself in the one Christ and through the one Holy Spirit to all believers, he unites not only those who are gathered together with one another in one place. He unites this local congregation with all congregations gathered for the service of worship, wherever they may be on earth. No worship assembly, not even the one that is most distant and cut off from all the other congregations, remains isolated, not even the two or three Christians who gather secretly in an internment camp. Through the presence of the same Lord, they are united with the entire church on earth. This unity comes to expression even in isolation, in intercession for other local congregations, for the universal church, and in the awareness of being supported by their intercession. Where, however, freedom of communication with other congregations exists, this unity comes to expression beyond these things in many kinds of acts and words, also, e. g., in the collection of gifts by the worshiping community for oppressed and suffering churches. The universal church lives not only in the unity of the congregations that simultaneously live in all places on earth. It lives also in the unity of all who in the course of history have followed after one another in the same faith. The universal church is not only a community with brothers and sisters but at the same time also a community with the ancestors who have preceded us in faith. For it is at all times the same Lord, by whose grace believers live, the same Lord who once acted for them, and who still does so today. The devout of the Old Testament already lived from the sacrifice of Christ, to which the sacrificial cult of the Old Testament pointed and foreshadowed. The service of worship today thus takes place in communion with the apostles, with the prophets of the Old Testament, and with both known and unknown members of the people of God of the Old and New Testaments—whereby one may recall the mother of Jesus as well. This unity, which reaches across the times, finds its expression in the worship service in the reading of the Scriptures of the prophets and the apostles, in the Old Testament psalms and New Testament hymns, in the confessions of the ancient church, and in songs and liturgical acclamations and prayers from all times. This expression of unity does not have to do merely with an historical recollection of those who have gone before us and upon whose service we are founded, but also with our becoming contemporaneous with the confessing and worshiping people of God of all times. In the worship service, we have communion with them as with those who are living even though they have died. In that, in the Lord’s Supper, we already now take part in the coming wedding feast of the Lamb, we have—across the gulf of time and also across the problematic nature of our

The Worship Assembly

transitional state—communion with all whom the Lord will one day in his parousia gather from every land and every age into eternal joy. It is in the adoration of the one Lord that the sojourning people of God on earth and those who have reached the goal are one. (e) The One Voice of the Worship Assembly That Unites in the Praise Offered by the Non-Human Creation The worship service of the church is not limited to human beings. In the liturgy of almost all churches there is regularly a joining into the heavenly liturgy, namely, the worship that the heavenly, spiritual creatures offer to God. Through the Preface, the congregation is thus called to join its voice with those of all angels and archangels in singing the Trisagion of the seraphim, which Isaiah recorded in the vision of his calling (Isa. 6.1–4).[viii] The church is also called to join its voice in singing the praise, “Gloria Deo,” which the angels offered to God after the birth of Jesus (Lk. 2.14). The dimensions of the heavenly worship were also revealed, e. g., to Ezekiel (Ezek. 1.1–28), and in the midst of the terrors of the divine judgments, it is of the greatest ever-recurring significance in the visions of the last book of the Bible (e. g., Rev. 4.1–11). The letter to the Hebrews also bears witness to the fact that in the worship service there is not only a “joining with” the people who have gone before in the faith, the “glorified righteous ones,” but also a joining with “myriads of angels” (Heb. 12.22–24). Thus, in the Orthodox Church, the Holy Liturgy celebrated on earth is named “heaven on earth.” The biblical statements about the worship by angels point beyond our comprehension to the unseen dimension of creation, in which spiritual creatures live in unbroken community with God and serve him. This adoration has not been silenced by the fall of the human being. The worship by the church takes place at the same time in the context of the praise for which God created the non-human visible creation. Despite all disfigurations of the earthly creation, despite all its sighing and groaning, faith recognizes that it has been given the purpose of glorifying God. The congregation joins the praise offered by the visible creation when, e. g., the Old Testament’s creation-psalms are voiced in the Christian worship service. Thus, with the Psalter, there goes forth from the congregation the appeal to heaven and earth, “Praise the Lord! … Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars! … Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and frost, … mountains and all hills, … wild animals and all cattle” (Ps. 148.1–7). Every created thing praises the Lord in its own way. It is thus presupposed that the non-human creation praises the Creator in its ordering. This joining in with the worship of the Creator has found

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its continuation in the hymns of the church, as for example in the Song of the Sun by Francis of Assisi.9 The cosmic dimension of the worship service has largely been lost from the consciousness of modern human beings. They understand the invitation of the Preface to join the angels in praising God, as well as the invitation of the psalms to praise God together with all creatures, more as lyrical statements than as realistic ones. Where, however, this dimension remains incomprehensible, the relationship between the human being and the environment is disrupted, and the non-human creation finally comes to be regarded only from the one-sided perspective of technical usefulness. So arises in the Christian worship service the unanimous hymn of praise for which God created the universe. Heaven and earth are to adore the Lord, and the human being in their midst, as the image of God, is to do so, too. Yet now the congregation’s hymn of praise on earth comes to voice only in the form of prayers, pleadings, sighs, laments. Only in faith do we now take part in the adoration offered by the glorified saints and the heavenly angelic hosts. The service of the congregation is still now surrounded by the groaning of the whole creation. And yet the church is already now the human voice of the hymn of praise, which the whole new creation will one day offer up to God. In the event of the worship service the mighty deeds of God are uniquely concentrated, namely, the deeds that God as Creator, Redeemer, and New Creator has done and yet shall do for humanity and all other creatures. The deeds of God and those of the human being interpenetrate one another, in that in the worship service God in Christ condescends to us in service, and the congregation gives honor to Christ as the Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit. The worship assembly—the concentration of God’s saving action—is the center of the vital activities of the church in the midst of the world, for again and again the Lord gathers here from the world those people scattered throughout the world, cleanses them of their sins, strengthens them in their trials and tribulations, unites them anew with himself. Again and again here the Lord here also sends his own into the world. In serving them he commands their servant ministry in the world, and in strengthening them he gives them authority for this ministry. Thus the sacrifice of self-surrender cannot be confined to the worship assembly. If it is true surrender, then the love of God will break forth from it into the world, and it will make the entire life of the members of the congregation into a sacrifice that offers praise to the mercy of God. “And whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3.17). The service to God offered

9 [Francis of Assisi, The Song of the Sun, trans. Elizabeth Orton Jones and Matthew Arnold (New York: Macmillan, 1952). –Ed.]

The Worship Assembly

by Christians is thus the daily sacrifice of the whole person in the obedience of acting and suffering. The faith that receives God’s gift cannot remain devoid of good works. These explanations of the worship assembly also have to do with the explication of basic structures. Recently in liturgical studies, it is not uncommon for the ordinarium of the mass, which is used in some church bodies, or the complete worship service (encompassing the sermon and the Lord’s Supper), or, e. g., the construction of the service of the word or of the liturgy of the hours, to be characterized as the “structure” of the worship service, in contrast to the readings, sayings, and prayers, which are changeable according to the context. The question of the basic structure of the worship service remains, however, not in these basic liturgical orders of worship of the varying church bodies and their historical precedents. This question endeavors to go behind the various forms of the worship service to ask, with all the differences in form, what is constitutive for the worship service of the church. For this reason, we have not entered into questions here about the structure of the confession of sin, the number of Scripture readings, the liturgical formulation of the words of institution, as well as the petition for the Holy Spirit and the related question about the point in time for the consecration. We have also not addressed questions about the subdivision of the worship service into services of preaching, of the Lord’s Supper, of prayer, and of meditation, nor have we addressed the questions connected with the church year. Our attention here is directed instead to the basic structures of the worship service, which in every church body, no matter what form they might take, require elaboration in such a way that it becomes clear that a one-sided emphasis, or the lack of one of these basic structures, would result in a loss that would not be without effect for the life of the respective church body. This applies, e. g., when the Lord’s Supper is celebrated only as an infrequent attachment to a service of preaching the word, or when the mass is separated from the communion of the congregation, when the prayer of thanksgiving is replaced by petitionary prayer, or when the cosmic dimension of worship disappears entirely from people’s awareness. A working out of the basic structures of worship, which here could be carried out only in the form of a sketch, is therefore of considerable ecumenical importance. It shows itself to be applicable not only in liturgically fixed services of worship, as in the Holy Liturgy of the Eastern churches, or in the masses of the Roman, Lutheran, and Anglican churches, but also in the free forms of the worship service, which—as in Corinth, so today—some free churches, charismatic movements, and basic ecclesial communities allow for spiritual spontaneity. The basic structures that have been presented also apply regardless of whether the worship service takes place in a cathedral, a residential home, or in the corner of a concentration camp.

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5. The Ekklesia of God, the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit: the Growing New Creation Since in Central Europe and in the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries the widespread usage of the word Kirche, church, Kyrka is not a direct translation of a New Testament term, it cannot be sufficient to interpret the reality designated by this word through only one of the New Testament terms. In the preceding sections of this chapter, this has been done with the term people of God. Within the framework of these principal features of an ecumenical dogmatics, it is impossible to allow all the New Testament designations for this reality to be expressed. In addition to people of God, we will restrict ourselves to the three terms that have played—and still play—the most important role in the Scriptures of the New Testament and in the history of ecclesiology. The observation that the worship assembly is the center of the church’s vital activities is confirmed by the fact that each of these three designations is determined by the event of this gathering. (a) This is clear without further discussion for the designation of the church as ekklesia, since ekklesia means “assembly” or “gathering, and this description has very nearly acquired the rank of a name for the people of God. In the Septuagint, ἐκκλησία [ekklēsia] is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word kahal [‫]ָקָהל‬, the gathering of the Old Testament people of God in cultic obedience.[ix] Already before this translational decision, ἐκκλησία was in use in the Hellenistic world as a description for the gathering of the citizens of a polis [city-state], who were responsible for legal acts. The self-designation of the earliest Christians is determined before all else by the Old Testament use of the term kahal. The church is repeatedly described as the ekklesia of God. This precise designation is often missing in the biblical passages, but it is always implied. It is not human beings who have gathered themselves into an ekklesia, but rather God is the one who has called and gathered them. Human beings do not have authority over this assembly. It is God’s own possession. God speaks and acts in it. In a few passages, the designation is christologically supplemented: the ekklesia of God in Christ Jesus (1 Thess. 2.14). Only exceptionally is this assembly described without the genitive expression “of God” as “the ekklesia in Christ Jesus” or “the ekklesia of Christ.” But even where the christological supplement is missing, it is presupposed that God acts for human beings through Christ in the ekklesia. Even if ekklesia means “assembly,” or “gathering,” this expression is not limited to the worship assembly. It characterizes the togetherness of the participants beyond their mere act of gathering together. It is the community of those who know themselves to be determined by what God has done for them in baptism and in the worship assembly, and who live in the expectation of what God has promised them in the future.

The Ekklesia of God, the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit: the Growing New Creation

The fact that those who are baptized into Christ, who accept the message of Christ and take part in the Lord’s Supper, call themselves “the assembly of God”—and that they refer to themselves as “the assembly,” without any further qualification—contains an outrageous claim. This applies in the first instance over against the Jews, since the New Testament ekklesia not only stands in continuity with the gatherings in the Old Testament, but it also confronts them as an antithetical counterpart. But also, over against the ekklesia of the Greek polis, and beyond it to the political and cultic gatherings of all peoples, the absolute usage of the word ekklesia raises the claim to be the life-determining gathering for all human beings. The “assembly” brings with it a boundary between those who follow the call of the gospel and those who reject it. This boundary, however, is a boundary that remains open for ever more persons to be added in faith. Believers have been gathered by God in order that they might serve him and one another and might proclaim the Savior to the world. In the Scriptures of the New Testament, the term ekklesia is used in both the singular and the plural. The word ekklesia serves as a description of a house-church, the gathering of all the believers in a locality, the community of multiple local gatherings of a region (e. g., Acts 9.31, the church in Judea), and also the universal community of all churches on earth. It is thus clear that the church of a locality is not to be understood as a summation of the house-churches, the regional church is not to be understood as a summation of the local churches, and the universal church is not to be understood as a summation of the local and regional churches. Each one of them is entirely “church,” since the same God is present in every worship assembly and, in Christ, serves those gathered. The one, universal church of God is a reality in the church of every locality and region. The manifestation of the one church in the multiplicity of the local churches does not come to expression adequately when, in contrast to the usage of the New Testament, a different term is used for the designation of a local church from what is used for the universal church. It is therefore misleading, for example, when in the German language the local gathering is described as a Gemeinde [“congregation” or “community”] in distinction from a regional Kirche [“church”] or the universal Kirche. Instead, both terms, Kirche and Gemeinde, should be used consistently as synonyms so that one may speak of both the local church [Kirche] and also of the congregation [Gemeinde] of God on earth and in the various federal states. (b) The designation of the church as the body of Christ has no direct prior history in the Old Testament. But it does indeed have one in Hellenism, with “body” (σῶμα [sōma]) understood not merely as the anatomical body, or the person of the individual human being, but the solidarity of many human beings, as it is present, e. g., in the state. The cosmos was furthermore so understood. Thus the political ekklesia could be described as a “body.” And the relationship of body, head, and

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members could be interpreted sociologically.10 The designation of the church as a “body” that derives from the Hellenistic understanding appears only with Paul (1 Corinthians and Romans) and in Colossians and Ephesians, where his thought is further developed. Paul profoundly alters the Hellenistic-sociological conception of the body since his usage is determined by “the body of Christ” given into death (Rom. 7.4) and indeed by the reception of the Lord’s body in the Lord’s Supper: “The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10.16bf. [S]). Even when Paul said that we all have been baptized into one body (1 Cor. 12.13), he has in mind the body of Christ, into whose death we have been transferred in baptism (Rom. 6.3). Through the reception of his body, believers are members of his body. Their bodies are no longer at their own disposal, but rather they have become organs of Christ. Paul has spoken extensively concerning the diversity and multiplicity of the members of the body of Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 12.14–20; Rom. 12.4–5; on this topic, see 889ff.). The statements concerning Christ’s body and its members in some places appear to be figurative language (e. g., 1 Cor. 12.14–20). But in the decisive matter, they have to do with much more, namely, with the real participation of the members of the community in the body of the crucified and risen Christ, and with their being taken into this body. In that the church lives from Christ’s body, it is Christ’s body. It need not be accidental that precisely in the letters in which Paul speaks of the church as one body in Christ, there are also found Paul’s elaborations concerning Christ as the one human being who encompasses many within himself (1 Cor. 15.21–22; Rom. 5.12–21). While in 1 Cor. 12.21 the “head” is introduced without particular emphasis as one of the members of the body, in Colossians and Ephesians Christ is named as the “head” of the body. He is “the Savior of his body” (Eph. 5.23), the Lord and Ruler of the church. He is the head “from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly” (Eph. 4.15bf.). Indeed, Christ is the head who rules as Lord over all “rule and authority” (Col. 2.10b; cf. v. 15), the Lord over all things. But the church belongs to him as his body. Thus Christ and the church are one, in that it is identical with his body. It is, however, at the same time distinct from him since he alone is the head. This applies in a similar way, as a husband and wife in the community of marriage are “one body” and nevertheless differently related to one another (Eph. 5.22–31). Because of this significant difference between the church as Christ’s body and Christ as head and body, it is at least susceptible to misunderstanding when the relationship between Christ and the church is brought to expression in the formula:

10 Cf. Eduard Schweizer, “σῶμα,” TWNT, 7.1031–1035. [TDNT, 7.1032–1036. –Ed.]

The Ekklesia of God, the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit: the Growing New Creation

“ecclesiology and christology are reciprocally related.”11 Even if such a statement has parallels in the history of ecclesiology, it remains to be considered that Christ shall also confront the church as Judge. Because Christ’s body is distributed and received in the worship assembly, every local church is the body of Christ. Because, however, all churches live from one and the same body of Christ, the universal church on earth is also the body of Christ. First Corinthians especially has in view the local church as the body of Christ. The letter to the Ephesians especially has in view the universal body of Christ. Here, too, the relationship is not additive but inclusive. Christ has one body, which manifests itself in the many churches. The local church is not a member of the universal body of Christ. It is the presence of this universal body in a particular locality. Because the church lives from Christ’s having delivered up his body and having given it to the church, statements concerning the body of Christ frequently appear as the basis for exhortations directed to believers: “God has so arranged the body, … that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another” (1 Cor. 12.24b–25). Every member has been appointed for a particular service to the other members. The actuality of being a member of the body of Christ is thus developed in a multiplicity of exhortations (Rom. 12.4–8) and in the listing of many spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 12.4–11). In the “being for one another” in the service that manifests love, the unity of the body of Christ is to be displayed and the one Lord is to be praised. This truth applies not merely to members of the congregation but also to the relationship of the congregations to one another. It becomes most concrete in the hortatory efforts of Paul on behalf of the collection for the Jerusalem congregation. The church is the growing body of Christ. This growth has its basis in Jesus’ death and resurrection and in the reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles that has been effected by his death. This growth takes place inwardly in an ever-stronger community of the members with the head and with one another. “But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph. 4.15). “As each part is working properly, (it) promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love” (Eph. 4.16b [S]). At the same time, the growth takes place outwardly in the growth into all things, in the advance of the gospel into the world. The body of Christ is the growing community of those who are saved by faith in him. The profound difference still exists, namely, that God has placed “all things under (Christ’s) feet” (Eph. 1.22 [L]) but has made the church to be the body of Christ. Although this body is still growing, it is already being praised as “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1.23). The statements concerning Christ, who is at once head of his body, the church, and head of the cosmos, have to do with the same

11 Karl Ludwig Schmidt, “ἐκκλησία,” TWNT, 3.512. [TDNT, 3.509. –Ed.]

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eschatological paradox that has come to expression—within the doctrine of the exaltation—in the distinction between the kingdom of Christ and Christ’s lordship over the world (590ff.), as well as in the statements above concerning the time of grace and the time of patience (599ff.; cf. 330ff.). Thus, in the struggle against the trials and tribulations of the world, the body of Christ grows both inwardly and outwardly—through the edification of believers and the increase in the size of their number—and it expands into the breadth of space and time. It is here Christ who, as the “firstborn from the dead” (Col. 1.18), is the beginning and the goal of this growth. (c) The designation of the church as “the temple of the Holy Spirit” has its presupposition in the Old Testament temple and in the apocalyptic expectation of a new temple, not constructed by human hands. It may well be that the saying of Jesus, in which he announces the destruction and reconstruction of the temple, stands in connection with this expectation—a saying that has been handed down in various forms, and whose meaning is contested (Mk. 14.58; 15.29; Mt. 26.61; 27.40; Jn. 2.19; cf. Acts 6.13–14). The Old Testament temple was also characterized as a “house” (οἶκος [oikos]) and as a “building of God” (οἰκοδομή [oikodomē]). Paul reminded the Corinthians a number of times that they are God’s temple and that the Holy Spirit dwells in them (1 Cor. 3.16; 6.19; 2 Cor. 6.16). Also, in Eph. 2.20–22 the church is designated as a “temple” or as a “spiritual house.” In 1 Pet. 2.5 Christians are exhorted, “like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” These examples and others make clear that the “temple of the Holy Spirit” and “spiritual house” were widely used designations for the church in earliest Christianity. They express not only that the Holy Spirit dwells in the church as his temple (1 Cor. 3.16; 6.19) but also that he builds this temple by making human beings into “living stones” and by fitting them together into a “spiritual house” (1 Pet. 2.5). This temple is thus distinguished from that of the Old Testament in that it is not made from stones but from renewed human beings; and in that it is “not made by human hands”; and in that it is not to be found in a certain place but arises everywhere that the Holy Spirit gives life to human beings and assembles them. The designation of the church as a temple and a house of the Holy Spirit is not to be understood as a spiritualization in the usual sense. These statements express the real presence of the Holy Spirit who gathers believers and edifies them. Paul confessed Jesus Christ as the foundation, upon which he founded and edified the congregations of believers (1 Cor. 3.11). Christ is also designated as the “cornerstone,” who gives the church its footing (1 Pet. 2.7)—also the “keystone, in (whom) the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (Eph. 2.20b–21 [S]), and without which the arching roof would collapse. If the apostles and prophets are named as the foundation of the church in Eph. 2.20,

The Ekklesia of God, the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit: the Growing New Creation

they are this merely as witnesses to Jesus Christ, the cornerstone that has been laid once and for all. Through this cornerstone and this keystone, the temple has its stability. The statements concerning the church forbid the idea of an arbitrary and erratic working of the Holy Spirit. Instead, he builds a solidly constructed and enduring house. This aspect of a reliable solidity and durability also is expressed in the promise that the gates of hell will not be able to overcome the church built by Jesus Christ on Simon Peter, the rock (Mt. 16.18). This aspect is also expressed in the characterization of the “house of God” as “the pillar and support of the truth” (1 Tim. 3.15). Individual members of the church may fall away. Even local churches may completely die away. But the temple of the Holy Spirit remains on this earth. Because this temple is fitted together by the Holy Spirit who dwells within it, the exhortation to labor together further in its construction applies to those who belong to this building. Paul thus understood his apostolic work of building and leading the congregations as “edification.” The edifying power of love receives special emphasis (1 Cor. 8.1; cf. Eph. 4.16). Here, too, edification concerns both an inward, spiritual strengthening and also the winning of outsiders for inclusion in the congregation. While the designations people of God, ekklesia, and body of Christ always characterize the church, the community of believers, but never an individual member of the church, Paul speaks not only of the church as the temple of the Holy Spirit but also of its members: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (1 Cor. 6.19). His warning against fornication and his exhortation, “Glorify God in your body!” (v. 20), thus possess an added urgency. The member of the church is simultaneously a temple and a living stone in the construction of the temple. By being built up by the Holy Spirit and by “building itself up” (Eph. 2.21; cf. 1 Pet. 2.4–5), the holy building “grows.” Admittedly, this growth is very odd, since the building is already complete and the keystone that holds the arch in place is already there. It is not half-construction. It is a whole. (d) All these designations for the church are determined by a divine activity that takes place in the worshiping assembly, and from which this activity has its further effect on the surrounding world. This activity is brought to expression in various ways, and indeed not merely through the various images of the church. The statements concerning the people of God and the ekklesia are primarily statements concerning God’s working. The statements concerning the church as the body of Christ are christologically determined, while those concerning the church as a temple, house, and building are primarily pneumatologically determined. In these distinctions, the various answers concerning the foundation of the church that were given above make a return: the church has been founded through God’s

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decree and the election of Israel, through the proclamation, death, and exaltation of Jesus, and through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. What these designations for the church refer to in the history of God’s acts of salvation also varies. It appears with the greatest prominence in the expression, “the people of God,” which cannot be separated from the remembrance of its having been delivered and guided in history, or from the promises given to it. History also remains consciously present within the designations ekklesia and temple, insofar as the antithesis to the Old Testament kahal and temple is retained here. This observation also applies in a broader sense to the designation of the church as a “building,” as it also does to the announcement of the heavenly Jerusalem, in which there will no longer be a temple (Rev. 21.10, 22). Scant reference is made to history and the end of history in the New Testament statements concerning the church as the body of Christ. Those statements are determined by the present Christ, the exalted crucified one. In the midst of these and other differences, nevertheless, important common, foundational structures may be recognized, even if they do not emerge with the same directness in every designation for the church: The church is not only the “ekklesia of God” but also “the ekklesia of God in Christ” and, as such, is not to be separated from the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In their diversity, the members of “the body of Christ” are determined not only by Christ but also by the gifts and demonstrations of the power of the Holy Spirit, “who allots to each one individually just as (he) chooses (1 Cor. 12.11 [S]). The church is designated as “the temple of the Holy Spirit,” as well as the temple of God. And Christ is attested to as the one who is at work in the construction of the temple (cf., e. g., Christ’s saying in Rev. 3.12: “If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God”). None of these designations for the church has its basis solely in the working of God or Christ or the Holy Spirit. Instead, in each of these designations the church is recognized, albeit in varying ways, as the work, the possession, and presence of God the Father and Christ and the Holy Spirit. It is understandable, then, that the basic statements that confess the interconnected work of the Father, Christ, and the Spirit appear in ecclesiological explications: there is “one and the same Spirit,” “one and the same Lord,” and “one and the same God” (1 Cor. 12.4–6), “one Spirit,” one Lord,” and “one God and Father of all” (Eph. 4.4–5). As a rule, these statements are characterized as triadic formulas, but, in view of the unity and intertwining of the same work of God the Father, Christ the Lord, and the Holy Spirit, they may already be described as economic statements concerning the Trinity. Because the church is also the work and the instrument of the triune God, ecclesiology cannot be equated simply with christology, nor with pneumatology. With all the variation in their relationship to salvation-history, the designations for the church named here have in common that they understand the church as the effect of a new act of God, which does not arise of necessity from his preceding action

The Ekklesia of God, the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit: the Growing New Creation

as Creator, Preserver, and Deliverer of Israel. This applies both to the designations that look back on God’s historical acts and to those, such as “the body of Christ,” which are determined above all by the presence of Christ. An exceedingly important basic structure of the church becomes visible in the fact that in the Scriptures of the New Testament, each of the three expressions, “ekklesia of God,” “body of Christ,” and “temple of the Holy Spirit,” are used to designate both the local church and the universal church. From this there arises the special nature of the early Christian and ancient-Christian understanding of the community of the churches. Each of the above-named designations for the church is determined by God’s doing and giving. Each of these designations therefore possesses the significance of an indicative, yes, a grammatical perfect of the divine deed of salvation on which the exhortations to the congregation are based. These exhortations constantly vary from one another according to the pictorial nature of the ecclesiological designations and the historical situations of the congregations. Despite all the differences, however, again and again the exhortations have to do with the threefold servant ministry of the members of the church, namely, the orientation of the service toward God, toward the other members of the church in the same locality as well as elsewhere, and toward the service and witness in the world. In statements concerning the growth of the church into the cosmic expanse, another equally important basic structure comes to light. Although the letters of the New Testament speak of growth explicitly only in connection with references to the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit, this growth is de facto also contained in the sending of the people of God and the church into the world. By focusing our observations on these common, basic structures of church life, using the four designations for the church presented above, it seems obvious to summarize the trinitarian aspect, the aspect of eschatological newness, and that of growth in the following sentence: the church is the growing new creation that has been called into life and permeated by the triune God. Without question, this statement expresses something entirely essential concerning the church and its course between Pentecost and its future consummation. Nevertheless, it is not possible for any single sentence to cover fully the various designations for the church—even if it is only the four that have been discussed here—or to express in an appropriate manner the material content in only one sentence. There is, in fact, some overlapping of the pictures that are employed in individual passages of the New Testament Scriptures, such as, e. g., when the temple is interpreted as the body of Christ (Jn. 2.21), or when there is reference to the edification of the body of Christ (Eph. 4.12, 16). Nevertheless, each of the individual pictures says something particular beyond what is common among them. No individual designation is able to encompass the whole life of the church. The Second Vatican Council therefore rightly added the concept of the people of

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God to the concept of “the mystical body of Christ,” which had been one-sidedly favored earlier, and it developed its doctrine of the church from both of these points of emphasis, without dissolving one of the concepts into the other and without ignoring other designations for the church in the New Testament.[x] The necessary differences in the dogmatic definitions of the church have their source, on the one hand, in the diverse linguistic requirements and historical situations in which speaking about the church takes place, and, on the other, in the diverse New Testament designations for the church and the basic structures that come to expression in them, such as, e. g., the interpenetration of the universal church and the local church. But the real reason that the mystery of the church is to be attested to only with different designations is the inexhaustible richness of the trinitarian working of God upon the church and in the church. He gave himself for the church and dwells in the church. He has made the church into a part of himself and works through the church in the world. The Holy Spirit, too, is not only an instrument of the divine working upon the church and through the church. The Holy Spirit himself works for the church, in it, and through it: He has been poured out upon it, dwells in it, renews its members, gives them his gifts, identifies their sighing with his sighing, and awakens joy in them in service toward one another and in witness before the world. Nevertheless, Christ and the Spirit do not work alongside one another in the church, but instead with one another and in one another. They act not only in communion with God the Father, but in this communion they are the one divine New Creator.

6. The Unity, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity of the Church If Christendom confesses “the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” with the words of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), then with these statements about the church’s attributes it is not describing the idea of the church, which the reality of the churches on earth needs to become more and more like. Instead, Christendom confesses the essential attributes of the church on earth, wherever believers gather in the name of Jesus. But how can the unity, the holiness, the catholicity, and the apostolicity of the church be expressed without the disunity, highhandedness, and narrowness existing in it, as well as its deviations from the apostolic foundation, being covered over, downplayed, and excused through the confession of these statements about its essence—without these statements of the church’s attributes being misused in a triumphalistic manner? If one makes an inquiry from the Constantinopolitan Creed back to the Scriptures of the New Testament, it becomes apparent that there is hardly any talk about the attributes of the ekklesia. While the members of the church are thus frequently characterized as saints, the holiness of the church is mentioned only once, and not

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in the form of a declaration but in the form of being appointed: Christ “loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5.25–27 [S]). It is decisive that the holiness of the church here is attested to as the working of Christ through baptism, and that on the basis of this sanctifying deed, the members of the church are exhorted to live in a manner that corresponds to this holiness that has been given. Statements concerning the attributes of the church soon began to increase, though, with the Apostolic Fathers (thus Ignatius of Antioch and the Martyrdom of Polycarp of Smyrna spoke of the “catholic” church), and they then became more widespread.12 Just as the substantival designations for the church have their basis in God’s action upon the church, so too do the adjectival statements concerning its essence. For this reason, in the following interpretation of each of the essential attributes of the church named in the Constantinopolitan Creed, we may begin with God’s acts and from this starting point ask in what sense one may speak of the “attributes” of the church. (a) The unity of the church.[xi] Already in the New Testament letters we read about various tensions, oppositions, and the forming of groups within the local congregations, e. g., the oppositions in Corinth, even about the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and also tensions and oppositions between the apostles (Gal. 2.11ff.). These tensions and even the forming of cliques did not hinder Paul from bearing witness to the unity of precisely these congregations and their members, nor from addressing those who were disunited among themselves about their unity, nor from exhorting them to unity by appeal to that unity. The unity of the church is not primarily the unity of its members but the unity of God acting in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit upon them all, and indeed at all times and in all places. Since all the members of the church have been chosen by the one God, called by the one Christ, and renewed by the one Holy Spirit, the unity of those who believe in Christ, who have been baptized into Christ, and who receive the body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper is a matter of faith—over against all their visible tensions, oppositions, and divisions. Indeed, it is to be believed as the reality that has been created by God in Christ through the Holy Spirit in the midst of this world. Because those who believe in Christ, who have been baptized into him, and have received his body are one, they should strive for unity; because they are one, they should be one. On the basis of the unity bestowed in Christ, Christians are

12 [Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8.2 (Holmes, 254–257; Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 238, 243); the Martyrdom of Polycarp, salutation and 8.1 (Holmes, 307, 315). –Ed.]

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to be of one accord in an orderly joint celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and in a mutual loving service of the spiritually gifted individuals, as well as in the reciprocal recognition of ministerial offices, and in the mutual intercession and aid effort beyond the local congregation. The unity of the church is not a work of human beings, but, on the basis of the unity effected by God, believers are to be one. (b) We so often see very little of the holiness of the church when we look at the persons who belong to the church. That also applies when we place before our eyes the picture of the early Christian congregations that the letters of the New Testament pass on to us. There we read of manifold sins; and even when the incestuous and some of the grossest sinners were excluded from the congregation, there was still enough to be admonished—presumptuousness, greed, legalism, little faith, misuse of Christian freedom, and lovelessness of every kind. One need read only, for example, the catalog of the “works of the flesh” in the letter to the Galatians (Gal. 5.19–21). The holiness of the church is not primarily the holiness of its members, but rather it is the holiness of God who has made this assembly his own possession and has united its participants with Christ through the Holy Spirit. In this way God makes the church into his sanctuary and his priestly people. Only in this way can we understand the unabashed freedom with which the writers of the New Testament letters address as saints those same members of the congregation whose sins they have clearly brought to light. The holiness of the church is not the sum of the holiness of its members, but rather it is the holiness of Christ, who gives himself to the church, and the power of the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies sinners. If we look at the members of the church, then we see that we all are sinners and that the church is a community of sinners and not of saints. If, however, we believe in the God who acts upon the church in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we know that this horde of sinners has been sanctified by the gospel and the sacraments, and that it is sanctified daily. Because the church is holy through God’s sanctifying work, its members should set sin aside and serve God as saints. The exhortation to holiness presupposes the salvific act of holiness. Everything that was said above concerning the doctrine of the gospel and the exhortation to holiness applies here as well. Thus it is to be observed that these imperatives of the New Testament are directed not merely to individual members of the church but to entire churches. For this reason, it is valid to say of the church as a whole that because it has been made holy, it therefore is to be holy. (c) The catholicity of the church. If by catholicity we understand that the church encompasses the world geographically, we see very little of that in the New Testament Scriptures, for what significance has even the course of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome, and then further to Spain and Gaul, as well as to the neighboring areas of Asia and Africa, in comparison with the whole world? Nevertheless,

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the Constantinopolitan Creed intends to say that already at the time of Pentecost the church was catholic. The church is catholic because Christ, the exalted Lord, lives in it—he to whom is given “all authority in heaven and on earth.” The word catholic does not occur in the New Testament Scriptures. It is first found in Ignatius, and indeed in a christological context: “wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church.”13 According to this original point of departure, the Reformers happily translated catholic with “Christian,” as did some translators in the Middle Ages. The catholicity of the church is thus the catholicity of Jesus Christ, the Lord of all authorities, the Lord of the universe. Another interpretation of the catholicity of the church is found in the Catechetical Lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem, with reference to the encompassing doctrine of the church, to the diversity of the persons guided by the church to true reverence of God (“rulers and ruled, lettered and unlettered”), to all the kinds of sins that here are forgiven, and to all the kinds of virtues.14 Before all else, catholicity here is the epitome of the diversity that has been encompassed by God in the church. One might continue to say: catholicity consists in the work of the Holy Spirit, who gathers the most diverse persons into the church, and who endows them with his various gifts. The understanding of catholicity as the richness of the working of the Spirit is especially alive in the Eastern Church. Later, the perspective of the spatial extension of the church on earth came into the foreground, in which a distinction was made between the virtual and the actual geographical extension of the church. Because the church in Christ is catholic, it ought to be catholic. It does not first have to achieve its catholicity through its self-extension, but it has to believe in its Lord who encompasses the universe, and has to proclaim him. Because it is catholic by faith, it is to make space for the abundance of his gifts of grace in the multiplicity of knowledge, of witness, and of servant ministry in the widest sense, by which the Lord makes himself present in his richness. Because it is catholic, it is to advance into all areas of the world in order to proclaim to all people the one who is already their Lord, whether they know it or not. For this reason, this servant ministry is in the end an untroubled and joyful activity, despite all trials and tribulations. Let us pause here for a moment. The confession of the unity, the holiness, and the catholicity of the church is, rightly understood, no occasion for Christendom to praise itself. It is instead an occasion for repentance. In the confession of these essential attributes of the church, all its members must test themselves as to what they have made of the unity, holiness, and catholicity that God has given to the church.

13 Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8.2. [Holmes, 254–257; Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 238 (trans. modified). –Ed.] 14 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, XVIII.23. [FOTC, 64.132. –Ed.]

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Thus the question arises: In what sense does the church “have” these attributes? They encounter the church in the assurance and claim that they are actively effective in Christ. More precisely, they encounter the church in an ever-new assurance and an ever-new claim—in Christ’s ever-new giving and in his commands that are new every day. The church “has” these attributes in receiving them anew each day and in obeying them anew each day. This means that the church is one in that it repents of its disunity, believes in the triune God, and loves the brothers and sisters. It is holy in that it repents of its self-willed actions and asks the Holy Spirit that it might be made into God’s possession. The church is catholic in that it repents of its self-contentment and lethargy and submits itself afresh to the Pantokrator [the Almighty]. But should a Church desire to hold fast to its attributes as its own possession, separated from God’s assurance and claim that are new each day, then such an understanding of unity would lead to schism, such an understanding of holiness would lead to self-righteousness, such an understanding of catholicity would lead to a claim of world domination, and thus would lead to self-assertion over against Jesus Christ. The attributes of the church are to be confessed with fear and trembling as the ever-new gracious acts of God’s faithfulness in Christ. In this faithfulness the church has its being and essence. Statements about the attributes of the church thus take part in the structure of statements about the being of believers in Christ and about the attributes of believers: their righteousness, their holiness, their freedom, and so forth, in him.[xii] This instruction, to be sure, has an intrinsic limitation: my being in Christ, my being as justified and sanctified stands or falls with my ever-new reception in faith of the righteousness and holiness of Christ which he grants us through word and sacrament. But the church does not stand or fall with my faith. The church was before the individual came to faith, and it will abide even if the individual falls from faith. Statements about the church thus can never expand into existential statements. On the other hand, however, one cannot overlook the fact that the church is the community of believers and that we can make true statements about the church only in faith. But in that respect, while the statements about the church cannot be separated from the personal existence of believers, one should watch out not to hypostasize the church.[xiii] (d) Apostolicity occupies a special position among the four attributes of the church.[xiv] To be sure, it is true of each one of these attributes that it is realized only in conjunction with the other three. They are inseparably interwoven with one another as are the attributes of God. Even their enumeration is incomplete in a way that is similar to that of the attributes in the doctrine of God. Yet in this intimate interrelationship and unity of the four attributes, apostolicity has a special place insofar as Christ—the one, holy Christ who is exalted over the universe—encounters the church in fact only in the apostolic witness, upon which the others in a certain

The Communion of Saints

respect are based. Apostolic doctrine is the standard by which true unity, holiness, and catholicity are to be measured, and by which it may be known where in the world the holy, catholic church exists. This standard has not been created by the church. It is instead specified for it. And it is not indeterminate but may be grasped historically in Holy Scripture. The confession of the apostolicity of the church also contains the call to repentance. There is no access to Christ with any circumvention of the apostolic witness to Christ. Because this is so, the exhortation to the church is valid at all times, namely, that it is to test itself against the standard of apostolic doctrine, and, where it has departed from it, to return to apostolic doctrine. In this sense, the call that has been affirmed by the Second Vatican Council remains valid: ecclesia semper reformanda est [the church ought always to be reformed].[xv]

7. The Communion of Saints The confession of the “sanctorum communio” [“communion of saints”] is first verifiable in southern Gaul from the end of the fourth century, appearing as an addition to the confession of the “holy, catholic church” in the Old Roman Creed. It also entered into the final form of the Apostles’ Creed. Its significance has been contested in modern research about the creeds. Is the formula originally intended to be personal or sacramental? Does it have to do with the communion of the sancti or the sancta [communion of the saints or the holy elements]? In the Greek Church there is an old, established understanding of “ἅγια” [“hagia”] in the sacramental sense (cf. the liturgical acclamation: “that which is holy for those who are holy”).15 But the earliest Western interpretations of “sanctorum communio” do not point in this direction.16 Nicetas of Remesiana (ca. 400) thus comments: “From the beginning of the world patriarchs, prophets, martyrs, and all other religious people who have lived or are now alive, or shall live in time to come, comprise the church…,” and banded together in this church are the angels.17 If Nicetas here was thinking more about the communion of the saints on earth with those who have been glorified, the later interpretation by Faustus of Riez (ca. 450) was aimed more toward the veneration of the glorified saints. In relation to the glorified members of the church, the formula serves not only as an explication of “sancta ecclesia catholica” [“holy

15 [The actual Greek of the deacon’s call is: τὰ ἅγια τοῖς ἁγίοις (ta hagia tois hagiois) = “the holy things for the holy ones.” Cf. Werner Elert, Eucharist and Church Fellowship in the First Four Centuries, trans. Norman E. Nagel (St. Louis: Concordia, 1966), 9, 219–223. –Ed.] 16 Cf. the precise evidence by Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 389–397. 17 [Nicetas of Remesiana, as quoted by Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 391. –Ed.]

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catholic church”] but also as an additional credal statement. The sacramental interpretation appeared in the West only in the Middle Ages and was bound together with the personal interpretation, as it had been before, whereby the understanding of “the saints” was influenced by the veneration of those who had been sainted and of their relics. In contrast to the cults of the saints that had mushroomed, the Reformers related the formula primarily to the members of the church living on earth. They interpreted it less as a new statement added to the confession of the sancta ecclesia than as an interpretation of this confession, understood in relation to the communio and congregatio. Even if the formula “communion of saints” is lacking in the Scriptures of the New Testament, the concept of communion (κοινωνία [koinōnia] with its corresponding verbs and adjectives) in connection with statements about the church is of the greatest importance.[xvi] It is thus characterized as communion with the Son (e. g., 1 Cor. 1.9), the “communion of the Holy Spirit” (e. g., 2 Cor. 13.13), “communion with the Father and with his Son, Jesus” (1 Jn. 1.3 [S]), “sharing in the gospel” (Phil. 1.5), and the communion of the blood and the body of Christ (1 Cor. 10.16). Since it is impossible for people by themselves to establish communion with God, it is clear that the presupposition of these statements is that God, through his Son and the Holy Spirit, has initiated communion with human beings, that God first loved us, and, through the gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, he has granted us participation in his act of love in Christ. The trinitarian connection that showed itself because of the richness of the ecclesiological designations is also found in the statements concerning communion. Communion with God takes place by our loving him in return, our petitioning and worshiping him. Communion with Christ, as it appears in numerous Pauline statements, finds its special emphasis in that believers suffer with Christ, are crucified with him, die with him, live with him, and are glorified with him (Rom. 6.8; 8.17). The Pauline statements thus point beyond communion with Christ and the Holy Spirit to the future consummation. In that God has initiated community with the human being, God also has created a new community of human beings with one another. It consists not only in our commonly being called out of the world but also in a manifold, mutual care, and participation in that which individuals uniquely encounter in their life history. In this community, individuals are to serve the others with the particular gift of the Spirit that they have received. Where space for the free expression of this life of reciprocal giving and receiving is allowed in the church, the indescribable richness of the divine work opens itself up, which encourages ever-new receiving and giving. This should in no case be restricted or repressed. In this “communion with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ,” it comes about that “our joy is fulfilled” (1 Jn. 1.4 [S]). Already above, in the inquiry as to the basis of the church and the most significant New Testament

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designations for it, the unity and the communion of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit demonstrated itself to be the source of this richness. God grants the church participation in God’s own eternal life in trinitarian unity and communion and makes the unity of the church in its diversity into a created image of his unity in Trinity. A reference to the saints who have preceded those on earth and have been glorified is lacking in the New Testament statements concerning koinonia. But the communion between believers on earth, who struggle and suffer, and those who have been glorified is fully attested to in other New Testament contexts. This is already fundamentally apparent from the interconnectedness of the statements concerning the future and the present of the reign of God, and of those statements concerning the participation in the future feast in the kingdom of God that takes place in the Lord’s Supper. This is also the case, e. g., according to the witnesses in the book of Revelation, regarding glimpses into the liturgy of the martyrs, the elders, and the angels that are given in that text. It also is true with respect to the promise of the letter to the Hebrews to a church that has grown weary: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant” (Heb. 12.22–24a). The communion between the members of the church on earth and those who have been glorified thus does not consist in the invocation of the glorified saints by the saints on earth but in their shared orientation toward God and Christ in joint adoration. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 19 [i]

[ii] [iii]

As he did in other chapters, here also Schlink made use of material that he had previously published. This chapter is largely based on his earlier essays, “Christus und die Kirche” (“Christ and the Church”), SÖB, 1/1.88–105 (ESW, 1.135–154); and “Der Kult in der Sicht evangelischer Theologie” (“The Cultus in the Perspective of Evangelical-Lutheran Theology”), SÖB, 1/1.116–125 (ESW, 1.166–175). Some phrasing in this chapter also echoes statements Schlink made in another essay, “Die apostolische Sukzession” (“Apostolic Succession”), SÖB, 1/1.160–1195 (ESW, 1.211–248). See AC VII (BSELK, 102–103 [BC, 42–43]). See Lumen gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church [Tanner, 2.849–900]).

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[iv]

[v] [vi]

[vii] [viii]

[ix] [x] [xi]

[xii] [xiii]

[xiv]

In Philip IV, known as “the Fair” (1285–1314), France had a king who was “unscrupulous, obstinate, and possessed by the loftiest conceptions of royal authority. The papacy was then occupied by Boniface VIII (1294–1303), a pope who was second to none in his aspirations to supreme authority in temporal affairs” (Walker et al, A History of the Christian Church, 370). Boniface’s famous bull Unam sanctum was issued in the midst of his protracted conflicts with Philip. It asserted papal claims to supreme jurisdictional authority over civil powers. Temporal powers are subject to the spiritual authority of the church, which, “in the person of the pope, can be judged by God alone” (Walker et al., A History of the Christian Church, 371). For the key wording in Unam sanctum, see Denzinger, 870–875. Either Schlink accidentally repeated this sentence, which appears almost verbatim in the previous paragraph, or he wanted to underscore this important point. During Schlink’s early years as a pastor in the 1930s, there were many Christians in Nazi Germany who appealed to a notion of “Volk” (“people”; “nation”) that was racist and nationalist. Some of the so-called “Deutsche Christen” argued that the Nazis’ understanding of “Volk” (= “the pure Aryan race”) was more central to the identity of the German Protestant Church than the apostle Paul’s teaching about baptism (cf. Gal. 3.26f.). As a member of the so-called “Confessing Church,” which confessed the Barmen Theological Declaration, Schlink had stressed the centrality of baptism into Christ as the true basis for the identity of the church. For the following sections, cf. Schlink, “Der Kult,” SÖB, 1/1.118ff. (ESW, 1.168ff.). While Schlink used the term Trisagion here to refer to the threefold Sanctus (“holy, holy, holy”) voiced by the angels in Isaiah’s vision (cf. Isa. 6.3), the Trisagion (“thrice holy”) is actually the refrain that is chanted in nearly all Eastern Orthodox liturgies: “Holy God, Holy and strong, Holy and immortal, have mercy on us” (ODCC, 1642). Cf. TDNT, 3.527. See chap. 2 (“De populo dei” [“The People of God”]) of Lumen gentium (Tanner, 2.855–862). For the following sections on the attributes of the church, cf. Schlink, “Christus und die Kirche,” SÖB, 1/1.95–98 (ESW, 1.143–146). A careful comparison between this earlier essay and these paragraphs in his dogmatics indicates Schlink has shifted the theological framework from one that was almost entirely christological and pneumatological to one that is explicitly trinitarian. This paragraph (with minor changes) appears as the final one in Schlink’s earlier essay, “Christus und die Kirche.” Cf. SÖB, 1/1.105 (ESW, 1.153). Schlink’s use of hypostasieren here refers to the application of divine and human attributes to the church, of thinking and speaking of the church in the same way that Christians think of Christ as two natures—divine and human—in one person (hypostasis). For this section, cf. Schlink, “Christus und die Kirche,” SÖB, 1/1.97–98 (ESW, 1.145–146).

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[xv]

[xvi]

Cf. Unitatis redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 21 November 1964, esp. sec. 6: “In its pilgrimage on earth Christ summons the church to continual reformation [perennem reformationem]…” [Tanner, 2.913]). In this paragraph and in a few other places, the word Gemeinschaft has been translated as “communion.” It makes sense, for example, to translate it this way in the context of the Lord’s Supper (Holy Communion), in reflections about “the communion of saints,” and in thinking about the inner-trinitarian relations, i. e., the eternal communion of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (cf. chaps. 25–29). Elsewhere, however, as I briefly explain in my preface, this word has been translated as “community,” especially when referring to the church on earth. The reader should keep both shades of meaning in mind when encountering these two words, “community” and “communion,” in ESW. (The same two nuances are present in the basic definitions of the Greek term, “koinōnia” [= “Gemeinschaft”]: “close association,” “close relationship,” “partnership,” as well as “sharing” something in common, “communion” [cf. BDAG, 552–553].)

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Chapter XX: Spiritual Gift and Ministerial Office[i]

1. The Apostles During his public ministry, Jesus was surrounded by disciples. Among them, the Twelve who were called by Jesus are emphasized in the traditions of the Gospels. The number twelve represented the twelve tribes of Israel, over which Jesus appointed these disciples as eschatological judges (Mt. 19.28 par. Lk. 22.30b). It is improbable that this tradition first arose as a projection back onto history of the eventual significance of the Twelve in the early Jerusalem church. The sending of the Twelve by the earthly Jesus was limited in time. They returned to Jesus after completing their mission. Then their discipleship broke up in much the same way that the old covenant was broken by Israel’s disobedience: it was broken by arrogance and petty belief in the face of their Lord’s passion. Therefore, the appearances of the risen one were fundamental for the ministry of the apostles. Indeed, ultimately, being an eyewitness to the earthly way of Jesus was not even an unconditional requirement for the apostolate. Paul certainly knew that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ solely because of the appearance of the risen Christ, without having been a disciple of the earthly Jesus. Thus the first impetus for the concept of apostle was being an eyewitness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, Paul did not understand himself as an apostle solely on the basis of being an eyewitness. This becomes quite clear through 1 Cor. 15.5ff. If the appearance of the risen one had been in itself the sufficient foundation for the apostolate, then the more than 500 brothers and sisters named there would all have been acknowledged by him as apostles. Rather, foundational for the apostle is the sending by the risen one, which was added to being an eyewitness. The sending is also one of the main themes in the accounts of the Easter appearances in the Gospels. This sending was at the same time an authorization. The mission given by the risen one was no unfulfillable demand, but at the same time a promise of a divine fulfillment, the promise of the present Christ and of the gift of the Holy Spirit—whether those sent received the Spirit already with the mission itself (Jn. 20.22), or he was received afterwards at Pentecost in the midst of the other believers and those waiting (Acts 2). These two elements—being an eyewitness and the sending by the risen one—are constitutive for the dogmatic concept of the apostle. The factual situation in the New Testament does not need to be set forth in detail here. It is well known that the Gospel of John avoids the title of apostle for the Twelve, that Matthew uses

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the word only once—and perhaps not even once in the original manuscript—and also that Mark uses it only once. To be sure, Luke spoke frequently of the apostles, but he referred in this way only to the Twelve, not to Paul (with the exception of Acts 14.14, where Barnabas is also referred to as an apostle). On the other hand, Paul did not restrict the concept of apostle, neither to the Twelve nor to the Twelve and himself: thus, in Gal. 1.19, he referred to James as an apostle, as well as others; Rom. 16.7 refers to Andronicus and Junia as apostles. While the Lukan concept of apostle includes being an eyewitness to the earthly and risen Jesus, for Paul the appearance of the risen Christ alone is constitutive. Thus the New Testament has no uniform concept of apostle. To be sure, we need to distinguish between the apostles of Jesus Christ and the apostles of the congregations, but even then, the New Testament conceptuality is not uniform, and their derivation (from the Old Testament prophetic mission or from the Jewish shaliah or even from Gnosticism?) is debated—as is the question of whether this term had already been used by Jesus.[ii] We must see clearly that the concept of apostle, which soon became common in the ancient church, is already a dogmatic concept. Although the concept of the apostolic office points to the essence of clear New Testament contents—otherwise it would not be a legitimate dogmatic concept—it is not drawn directly from New Testament statements but is rather the result of its systematic-theological processing. Just because this concept points to the heart of the New Testament, it cannot be used in an exclusive sense but must retain a certain openness and diffuseness, for the differences in the New Testament use of the term apostle means at the same time an openness regarding the borders of the apostolic circle. Thus the concept of apostle was broad, according to Paul, or narrow, according to Luke. The diffuseness in the concept of apostle corresponds to the fact that the apostles were surrounded by prophets, evangelists, and teachers, in each case without any clear-cut distinction being made between their ministries. Thus, in Eph. 2.20, the apostles and prophets are named as the foundation of the church. In this connection it should also be remembered that in the Gospel of Matthew the same saying of the Lord is handed down that transfers the power of the keys to Peter (16.19) and also to the congregation (18.18), and that the Gospel of John shows little interest in delimiting the number of disciples. The church is addressed here together with the disciples. The dogmatic concept of the apostle thus grasps the constitutive center of the New Testament’s conceptuality, but the diffuseness that radiates from this center cannot be overlooked. Otherwise, dogmatics would lose its historical basis, and would neither be able to see correctly the early Christian relationship between charismata and ministerial office nor be able to provide a convincing justification for the authority of the New Testament canon, which indeed, as we noted above, does not consist solely of writings produced by apostolic hands.

(a) What was the ministry of the apostles? The many New Testament witnesses to apostolic activity, which nevertheless do not give us any information about the further historical path of each of the Twelve, can be systematically summarized in different ways. In any case, the apostolic message about Christ should be mentioned first:

The Apostles

(1) The apostles proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus from death and, in its light, the death of Jesus on the cross as God’s saving act of salvation. This proclamation was not only the communication of facts but also the assurance of the divine act of salvation, first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles, in the advance into ever-new conceptualizations, religions, and worldviews. Through the ministry of the apostles, Christ himself has acted to judge and save the world. In their words and deeds, he has demonstrated himself as the one speaking and acting in the present. In Christ’s stead, they were ambassadors through whom God exhorted the people. This holds true also about the suffering of the apostles. In that they took part in the suffering of Jesus Christ, they represented the suffering Christ in the midst of the congregation and before the world, and as the representation of the suffering Christ they were the agent of the power of the exalted Lord. The apostles therefore appear before the world as the vicarious representatives of Jesus Christ. So the witness of the apostles was the word of God, binding and loosing, and the power of their message was the power of God, the working of the Spirit. (2) Thereby, because the apostles proclaimed the gospel, faith and the community of believers came into being; congregations came into being. The apostolic ministry was that of the builder. They did not restrict themselves to the relevant assurance and claim of the gospel, but they also gave instructions for ordering the worship service, for ordering the life of congregations, for the ministry of the spiritually gifted individuals [Charismatiker], for the community of Jewish-Christians and GentileChristians with each other, for marriage, for collecting the offerings, and so forth. They also undertook installations into the ministry of congregational leadership, and they strengthened the authority of those who presided in the congregations. (3) In relation to our ecumenical context, one impetus contained in this churchfounding and church-leading activity should be particularly emphasized: The apostles were the bond of unity for the earliest Christian congregations. The unity of the congregations in the exalted Christ and in the Spirit became an historical reality through the ministry of the apostles, through the witness of the same to the Lord who appeared to them, through missionary journeys to the congregations, through the sending of messengers and letters, through mutual petitionary prayers, through the organization of the offering collection for Jerusalem. If the apostles were effective as the bond of unity for the congregations, then this presupposes that the apostles themselves represented a unity with one another. Against an idealization of this unity—an idealization that already clearly began in the Acts of the Apostles and soon was completed in the ancient church—the letter to the Galatians especially offers warning. There we experience tensions and real conflicts among the apostles. But neither can we overlook the obligation to unity that was acknowledged by all of them, their commitment to this unity, and the unity that is actually existing in the one Christ, a unity which does not consist in a pyramid of hierarchical ordering of

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over and under but in the partnership of service, that is, it is brought about at the same time in the mutual recognition of being sent by the Lord. (b) Simon Peter held a special position among the apostles.[iii] According to the reports of all the Gospels, this was already true regarding his position in the preEaster circle of disciples: Simon belonged to those who were first called by Jesus, and he is named first in all the lists of the Twelve. Together with the sons of Zebedee, he belonged to Jesus’ closest circle. He confessed Jesus as the Christ (Mk. 8.29 par.; cf. Jn. 6.68f.). From Jesus he received the name Cephas/Peter (Mk. 3.16, Mt. 16.18 et passim), the power of the keys (Mt. 16.19), and the commission to “strengthen” the brothers (Lk. 22.32). While there is debate about the extent to which these reports have been shaped by the special position that Peter occupied in the postEaster community, even if one disregards the particularly controversial logion of Mt. 16.18 and the ordering of names in the lists of the Twelve, indications of a special relationship between the earthly Jesus and Peter remain deeply embedded in the Synoptic tradition. Certainly, the tradition of Peter’s denial (especially in connection with his previous promise to go to jail and to death with Jesus, Lk. 22.33) cannot be explained as a projection by the post-Easter community back onto the past. But be that as it may, Peter’s pre-Easter discipleship was shattered in the face of Jesus’ passion. With relentless transparency, the Gospels report his failure, and they portray Simon Peter as an enthusiastic and unstable person. The apostolate of Peter, like that of the other apostles, is based on the appearing and sending of the risen Christ. Here Peter is given prominence within the circle of the other apostles by the fact that the risen one appeared to him first among the disciples (1 Cor. 15.5; Lk. 24.34). Whatever commission Simon might have received from the earthly Jesus, he who had denied him was taken into service by the risen one in a special way (Jn. 21.15ff.). Precisely in this way, Jesus Christ made this person who had failed a sign of his power for all times. Faith in the risen Lord began with Peter, as did the public message of Jesus’ resurrection and the church. Simon Peter thus appears in the Acts of the Apostles as the initiator of apostolic activity: He called for the election of the twelfth apostle (1.15f.), delivered the sermon on Pentecost (2.14ff.), accomplished the first miracles of healing in the name of Jesus Christ (3.2ff.), defended the message of Christ before the Jewish authorities (4.8ff. and 5.29ff.), practiced church discipline (5.1ff.), visited the Christians in Samaria and connected them with the early church (8.14ff.), etc. Even if Peter and John are mentioned together several times in these reports, the real weight rests on the work of Peter. The fact that Paul traveled to Jerusalem three years after his conversion to “get to know Peter” (Gal. 1.18 [L]) also speaks for his special position in those early days. What was it that made Peter’s position prominent in relation to the other apostles? This relationship cannot simply be reduced to one of the usual terms. Peter was not merely the “representative” of or the “spokesman” for the other apostles

The Apostles

(especially not in the sense of a representative or spokesman commissioned by the other apostles), but rather he preceded them with authority in preaching and in establishing and leading churches. Conversely, however, Peter also did not treat the other apostles as a “superior.” Neither from the pre-Easter period nor from the founding events of the church is it reported that Peter had issued commissions to the other apostles in the name of Jesus. Rather, he acted in partnership with the apostles—leading, but not as an individual standing opposite or over them. According to the accounts in the book of Acts, he worked with the apostles and the Jerusalem congregation (in Acts 15.22 the elders are also mentioned) to make the decision in the conflict about providing for the Hellenistic widows (Acts 6.1–6) and in the dispute over circumcising Gentile Christians (15.1ff.). Yes, Peter even allowed himself, together with John, to be sent by the apostles to the churches that arose in Samaria (Acts 8.14–25), and later he allowed himself to be held accountable to James for his eating at table with the Gentile Christians in Antioch, and was therefore rebuked most severely by Paul (Gal. 2.11ff.). Despite full acknowledgment that Peter’s special position remains constitutive for the concept of an apostle, the Lord did not call just one apostle but a multiplicity of them. Every apostle has authority, not merely Simon Peter, and not merely “the college.”1 But no individual apostle has an authority apart from the others. Within the community of apostles, Peter’s special position is indicated by the mandate, “strengthen your brothers.” After the initial period of the church’s founding, Peter left Jerusalem. After the apostolic council, he is no longer mentioned in the book of Acts. After his departure, James was in charge of the Jerusalem congregation, and Peter was active in missionary work outside of Jerusalem, as were other apostles (1 Cor. 9.15)—certainly in Antioch (Gal. 2.11ff.), perhaps in Corinth (1 Cor. 1.12), and very likely in Rome, where tradition says he was martyred. It is unlikely that he was bishop of the Roman congregation since there was no episcopal structure there but only a presbyterial one in the early days (cf. 1 Clem.). There is, therefore, no evidence in the New Testament Scriptures that, after his departure, he led the entire church from Jerusalem and later from Rome. In any case, Paul saw Peter as an apostle among the Jews in the same way that he understood himself as an apostle among the Gentiles (Gal. 2.7–9). But there is, however, some evidence that James, as the leader of the Jerusalem congregation, understood himself to be at the same time the leader of the universal church. But his understanding of the ministry seems to have been different from that of Peter. If Peter had previously worked in partnership with the Twelve, the elders, and the Jerusalem congregation to maintain the unity

1 [Cf. Lumen gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), which teaches that the Lord Jesus established the apostles “as a college or a permanent group over which he placed Peter, chosen from among them” (Tanner, 2.863; cf. 2.864–65, 868, 899–900, and 921–22). –Ed.]

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of the expanding church, and had understood this unity as a partnership with the Jerusalem congregation, James seems to have made a stronger claim to leadership and to have called for the subordination of the Jerusalem congregation to himself. The claim to be leader of the whole Jerusalem congregation came to an end with the martyrdom of James, the flight of that congregation to Pella, and the destruction of Jerusalem. Also, in the disputed saying of the Lord (Mt. 16.18), no special significance is accorded to Simon Peter beyond the initial event of the church’s founding: “You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church.” It is not Peter here who is called the builder of the church, but Jesus Christ. Peter is the “foundation-rock” [Felsengrund] on which Christ wants to build his church. Laying the foundation and building the structure are two different things. Laying the foundation is a one-time event; building is ongoing. The one-time foundational event was soon completed in Jerusalem, but missionary-ministry constantly proceeded further. (c) How the apostles understood themselves in relation to the church is most clearly and reliably set forth by Paul. To be sure, one cannot generalize about the Pauline understanding without further ado, since one must reckon with the differences in the relationship between apostle and congregation when one compares the Jerusalem basic conception with the Pauline. Nevertheless, the following general statements can be made: (1) In the “ministry of reconciliation,” the apostles face both the world and the church, for they encounter them as ambassadors, in the stead of Christ, through whom God exhorts human beings (2 Cor. 5.20). The apostles belong to God’s salvific action in the world and in the church, insofar as, without them, God’s act of salvation in Christ would have remained hidden from the world, and no church would have come into being. (2) Together with all members of the church the apostles stand under the Lord; they were justified sinners among the others. What they are, they are solely by grace. Indeed, the apostles sinned in a special way, as Peter did as the denier, and as Paul did as the persecutor of Jesus Christ. Together with all members the apostles must also appear before the judgment seat of God and be revealed along with their deeds. The person of the apostle is nothing; that person’s testimony is everything. Thus, according to his own self-judgment, Paul appears to be the greatest sinner, one untimely born, an aberration, a doormat, unworthy, tormented by demons.[iv] Decisive is this: “It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2.20). The apostle stands as a witness facing the congregation and brings it everything, and yet at the same time the apostle stands as a justified sinner under the Lord and before him is nothing. The apostles thus live as every Christian does, namely, from the congregation’s comforting witness and from the intercessions of the congregations, and again and again we read how Paul asks that they should pray for him so that his work could progress, that his sorrow be taken from him, and so forth. In that

The Apostles

way, the apostles live from the ministry of the congregation. As recipients, they are dependent not only on material gifts and payments for services rendered but also on the spiritual gifts of strength that the congregations bestow upon them. (3) Since the observations in both of the previous sections belong together, this cannot remain without consequences for the execution of the apostolic ministry. The apostles act in community with the other members of the church. This becomes clear both in the letters of Paul (e. g., 1 Cor. 5.4) and in the Acts of the Apostles (e. g., Acts 15). In other respects, it is also characteristic for Paul to strive constantly for the “Amen” and cooperation of the congregation, for it also had received the Spirit. In that the congregation submits itself to the apostle’s message about Christ, it also shares in Christ and in his Spirit and is equipped and called to test and judge everything. The apostle did his ministry surrounded by the manifold ministries of the other members of the congregations. Even where the multiplicity of spiritual gifts is not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament, it is clear that the apostle—whether surrounded by spiritually gifted individuals [Charismatikern] or by elders [Ältesten]—does not represent an isolated authority. Once more, it is important here to stress the diffuseness in the concept of apostle, about which we spoke above. The apostles do their ministry surrounded by prophets, teachers, evangelists, who at times are working across several congregations, as the apostles do too, and surrounded by manifold other spiritual persons [Pneumatikern], elders [Presbytern], and initial believers in the local congregations. Thus, alongside the apostles, prophets are also mentioned as a foundation on which the church is built (Eph. 2.20). Since the prophets are here mentioned after the apostles, the author was probably thinking of New Testament prophets. This aspect of the partnership of the apostolic ministry with the other ministries was then also acknowledged in the compilation of writings in the New Testament canon, only some of which, of course, originated directly from the apostles. The office of the apostle will only then be correctly understood if we keep in mind this threefold set of circumstances. Through the calling of the risen one the apostles are brought into prominence in relation to all other members of the church, but they are just as dependent on grace as the other members of the church are, and they work in the congregations and in the world surrounded by the witness of all who receive the Spirit. Here it can also be stated that the apostles are called in order to build up the church. At the same time, they themselves are also members of the church, which is built through the Spirit on the one foundation, Jesus Christ, and they work together with the other members of the church in edifying it. Together with them, they are the church. (d) The apostles were not only the builders and planters of the earliest Christian community, but the builders and planters of the church in all times and places. Their ministerial office is and remains utterly unique. Only the apostles have proclaimed Christ as the called eyewitnesses of the risen Lord. On the basis of the historical

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uniqueness of their direct and immediate calling by the risen one, the apostles are the foundation of the church, not merely of individual local congregations but of the church of all times and places (cf. Mt. 16.18; Eph. 2.20; and Rev. 21.14). This statement does not imply any competition with those passages that refer to Christ as the foundation of the church, for, in the ministry of the apostles, Christ—the foundation-stone, the cornerstone, and the keystone—is present. To what extent are the apostles foundational for all further servant ministry and all further life of the church? Here the same three points must be mentioned again, which were discussed above: (1) The apostolic gospel is the authoritative message of Christ for the church of all times. It corresponds entirely to the starting point found in the undisputed letters of Paul and also in a concentrated way in the Pastoral Letters, where one is exhorted to remain true to the doctrine of the apostle, for Paul had spoken of the gospel in such a way that the apostle and the gospel cannot be separated from each other (e. g., Gal. 1.9). Of course, it is not only the content of the apostolic witness that has authoritative significance, but so too does the apostolic act of servant witnessing. Acknowledging the apostles’ witness does not consist simply in reciting apostolic words, but rather it is continuing in what the apostles have done to advance the proclamation of God’s act of salvation into the world. (2) Furthermore, foundational is the apostolic ministry of church leadership. Here, too, it is not only the factual directives of the apostles which have been handed down that are obligatory for all later times, but also the act of the apostolic directing. The church must follow this example so that it orders its ministry aright and calls others into the ministry of preaching and leading. (3) The apostles are the abiding authoritative bond of unity of the church of all times and places—a bond of unity through their message about Christ, but also through the differences that are evident among them in the theological unfolding of the message of Christ and in the understanding of the church and its order in the New Testament Scriptures. Precisely in these differences, the apostles are the paradigm for the extent and limits of church unity. The ancient church acknowledged the differences within the New Testament Scriptures—their traditions of the gospel, their theologies, their starting points for the ordering of the church—as existing within this unity, in that they summarized them in one canon of Scripture. This threefold foundational function of the apostolate is affirmed by the Eastern Church, the Roman Church, and the churches of the Reformation. In this fundamental affirmation there is no opposition. The differences first appeared at a later time, namely, with the question regarding the sources of apostolic tradition and regarding the implementation of the apostolic succession. But despite these differences, the fundamental acknowledgment of the apostles as foundation of the church is of greatest significance. This makes ecumenical dialogue possible.

The Community of the Charismata

2. The Community of the Charismata Through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, all members of the church have become witnesses of the mighty deeds of God in Christ. This witness of the prophetic, priestly, royal people of God is not like a choir that sings in unison, but like a mixed chorus of many voices. That “all” the members of the New Testament people of God have been given the Spirit is the testimony of all the New Testament Scriptures. That the outpouring of the Spirit brings about the public “witness” in all members of the church is especially the testimony of the Acts of the Apostles. But that the outpouring of the Spirit itself takes place in a multiplicity of spiritual gifts is, above all, the testimony of Paul. Each believer has received a particular spiritual gift. One and the same Spirit “allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses” (1 Cor. 12.11; cf. v. 7). In this connection it is important to note First Peter (4.10ff.), where it is likewise presupposed that each member of the congregation has received a special spiritual gift. Paul’s teaching about the multiplicity of spiritual gifts was so fundamental for him that his statements can in no way be restricted to the congregations in Corinth and Rome or even only to the Pauline congregations in the era of the church’s founding. Rather, the multiplicity of spiritual gifts, according to the statements of Paul, belongs to the very nature of the church at all times and in all places, for as the body of Christ, the church is an organism of many gifts and servant ministries. Paul has made these statements so universal and fundamental that they cannot be relativized historically but must be incorporated into the doctrine of the church and ministerial office, even though there was no reflection on this multiplicity of gifts in most of the other New Testament Scriptures. A concrete spiritual gift is allotted to each believer out of the freedom of the Spirit. No defined order has been handed down by which the individual members receive the concrete spiritual gifts. Indeed, all have received the Spirit as they came to faith and were baptized, and the Spirit again and again works in and through those who participate in the worship assembly. One can come to baptism and to the Lord’s Supper, but which concrete spiritual gift the individual receives, that is dependent upon the freedom of the Spirit itself. There is no mention of a definite way by which an individual could come to have a particular spiritual gift. Here we have to keep open the various possibilities: Charismata can be received already in the reception of the gospel in faith, or through baptism, or through the laying on of hands in connection with baptism, or through a later hearing of the gospel, and in the reception of the Lord’s Supper, but also apart from any special action, as an answer to prayer and pleading. The gifts of the Spirit also appear spontaneously when a congregation faces emergencies and special needs, on which God has mercy by bestowing spiritual gifts. The believer should pray to receive the spiritual gifts, and in fact to receive the most important of these (cf. 1 Cor. 12.31 and 14.1).

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The multiplicity of spiritual gifts is set forth in the concrete details that are given in the lists of charismata in 1 Cor. 12.4–10; 12.28–30; and Rom. 12.6–8; as well as Eph. 4.11. These gifts have to be distinguished from the list of the fruit of the Spirit that is given in Gal. 5.22, for the charismata are imparted to different members of the congregation, while the spiritual fruit of love, joy, peace, and so forth, are expected of all Christians. But strict boundary lines should not be drawn here (cf., e. g., the transition from 1 Cor. 12 to 13 and also the verses following Rom. 12.9, in which love is again mentioned). In what follows, those observations about the lists of charismata that are especially of fundamental significance are briefly highlighted: (a) It is clear that there is no firmly established catalog of spiritual gifts that is valid for congregations in all places and—we may add—at all times. By comparing Rom. 12.6ff. with 1 Cor. 12.4ff., one can immediately notice that the same spiritual gifts will not be present in every congregation at all times, but that at all times spiritual gifts will be present for every member of the congregation. (b) In all the lists of charismata there emerges a certain hierarchical ordering of gifts. Coming first are the specifically kerygmatic spiritual gifts: 1 Cor. 12.8, the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge; 1 Cor. 12.28, apostles, prophets, and teachers; Rom. 12, prophecy; and Eph. 4.11, apostles, prophets, and evangelists. By contrast—and this is most significant—the spiritual gifts of leader (1 Cor. 12.28), of administrator (Rom. 12.8), of pastor[v] (Eph. 4.11) are first mentioned at a later spot, after the specifically kerygmatic gifts and even sometimes after the gifts of healing and other gifts of helping. To be sure, in Eph. 4.11 teachers follow after pastors, but here too prophets and evangelists come first. (c) Apostles are named in the first position in the ordering of the charismata in 1 Cor. 12.28 and Eph. 4.11. The apostles are cited here not only because of the otherwise prominent aspect of their special calling but because of their spiritual empowerment, as the church-founding spiritually gifted ones. In fact, the manifold charismata are concentrated in Paul himself in a unique way. He is prophet, teacher, wonderworker. He can also speak in tongues and has the gift of leadership. (d) It already here becomes clear that a sharp distinction cannot always be made between the charismata. A prophet can be at the same time a teacher. How closely prophets and teachers work together is shown, e. g., in the Acts of the Apostles 13.1ff.: Prophets and teachers send Paul and Barnabas. (e) In the lists of charismata, we find some statements that designate only the gifts and their activity and other statements that designate the person. Thus 1 Cor. 12.28 begins with the latter, such as apostle, prophet, and teacher, and then goes on to list wondrous powers, gifts of healing, etc. This alternation between the designations of the person and the statements about the spiritually gifted activity is found also in Romans 12. From the designations of the person is inferred that the gifts of the Spirit, even if they are given freely by the Spirit, do not come and go arbitrarily, nor

The Community of the Charismata

do they arbitrarily jump from one person to the other. Rather, a certain constancy of the same concrete spiritual gifts is presupposed, which makes the designations of the person possible. (f) Even if in all the lists of the charismata the specifically kerygmatic charismata are prominent, and the servant ministries of the other powers and gifts of helping are ordered after them, we cannot overlook the fact that all the charismata serve the word, namely, the witness to God’s act of salvation in Christ. Even the charismata which are not specifically kerygmatic are related to the word, display the image of Jesus, and may be designated as the radiance of the Logos, for all the charismata occur in the power of his name, and are a concrete unfolding of the confession, “Jesus is Lord.” In the multiplicity of the spiritual gifts is realized the fullness of the one Christ in the church. As head of the body, he is the bearer and the origin of all the charismata, and they in turn are all ordered in service to him. So the community of the charismata consists in their common participation in the one charis [grace, favor] of Jesus Christ. Christ himself is the actual, true, and original bearer of all the charismata. He is the one apostle, prophet, teacher and evangelist, pastor and deacon of the new covenant. In this sense of the common participation in the one grace of Jesus Christ, the church is the community of the spiritual gifts. (g) Because each spiritual gift [charisma] is a participation in the one charis of Christ, the multiplicity of charismata is at the same time the multiplicity of the mutual service of the members of the church to one another. It is not merely service to God but also service to the brothers and the sisters: “Serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received” (1 Pet. 4.10). In the worshiping assembly this mutual service of everyone to everyone else appears in a concentrated form. The value of each spiritual gift is measured according to its significance for the gathered congregation and its edification. The more one spiritual gift serves the others, the more highly it is to be respected. Consequently, in the midst of all the spiritual gifts love is the “more precious way” [“köstlicher Weg”], as Luther translated 1 Cor. 12.31. Spiritual arbitrariness and disorder are forbidden by the apostle, that is, by Christ himself. The legitimacy of the spiritual gifts proves itself in that they persevere in an abiding, free, and whole-hearted relationship to the body of Christ. As appropriate to the nature of the church, this servant ministry is carried out for the brothers and the sisters and then, in partnership with the brothers and sisters, for the sake of the world. (h) For this reason, space is to be made for the spiritual gifts in the congregation. To be sure, they have to be tested. They are to be evaluated according to their usefulness for the edification of the church, and yes, under certain circumstances, as in speaking in tongues, to keep them in check. False spirits are to be completely excluded. But the true and deep concern in the Pauline statements comes explicitly to voice in his appeal not to dampen the Spirit and to strive after the spiritual gifts.

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3. The Sending into Servant Ministry The presupposition of each one of the servant ministries in the church is the calling and sending that has come through the gospel. The gospel calls persons from the world into the new people of God and sends them as the prophetic, priestly, royal people into the world. Through the gospel and baptism all the members of the new people of God are placed under the lordship of the Spirit. Baptism is, however, always one and the same thing, whereas the spiritual gift received in baptism, or also at a later time, is a different one for each Christian. The Spirit, whose coming is pleaded for, is always one and the same, but it pleases him in his freedom to bestow himself in various spiritual gifts to each one in a differing way. Thus, in general, the concrete spiritual gift is not preceded by a concrete word of calling that corresponds to it. Rather, the concretizing of the gift of Christ emerges in the congregation and in its individual members in the freedom of the Spirit, without a concrete word of calling, and is retrospectively to be acknowledged as a gift that has been bestowed. We have to distinguish this calling of all into membership in the people of God from the calling which individual members receive to a special ministry, one for which they are commissioned and authorized. The multiplicity of the freely emerging charismata and ministries carried out by all the believers is to be distinguished from the servant ministry that is exercised on the basis of a concrete calling and authorization in the church, as existing in the foundational ministry of the apostles. Here a concrete word of sending comes to believers and encounters them. In this case, it is not only an inner compulsion that urges them to a concrete servant ministry, but a concrete command that is issued to the individuals and places them into ministry. Now, to be sure, all the charismata come not from human beings but from God. But the mission of the sending is the concrete external word that the individuals encounter as an external word, which remains upon them and again and again urges obedience from them in the servant ministry in which it has put them. Every believer receives a spiritual gift, but not every believer receives such a concrete mission. These concrete callings, installations, and authorizations can be summarized in the concept of commissioning [besonderen Sendung]. There is frequent mention made about such a special sending or commissioning in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Pastoral Letters, but there is seldom any mention in the undisputed letters of Paul (2 Cor. 8.19 is an exception here).[vi] The commissioning of specific members of the church for a specific ministry is, according to the New Testament, often reported as taking place with the laying on of hands. As is well known, we are here dealing with the adoption of a custom—a custom already documented in the Old Testament—whose continuation is then found in the ordination of Jewish scholars. We can thus surmise that callings with the laying on of hands took place in the earliest Christian community in Palestine from the very beginning and that the laying on of hands took place in connection with

The Sending into Servant Ministry

such callings, even where it was not explicitly mentioned (as, e. g., in Acts 14.23). To be sure, one cannot thus surmise that every calling in earliest Christianity occurred with the laying on of hands, just as one must in general be careful to avoid applying statements in the New Testament regarding the ordering in a given congregation or in a given area of mission to all congregations. For which concrete servant ministry is the special sending or commissioning done, according to the New Testament texts? Not for healing, nor for works of miracles, nor for individual forms of witnessing, such as the “word of wisdom” or the “word of knowledge” (1 Cor. 12.8). Nor in the New Testament do we hear about a special laying on of hands for the gift of speaking in tongues. Rather, the New Testament reports which deal with the commissioning focus on the ministry of missionary church-founding and of church leadership, as well as on ministries that assist in the founding and leading of churches. The tasks of missionary churchfounding and church-leading correspond to the servant ministry into which the apostles had been called. They, too, were not spontaneously acting, spiritually gifted individuals, who then later received the “Yes!” and “Amen!” from the congregation; rather, the concrete sending preceded their spiritually gifted ministry. Admittedly, they had been called by the risen Lord; all subsequent callings occurred through human beings. In this way, all these later callings are different from the calling of the apostles. All these callings are in that respect distinguished from the callings of the apostles, but they do indeed entail the mission of following in the train of the apostles, whose ministry they continued. About this special sending or commissioning the following key points need to be highlighted: (a) The sending is not left to the arbitrary will of human beings, even though it occurs through human beings. This becomes very emphatically evident in the election that precedes the laying on of hands. The particulars in the New Testament make clear that the mission, sending, and imparting of the Spirit are by no means at the disposal of human beings, but rather that those doing the sending fast, pray for the Spirit, and not only for the one who is to be called but also for those who have to do the calling, since the discernment of the suitability of those who are to be called already itself presupposes the Spirit who alone is able to recognize the spiritual gifts and to distinguish among them. The leading of the Spirit is attested to as of decisive importance—the Spirit who calls, installs, and presents before the congregation the one whom he wants to be sent. This is how the pertinent witness of the prophets is to be understood in this context (Acts 13.1ff.; cf. also 1 Tim. 1.18; 4.14). (b) In the sending, human words and human hands serve as the instrument of the sending God. God calls through the mouth and hand of the church, as through his instrument. This is already the sense of the pericope about the calling of Matthias (Acts 1.21ff.): Lots were cast precisely because the Lord is the one to choose and not

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human beings. Compare also Acts 13.2: In a time of worship and fasting, the Holy Spirit, and thus the Lord, summons them for a calling and makes known whom he has called. The prophets and teachers send them with the laying on of hands, but then it states again: Saul and Barnabas are sent out by the Spirit. Acts 20.28 also speaks of the installing through the Spirit. (c) God authorizes through the call, but two things need to be distinguished within the authorization: (1) Commissioning as the explicit placing into service of an already existing spiritual gift. Thus Acts 6.3: “Select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task.” See also the evidence in the Pastoral Letters regarding the prerequisites for those who can be installed as bishops. In these passages an already existing spiritual gift, or, according to the Pastoral Letters, at least an aptitude to teach, is already acknowledged with the commissioning and is taken up into the ministry. This significance of the laying on of hands, however, may not be generalized, and understanding it as the imparting of the Spirit can in no way be fundamentally excluded. Rudolph Sohm did this: The laying on of hands is presupposed by the fact that for the one who receives it, “the charisma [spiritual gift] which enables the receiver to be a teacher is already dwelling within him. The laying on of hands is thus not the root cause of the charisma [spiritual gift] but its presupposition.”2

(2) Through the commissioning God bestows [verleiht] the spiritual gift that qualifies one for the ministry of leading the congregation. The commissioning to the concrete servant ministry grants to believers, who as such are urged by God’s Spirit, also the concrete spiritual gift for the specific servant ministry to which God has called them. Consequently, the laying on of hands is not an empty sign, but rather with it what is commanded by God and requested of God is effectively appropriated. The laying on of hands at the commissioning is, to be sure, different from other kinds of laying on of hands that are described in the New Testament, such as for healing or for blessing or for the imparting of the Spirit after baptism. However, as in all these other special-ministry actions—according to the New Testament witness—what is prayed for with the laying on of hands is received, which is also true with respect to the spiritual gift received for the special ministry into which a member of the congregation is sent with prayer and the laying on of hands. On this basis, confidence in one’s ordination [Ger.: Ordination] is possible, in fact, also in the case of looking back on the ordination once received. On that same basis, this comforting certainty is possible: I have been called; I have been sent. Those

2 Rudolph Sohm, Kirchenrecht [Canon Law], 2 vols. (Leipzig: Dunker & Humblot, 1892–1923), 1.63.

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ordained can know that the spiritual gift will give them the strength to proclaim the gospel rightly, and they should in this certainty “rekindle God’s gift of grace which was given… through the laying on of hands” (2 Tim. 1.6 [S]). This point receded in the Reformers’ understanding of ordination, which developed in the course of their disputation about the Roman Catholic ordination of priests, and it has often been overlooked in scholarly research. But that point is not missing, as is clear from the ordination prayers. See, e. g., Peter Brunner’s analysis of the act of ordination which Luther carried out when he installed Nikolaus von Amsdorf as bishop of Naumberg: With the laying on of hands accompanied by prayer, “the moment of the Paraclete’s assurance appears in concentrated form, for here assurance becomes a blessing. The hands that are laid in the ordination on the one ordained are hands ‘that bless.’ For the one ordained this blessing is the visible assurance of power, courage, and comfort for the leadership of the office of ministry that is now laid upon him.”3 “Melanchthon teaches that the meaning of the ordination is the public confirmation of the rightful calling [Vokation] by other ministri verbi [ministers of the word] through whom Christ himself calls individuals into the ministerial office, commissions, and blesses them for the ministerial office through the mediation of the Holy Spirit,” whereby the laying on of hands comes to have not only a significative [symbolic] meaning but also a benedictional one.”4

(d) Which people do the calling? Obviously, only members of the church, but which members? Here two lines have to be distinguished: (1) The New Testament Scriptures report, on the one hand, about the implementation of a special sending or commissioning by those who themselves have been sent into ministry through a commissioning. Thus, in Acts 14.23, Paul and Barnabas install elders in Asia Minor; and in Titus 1.5, Titus, who was himself called to be a co-worker of Paul (2 Cor. 8.19), is given the task of installing elders.[vii] In 1 Tim. 5.22, it is said that Timothy, who was himself first called, should install others through the laying on of hands. It is not completely clear in Acts 6.6 who laid hands on the seven. According to the language and syntax, it could be the same ones who chose the seven and then presented them to the apostles. But Luke here would have meant that the laying on of hands was done by the apostles.

3 Peter Brunner, Nikolaus von Amsdorf als Bischof von Naumburg, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 179 (Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1961), 73f.; see also Peter Brunner, Das Amt des Bishofs [The Office of Bishop], Schriften d. Theol. Konvents Augsburger Bekenntnisse 9 (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1955), 15ff. 4 Hellmut Lieberg, Amt und Ordination bei Luther und Melanchthon [Office and Ordination according to Luther and Melanchthon], Ph.D. diss. (Erlangen, 1960), as self-reported by Lieberg in Theologische Literaturzeitung (1960): 704–705.

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(2) The New Testament Scriptures report, on the other hand, also about a commissioning given by those who themselves have not received a commissioning. Thus, in Acts 13.1ff. there is the commissioning of Paul and Barnabas by the prophets and teachers in Antioch, for nowhere in the New Testament is there mention of an installation of prophets through the laying on of hands. Neither is an installation of the teachers involved here likely. According to 2 Cor. 8.19, Titus was called by the congregations to be the co-worker of Paul, without any mention here of called officeholders. According to 1 Tim. 4.14, Timothy was sent into his special ministry through the laying on of hands by the elders, and according to 2 Tim. 1.6, through the laying on of hands by Paul; and we cannot easily presuppose about the elders that they themselves had first been ordained into their ministry through the laying on of hands. There is some evidence that the elders mentioned in the Pastoral Letters were those members of the congregation who belonged to the congregation for already a long time or possibly as the first members of the congregation, who had demonstrated their Christian faith through purity and a blameless life, through works of love, and so forth, and were therefore held in high esteem in the congregation, but who would not have thereby received a special installation into an office of elder. The installation of elders, which is mentioned in the Pastoral Letters, would then instead be the installation of elders as bishops. This interpretation is, however, controversial, and the place of the presbyter [elder] in the early Gentile-Christian congregations, at least according to the Pastoral Letters, is far from clear in both the German and the English theological literature. The reasons for this are the following: “The special problem regarding the use of the term πρεσβύτερος [presbyteros (= elder)] in Judaism and Christianity arises from the twofold meaning of the word. It is either a sign of age or the title for one who bears a ministerial office. Both meanings are often not clearly distinguished from one another.”5 Moreover, one should consider the possibility that the term elder within the context of Jewish-Christian congregations did not mean the same thing as “elder” within Gentile-Christian congregations. It has been attempted to coordinate these different statements in the New Testament, grouped under (1) and (2) above, so that the election was made by the congregation but the laying on of hands was always by ministerial officeholders. But such a clear-cut arrangement of this kind is historically far from certain. It can indeed, however, be assumed that the commissioning by the ministerial officeholders would be done with the involvement or at least the approval of the congregation and, on the other hand, the commissioning by the congregation or members of the congregation would be done with the participation or at least the acknowledgement of the ministerial officeholders, insofar as they were present. From what has been said, it follows that the New Testament Scriptures show no interest in the successive series of laying on of hands from the apostles through their co-workers and disciples and then from them to subsequent pastors of the local congregation. Even

5 Günther Bornkamm, “πρεσβύτερος,” TWNT, 6.654. [TDNT, 6.654 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

The Church’s Ministerial Office

then, where such a series is presupposed as an existing fact, the interest clearly does not rest on the succession of the laying on of hands but on the tradition of pure doctrine (see, e. g., 2 Tim. 2.2). The notion of a succession in the spiritual gift of the ministerial office, efficacious and guaranteed through the series of the episcopal [bischöflicher] laying on of hands, belongs to a much later time, in the third century.6

4. The Church’s Ministerial Office The doctrine of the church’s ministerial office cannot overlook the fact that, on the one hand, the undisputed letters of Paul, in which the congregation is presupposed and addressed as the community of manifold spiritually gifted ministries, do not speak of a special calling into these ministries (apart from the apostle himself and the passage we cited above about the calling of Titus). On the other hand, however, in the Acts of the Apostles and especially in the Pastoral Letters, in which the commissioning plays an emphatic role, the multiplicity of spiritual gifts and servant ministries that are given to each member of the congregation does not appear. To be sure, it is also presupposed in these writings that the Spirit is given to every Christian, and over and above this the book of Acts emphases that the spiritual gift has its effect in every Christian’s witness in the world, but what is missing here is the specifically Pauline understanding of the congregation as a community of diverse spiritual gifts and servant ministries. This distinction between the authentic letters of Paul and these other New Testament Scriptures is magnified in the observation that in the letters of Paul the ministry of leadership (1 Cor. 12.28) and of oversight (Rom. 12.8) are also mentioned as gifts that occur in the midst of the congregation in the freedom of the Spirit without commissioning. Here the actually occurring servant ministry—not the commissioning into the ministry—is the basis for the obedience that the congregation owes them, the congregation within which they are working. Paul thus exhorts the Corinthians to be subject to the house of Stephanas for the following reason: “Because they were the first fruit from Achaia and because they have been ordained for the ministry to the saints” (1 Cor. 16.15 [S]). The fact that here the very first believers began to work, gathered a congregation, and served it, is the reason for the exhortation of the apostle to be obedient to this house. In addition, one has to reckon with the fact that the earliest Christian community expanded through such spontaneous mission work.

6 Cf. Hans von Campenhausen, Kirchliches Amt und geistliche Vollmacht in der ersten drei Jahrhunderten (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1953), 163ff. [ET: Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries, trans. J. A. Baker (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), 149ff. –Ed.]

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¶These important differences in the founding and carrying out of the ministry of church-planting and leading have long been overlooked. After they were recognized, however, they were frequently exaggerated so that the spiritual gift and the ministerial office were set against each other, and it remained unclear to what extent these two very different foundations and forms of servant ministry did not disrupt unity within earliest Christianity. (a) It is crucial to keep in mind what these different understandings of servant ministry have in common: (1) Foundational for each servant ministry in the church is the apostolic office and, along with it, the direct and immediate calling and authorization of the eyewitnesses of the risen one. This is fundamental, whether the ministry takes place on the basis of a commissioning or as a consequence of the charismata that have blossomed without a commissioning, for the presupposition of each ministry in the church is faith in the gospel proclaimed by the apostles. (2) The presupposition for each servant ministry in the church—whether that ministry is based on a commissioning or occurs as a consequence of a freely given spiritual gift—is one’s own self-giving to Christ, the Lord, by faith in the gospel and through one’s reception of baptism. Every ministry in the church has its foundation in baptism, by which the believer is received into the prophetic and royal priesthood of God’s people. (3) Not only the charismata blossoming in the church apart from a commissioning but also the servant ministry that is the result of a commissioning in the church has its origin in the freedom of the Holy Spirit, for the commissioning is, after all, precisely not left up to the disposal of human beings. Rather those to be called, who are identified by the Holy Spirit in a preceding period of testing, are those whom the Spirit wants to have called. (4) It is inappropriate to set the New Testament statements about the ministry of spiritual gifts over against the servant ministry that occurs on the basis of a commissioning, that is, to set spiritual gift over against the ministerial office, for the commissioning occurs through the exalted Christ, who reigns through the Spirit. The commissioning is the imperative of the gospel, which is the power of God. Through the commissioning, the task and authority to fulfil the task are imparted at the same time. The ministry which occurs on the basis of a commissioning is thus at the same time a spiritually gifted ministry. (5) The freely emerging charismata cannot be set over against a servant ministry that is established on the basis of a commissioning, that is, they cannot be understood as the manifestation of a hubbub of enthusiasm in opposition to order or as an impulsive interaction between people in opposition to a personal stability. There is a widespread misunderstanding that spiritual gifts merely have an ecstatic and more or less chaotic character; spiritual gifts do not wander about or vacillate senselessly. One should rather reckon much more with a stability that

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works itself out in a correspondingly stable ministry in the congregation. Thereby, one can hardly distinguish the external effects of these gifts from the deliberately transmitted ministerial offices. (6) Not only the ministry of the freely emerging charismata but also the action of the called ministers, as it is implemented, remains under the examination and judgment of the congregation. Also, the authority that has been given through a commissioning does not preclude the possibility that the called minister will commit an error or be guilty of a moral failure. The New Testament letters warn not only against false prophets or other spiritual outcomes that are not from God but also against false and self-enriching officeholders. Because God’s Spirit is living in all members of the church, each spiritually gifted individual stands under the judgment of the others but especially under the judgment of those who have received the gift of spiritual discernment (1 Cor. 12.10; cf. 14.29ff.). (7) To be sure, not every spiritually gifted ministry is grounded in a concrete word of a commissioning, and yet a concrete word is imparted to all spiritually gifted people, even if their ministry is not grounded in a commissioning, insofar as their ministry remains under the examination and judgment of the congregation. This judgment comes to expression in the “Amen!” with which the congregation acknowledges the witness as a witness of the Spirit in its midst and thus makes that witness its own. The congregation expresses a judgment in its “Amen!” The “Amen!” signifies the “Yes” of the Spirit who is working in the congregation and making it capable of distinguishing between true and false spirits. Also, a concrete word is coordinated to the actually occurring spiritual ministry in the exhortations through which the apostle or another called minister exhorts the congregation to acknowledge and submit itself to the ministry that is occurring in its midst (see again 1 Cor. 16.15–16). In this case, the concrete word comes retrospectively as an acknowledging word and one that urges acknowledgment to a spiritually gifted ministry that is already occurring. Also, the spiritually gifted ministry that occurs without a commissioning is affirmed by God’s word, by the commissioning to bear witness to the world, a commissioning which actually applies to every member of the New Testament people of God, and by the concrete word of the judgment of the congregation and the called ministers through which this ministry is acknowledged by the Holy Spirit. This “Amen!” of the Spirit is a word of confirmation and at the same time also a word that strengthens and inspires trust for further ministry. (b) Nevertheless, the differences that remain within all these commonalities need to be taken seriously, differences which exist side by side in the founding and in the execution of the ministry in the earliest Christian community, especially in the Pauline congregations, on the one hand, and the congregations established by Jerusalem, on the other: (1) There is no indication that an ordering of elders and bishops, based on a special calling, existed in the congregations in Corinth or Rome at that time, when

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Paul wrote to them. The generalizing of commissioning as a principle begins with 1 Clement, which then continues its development in the doctrine of ministerial offices in the ancient church, both Western and Eastern, and also by the Reformers. It is equally impossible, however, to generalize about the Pauline notion of the church’s servant ministry as the multiplicity of freely emerging charismata and then to reinterpret the commissioning as merely the confirmation of the previously occurring spiritual gifts or as an indication of the beginning of “Catholicism.” Instead, one has to reckon with these various foundings and forms of ministry existing alongside each other and with each other in the early church from the start. The servant ministry of church-planting and church-leading was carried out partly on the basis of a commissioning by the apostles or by others who were called to the ministry of church-planting and church-leading, partly on the basis of the commissioning by the congregation or by prominent members within the congregation (but not by a commissioning), and finally, the ministry of churchplanting and church-leading was also carried out spontaneously in a spiritually gifted manner without a commissioning. Already for these reasons, it is not possible to presuppose historically that episcopal functions were done in the earliest Christian congregations solely on the basis of an installation by an apostle and that in general a series of laying on of hands connected later bishops with the apostles. This has also been clearly acknowledged by a group of Anglican theologians and among the Orthodox by Sergius Bulgakov.7

(2) Furthermore, we need to observe that the New Testament Scriptures, as is well known, do not contain a consistent term that corresponds to our concept of the ministerial office. For one thing, there is reference to elders, which in some places means people who have been specially ordained to be an elder, but in other places the term simply means people who are honored as the oldest or as the first believers without special installation. The ordering of elders is of Jewish or Jewish-Christian origin. Beyond that, there is reference to bishops and deacons, who carry out their ministry on the basis of a special installation (see Acts 20.28 and the Pastoral Letters; in addition, Paul names them in Phil. 1.1 without any further details). Bishops are likely to have first worked in Gentile-Christian congregations. One can add that in Acts, the Pastoral Letters, 1 Peter, and 2 and 3 John, elders are presupposed, to be sure, but in the undisputed letters of Paul there is no reference to elders. Nevertheless, Paul does speak

7 Sergius Bulgakov, “The Hierarchy and the Sacraments,” in The Ministry and the Sacraments, Report of the Theological Commission Appointed by the Continuation Committee of the Faith and Order Movement, ed. Roderic Dunkerley (London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1937), 96.

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of the gift of “leadership” (κυβέρνησις [kubernēsis], 1 Cor. 12.28) and of the gift of grace, which is working in those who take care of the congregation as “administrator” [Vorsteher] (Rom. 12.8; cf. 1 Thess. 5.12). He speaks further about those who “toil” [sich abmühen] and about the “zeal” [Eifer] with which some commit themselves to the congregation. The Pauline term service [diakonia] has often been translated as ministerial office [Amt] or ministerium, also by Luther, but with this same word Paul describes each spiritually gifted ministry, whether of those who preach or of those who help, just as he also gives to the term διάκονος [diakonos] a wide range of meanings and does not restrict it only to the one installed to be an assistant to the bishop. The Pauline term οἰκονόμος (oikonomos = “steward”) of the mysteries of God, which is used in 1 Cor. 4.1 to describe the apostolic ministry, is used again in Titus 1.7 in reference to the bishop, and in 1 Pet. 4.10 it is used to refer to every member of the congregation. Hebrews 13 refers to “leaders” [ἡγουμένων (hēgoumenōn), Führenden] and of their responsibility to guard the souls entrusted to them without it being clear about how they came to their position of leadership. Finally, in Eph. 4.11, in the list of the gifts of grace (after the apostles, prophets, and evangelists but before the teachers), there is the reference to pastors [Hirten = “shepherds”], the use of which has a christological designation. Also Acts 20.28 says of bishops and 1 Pet. 5.2 of elders that they are “to tend” [“weiden”] the congregation. In light of all of this, it is noteworthy that missing within this great multiplicity of New Testament designations for ministry is one that points to a uniquely sacred origin, such as belongs to a priest.

(3) Just as the New Testament Scriptures do not produce any definite term that corresponds to that of the ministerial office, so they also do not contain any unified and exact statements regarding the functions of “elders,” “bishops,” “administrators,” “leaders,” and so on. In part, the statements about what the elders, bishops, and so forth do remain colorless and indefinite, and they do not permit us to form any more concrete ideas about the execution of the ministry of church leadership. In part, substantial differences become apparent in the statements. Thus, for example, the ministry of the administrator and of leadership—which is listed in Rom. 12.8 and 1 Cor. 12.28 at a relatively later spot, after the prophets and teachers—was publicly carried out differently from the ministry of the bishop described in the Pastoral Letters, who is so crucially the servant of the word that alongside that ministry there seems to be no longer much room for the special ministry of the prophets and teachers. The concept of the church’s ministerial office is therefore not already given in the New Testament Scriptures, but there is a need for systematic reflection, clarification, and decision-making. For this reason, the concept of ministerial office cannot be determined by generalizing on the basis of just one of the notions in earliest Christianity. Rather, dogmatic reflection is faced with the task of taking seriously all the various possibilities that become evident in the New Testament Scriptures and to make space for them. A one-sided generalization always carries the risk of

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suppressing spiritual life and with it the danger of dividing the church. The concept of the church’s ministerial office cannot, however, be replaced by an unhistorical harmonizing of the differences that existed in early Christianity, for, by doing that, the dimension of diversity, which was significant from the beginning, would be diminished, and the church would be prevented from arranging its servant ministry in an appropriate manner within ever-changing historical situations. (c) Where should one begin in order to define the concept of the church’s ministerial office? We choose as our starting point not the freely emerging, spiritually gifted ministries but the commissioning into the ministry. The basis for this starting point cannot be the fact that, according to church history, the carrying out of the church’s servant ministry was increasingly made dependent on a special calling that preceded it and that the church’s words and actions were in this sense increasingly clericalized [verbeamtet]. (Just compare, e. g., the picture that Paul gives of the worship assembly at Corinth with the picture of the form of the worship service as reported by Justin around 150 and by Hippolytus around 200.)[viii] After all, this increasing suppression of the free, spiritually gifted expressions could also lead to a constriction and ossification of the church’s servant ministry. But also the reference to the early deterioration of the free, spiritually gifted expressions—as became evident in the heresies of Gnosticism and Montanism, as well as in the variety of medieval movements and in the spiritual enthusiasts [Schwarmgeistern] at the time of the Reformation—cannot serve as a sufficient basis for the starting point of the dogmatic understanding of ministerial office through a sending. After all, basically it is equally possible that called officeholders could succumb to teaching false doctrine, lusting after power, and so forth, and that conversely, by means of the freely emerging charismata, these overseers will be granted to the church, which the church needs. But indeed, the sending had to take on more and more significance basically and in actual practice, given the increasing temporal distance from the church-founding ministry of the apostles. The church can only live by abiding with the historical Christ, the crucified and risen one, as its present Lord. This means, then, that it must abide with the witness of the apostles, the called eyewitnesses of this Lord. Because of this growing temporal distance, the tradition of the apostolic message, doctrine, and directives had to gain in significance and, along with it, the sending into ministry, which is serving this tradition, for everything depends absolutely upon the apostolic word continuing to be proclaimed in the church without falsification and upon all the voices that are heard in the church agreeing to be subject to it. Given the significance of the apostolic tradition, one can understand that the ordering of the church reflected in the Pastoral Letters was placed under the authority of Paul. Indeed, in view of the significance that Paul gave to the tradition in his undisputed letters, the possibility cannot be excluded that in view of the further expansion of the church, he backed an order of ordination and of ministerial office through his authority (in the sense

The Church’s Ministerial Office

of the Pastoral Letters). The relationship between word and Spirit, between the historical singularity of God’s act of salvation and the ongoing working of salvation by the Spirit, which is foundational for the life of the church, finds its appropriate expression in the emphasis on the commissioning, for the work of the Spirit is to bring to remembrance, i. e., to refer back to the singular historical act of salvation in Jesus Christ and to the apostolic word, and in this way to make the act of salvation an action that is present. Spirit and tradition, then, are not in opposition to each other but belong together. Yet at the same time, it cannot be forgotten that the multiplicity of freely emerging, spiritually gifted manifestations and ministries in the Pauline congregations were in fact not left without the leadership of someone who had the authority of a commissioning, that is, without the leadership of the apostle. The Pauline reports are documents that show how the apostle worked concretely in the congregations, comforting and exhorting, acknowledging but also warning them, and at all times directing them on the basis of his special authority. With the disappearance of this very concrete leading and directing of the apostle (which was still presently effective, even when it was exercised from a distance), the ministry that was based on a special calling had to gain in significance—namely, the ministry of the spiritually gifted person who, on the basis of this calling, encountered the congregation with a given authority and who was not only in the same category as the other spiritually gifted individuals who were dependent on a subsequent acknowledgment by the congregation. Thus, in the absence of a term that is used consistently in the New Testament, the concept of ministerial office, even more than the concept of the apostolate, is a dogmatic concept. To be sure, such a concept includes the clear substantive contents of the New Testament—otherwise it would not be a true dogmatic concept—but it includes them in a systematic, concentrated way, for it has to highlight systematically the heart of these very diverse contents from the New Testament and must then, in a manner similar to the dogmatic concept of the apostolate, allow room for the distinctive scattering and multiplicity of ministries. At the same time, the concept of ministerial office must be defined systematically in such a way that it does not fundamentally exclude any of the starting points laid out in earliest Christianity. If we understand that the church’s ministerial office is a kind of spiritually gifted servant ministry, which is based on a commissioning, then this concept must remain open to the understanding of the church as a community of charismata and ought not to be closed in principle to the possibility that the charismata of church-planting and church-leading might freely emerge. Christians who have been forced by circumstances into a purely heathen society, who through their witness to Christ bring heathens to faith, baptize them, and assemble for worship with them, act in the church’s servant ministry if they have done all this in keeping with apostolic doctrine and order, even if before they are carried off into the heathen terrain they had not

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been given prior authorization by means of a special assignment to carry out this ministry. In the isolation of the prison camp or forced labor camp they are in fact acting in partnership with the church and its leaders, and, when these latter encounter the former and their congregations, they cannot fail to acknowledge their servant ministry and congregation. The spiritually gifted ministry of the Christian is not only based on a commissioning but, indeed in every case, it is based on the apostolic gospel, which the Lord wants proclaimed to the whole world.

(d) Just as the concept of the church’s ministerial office is not already there in the statements of the New Testament but requires systematic reflection to develop it, so also the task of that ministerial office needs to be defined more clearly. On the one hand, we must take into account that the special calling has been handed down in the New Testament as a calling and sending into the servant ministry of churchplanting and church-leading, as well as into associate ministries. On the other hand, the multiplicity of New Testament designations includes very different possibilities for the execution of this ministry. Defining the tasks of the church’s ministerial office can also, therefore, neither be achieved by adding up and harmonizing New Testament statements about the functions of elders, bishops, leaders, etc., nor by giving preference to just one of these functions. Rather, defining the task of the church’s ministerial office must be carried out by taking into account the various earliest traditions through systematic reflection on the nature of the church. In this way, we assume that if the New Testament speaks of the “ekklesia” or of the “people of God” or of the “body of Christ” or of the “temple of the Holy Spirit,” the heart of these terms is the worshiping assembly in which Christ is presently acting and giving himself through the Holy Spirit. If this event is at the center of the church’s life, radiating out from which its servant ministry takes place in the world, then it makes sense to define the task of the church’s ministerial office more precisely in the following ways: (1) Leadership of the worship assembly. This includes proclamation of the word and the eucharistic prayer, making space for the manifold witness and servant ministries of those who are spiritually gifted, and excluding false teachers and other gross sinners (power of the keys), as well as the administration of the congregation’s gifts—insofar as they are not necessary for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper—for the poor and for special needs, both within and beyond the local congregation. (2) Leadership of the missionary expansion into the world, which has to proceed from every worshiping assembly. This means, namely, calling those who are far off, baptizing them, and gathering them, and then sending the members of the congregation into mission. At the core of every missionary servant ministry is the ministry of leading the newly emerging congregation. (3) Maintaining and strengthening the unity of the local congregation in relation to other congregations.

The Church’s Ministerial Office

In view of the diversity of New Testament statements about the functions of presbyters, bishops, leaders, etc. and the change in historical situations, it cannot be expected that these tasks, which are systematically derived from the nature of the church, will be viewed and realized in the same way wherever the ministry of leadership takes place. Rather, from the start, one must reckon with the diversity of emphases in the execution of the church’s ministerial office and with the differences in the interpretation of that office. In theological reflection on the office, as is well known, significant differences developed very soon, depending on which of these functions were especially noted and given theological validity. For example, the Pastoral Letters emphasize the function of keeping doctrine pure, the letters of Ignatius emphasize the representation of the one Christ through the office of the bishop, and 1 Clement emphasizes the function of order.[ix] Such differences have continued in church history to this day, whether the task of the church’s ministerial office is viewed primarily in terms of the proclamation of the word or the administration of the sacraments or the coordination of leadership. It is ecumenically significant that the very different conceptions that are mentioned in the Pastoral Letters, the letters of Ignatius, and 1 Clement were not perceived as church-dividing oppositions. On the basis of this definition of the tasks of the church’s ministerial office, if one is looking for a substantive term from the variety in the New Testament terms, it should be obvious to select that of pastor [Hirt = “shepherd”]. Although this term is alien to many today and is perceived to be authoritarian, it is indispensable for Christianity because of the Old Testament and Johannine witness, for the unique basis and lasting model for the church’s ministerial office is Christ, who calls out to us: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (Jn. 10.11). The term pastor makes sense for designating the church’s ministerial office because it is more firmly established than that of bishop and elder [Presbyter] in the broader history of the church in terms of church law, and also because it has not changed with respect to its New Testament meaning. (e) Also, the definition of the possible forms [Gestalten] of the church’s ministerial office does not as yet result directly from the diverse statements scattered throughout the New Testament, which are in part indefinite. For one thing, there is talk of leaders of a local congregation, in some cases of one, in other cases of more than one, and furthermore there is talk of pastors who, like, e. g., Timothy and Titus, are responsible for leading more than one congregation and who thus can be designated as overseers of pastors. Then we hear of missionaries, who bear responsibility for an area in which congregations are still to be planted. Finally, we read in the New Testament of assigned helpers (deacons in the narrower sense), as well as of such co-workers who received a temporally limited task, thus apostles in the broader sense of the term [= “sent ones”] (members of the congregation who, e. g., were given the task of transporting a collection, a task, that is, that ends once the offering

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is transported). Here, too, we cannot be satisfied with either merely picking and choosing New Testament statements or simply harmonizing them. Rather, their diversity has to be processed in a systematic reflection. Here, too, one must ask about basic structures that result from the nature of the church. It is particularly important to note that every local church is thoroughly and completely “ekklesia,” “body of Christ,” and “temple of the Holy Spirit.” The local congregation is not just a part of the church, not just a member of the body of Christ, not merely a stone in the building of the temple. This results in the following possibilities for the differentiations within the ministerial office with respect to personnel, function, and territory, which then can be combined with one another in manifold ways: (1) If the tasks of the ministerial office in early Christian local congregations were carried out by several members of the congregation before the monarchical episcopate came into being, the possibility must also be left open for all later times that the pastoral office in one and the same congregation should not only be carried out by one person but is carried out by the participation of several people. (2) Corresponding to the New Testament reports about the installation of deacons and the tasks that were given for a stipulated period, a multiplicity of possibilities must be kept open in principle in order to make the individual functions of the pastoral office independent of the person and to assign them to serve the pastoral office. (3) The term ekklesia in the New Testament refers not only to the local congregation but also to the entire church on earth and to the community of local congregations in a particular area. Correspondingly, the pastoral office bears responsibility not only for a local congregation but also for the community of regional churches in a country and, further still, for the community of all churches on earth. The nature of the church thus gives rise to various forms of the pastoral office with varying areas of responsibility: leadership of a local church, that of a territorial church, and that of the universal church. The possibilities highlighted under (1) and (2) apply in principle to ministerial offices at all three regional levels. (4) There thus arises among the offices in the various regions manifold possibilities for the ordering of them in terms of superior and subordinate. After all, the church is the growing body of Christ that is advancing the gospel into the world, and thus it is always planting additional local congregations and entire church regions. Corresponding to the relationship of mother and daughter congregations is the relationship of fathers and sons in the pastoral office. A structure of the pastoral office thus results in a coordination of pastors and overseer pastors so that certain functions of leadership are reserved for overseer pastors (such as, e. g., missionary planning, ordination to the ministry of church-planting and church-leading, aligning church regulations with one another). (5) The relationship between the universal church, territorial churches, and local churches is not one between the sum and its parts; rather, it is a relationship of

The Pastoral Office and the Church

community as common participation in Jesus Christ. Every local church is a manifestation of the universal church, and the relationship between the whole church and the local church is not one of addition but rather one of being intertwined. So also, the pastoral office is already a perfectly complete pastoral office in every local congregation, even if certain functions are only exercised by an overseer pastor. The relationship of pastoral ministries to each other in local congregations, regional churches, and in the whole church corresponds to this. This relationship is not only defined as an ordering of over and under, but at the same time as a community and partnership, as for one another and with one another. In other words, the directives about the overseer pastor and the obedience with respect to the overseer pastor are enclosed within the command that each should be subject to the others in the Lord. It is of great importance for ecumenical dialogue that the doctrine about the ministerial office, its tasks, and its forms keep open the extent of the possible starting points found in the first congregations and that it consider that there is a difference between the dogmatic definition and its definition in church law. Definitions in church law are often caused by a certain historical threat to church order, whether from the degeneration of the freely emerging charismata or from the degeneration of the ministerial office itself or from encroachment by the state. But these decisions of church law must not be put on the same level with the dogmatic concept of the ministerial office, which is substantially wider than that which is put into effect by church law in each historical situation. The abundance of New Testament starting points for the ordering of the church is larger than what can be realized only in one ordering of a Church as it is set forth in its church law. If one compares the doctrines about the ministerial office with one another, as they are to be found in the dogmatics of the various church bodies, it becomes clear that those doctrines are still largely in a pre-dogmatic state. They set forth and defend the order of the ministerial office that is already positively and legally valid in the respective Church, and they do so by using eclectic statements from the New Testament (or the lack thereof) as the basis. By contrast, dogmatic expositions that set forth the multiplicity of New Testament traditions about the ordering of the church are receding into the background, i. e., expositions that make systematic-theological inquiry into the fundamental structures of the church and into the basic possibilities for ordering the ministerial office, as laid out by the New Testament statements.

5. The Pastoral Office and the Church How is the relationship between the church’s ministerial office and the church to be determined, i. e., the relationship between the member of the church who is called to the ministerial office, and who serves the church in that office, and the other members of the church?

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¶Because the church of all times, along with its pastoral ministries and charismata, is founded on the apostles, in determining the relationship between the pastoral office and the church, the same three elements that were highlighted about the apostolic office have to be revisited (cf. sec. 1.c above): (a) The pastors in relation to the church. The pastoral office faces the church, for Christ speaks through this office to the church as its Lord. In it, what pastors do in obedience to their mission, they encounter the congregation as vicarious representatives of Christ, the one good shepherd. When they proclaim the apostolic message, “Be reconciled to God!,” then, like the apostle, they are an ambassador in the stead of Christ, an instrument through which God himself exhorts the church and the world (2 Cor. 5.20). In that pastors proclaim the apostolic message, the same promise that was given to the apostles holds true for them: “Whoever hears you, hears me” (Lk. 10.16). The comforting and exhorting voice of the pastoral office, if it is voiced in obedience to God, is God’s voice, which is “resounding from heaven.”8 The pastor, as also the congregation, in all human doubt and uncertainty, can and should be most surely comforted about God’s act through the pastoral office. The same thing applies to the pastor’s actions in the administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It also applies to the action of the pastor in binding and loosing and sending. Christ himself, the good shepherd, feeds his flock through the pastors called and gifted by him and taken into his service. To be sure, every spiritually gifted witness and every spiritually gifted ministry has authority in the church, for this is the way the Spirit acts, who is the Lord. But the spiritually gifted ministry of the pastoral office has an authority that is given ahead of time, in contrast to independent spiritually gifted ministries, since in this respect it is grounded in the commissioning that authorizes it. In contrast to the independent spiritually gifted ministries, the pastoral office has an authority that authenticates itself not merely in the execution of that office, which then is acknowledged later by the congregation; rather, its authority is actually given in advance, insofar as the pastors, on the basis of their commissioning, can count on being met from the outset with the expectation that God is acting through them in the congregation. The authority of this pastoral office does not of course merely consist in the special calling but also in ever-new obedience to this calling. When the spiritual gift is received, which authorizes one for the ministry, then the same can be said here about what is generally true of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the gift that has been granted to us in that he is and remains at the same time the Lord who wants ever to be summoned anew and who wants to bestow himself. To be in the Spirit is not a characteristic of the person but the ever-new working of the Spirit in the faithfulness of God, the one who is creating anew. Thus the authority of the pastoral office does not consist

8 AC XXV.3f. [German. BSELK, 148 (BC, 72). –Ed.]

The Pastoral Office and the Church

in the bare historical fact of ordination, but rather in the ever-new apprehension of this sending (cf. 2 Tim. 1.6). (b) The pastors as members of the church. The pastors stand under the Lord, along with all members of the church. The officeholder stands in the midst of the congregation under the judging and saving action of God. Like the others, the pastor is dependent on grace and intercessory prayer. Pastors, too, must appear before the judgment seat of God, and in fact not in spite of their commission but because of it, which as such brings with it special temptations. The very idea of a personal superiority over against the other Christians would be a delusion. In fact, the pastoral office means precisely the opposite, for nothing is more humbling than this office, nothing reduces one to nothing more than the knowledge about being installed as the vicarious representative of Christ. Ordination is the end of one’s own plans, ways, means, and words, for the pastoral office means that Christ wants to feed his flock through this called person. (c) The servant ministry of the pastors in the community of the church. What was said above about the community of the ministry of the apostles and the other church members cannot now be watered down in the statements about the pastors coming after them. Pastors lead the congregation in partnership with the other spiritually gifted ministries. This is true for the pastoral office in the local congregation as well as in the larger regional church and in the church as a whole. Moreover, it cannot be only a matter of the participation of pastors with each other but also about the participation of pastors with the members of the church who have not received a commissioning but who are awakened to servant ministry by the same Spirit. Here we need to observe once more that the office is not separated from the other charismata by a special designation in the New Testament; there is no verbal parallel in the New Testament for our dogmatic concept of the ministerial office. Correspondingly, it is not demonstrable from the New Testament that the servant ministry of the pastor, of the pastoral administrator, and so forth came about only after a prior commissioning. Here there are transitions and diffusions that do not permit themselves to be grasped in the schema of over and under, but rather are shown to be effective in the completely different structure of community and mutual acknowledgment in the course of life and service in the church. Besides, one cannot forget that Paul speaks of “administrators” and the gift of “leadership” and also “pastors” in the letter to the Ephesians after he has spoken of the actual kerygmatic ministries, and that still in the Didache, which presupposes the office of bishop (15.1ff.), one finds the instruction to leave the eucharistic prayer of thanksgiving up to the prophets, if any should be present (10.6).9 In the statements of the New Testament we find pastors surrounded by spiritually gifted individuals and elders,

9 [Holmes, 366–367, 360–361 (Cf. Niederwimmer, The Didache, 161f., 203ff.). –Ed.]

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in the course of which, at least in the Gentile-Christian congregations during the first century, there was truly no elected college of elders with definite ministerial functions and limits, but only a group of elderly, honored, and esteemed individuals, the initial believers, and so forth. The commissioning of elders—and with it the office of elder—likely belonged to a later period within the domain of Gentile Christianity. But as the case may be, it is in the nature of the pastoral office to be surrounded by functioning ministries of the congregation and precisely, indeed, also by its witness. (d) In addition to the three relationships that correspond to the relationship between the apostle and the church, there is still the fourth relationship that involves a certain reciprocity in the allocation of ministerial offices and free charismata because of their common subordination to apostolic authority. Not only does the pastoral office face the congregation but the independent spiritually gifted witness in the congregation also faces the pastoral office. Christ deals with the congregation and its spiritually gifted members through pastors, but he also deals with both the congregation and the pastors through manifold charismata. The spiritually gifted witnesses in the congregation are not to be tested and judged one-sidedly by the pastoral office, but likewise, conversely, the congregation has the task and the authority—like every ministry—also to test the ministry of the pastor. Therefore, the church’s ministerial office does not face the church in the same way as the apostles, for the latter’s authority is unique in that it was immediately established as foundational by the risen Lord. All members of the church, including pastors of every place and time, are subordinate to it. These four relationships apply in all areas of the church: in the local congregation, in the territorial churches, and in the universal church. They are constitutive for the life of the church, even if the individual details of the tasks and responsibilities of the ministerial office and of the other members of the church are not set down in church law in the same way everywhere. The interconnection of these four relationships can be described as the basic synodical structure of the church.[x] This structure would be misconstrued if it were understood to be opposing the ministerial offices and the orderly structures of “higher” and “lower” that exist within them, as well as their facing the church. But it would be no less misconstrued if the “hierarchical” order were opposed to the synodical structure of the church. At none of the regional levels can the events of the church be determined solely by the ministerial offices—just as they also cannot be determined solely by the will of church members to the exclusion of the given authority of the church’s ministerial office. Rather, the ministerial offices participate with the other members of the church, especially with those who, through their spiritual gift, are qualified in a special way to build up the church. As a concept, the basic synodical structure refers not only to the structure of synods or councils, e. g., at the various levels of the church, but also to the manner in which the ministerial offices and members

Apostolic Succession

of the local congregation, the regional churches, and the universal church treat one another, serve one another, respect others more than themselves, listen to one another, strive together to clarify matters, make decisions together, and support one another to implement them. We have to restrict ourselves here to these dogmatic theses. With respect to the further tasks of ensuring synodical-collegial conduct at the various levels of church life and of establishing proper order for synods and councils, in terms of church law, there are undoubtedly various possible regulations that could be formulated.

6. Apostolic Succession It was stated above, in reference to the servant ministry of the apostles, that this ministry of the called eyewitnesses of the risen one is decisive for the church, for all its members, all ministerial offices and freely emerging charismata, in all places and at all times. If the apostles are the permanent foundation of the church, the task of succeeding the apostles thus arises for the church. What does succeeding [Nachfolge] mean here?[xi] Since the apostles are historically unique—because of the appearances of the risen one granted them and because of his direct sending—the apostolate, as the company of eyewitnesses to the resurrection, ones who were directly elected by Christ, can have no continuation, but is extinguished with the death of the apostles. But the mission that was given to the apostles has not expired. The message of Christ is to be directed further to all peoples to the end of the world. And with that, the sending of the apostles extends beyond the person of the apostle. It concerns the “universe” [das “All”] over which Jesus has been set as Lord—all peoples of all countries and all times until the parousia. In this respect, from the commissioning of the apostles there follows every other special commissioning into servant ministry—whether it be through baptism into the universal priesthood or through ordination into the church’s ministerial office. Here, too, these sendings occurred through the exalted Lord, not directly but indirectly, namely, through the service of people. In this way, all later ministry is to be profoundly distinguished from the apostolic office. But if it is done in obedience to the mission given to the apostles, it can also be described as apostolic in an analogous way. In this sense, e. g., some have spoken of a “lay apostolate.”10

10 [See Schlink, “Ökumenische Konzilien einst und heute,” SÖB, 1/1.263 (ESW, 1.320); and especially Apostolicam actuositatem (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity), promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 18 November 1965 (Tanner, 2.981–1001). –Ed.]

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In apostolic succession, not only is the content of the apostolic message of Christ to be preserved, but the act of bearing witness, which is based on that message, is to be continued. The one gospel has to be proclaimed anew in the flux of changing historical situations. Apostolic succession does not mean repristinating the ministry of the apostles; rather, proclamation, church-planting and church-leading, strengthening and preserving unity—these actions must be continued even in the face of situations that did not yet exist in the apostolic era and for which neither the Lord nor the apostles had given concrete instructions. This is true, e. g., with respect to problems that arose with the ever-increasing temporal distance from the apostles. When the church created a canon of New Testament Scriptures to preserve apostolic teaching, it did something that the apostles had not thought of doing. The same is true with respect to problems that arose with the increasing expansion of the church in the world. If, e. g., the churches increasingly harmonized their ordering of ministerial offices, they also went beyond early Christian orderings. Conversely, some of the orderings in the apostolic era were not permanently retained. The ministry of apostolic succession, therefore, has to be done precisely with the freedom that is in Christ and in the Holy Spirit, as the servant ministry of the apostles. Since this freedom is bestowed to believers in obedience to the gospel, preserving the original message about Christ and being further oriented toward it are at the center of all that the church says and does. There is an important basic agreement among the churches in acknowledging the fundamental uniqueness of and the need for apostolic succession. With respect to the details, however, the differences are not inconsiderable. In general, apostolic succession is discussed under two different concepts, the apostolic succession of the ministerial office and the apostolicity of the church. Both concepts, however, are by no means defined in the same way in Christendom, so that, depending on the circumstances, they closely border each other, perhaps overlap each other, or are even opposed to each other with some separation between them. The concept of the apostolic succession of the ministerial office is described differently: (1) as the continuation of the apostolic ministry through the ministerial office; (2) as the transfer of apostolic doctrine through the calling into the ministerial office; (3) as the succession of the laying on of hands in ordination; (4) specifically, as the succession of the episcopal laying on of hands. Theological discussion has concentrated above all on the controversial issue of the unbroken series of laying on of hands since the apostles. The concept of the apostolicity of the church is also used in various ways: (1) as recognition of the historical foundation of the church on the ministry of the apostles;

Apostolic Succession

(2) as a statement about the actual preservation of apostolic teaching in the church; (3) as acknowledgment of the obligation of the church to follow [nachzufolgen] the apostles in their ministry; (4) as a statement about the church’s reality as it is determined by the apostolic succession of ministerial offices. In controversial theological discussion, the issue generally is more about an actual attribute of the church than about the obligation of the whole church, together with all its members, to continue the apostolic ministry. The different ways of defining both concepts result in very different relationships between apostolic succession and apostolicity. The demarcations that have arisen historically with respect to the relationship between ministerial office and the universal priesthood, or, e. g., between ministerial office and freely emerging spiritual ministries, have had an impact on these differences. The greatest contrast exists between an understanding of the apostolic succession of the ministerial office that is one-sidedly focused on the unbroken succession of the laying on of hands and the understanding of the apostolicity of the church in the sense of the active responsibility of all Christians to continue the apostolic ministry. Because of such differences, some churches have refused to recognize each other’s ministerial offices. The theological controversy and debate about apostolic succession has usually been conducted in such a way that each individual church body has sought to demonstrate historically, from the New Testament Scriptures and the tradition of the ancient church, that its understanding and its ordering of the ministerial office and ordination are consonant with apostolic doctrine and order. In earliest Christianity, however, there are such varied starting points for ordering the church that more than one conception of apostolic succession can be derived from them. The question thus arises: Which differences in today’s understanding of apostolic succession are possible without damaging the apostolicity and unity of the church? For the ecumenical discussion of this question, it is crucial that none of the early Christian starting points for ordering the church that have been established by historical research be disregarded, and that the breadth and diversity of the apostolic foundation be taken seriously. Both the concept of the apostle and the definition of the apostle’s work must remain open to the differences that emerge from the New Testament texts. The concept of the apostolic foundation must also not be restricted to apostolic teaching and to the apostles’ work of church-planting and churchleading; rather, this work cannot be separated from the apostles’ own membership in the church and their interaction with other spiritually gifted ministries. The apostolic foundation also includes the echo that their work found in the earliest congregations. Such early Christian orderings—which were not arranged by the apostles themselves but were later put into effect by the early church by appealing to them —also remain to be considered here.

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But we would take neither the historicity of the apostles nor that of apostolic succession seriously if we were content to stop with a mere summary of all these different historical matters. Since apostolic succession does not have to take place by repristinating past words and actions but can do so by advancing the Christian mission through further speaking and action, it is necessary to work out, through systematic reflection on the diversity of early Christian events, the basic ecclesiological structures that have lasting validity in the midst of all historical change. In this sense, what has been stated above has been derived from various historical materials—the ministerial tasks of church leadership, the relationships between ministerial office and the church, the options for the form of the church’s ministerial office, and the synodical structure of the church. The dogmatic concept of the apostle and that of the ministerial office were also defined in connection with such basic structures. A distinction is to be made between these dogmatic structures and the concrete forms in which they have influenced church law in the course of church history. Since the explanations in the preceding sections were already determined by these methodological perspectives, the dogmatic concept of apostolic succession can be briefly summarized in the following conclusions: (a) Because the mission that was given to the apostles is to be carried out to the end of the world, servant ministry in its various forms is necessarily derived from the ministry of the apostles. The commissioning into the pastoral ministry is a continuation of the commissioning of the apostles—a continuation, not in the sense of further installation as apostle, but rather in the sense of a continuation of the servant ministry that the apostles have foundationally begun. Apostolic succession of the ministerial office thus takes place when, in accordance with the servant ministry of the apostles, pastors (1) proclaim the message of Christ; (2) lead the church and plant other churches; and (3) maintain the unity of the churches (cf. sec. 1.a above). This applies regardless of how the functions and forms of the ministerial office are individually defined by church law. (b) Since the servant ministry of the apostles to the church is inseparable from their membership in the church and from the co-working of prophets, teachers, and other spiritually gifted ministries, apostolic succession of the ministerial office takes place when pastors (1) face the congregation on behalf of Christ; (2) live in harmony, by the grace of Christ, with the members of the congregation; and (3) conduct their servant ministry in partnership with the other gifts of grace and ministries in the congregation (cf. sec. 1.c above). Christ’s assurance and claim are not only made through the pastor’s ministry to the congregation, but conversely, Christ’s voice also encounters the pastor through the witnesses within the congregation. (c) The concept of apostolic succession cannot continue to be restricted merely to the church’s ministerial office. If Paul exhorts the congregation, “Be my imitators” (Luther translates it: “disciples” [Nachfolger], 1 Cor. 4.16; cf. 1 Thess. 1.6),

Apostolic Succession

this exhortation applied to all members of the congregation, and it pertained not only to their ethical behavior but also to their witness to Christ. These and similar exhortations cannot be detached from the presupposition that every baptized person is taken into service by Christ through a spiritual gift. But this means that the spiritually gifted ministries also have to take place in apostolic succession [Nachfolge]. In mutual recognition of the church’s ministerial office, the members of the church share responsibility for the message of Christ, for the leadership of the church, and for the planting of other churches, as well as for the maintenance of their unity—depending on the spiritual gift that each has been given. If the task of the ministerial office includes the sending of further members of the congregation into this pastoral ministry, then the church as a whole also bears joint responsibility for this, regardless of how the exercise of this responsibility is regulated by church law. The apostolicity of the church can be restricted neither to the historical foundation of the apostles nor to the recognition of the apostolic succession of the ministerial office; rather, it is about the apostolic succession of the ministerial office and the church, the church and the ministerial office. Because the church and the ministerial office are founded on the servant ministry of the apostles, both are apostolic. Because they are apostolic, both have to prove their apostolicity through the servant ministry of apostolic discipleship, and to grasp it again and again. Apostolicity and apostolic succession interpenetrate one another and belong inseparably together, both for the ministerial office and for the church as a whole. It is of great importance for the future of the church to regain a concept of apostolic succession that encompasses both church and ministerial office, a concept within which the special tasks of the ministerial office and of the other members of the congregation must be differentiated dogmatically and in terms of church law. (d) The ministry of the church’s ministerial office takes place on the basis of a preceding call, the implementation of which is usually carried out by means of the ordained. The continuation of apostolic ministry in the church has thus given rise to a sequence of ordinations, and one must therefore inquire about what significance such a sequence has for the recognition of apostolic succession. This issue is all the more important the more one insists on tracing this series of laying on of hands back to callings that had already been implemented by the apostles through the laying on of hands. In the controversy between the churches regarding the validity of ministerial offices, one of the main concerns is whether the ordination in question can be traced back through an unbroken sequence to the original sending by the apostles, and whether the ministerial offices that they have mediated correspond to the apostolic directive. After being rigidly opposed to one another for centuries, the fronts in these disputes have recently begun to move as a result of a number of historical findings that are now acknowledged by researchers from a wide variety of churches.

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(1) Regarding the issue of the unbroken succession of the laying on of hands since the apostles, the following observations need to be taken into account: In earliest Christianity, the missionary witness to Christ and the leadership of the eucharistic service was not carried out solely on the basis of the laying on of apostolic hands. This becomes particularly clear in the undisputed letters of Paul. Nowhere in the New Testament Scriptures, not even in the Pastoral Letters, is there any interest in a successive series of laying on of hands by the apostles through their co-workers to the later pastors of congregations, but rather the sole concern is the transfer of apostolic teaching. For a long time, even in the ancient church, the concern with apostolic succession was focused most sharply on the preservation of apostolic tradition, not on the sequence of the laying on of hands. If it had been otherwise, one would be unable to understand that, during and after periods of persecution, the duties of the church’s ministerial offices that were carried out by confessors, even without ordination, were acknowledged because of the confessors’ suffering and steadfastness. Reference to lists of bishops was determined not by a concern about an unbroken succession in the laying on of hands but about the antiquity and unbroken continuity of the apostolic tradition living in the respective Church. Concern for the succession of ordinations only emerged clearly with Cyprian. Now one could object to these observations by arguing that even if, in the earliest church, the ministerial office was by no means carried out solely on the basis of a calling by the apostles and their disciples, nevertheless, in the course of later ordinations, as a result of the customary laying on of hands, most of the offices were in fact accepted into an unbroken succession that goes back to the apostles. In addition, one could point out that despite the early church’s lack of or little interest in the succession of the laying on of hands in the transmission of apostolic tradition, and in the sequence of bishops, such sequences of the laying on of hands in fact also occurred. And yet, in light of the above-mentioned observations, one may conclude, at the very least, that the conception of an unbroken sequence of the laying on of hands that began with the apostles cannot have decisive importance within the dogmatic concept of apostolic succession. This is true not only because the historical facticity of such a sequence is questionable but precisely because the conception of an apostolic succession that consists of a sequence of ordinations cannot be demonstrated in the original apostolic witnesses nor in the church traditions of the first centuries. These observations, however, by no means exclude the succession of the laying on of hands, even if it cannot be traced back to the apostolic laying on of hands, nor do they exclude the original understanding of apostolic succession [Nachfolge] in the early church; rather, they acknowledge it to be an important aid for ensuring that the church and its ministerial offices remain in apostolic succession [Sukzession].

Apostolic Succession

We know that there are basically three paths into the ministerial office that can be acknowledged to fit with the effective working of the apostles: (1) the sending into the pastoral ministry by those who have previously been ordained themselves—following the acknowledgment of the pastors or, beyond that, the cooperation of the church, that is, by such church members who had not themselves received ordination; (2) the sending into the pastoral ministry by the church, that is, by such members of the church who have not themselves been sent as pastors—following the acknowledgment by the called pastors or, beyond that, their cooperation; (3) the acknowledgment by the called pastors and the other members of the church of an actually existing pastoral ministry that has emerged in spiritual freedom (cf. sec. 3.d above). It is obvious, however, that of these three ways the first was preferred in all the churches and is valid as a rule, for as the temporal distance from the apostles has increased, the pastoral office and also a special education for the office had to gain more and more importance if the church was to guard apostolic tradition. Ordination by means of the ordained has rightly become the established practice in Christendom, and great importance is attached to the observance of this regulation in all churches. Nevertheless, the other two ways of apostolic succession cannot be excluded in principle since they too correspond to the relationship of apostle and church, and also in these ways the apostolic church grew. This openness is of great ecumenical significance. Without it, certain spiritual breakthroughs in church history—whether missionary advances in heathen lands or worship assemblies of Christians or movements of spiritual renewal inside a tired and self-righteous church—remain incomprehensible; and without this openness the divisions that have arisen within Christendom remain incurable.

The succession of the laying on of hands is to be acknowledged as a sign for the apostolic succession of ministries and of the church, for even if this succession cannot be traced back historically to the laying on of hands by the apostles, it nevertheless points to the unity of the apostolic church over time. Since ordination is usually carried out with the assistance of pastors from other congregations, the series [Kette] of laying on of hands is not a straight line, and thus it is not a sign of the spatial expansion of the one apostolic church. As a sign of the unity of the church through time and space, the succession of ordinations is to be taken seriously and secured under church law. (2) One question relating to the relationship between apostolic succession [Sukzession] and the sequence [Folge] of ordinations that has been particularly controversial for centuries is whether apostolic succession is to be carried out only in the sequence of the episcopal laying on of hands or also in the sequence of the presbyterial laying on of hands. For this specific question, the following historical observations should be noted: The threefold form of the church’s ministerial office (bishops, elders [presbyters], and deacons) that came to be established in the ancient church cannot be presup-

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posed to have been a general regulation in the earliest Christian congregations and cannot be traced back to a general apostolic directive. In the apostolic era, bishops were leaders of a local congregation. The same was still the case well beyond the time when the Pastoral Letters and those of Ignatius were written. Compared to the bishops and elders of the early days, the bishop of the future, who was the leader of a regional church with several local congregations, and the elder of the future, who was the leader of a local congregation, represent a considerable change, and quite a radical one when compared to the freely emerging spiritual ministries of the Pauline congregations. It is also significant that the church, even in later times, did not exclusively acknowledge such ordinations that had been carried out by bishops. For example, until the third century, the church of Alexandria attested to the custom of the consecration of bishops by the college of elders. Valid ordinations by abbots who had not received ordination by a bishop, as well as ordinations by priests, have been handed down from the Middle Ages. In connection with this, it should be remembered that the relationship between the ordination of priests and the ordination of bishops has been defined very differently in the course of church history. Jerome and Ambrosiaster denied that there was a difference, and the Protestant Reformers invoked them. But even if the difference is acknowledged, some put the emphasis more on what the two ordinations have in common (as did Thomas Aquinas), while others stress the difference between them. The historical arguments about the question of whether this conjecture of a continuous line of the laying on of hands by bishops from the apostles to the present is historically tenable cannot be discussed in detail here. But it may be asked of Karl Rahner—who concluded that “a priest could, in the best sense of the word, claim a moral probability for the validity of his ordination”—if he has thereby considered the presuppositions for that validity, as they are usually understood, especially the unbroken succession of the episcopal laying on of hands. He adds: “Does such a notion actually make sense, corresponding to the nature of the matter at hand and worthy of God? I think not. This whole notion is based on a physical conception of the conditions that make for validity, a notion that does not correspond to the matter at hand.”11 Yves Congar has pointed to important historical examples where ordinations that were not carried out by bishops were acknowledged in the older church.12

11 Karl Rahner, Vorfragen zu einem ökumenischen Amtsverständnis [Preliminary Questions about an Ecumenical Understanding of the Ministerial Office], Quaestiones disputatae 65, ed. Karl Rahner and Heinrich Schlier (Freiburg: Herder, 1974), 40. 12 Yves Congar, “Tatsachen, Probleme und Betrachtungen hinsichtlich der Weihevollmacht und der Beziehungen zwischen dem Presbyterat und dem Episkopat” [Facts, Problems, and Considerations

Apostolic Succession

If one takes these facts into account, then the relationship between a succession of the presbyterial laying on of hands and apostolic succession is not fundamentally different from the relationship between the succession of the episcopal laying on of hands and apostolic succession. Ordination in the succession of the episcopal laying on of hands does not place a person into an apostolic succession that is any different from that in the succession of the presbyterial laying on of hands. Ordination by bishops does not establish an apostolic succession of the ministerial office that the presbyterial laying on of hands is lacking. There are, of course, arguments that can be used to favor one or the other succession. For example, ordination by overseers of pastors in a region of the church presupposes greater opportunities for comparison in the selection and sending into the ministerial office than is possible for the leader of a local congregation. On the other hand, in times of persecution, when episcopal leadership may be eliminated, the preservation of the church’s servant ministry is better assured if ordination in the presbyterial succession is acknowledged to be legitimate. Beyond these and other practical points of view, one will have to assert, in favor of the episcopal laying on of hands, that this succession is a clearer sign of the universal unity of the church than is the sequence of ordinations in local congregations, for the bishop is the bond of the unity of a multitude of local congregations. In this respect, the succession of the episcopal laying on of hands is preferable and, where it is lacking, should be sought. But what is important here is the clarity and visibility of the sign, not the exclusive reality of the matter, namely, apostolic succession. In this sense, “episcopal succession” was designated by the plenary assembly of the Commission for Faith and Order at Lima in 1982 “as a sign but not a guarantee of the continuity and unity of the church,” and added that a positive assessment of episcopal succession does not mean that ordination received without the episcopal laying on of hands “should be invalid until the moment that it enters an existing line of episcopal succession.”13 Under no circumstances should it be forgotten that the local congregation, too, through the presence of Christ, is fully and completely a church and that its pastor is fully and completely a bishop in the sense that this concept had in the early church. The arguments for the succession of episcopal or presbyterial ordinations, or for a combination of both, cannot be further discussed here. Essential for this question is the statement that we are dealing here with historical differences within apostolic succession, namely, with

regarding the Authority to Ordain and the Relationship between the Presbyterate and the Episcopate], in Heilige Kirche [Holy Church] (Stuttgart: Schwabenverlag, 1966), 285–316. 13 Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, “The Ministry,” par. 38. [Growth in Agreement, ed. Meyer and Vischer, 491–492 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

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different forms of the continuation of the fundamental mission that was given to the apostles. Ultimately, this issue is not about a dogmatic difference but about a difference in church law. If the historical findings that have been assumed here are taken seriously in dogmatics, then an important obstacle will be removed, which has uniquely blocked the mutual recognition of ministerial offices for centuries. The possibility of revising that rejection, which has been in place until now, is recognized more and more today.

If we understand the succession of the laying on of hands in ordination as an aid and sign of apostolic succession, then it is of course crucial that this sign is not detached from the matter, namely, from the tradition of apostolic teaching and from the concrete continuation of apostolic speaking and acting. This is the decisive issue regarding whether the church and its ministerial offices really stand in apostolic succession. One cannot overlook the fact that, already in the christological conflicts of the ancient church, the succession of episcopal ordinations did not prove to be the sure means by which the apostolicity of doctrine would be preserved. That has also often become clear enough in later church history. This also applies to the presbyterial laying on of hands. Thus, in their reflections about the apostolic succession of ministerial offices, all churches are to be directed again and again to the question of whether the ministry of their offices is in fact taking place in succession to the apostles; that means, above all, whether the apostolic message of Christ is being carried out further by them.[xii] So the question arises whether the ecumenical dialogue about the apostolic succession of ministerial offices has not diverged from the original apostolic succession insofar as that dialogue is partly about refusing to acknowledge offices whose ministerial service takes place in one and the same confession of Christ and in the belief in the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper—while, in the New Testament traditions, what is of decisive importance is the witness to Christ, and there is no question about who is to lead the eucharistic celebration. In the context of these “basic features” of “an ecumenical dogmatics,” this chapter has been deliberately restricted to working out the basic structures of the relationship between church, ministerial office, and apostolic succession. An ecumenical dogmatics that is fully executed would have to deal with the history of this relationship and the very different forms in which this issue has been dealt with in the emergence of the various church orderings and church divisions. Undoubtedly, there are various, sometimes considerable divergences from the basic structures of the apostolic congregations in the early period, including divergences from the relationship between Peter and the other apostles. But one will also come across the fact that the basic structures of the church and the relationship between church and ministerial office are again and again made visible in church history in defense of inadequate regulations in church law, be they unilaterally centralized-monarchical

The Secular Office and the Church’s Ministerial Office

or be they determined unilaterally by the local congregation and the rejection of higher-level offices of church leadership.

7. The Secular Office and the Church’s Ministerial Office The church’s ministerial office is profoundly different from the secular office. The relationship between the two has been extremely eventful in the history of the church and is still so today. But if we draw the basic conclusions from the preceding statements about the secular office (chap. 7.4) and the church’s ministerial office (chap. 20.4–6), then at least the four following principles arise for distinguishing between the two offices: (a) The church’s ministerial office has a different mission from that of the secular office. The authority of the secular office is based on the commandment of God the Preserver, while that of the church is based on the sending that comes through Jesus Christ. Through the secular office, God wants to preserve humanity, which is ruled by the powers of corruption and has fallen into judgment, while he uses the church’s ministerial office in the service to his redemption from the powers of corruption and from the fall into judgment. Through this servant ministry he not only wants to check the excesses of sin but also to liberate people from the dominion of sin. Through the secular office, God wants to bring about secular justice, earthly peace, and political order vis-à-vis human beings, but the church’s ministerial office is the instrument by which God justifies sinners, reconciles them with himself, and gathers and guides the community of believers. The secular office has to fulfill its mission through ordinances, laws, and threats of violence, but the church’s ministerial office is fulfilled through the proclamation of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. The summons of this office is less an order than an invitation. Its threat is not carried out with the sword but with the word and, in the extreme case, with exclusion from the Lord’s Supper. Its authority is not a worldly, coercive force but the power of the Holy Spirit. (b) The missions of both offices are related to each other in several ways: Both offices are ordained by the same God. In both offices people serve the same God. The same God acts through both offices. The acts of God the Preserver and the Redeemer are not unrelated to one another; rather, God preserves humanity, in spite of its having fallen into judgment, in order to redeem it from this fallen condition by means of the gospel. Through both offices God acts upon all people. Through the secular office, God wants to preserve the life of all people, and he demands of everyone, including Christians in the church’s office, that they obey the secular office, i. e., obey his command to preserve humanity and to establish secular justice and peace. His mission that is given to the church’s ministerial office is also directed to all people.

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God wants Christ to be proclaimed as Lord to all people—including those who hold political power—and all people to be called to faith. Each of the two offices has been handed responsibility for the other office. If the secular office has the task of protecting human freedom by preserving life, it is also responsible for ensuring that the church’s ministerial office can freely proclaim the gospel to all people and gather believers. If the church’s ministerial office has the task of proclaiming God the Creator and Redeemer, it also has the task of teaching the divine ordering of the secular office and of exhorting obedience to this office. The church’s office is at the same time the office of a watchman that must warn against the abuse of political power. (c) The two offices are inseparable from each other. Their relationship to one another is by all means to be maintained despite their differences. This is true even if those who are holding secular office belong to another religion, or are agnostics or atheists, and they do not acknowledge the divine mission of the church’s ministerial office, and if thereby the self-understanding of the church’s ministerial office and its interpretation by the political office are poles apart. Even when political power persecutes the church, the church’s ministerial office is not released from its divine mission to preach the law and the gospel to those who hold political power. In each case, it has to show them the ordinance of God through which they are put into service. But the converse is also true. The secular office must not fail to demand obedience from those holders of church office who, in an enthusiastic rejection of the world, believe that they can break away from political responsibility and withdraw to the care of religious inwardness. (d) The two offices are not to be mingled or confused. Their difference is to be maintained in their relationship to each other. Even if the holders of secular office are Christians, they have to respect the special mission and the independent responsibility of the church’s ministerial office. They must not subordinate the church’s office to the political task, define or determine the content of the church’s proclamation based on their political interests, or misuse appointments to church office to expand political power, and finally, they must not unite the church’s ministerial office with secular office or merge into it. But conversely, the church’s ministerial office must not interfere with the independent responsibility of the secular office. The church’s office may not abuse its function as a watchman by patronizing the secular office. It may not prescribe the measures by which the secular office is to protect and promote the common good. It may not subordinate the secular office to the church’s task, fill secular offices, or even assume the secular office itself. Only through mutual safeguarding of the independent responsibility of each of the two offices is the difference in how God works through each—who, as the Preserver, wants good works to be promoted and evil deeds to be punished through

The Secular Office and the Church’s Ministerial Office

the secular office, and who, as the Redeemer, wants convicted criminals to repent of their sins and believe in Jesus Christ, to be absolved before God independently of the time that remains for them to complete their earthly sentence, and who also calls to repentance those who do good works. The respective mission of each of the two offices is so different from the other that it is a mistake to ask which of them is to be given priority. One could answer that the secular office is superior because it possesses a coercive power that the spiritual office lacks. Conversely, one could also consider the church’s ministerial office to be superior because it is not only concerned with earthly wellbeing but also with eternal salvation, not only with the preservation of this perishing world but also with the inbreaking of the new creation that is imperishable. But both offices are ultimately so incomparable that it makes no sense to ask which one is the greater. God wants people in both offices to serve him and other human beings. This fourfold distinction between the secular office and the church’s ministerial office is systematically and theologically simple to make, but within historical reality it is a difficult task to fulfill, one that is set before us anew again and again, for the concrete tasks of each of the two offices change in their details, depending on the individual needs and dangers that confront the offices. Considerable differences also arise in the exercise of the church’s ministerial office, depending on whether the secular office is exercised by pagans or by Christians or by apostates. Thus the aim of both offices, which is given at the same time with the difference between them, is to strive anew again and again to find that legal form of their relationship in which each office can best fulfill its mission. Given the necessity to make that distinction anew again and again in history, the relationship between the two offices resembles the one between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world, but it is not identical with it. The relationship between these two kingdoms is essentially a struggle, for the kingdom of the world is the dominion of sin and the powers of corruption, while the secular office is established by God to restrain evil and corruption. It is true that the struggle between these two kingdoms can be concentrated in the struggle between the two offices if one or both becomes degenerate. But God has established them both for the protection and wellbeing of people, and he has thus coordinated each of them in relation to the other for the sake of peace. While membership in the kingdom of the world and membership in the kingdom of Christ are mutually exclusive, members of the kingdom of Christ are to be found in the secular office, just as members of the kingdom of the world are to be found in church office. Serious misunderstandings of the Augustinian and Lutheran two-kingdoms doctrine arose from the fact that no clear distinction was made between the two kingdoms and the two offices. The body politic cannot simply be identified with the kingdom of the world, nor can the churches simply be identified with the kingdom of Christ.

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The history of the relationship between the secular office and the church’s ministerial office, as well as a typology of the possible ways of defining that relationship, cannot be presented here. We will point only to three extreme situations and the temptations resulting from them that have accompanied the church in its history until now and will also accompany it in the future: (1) There can be such a disintegration of political authority and such a vacuum within the political order that the church’s ministerial office steps into the breach for the sake of addressing human need and because people—not only Christians but also non-Christians—are endangered, and thus it takes over the functions of the secular office. Such a situation arose, e. g., when, during the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and in order to protect the city of Rome, Pope Leo I conducted political negotiations with Attila the Hun in 452 and with the Vandal King Gaiseric in 455.[xiii] Similar situations have arisen in our time when, after the collapse of National-Socialist rule in Germany, pastors took over the office of mayor in some places, or when, after the end of colonial rule in India and Africa and because of a lack of qualified personnel, pastors took over political offices in the development of the young, independent states. It is a different matter, however, to intervene subsidiarily in an emergency and hold on to political power after the emergency has been resolved. Any exercise of power brings with it the temptation to retain and expand power. It is especially the history of the West in the Middle Ages that offers sufficient examples of holders of the highest offices in the church who succumbed to the temptation to claim dominion over the secular office. But when this happened and the church’s ministerial office used secular force to carry out its mission, coerced the acceptance of baptism by force, eradicated heretics, and tried to spread Christianity through crusades, the church’s office became unfaithful to its mission. (2) The ordering of the church’s ministerial office can also degenerate in such a way that the Christian who holds secular office intervenes for the sake of addressing the church’s need and because the church is endangered, and thus the secular office takes over the functions of the church’s ministerial office. So, e. g., in view of the Arian controversies of the fourth century and the related mutual excommunications of bishops, Emperor Constantine convened and chaired the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea and made its decisions binding under threat of state violence. In the tenth century, when, in the “Dark Ages,” the papacy was usurped by depraved Roman noble families, the Ottonian emperors appointed worthy men as popes.[xiv] In the sixteenth century, German princes and magistrates protected Reformation preachers from being ostracized and banned, appointed them to church offices, and introduced church regulations. Here, too, it is a different matter if the secular office takes over leading the church in an emergency situation and then, on that basis, derives a permanent claim for such an intervention and institutionalizes it. This happened both in Byzantium and in the church regimes of Protestant sovereigns.[xv] When this happened, however, it made sense to make the church’s ministerial office subservient to political purposes, to require the church’s preaching to glorify those in power and to justify their measures, including their wars of aggression,

The Secular Office and the Church’s Ministerial Office

and to make the selections for appointment to church offices on the basis of a political point of view. Then the church’s ministerial office becomes an organ of political propaganda and its office as watchman falls silent. Whether the head of the church—as the vicarious representative of Christ—claims dominion over the world, looks upon emperors and princes as his feudal servants, and has the power to install and remove, or whether the secular ruler claims to rule the church, its synods and bishops, in both cases the point is that the church’s ministerial office and the secular office are more or less brought into line. The eschatological distance between the divine acts of preserving the world and of the inbreaking of the new creation into this world is no longer sufficiently considered. Whether the encroachments come from the secular office or from the church office, either way both offices become disfigured and impaired. (3) A completely different emergency situation occurs when the church’s ministerial office is suppressed and persecuted by an anti-Christian political force that forbids missionary proclamation, the instruction of youth, charitable activity, and the exercise of the church’s office as watchman vis-à-vis political life, and only allows the cultus. Although all these forbidden actions are essential to the task of the church’s ministerial office, the external and internal danger to the congregation can be so great that the leader of the congregation might heed these prohibitions in order to maintain the congregation’s worship service. Of course, such a leader would also have to continue this worship in secret if it were banned, for word and sacrament are the indispensable food for the believer. It would of course be a different matter if the church’s ministerial office were restricted to the cultus, even after the suppression ends, and would not safeguard its missionary and diaconal aims that had previously been hindered, as well as its office as a watchman vis-à-vis political life. After the end of the persecution of Christians in the ancient church, there arose the temptation to glorify the rulers to whom the church owed this liberation, and to do so in such a way that the special mission of the church’s ministerial office, in which it stands vis-à-vis the secular office, was not sufficiently safeguarded. This temptation not only fell upon Eusebius of Caesarea, but it also has accompanied subsequent church history.[xvi] This history shows not only the forced adjustment of the church’s ministerial office to make it fit with the secular office but also the adjustment that is voluntary and enthusiastic on the part of the church’s ministerial office, to the point that that office becomes silent about the obvious needs of the people.

In view of these and numerous other temptations, both offices must again and again seek to obey the special mission that God has given each of them. This challenge is not only about the special problems and temptations that faced the ancient and medieval church but also about those issues and temptations that can arise at any time and in every part of the world. The constantly changing interconnection between emergency situations and the temptations to exploit them makes it clear that coordinating both offices, in terms of state and church law, is a task that has to be solved again and again.

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Editor’s Notes to Chapter 20 [i]

[ii]

[iii]

[iv] [v]

[vi] [vii]

[viii] [ix]

[x]

The German title of this chapter is “Charisma und Amt.” For the terms charisma and charismata, cf. editor’s note 15 at the end of chap. 14 and editor’s note 10 at the end of chap. 7. Schlink developed the first six sections of this chapter largely on the basis of his earlier essay, “Die apostolische Sukzession,” cf. SÖB, 1/1.160–195 (ESW, 1.211–248), which he re-worked for a subsequent essay, “Die apostolische Sukzession und die Gemeinschaft der Ämter” [Apostolic Succession and the Community of Offices], in Reform und Anerkennung kirchlicher Ämter: Ein Memorandum der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Ökumenischer Institute [Reform and Mutual Recognition of Church Offices: A Memorandum of the Study Group of the Ecumenical Institute], ed. Edmund Schlink et al. (Munich: Kaiser; Mainz: Grünewald, 1973), 123–162. This sentence does not appear in either of the essays on which the chapter is based. Cf. SÖB, 1/1.184; ESW, 1.236. A shaliah was a legal agent in ancient Judaism. This ministerial office is referred to by the term ‫( ָשִׁלי ַח‬shaliach), which means, “one who is sent.” This section “b” is new material that represents a significant expansion beyond the few references to Peter in Schlink’s earlier two essays on which this chapter is largely based. Cf. 1 Cor. 15.8, 9; 2 Cor. 11.23–12.10; and 1 Tim. 1.15. The typical German word for pastor is Pfarrer. Throughout his writings, Schlink rarely used this term. Instead, he preferred the literal terms Hirt (shepherd), as in this sentence, and Hirtenamt (shepherd office). These terms will be rendered here by their English equivalents, “pastor” and “pastoral office.” Cf., e. g., Acts 8.14; 11.22; 13.3–4; 15.22, 25, 30, and 34. The word Schlink used here is Älteste, literally, “the oldest ones.” He will also use the original Greek term from the New Testament, namely, presbytereroi, which means “old ones” or “elders” but also “officials,” e. g., officers of a Jewish synagogue (cf. BDAG, 862). Cf. Justin, First Apology, 61–67 (ACW, 56.66–72); and The Apostolic Tradition (Bradshaw et al.). See Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians, 3.1–2; Letter to the Magnesians, 3.1–2; 6.1–2; Letter to the Trallians, 3.1–2; and Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8.1–2 (Holmes, 184–185, 204–207, 216–217, 254–257; cf. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 48, 108, 112, 140, 238). Cf. 1 Clement, 21, 37, 40–50 (Holmes, 75–77, 95, 99–113). Cf. Schlink, “Ökumenische Konzilien einst und heute” [Ecumenical Councils Then and Now], SÖB, 1/1.244–247 (ESW, 1.301–7).

The Secular Office and the Church’s Ministerial Office

[xi]

[xii] [xiii]

[xiv]

[xv]

[xvi]

Much of this sixth section on apostolic succession is not in the original essay but comes from the revised version, “Die apostolische Sukzession und die Gemeinschaft der Ämter,” 136–40. The term Nachfolge can mean “sequence,” “following,” or even “pursuing.” In a Christian context, it can also be translated as “discipleship” (as in the title of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book) or even “imitation,” e. g., “the imitation of Christ.” While these nuances are certainly present in Schlink’s use of the term, Nachfolge will normally be translated here as “succession” (e. g., “succession in office”) or “following.” The related word Folge, which Schink also used in this context, will likewise be translated here as “succession” or “sequence.” For Schlink’s treatment of this topic in light of the Lutheran Confessions, cf. chap. 7 of TLB, SÖB, 4.188ff. Leo I (“the Great”) was the bishop of Rome between 440 and 461. For his intervention with Attila, see Walker et al., A History of the Christian Church, 152. For Leo’s pleas with Gaiseric (“the Lame”), see J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire: From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 284–90. Cf. Walker et al., A History of the Christian Church, 251ff. “The most scandalous period for the papacy was undoubtedly the half-century between the accession of Sergius III (904–911) and that of John XIII (965–972). During this era, traditionally known to historians as the ‘Pornocracy,’ Rome and the papacy were under the control of the family of Theophylact, ‘Senator of the Romans’ and the highest lay official in the papal curia” (ibid., 252). For a helpful description of pre-WWI church organizational/governmental structures in the various German Landeskirchen (regional churches), see Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, 1.3ff. Cf. Eusebius of Caesarea’s (ca. 260–ca. 340) flattery toward Constantine in both his Ecclesiastical History (IX.9–11; X) and his Life of Constantine (NPNF 2 , 1.363–387, 481–559).

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Chapter XXI: The Preservation of the Church

Introduction: The Indestructibility of the Church[i] Like Jesus Christ, the church is also a disturbance of this world, for it proclaims to the world the end of the world with the inbreaking of the reign of God. It calls every person to repentance and to faith in the crucified one as the Lord of all lords. It spares no one with this call, no persons or peoples, no offices or social structures, but exposes the arbitrariness and disorder of this world so that sinners may be renewed by faith and that the creatures may be set free for their original purpose. But the world again and again resists this message. It will not surrender its sense of self-importance and glory, and seeks its eternal perpetuity in it. The more the church lets itself be placed in service to Jesus Christ, the more embittered against it the resistance of the world becomes. This struggle is constant and is carried out by the world in ever-new disguises of its aims, on ever-new historical fronts, and with ever-new arguments. Open hostility and apparent friendship, force and seduction, often immediately alternate with one another so that it is in no way easy to recognize the identity of the opponent. The second form of the struggle, friendship and seduction, is the more dangerous one. In this struggle, the goal of the world is the destruction of the church—whether through its eradication by force, by causing its members to commit apostasy because of intimidation and threat, or by eliminating those who will not yield to this pressure; or through such mutations to the church that it is no longer the church of Jesus Christ, no longer the salt of the earth, no longer the home of those who hunger after righteousness, because it has become the instrument of worldly propaganda and a collaborator and glamorizer of the crimes of a worldly power. In this way, the world seeks to attain its goal by establishing itself within the church, by distorting the message of the church or making it inaudible in the public square, and finally by replacing the church with itself. (a) In the midst of this constant surveillance and struggle, the church has been given the promise by its Lord that it will endure. “The gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Mt. 16.18 [L]). “And if those days had not been cut short, no one would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short” (Mt. 24.22). The promise of the Lord holds true for the members of the church: “No one will snatch them out of my hand,” “no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (Jn. 10.28–29 [S]). Even if members of the church are put to death, the church will nevertheless endure on earth. The vision of the woman in the sun, who gave birth to the son who has been exalted by God, also makes this promise. It is the vision

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of the people of God that is preserved from the dragon throughout the time of tribulation and is kept alive in a wondrous way (Rev. 12). What does the word endure [bleiben] mean here? It does not mean that the church always will be at the same place on earth, for there is no earthly Canaan and no earthly Jerusalem that has been promised to it as it was to the Old Testament people of God. In some lands where the church once was present it has disappeared today. The word endure also does not mean that the church will steadily grow and extend itself. There are times of spreading forth and times of standing still and even times of regress. The word endure also does not mean that the gospel will be proclaimed at all times and in all places with the same alertness, clarity, and power. Nor does it mean that the grace of Jesus Christ will unfold itself in ever the same riches of the gifts of grace. Within the history of the church there are times of darkness and light, times of riches and times of poverty. The word endure here also does not mean that at all times all its offices are witnesses to the truth, nor that the unity of the church is always manifest in the church’s corporate speaking and acting. But there will always be people on earth who live by faith from the gospel and the sacraments, based on whose new creation God preserves the world despite sin and death. There will always be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church on earth. The church endures because God does not cease to let his truth again and again break through the errors of Christians, nor cease to let his power again and again become effective in the midst of the church’s powerlessness. The church endures because the reign of Christ cannot be toppled. He suffered and has been exalted to be Lord for the sake of the people, his brothers and sisters, who suffer with him and triumph. As the exalted one, he gathers, purifies, and strengthens them, and holds them fast. The church endures because the outpouring of the Holy Spirit takes place ever afresh. The Holy Spirit does not cease to work as the one who transfers human beings into the ownership of Christ and who preserves them. The church thus endures because God will complete the new creation that he began in Christ through the Holy Spirit. (b) The same Lord, who promises to the church that it will endure in the midst of all trials and sufferings, gives it the command: “Abide in me” (Jn. 15.4), “abide in my love” (Jn. 15.9), “abide in my word” (Jn. 8.31 [S]).[ii] These and other similar imperatives have their basis in the act of salvation by which God created the church in Christ through the Holy Spirit. The abiding of believers in Christ is grounded in Christ’s abiding in believers. And yet it is also true that Christ abides only with those who abide in him. The indicative does not make the imperative superfluous. It makes it urgent. The indicative and the imperative are to be maintained at the same time, whereby the imperative is comfortingly encompassed by the perfect tense of the act of salvation and by the promise of the salvific action of God contained within this act of salvation that will continue until its completion. In statements concerning the indestructibility of the church, the structure of the statements concerning the

The Indestructibility of the Church

attributes of the church as a whole thus becomes even clearer. The corresponding statements of the New Testament are not about an attribute of the church, i. e., as if the community of believers is capable of abiding on earth on its own and is incapable of being destroyed. Rather, those statements are about a twofold address of the Lord to the members of the church: the promise of enduring, based on being in him, and the command to abide in him so that they will not be cast away and wither (Jn. 15.6). The exhortation to abide in Christ includes the command to be constantly watchful. It has its force not only in relation to the constantly changing attacks from without but also with respect to the weariness, the failures, and the errors, which make the members of the church susceptible to the attacks from without and which make them allies of the world. Only through watchfulness can the dangers that arise be recognized in time. The command to abide is at the same time a command to struggle. This struggle is not easy since the fronts between the world and the church are rarely apparent in advance. The lines of conflict mostly do not run along the outward boundaries of the church but within the host of the baptized, namely, between Christians who recognize the opponents and those who do not recognize them and who thus become the helpers and servants of those opponents. The struggle is therefore not only a struggle that is directed outwardly but also one that is internal. It is not just about defending the church but also about purifying it. The center of this struggle is the worship assembly, in which Christ gives himself to the church again and again anew, empowers it, and sends it. The preservation of this assembly in word and sacrament is therefore decisive. The attacks of the world are directed against this assembly, against the purity of the gospel proclaimed within it, and against the message that goes forth from it to the world. False doctrine in its ever-changing forms is therefore the greatest danger to the church. The church then abides in Christ only when it abides with the historical Jesus, who approached the cross, proclaiming and healing, and who, as the crucified and risen one, is its foundation. He is its historical foundation and the present Lord of the church in one person. Whoever loses the historical foundation, also loses the present Lord. To abide in Christ thus always means at the same time to abide with the apostles, who, as those called eyewitnesses, proclaimed the historical Christ and who thus are the foundation of the church together with Christ. But what does preserve [bewahren] mean here? It cannot be limited to the retention of the apostolic words and to citing them again and again. Instead, in succession to the apostles, in the face of new historical fronts, the church must do what the apostles foundationally did. It must proclaim in its own words the same Christ whom they foundationally proclaimed in the struggle of their time. It must do so if the gospel is not a letter but a living voice and the power of God that works effectively in history. Thus the church must not only maintain the directives of the

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apostles but, in its maintenance of them, proceed in the face of the new threats to which it is always exposed from without and from within. Abiding with the apostles thus must always take place in the historical unfolding of that which has been delivered to the church by the apostles, in the face of ever-new fronts, in new words and new directives. The church abides with its present Lord only in watchful vitality. Of course, the greater the temporal distance from the historical Jesus and the apostles became, the greater the difficulty became to abide with this source and to preserve the identity of the church. In fresh reflection and with new answers, the church had to ward off ever-new false doctrines at constantly changing fronts. In fact, all false doctrines are finally, essentially identical. But this identity is hidden behind extremely diverse historical forms and must be discovered again and again afresh. Above all, the responses of the church are finally only one and the same response. It cannot bear witness to anything new but has only the one Lord, Jesus Christ, to whom it must bear witness. But the broader the stream of manifold witnesses became over time, the more difficult it became to test their relationship to the common apostolic foundation and to establish the identity of the witnesses. At the same time, the danger for divisions in the church became greater. The mere assertion of apostolicity and the evidence of spiritual experiences were not sufficient to counter this danger, since the opponents of the church also made this assertion. How, then, can the church abide with an historical event that lies hundreds of years in the past, and which has been proclaimed and has been effective in very diverse historical situations? Here, in the course of the history of the church, problems have burst forth that the early Christian community could not have recognized as such, since the eyewitnesses of the historical Jesus were still active in its midst. These problems had to be taken up later. (c) In order to abide with the historical Christ, the church (A) gathered the documents of the apostolic message and added them to the Scriptures of the Old Testament, (B) unfolded the confession of Christ, and (C) increasingly established the ordering of the church. In other words, it settled (A) the biblical canon, (B) dogma, (C) and church law. For now, we can leave out of consideration the time when the terms canon, dogma, and church law came into fixed usage. Undoubtedly, the rudiments for these definitions lie much earlier than the words themselves that came to be used. Canon, dogma, and church law have their source in the worship assembly. The collection and delimitation of the biblical canon had to do with those writings that could be publicly read in the worship service. The formulation of dogma had to do with the unfolding of the confession that was heard in connection with baptism and, in other ways, with the acclamations and doxologies of the worship assembly. Church law, too, primarily served to provide an ordered course of the worship service and decided, e. g., the question as to who was to lead the worship service.

The Indestructibility of the Church

The early history of the canon, of dogma, and of church law thus was connected most closely with the history of the liturgy. The original correlation to the event of the worship service may not be ignored, when, in the later history of dogma and church law, it is not immediately recognizable in some of its topics. All three of these settlings are about acts of demarcating the church in its struggle with the world. In the demarcation of Holy Scripture, the church excluded from use in worship services those writings that are of pseudo-apostolic provenance and that distort the message of the historical Jesus. In the unfolding of the creed, it warded off false teachings that had found entrance into the church or were about to do so. Through church regulations, the boundaries of membership and service in the church were defined over against the dangers of disorder and division. As a rule, these decisions did not mark a boundary between the church as the community of the baptized and the world of the unbaptized. Rather, they were about a boundary within the realm of the church that in fact led to the exclusion of those who were only seemingly members. Each of these demarcations had to do with the church holding fast to Jesus Christ. The settling of the biblical canon, of dogma, and of church order did not have to do primarily with being marked off from the world. They were about abiding with the Lord, in whose name a true caring commitment to the world, namely, the proclamation of its only salvation, had to take place. In the constant changing of the fronts of the conflict with the world and in the multiplicity of its witnesses, confessions, prayers, and other expressions of life, with which the church responded in word and deed, with the demarcation of Holy Scripture, with the establishment of the confession and church order, more and more firmly formed texts that determined church life came into force. Already within the worship service and missionary proclamation of early Christianity, didactic, kerygmatic, confessional, hymnic, and dogmatic formulas had been employed, which strengthened and secured the connections between members of the congregation, between congregations themselves, and connections with the earlier witnesses, in the midst of freely emerging charismatic expressions. Such verbal settled definitions had to grow in importance with the increasing temporal distance from the historical origin of the church, for in the midst of the contradictory character of the attacks from the world, what was laid down in the wording increasingly took on the importance of protecting and preserving the church so that it could abide in its historical foundation. By establishing the biblical canon, dogma, and church law, the church preserved the identity of its worship assembly and its advance into the world. At the same time, the scriptural canon, dogma, and the ordering of the church are not to be separated from one another. They begin their growth simultaneously in the ancient church and permeate one another in content and purpose. But between the canon, on the one hand, and dogmas and church regulations, on the other, an important difference exists, namely, that the church merely established

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the boundaries with its collection of New Testament writings, while these writings themselves were given in advance to the church in the formation of the canon. It received these writings, accepted them, and delimited them, but it did not produce them for the canon. Dogma, too, in fact has its root in early Christian confessions, just as church order has its origin in the directives of Jesus and the apostles. But dogma and church order have not merely been accepted by the church. They have been established in further formulations and directives of their own. In distinction from the delimitation of the biblical canon, further formulations of dogma and church law have been made in the history of the church. The biblical canon, by contrast, is essentially closed. It contains the historical documents of the prophetic and apostolic message. It could be supplemented only by further, authentic documents of this message, if such were to be discovered, but not by further formulations of the church itself. The formulations of dogma and of church regulations, on the other hand, have to be supplemented again and again, since in succession to the apostles they must respond to the later attacks by the world that seek to destroy the church through false teachings and disorder. These observations mean that the church has more room for decision-making in defining dogma and church order than was the case with the delimitation of the biblical canon. Even with the entire set of problems concerning the “antilegomena” [i. e., the “disputed writings”], when the church was delimiting Holy Scripture it was bound to the documents that had been handed down and to the wording within them. In dogma, however, the church has made and continues to make its confession in its own words, in the choice between manifold terms and concepts and in dispute with manifold false doctrines and philosophies. In its details, church law is conditioned to an even greater extent by external presuppositions of the contemporary situation, in which the church obeys the commission of its Lord. These differences are important not only in retrospect, with regard to the history of dogma and church law, but also fundamentally and therefore also with a view to the future. There still exist further possibilities for establishing both dogma and church law that have not yet been realized, but which might or even must become a reality in later decisions of the church because of new historical situations, if in watchfulness the church takes its historical responsibility seriously. The biblical canon, dogma, and church order are thus not invariable in the same way, even if they all bear the significance of being constants in the diversity of the church’s life. It is not only Holy Scripture that encounters the church’s members with a claim to authority. So, too, do the creed and the ordering of the church. This is expressed, e. g., in the fact that the concept of the canon has been applied not only to Holy Scripture but also to dogmatic decisions (especially anathemas) and regulations of church law, as well to the central sentences in the eucharistic liturgy.

Holy Scripture

A. Holy Scripture 1. Holy Scripture as a Collection of Church Writings Already before Jesus appeared, the Jews had a collection of writings to which they ascribed the highest authority as witnesses to Yahweh’s historical acts, promises, and commands. The number of these writings was not yet finally closed (this took place only after the destruction of Jerusalem, around the end of the first century), but the collection was already so much a whole that it could be described as “Scripture.” The cessation of the prophetic word since Ezra and Nehemiah served as the boundary for a reception into this collection. Its first section, after the patriarchal narratives, reported primarily of the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, of the establishment of the covenant at Sinai and the statutes of the covenant, as well as of Yahweh’s further historical dealings with his covenant people. It also taught the interpretation of the covenantal stipulations in the law that had accumulated in a comprehensive manner through the centuries. The prophetic writings of the second section reminded Judah and Israel of Yahweh’s act of salvation, reproached the people for their transgressions, and announced to them God’s judgment but also his new promises. To these two sections a collection of other writings was added, the core of which was the Psalter and the Proverbs—some of which were responses to God’s acts of salvation and judgment, his promises, and demands, and others of which were observations concerning the world and human beings in the light of the law. The books of Torah received a prominent position, before all other books, so that the whole of these writings came to be designated as Torah. Jesus, his disciples, and the early Christian community acknowledged the divine authority of these writings, and designated them, as the Jews did, as “Scripture” or “the Scriptures,” as “the Law and the Prophets,” “the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalter,” or also simply as “the Law.” Jesus himself did not write anything. There is no indication that he intended to supplement the existing “Scripture” with further writings, or that he gave his disciples a mandate to this effect. Paul, too, whose letters are the earliest written testimonies of Christianity, did not intend thereby to compose any further Holy Scriptures. He simply wrote occasional letters to his congregations as substitutes for his personal presence and his oral address. To be sure, he wrote in the expectation that his letters would be read in the assembly of the congregation. But one finds in the letters no instruction for them to be collected. In fact, the New Testament gospel, as a living proclamation, from the very beginning pressed much less urgently to be fixed in written form than did the Old Testament law. Of course, despite Jesus’ acknowledgment of the Old Testament “Scriptures,” one cannot overlook the fact that with his corrections to the law and his transgressions of it, he in fact claimed a higher authority than that of Moses.

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That Paul proclaimed Jesus Christ as “the end of the law” corresponds to this claim (Rom. 10.4). Thus the traditions of Jesus’ words and deeds, his death and resurrection, obtained decisive significance for the early Christian congregations. But the reliability of these traditions was not guaranteed in the long run if they were handed down only orally. Even if the traditions handed on what took place in the past, this handing on took place in view of the various situations of the congregations, to whom Jesus Christ was to be proclaimed in concrete assurance and claim. As the history of the Synoptic tradition shows, the traditions about Jesus underwent many changes. It was a more serious matter when oral tradition was distorted by the fanatical degeneracies of prophetic charismatics and by a docetic dismissal of the message about Jesus’ birth and death. In view of the ever-increasing temporal distance from Jesus’ ministry and from his eyewitnesses, and with the ever-increasing geographical distance of the local churches from one another through the spread of Christianity, the securing of the tradition in written form became ever more necessary. This was then especially necessary in view of the large Gnostic systems and the Montanist movement of the second century. It was necessary to establish and demarcate church tradition in written form over against the secret traditions that had been made binding by these circles and over against the Gospels and the supposedly apostolic writings that had emerged from these groups. Decisions had to be made about which writings were to be read in the worship services of the church and used as a basis for catechetical instruction, and which were not to be so used. From this task of gathering and excluding there arose the material necessity of delimiting a church canon of New Testament Scriptures—and this took place entirely apart from the fact that the Gnostic Marcion had first established a canon of the New Testament, against which one had to take a position. It is not our task here to reproduce the history of the New Testament canon. We can only recall the most important steps that led to it. They began with the oral collection of the sayings of Jesus that were connected to one another, as well as with the early doctrinal and confessional formulas, in which Jesus’ history, especially his death and resurrection, was summarized and which later influenced the form of the Gospels. It may well have been quite early that letters of Paul also became known to communities to which they had not been addressed. It also may have been quite early that the first written collections of Jesus’ words and written reports concerning his mighty deeds and passion arose, and then later the large sayings-source (Q) and the Gospel of Mark.[iii] Out of these there emerged the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, with the working up of their further transmitted special material. The first collection of writings may well have been the letters of Paul. Following them, then, the collection of the four Gospels, which had been in use in various regions of the church. Words of the Lord from the Gospels were cited at the beginning of the second century with the same formulas that generally were used for citations of the Old Testament:

Holy Scripture

“It stands written . . .”. This took place only later with citations from the apostolic letters. Against Marcion, who denied the Scriptures of the Old Testament and who had limited himself to his own altered form of the Gospel of Luke and to the letters of Paul, the church placed the collection of all four Gospels and a broadening of the apostolic basis by the acceptance of non-Pauline letters and the book of Acts, and it did so in connection with the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which the church had maintained. Alongside this collection that finally led to the canon of the New Testament, whose specific demarcation had not yet been established, the oral tradition about Jesus continued. Even as late as around the year 150, Papias of Hierapolis had collected orally transmitted words of Jesus from the students of the apostles, the disciples of the “Elders,” and he regarded them as more reliable than the written Gospels. However, by around the year 200, with Irenaeus, Tertullian, and the other anti-Gnostic fathers, one no longer finds the citation of tradition from Jesus that is not found in the Scriptures of the New Testament. When Irenaeus argued by appealing to “tradition,” in addition to the Scriptures of the New Testament, his argument no longer had to do with the tradition of the concrete words and deeds of Jesus but with the orally transmitted “regula fidei” [“rule of faith”], the essence of that which the church believes and teaches. This tradition did not, however, extend beyond Scripture but was basically proven and confirmed by Scripture. The external limit of the collection of the New Testament Scriptures was just as little established at this time as the limit of the Old Testament Scriptures had been in the time of Jesus. But even then, the New Testament Scriptures were already having an effect as an authoritative unity. Still missing were the letter to the Hebrews, Second Peter, James, and in part the book of Revelation as well, and there were still other differences between the collections used in the various regions of the church.[iv] The increasing agreement in the delimitation of the Scriptures of the New Testament that followed took place with the increasing exchange that arose between the geographically divided churches. Finally, in the year 367, when Athanasius established the limit of the New Testament canon, that was not really a decision by which the biblical canon was created and put in force. Instead, he merely confirmed the collection of the New Testament Scriptures that had grown within the church through the centuries, to which the Old Testament Scriptures had been attached.[v]

The reliability of the tradition about Jesus and the message of Christ was the decisive criterion in the delimitation of the Scriptures of the New Testament. For this reason, only those writings were collected that, according to tradition, had been written by apostles—i. e., eyewitnesses of the earthly ministry and suffering of Jesus and especially of the appearances of the risen one—or by their students and coworkers. Statements about the author that were handed down in the relevant writings themselves or also in other places were asserted as a criterion for the apostolic origin of the writing. Other factors included the place, the time, and the circumstances of the origin of these texts, as well as the longstanding use of these writings in a congregation that had been founded by an apostle or by one of his coworkers. Beyond these considerations was the extent to which this writing was used throughout the

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whole church, from which inferences were likewise drawn regarding its antiquity. Material criteria stood alongside the historical criterion of temporal proximity of the writings to the Christ-event: the agreement of the writings with one another, agreement with the faith of the church, and the “regula fidei,” which bore authority as the oral tradition of apostolic doctrine. In this connection, the confession of faith, which may be characterized as a concentration of the more comprehensive rule of faith, may well have been of significance as a norm. The New Testament canon is thus the result of the church’s preserving, testing, accepting, gathering, and excluding. In a very comprehensive sense, it is the result of church decisions that were reached in the process of local and territorial churches growing together. Can modern historical research agree with the delimitation of the canon by the ancient church? Undoubtedly, some New Testament writings arose later, and their connection with the apostolic eyewitnesses is more indirect than the ancient church had supposed. The path that the tradition of Jesus’ words and deeds traveled to the composition of the Gospels was also much more complicated. It became clear, too, that the concept of “apostle” cannot be restricted so narrowly to the Twelve and to Paul, as was generally done at that time. Instead, already in the New Testament Scriptures themselves this term could have a meaning that went well beyond this narrow understanding. The apostles understood themselves not only as the founders of their congregations but also as their members, so that the authority of the New Testament canon cannot be based one-sidedly on apostolic authorship but is also based on the historical, original witness of the early Christian communities. Historical-critical testing of the ancient church’s delimitation of the canon, however, has also shown that such corrections to the New Testament canon do not contradict its establishment but merely indicate its complexity. Modern historical research agrees with the judgments of the ancient church that the New Testament canon contains the temporally earliest traditions about Jesus and witnesses to Christ. We, too, would not want to accept any of the “New Testament apocrypha and pseudepigrapha” that at that time might have been selected for inclusion in the New Testament canon. It has been recognized by historical-critical research more than once that with its delimitation of the canon, in the drawing of historical and material boundaries, the ancient church decided exceedingly well according to our historical and material understanding as well. Basically, the same writings remain debated today that were already debated in the third century, and which then were called into question in the sixteenth century by Cardinal Cajetan and by Luther.[vi] It is also clear that the substantive differences between the canonical Scriptures could not remain entirely hidden even in the ancient church. The astounding decision of the ancient church to receive all four Gospels into the canon, despite the many differences in detail that exist between them, presupposed even then a knowledge of the unity of church regions that used differing texts in

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their worship services—knowledge whose ecumenical significance has become even more apparent through recent research. 2. The Authority of Holy Scripture The writings that have been collected by the church, together with the Scriptures of the Old Testament, encounter the church as a unique authority for its entire speaking and doing. The worship service, with its intercessions and its adoration, with its proclamation and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, is determined by the Scriptures. The liturgical readings arise from them. They provide the basis for its preaching. They determine catechetical instruction and theological doctrine. Church dogma and church order are grounded in the Scriptures. Even for those who recognize oral tradition not only as the interpretation of Holy Scripture but as an independent apostolic authority that stands alongside it, the authority of Holy Scripture is unique to the extent that the postulate of the agreement of tradition with Scripture remains non-negotiable. If Holy Scripture is designated as a “canon,” the term canon does not mean merely a list or a number of the collected writings but also an obligatory norm for the church as a whole, for every local church and for each of its members. In this sense, the Bible, as the “canon of truth” and “the canon of faith,” is accorded an authority as the sum and substance of the original witnesses to God’s revelation. Did the church establish this authority through its collection and delimitation of the New Testament Scriptures? No. It merely acknowledged the authority of these Scriptures that had been given to it and, by uniting them with the Old Testament Scriptures, proclaimed Jesus as the one who had been promised and who had come, and thus it proclaimed the identity of the God of Israel and the Father of Jesus Christ. The delimitation of the biblical canon was thus not a productive act but a receptive act of the church, namely, the acknowledgment of the mission, sacrifice, and exaltation of Jesus Christ, which had been announced and now was fulfilled by God. That Jesus’ words and deeds were transmitted orally to the churches before the composition of the Gospels and that many adjustments to the situations of the congregations had taken place, does not contradict this. After all, oral tradition, too, is crucially a completion of the act of reception that takes place through changes in the historical situation. The New Testament canon has indeed been delimited by the church, but it has not been created by it. Instead, the canon has been made binding for the church by the word of God to which it bears witness, and which takes place within it. In acknowledging the authority of Holy Scripture, one must distinguish between the grounding that has taken place once and for all and the confirmation of Scripture that constantly takes place anew:

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(a.1) The authority of the New Testament canon is grounded in God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ that took place once and for all. Since we know of Jesus’ words and deeds only through the testimonies of the eyewitnesses of his earthly work, his dying, and especially his appearances after his death, the authority of the New Testament canon is at the same time grounded by the apostles. What already has been presented concerning the authority of the apostles (see above 887f.) and also concerning the broadening of the concept of an apostle in early Christianity (see above 881f.), is to be maintained with respect to the grounding of the New Testament canon. The apostles and the authors of the New Testament writings who were in temporal proximity to them were never an independent authority that stood next to Jesus. They were instead simply witnesses, instruments, and, indeed, “slaves” of Jesus Christ. They bear witness to him also by their interpretation of the Old Testament Scriptures (cf. above 569ff.). At all times and in all places, the church lives by God’s one-time act of salvation in Jesus Christ and thus at the same time by the word of God proclaimed by the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles, which announced this act of salvation as a promise to human beings and which now assures it to them as fulfilled. (a.2) The acknowledgment of the inspiration of Holy Scripture is included within this grounding, for the authority by which Jesus proclaimed and healed was that of the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament prophets, “the Spirit of Christ” had pointed to the coming one (1 Pet. 1.11), and the same Spirit had awakened the disciples to faith, had given them the authenticating power to bear witness, and had led them on their way. The Jews already had spoken of a theopneustia [divine inspiration] of Moses and of the prophets and thus of the Scriptures that bore their names. However, on the basis of the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, the inspiration of the apostles and the early Christian communities is to be entirely presupposed in their proclamation of Jesus’ words and deeds and in the composition of their writings. What does the acknowledgment of this inspiration mean? In the New Testament Scriptures there are several statements concerning the inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures (e. g., 2 Tim. 3.16), but obviously there are none about the inspiration of the New Testament canon. To be sure, they repeatedly state that faith in Jesus Christ, the confession of Christ, and bearing witness to Jesus Christ are not possible without the Holy Spirit. Apostolate, prophecy, and teaching are gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12.28; cf. Eph. 4.11). Therefore, one cannot restrict the inspiration of the authors of the New Testament Scriptures to the emergence of their faith and to their oral testimony about the one in whom they believe. Rather, the inspiration of their writings emerges from these presuppositions. It is not possible to tear apart oral and written testimonies. The inspiration of Holy Scripture has not infrequently been understood in the course of the history of the church in a way that does not correspond to the statements of the New

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Testament concerning the work of the Holy Spirit. In connection with Hellenistic conceptions, already in the second century Athenagoras taught that the Holy Spirit loosened the mouth of the prophets from their own thoughts and used and moved them as his instrument, as a flute-player does with a flute.[vii] Montanists explained the origin of the Holy Scriptures by asserting that the Holy Spirit turned off the authors’ own thoughts and consciousness when he used them as writing instruments. The verbal inspiration of the Scriptures has been described with such notions for hundreds of years up to old-Protestant Orthodoxy and to contemporary fundamentalism. But many of these notions stand closer to the writing of a spiritualist-medium than they do to the manner in which the Holy Spirit cares to work, for the Spirit of God sets people free so that they themselves bear witness to God’s mighty deeds, both orally and in writing. Thus, in the Scriptures of the New Testament, instructions of the Holy Spirit are indeed directed to individuals and to congregations, but they do not make inoperative the person through whom and to whom they go forth. Instead, they call that person to decision. The classic formula for the working of the Holy Spirit through believers reads: “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” (Acts 15.28; cf. above 819). Divine inspiration and the personal words and ideas of the human witnesses do not exclude one another. The inspired word of God is simultaneously the personal testimony of the inspired witness.

(b.1) The authority of Holy Scripture is confirmed through the ever-new salvific action of God in the present on those who deal with Holy Scripture. As the same one who once established the old covenant and then the new covenant, God speaks and acts today through the biblical witnesses to these acts. The act of salvation that he accomplished once and for all in Jesus Christ he makes present in his faithfulness through the proclamation of this deed and through the sacraments. The once-andfor-all crucified and risen Jesus enters the assembly of those who proclaim the witnesses of Holy Scripture and act according to them, and he does so in a salvific and self-giving manner as the living one. The gospel is thus not only the message of God’s powerful deed but the “power of God,” which is at work through the gospel. It is not only the message of Jesus Christ but the presence of Christ, who justifies and renews through the gospel. We do not merely experience that Christ said, “I am the light of the world.” In hearing this word, we are encountered by Christ as the light of the world. (b.2) This means at the same time that the biblical writings are not merely the result of a work of the Holy Spirit that once took place. It means that the Holy Spirit communicates himself through proclamation that accords with Scripture and through the distribution of the sacraments. The “power of God” that is at work through the gospel is the power of the Holy Spirit. The action of the exalted Christ is an action that takes place through the Holy Spirit. God’s Spirit demonstrates himself to be the living, life-giving Spirit in the church when the church engages Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture reports not only about the gifts of the Spirit that the early

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Christian community once received but permits and commands the expectation that God distributes the gifts of the Spirit also today, and that the fullness of the grace of Jesus Christ wants to manifest itself also today in the multiplicity of the gifts of grace. Therefore, one would not be fully acknowledging the inspiration of Holy Scripture if one were to think only of its original inspiration and not at the same time consider the active inspiration that takes place through it at all times. The problem of the inspiration of Scripture is twofold, namely, its origin through the Holy Spirit and the witness of the Spirit acting through it. In the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture, its origin has often been one-sidedly emphasized. From the acknowledgment of both of these actions of the Holy Spirit there arises the conclusion that the collection of the biblical writings did not take place without the support of the Holy Spirit. (c) Holy Scripture is thus not merely a collection of documents of God’s historical, foundational words, but it is also the instrument of God’s speaking today. If it were only the first, then perhaps its witness would have been at work for a time, as happened with other historical witnesses, but then it soon would have been forgotten. After all, the word of the cross is too nonsensical for it to have been handed down as meaningful if it were without the ever-new confirmation of its wisdom and power by God’s Spirit. If one were to isolate God’s present speaking from the historical tradition, Christian faith would then immediately dissolve into indeterminate religious experiences. Because, however, both belong together—its origin in God’s historical word and the divine speaking that makes this origin present—the Bible is rightly called the word of God. This designation signifies the acknowledgment that its witness is true, for it bears witness to the faithfulness with which God has stood by his promises through the millennia and by which he will complete that which he has begun. This designation also means that these witnesses are clear, for through them the Holy Spirit opens us up to the knowledge of its truth. All of this together means that Holy Scripture is complete. This position is not contradicted by the fact that there are statements within the Bible that have been shown to be obsolete on the basis of later cosmological, biological, and historical research. God’s historical word has broken through in worldviews of a past time, and the authors of the biblical writings, reflecting the notions of their time, have attested to God who is wholly other and who cannot be encompassed in any worldview. Holy Scripture is complete in that it bears witness with inexhaustible riches to everything that is necessary to know about God for our salvation. Through the knowledge of God, Scripture sets human reason free at the same time for the investigation of the world, but it does not reserve this task to human reasoning. The unity of the historical grounding and present confirmation of Scripture is of fundamental significance for acknowledging the authority of Holy Scripture. Through this unity it is lifted above all other books, and everyone may approach

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its witnesses with the expectation that through them God will speak to the person today. 3. Basic Principles of Biblical Hermeneutics In the Bible, words of divine revelation are handed down that lay claim to a meaning that eternally encompasses all time, words such as, e. g., the Old Testament “I am…” sayings of Yahweh and the New Testament “I am . . .” sayings of Jesus. Likewise, divine acts of salvation are also handed down that determine the future of all Israelites, such as the establishment of the Old Testament covenant and the new covenant established by Jesus’ death, which contain the caring commitment of the divine love to the world, and which thus determine not only the lives of those living at that time but also of those of the coming generations of humanity. The biblical writings also hand down, however, words of God that have gone forth to human beings in a nontransferable way, as, for example, the calling of Abraham, Moses, the prophets of the Old Testament, and the disciples of Jesus. In the Bible, numerous nontransferable instructions of God are also reported, such as, e. g., the order given through the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz to endure in the face of the threat to Jerusalem by the Syrians and Israelites (Isa. 7.1–9), and the instruction that went forth through the prophet Jeremiah to King Zedekiah to surrender himself and Jerusalem to the besieging Babylonians (Jer. 38.14–28). The instruction to Paul to go from Troas to Macedonia, to proclaim the gospel there, was also unique and nontransferable (Acts 16.9–10). The Bible contains accounts of divine acts of salvation and judgment, witnesses to God’s actions of making alive and putting to death, his actions of delivering and destroying, of acting in love and acting in wrath, which encounter individual people in very different ways. Such differences and contradictions are found in both the Old Testament Scriptures and in the New. What does God say to us through these accounts and witnesses today? Which of these very different addresses by God applies to me? The church does not live from the bare report of divine speaking and acting in the past but from God’s present speaking and acting, by which God affirms the words and acts that he once accomplished. How, then, do we recognize the address of God that is binding upon us in the words of the biblical canon that were recorded once long ago? How do we arrive at the certainty that what was spoken and done by God long ago applies today? How do we recognize what he concretely requires of us? This is the fundamental problem of biblical hermeneutics. It is in fact true that “the real knot of the hermeneutical problem, as it presents itself for theology, consists in the relationship between the interpretation of the text as proclamation

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that has taken place and the interpretation of the text as proclamation that is taking place in the present.”1 Although hermeneutical problems had been treated within the discussions of the fourfold sense of Scripture in the ancient and medieval church, the concept of theological hermeneutics arose only in the modern period and was employed at first in teaching about the methods for the interpretation of Scripture and only later in teaching about the understanding of Holy Scripture. Interest here rested on extending the tendency of interpretation that had been established by the Antiochians, Jerome, Thomas Aquinas, and Luther to direct one’s attention to the littera [letter] of the biblical writings and thus to the meaning that the authors themselves intended. That is not to say that a deeper, fuller sense of Scripture, which went beyond the sense that the authors themselves were aware of, was thereby excluded. This applies, e. g., also to the encyclical of Pius XII, Divino afflante spiritu.2 By contrast, the proliferation of allegorical and mystical interpretations of Scripture, rooted in the Alexandrian approach, has been suppressed in modern hermeneutics. With the question as to what God wants to say to us today through the biblical texts that have been handed down to us, we must first ask what the authors of the text wanted to say about God to their contemporaries, and then inquire about what God wants to say to us today through these very same biblical texts. We must thus distinguish between philologicalhistorical investigation of the biblical texts and the event of understanding these texts as an address of God to us today.

(a) The Investigation of Holy Scripture (1) Methodical Philological-Historical Investigation Differing interpretations of Scripture have played such a large role in the divisions of the church that for ecumenical dialogue it is necessary to employ the most sophisticated and precise methods that have been developed by philological-historical research. We cannot here enter into the history of the origin and establishment of individual methods, nor can we deal with the subsequent alteration or repression of the older methods. Rather, we will restrict ourselves to highlighting in key words the most important questions that one should raise when approaching the biblical texts. This requirement does not contradict the venerable conviction that has been proven through many centuries, namely, that Holy Scripture, despite many dark passages, is clear and understandable for every Christian (even for non-theologians)

1 Gerhard Ebeling, “Wort Gottes und Hermeneutik,” in Wort und Glaube, 2d ed. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1960), 347. [ET: “Word of God and Hermeneutics,” in Word and Faith, trans. James W. Leitch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1963), 331 (trans. modified). –Ed.] 2 [Divino afflante spiritu, promulgated by Pope Pius XII on 30 September 1943. See Denzinger, 3825–3831. –Ed.]

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regarding everything that is necessary for our salvation. To be sure, however, the sophistication of philological-historical methods helps us to achieve more precise knowledge of what the scriptural texts were originally intended to say. (1.1) By procuring, comparing, and grouping all obtainable traditions of the same scriptural text, the probable, original text is to be determined by taking into consideration the known rules regarding the corruption of biblical texts (e. g., the simplification of difficult-tounderstand readings in later copies). (1.2) The words and their fields of meaning, the construction of clauses and the connections of clauses to one another, the form and genre of the text, the structure of the statements in the relationship between human beings and God, and in the relationship between human beings are to be investigated with the goal of establishing the content of the text. (1.3) The text is to be compared with thematically and linguistically related traditions and texts from the Old Testament, early Judaism, and the New Testament, which may have had an impact on the text or along with the text. (1.4) One must inquire about the historical situation in which the text arose, into the threats from without, against which it takes a position, and into the inner-Israelite and inner-church conflicts that it addresses—the time and place of its origin and its addressees. (1.5) In this connection, one must inquire about the author of the text or the circle that was influenced by the author and which furthered his teaching in his name (e. g., the problem of the relationship of the Pastoral Letters to Paul). This further inquiry has to do at the same time with the task that Schleiermacher called for, i. e., of moving beyond the bare establishment of the author to undertake the task of psychological interpretation.[viii] (1.6) The text is to be compared with other texts of the same author or circle, with special attention given to the central topics of the writings as a whole. (1.7) The statements of the biblical text must be compared with the contemporary and antecedent religio-historical context—the Old Testament texts especially with the Caananite, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian contexts; the New Testament texts especially with the early Jewish, Hellenistic, and Gnostic contexts. (1.8) On the basis of the biblical texts, one must inquire about the historical events that they report. In so doing, one must draw upon all available extra-biblical sources and also take into consideration archeological finds. (1.9) One must pursue the question about the time and place, the circumstances and arguments, regarding when and where the relevant text was accepted into the biblical canon. (1.10) One must investigate the history of the use and interpretation of the text in the worship service, in piety, church teaching, and, beyond these things, its history of effects in the life and activities of the church. This history of interpretation is to be brought to awareness as a corrective over against contemporary issues and scholarly results. Even methodically less-sophisticated interpretations of a text from the time of the ancient church and the Middle Ages—such as was done earlier, e. g., when texts were linked together in catenas

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[chain citations]—can disclose true insights that escape the more sophisticated work of current research. (1.11). The larger context of the acts of God, as they are attested to in a manifold way in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is to be kept in view. Here one must observe especially the relationship of the text to the formulas of confession, instruction, and praise, in which the witnesses to the foundational acts and words of God are concentrated. Naturally, these issues may be refined considerably. The order in which they have been presented is not identical with the temporal order in which they are to be addressed. For example, decisions concerning differing text-traditions (1.1) presuppose, in many instances, the use of literary methods, redaction, form, and genre criticism, structural analysis, and other linguistic methods, as well as history-of-religion comparisons and historical inquiries, i. e., methodological engagement with the issues raised later in the list. The issues identified above overlap each other in some respects. Nevertheless, the ordering here cannot be arbitrarily inverted.

(2) Methodical Clarification of the Subjective Presuppositions of Philological-Historical Research The execution and the results of philological-historical research are not determined by the text alone but also by the presuppositions that the researcher brings to the text. In the historical-critical research of the Bible that has developed since the Enlightenment, care has been taken to require this research to be free from church dogma, and, in this sense, to require its being without presuppositions. But often too little consideration was given to how other ideological, philosophical, and religious convictions had taken the place of dogma and were used as criteria in philosophical and historical criticism without being aware of their dogmatic significance. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the discussions and debates that then followed had only in part to do with philological and historical arguments but also involved varying material criteria, against which the biblical texts were measured. It largely had to do with a controversy concerning religious, ideological, and philosophical presuppositions. The co-determination of the results by the presuppositions of research makes it obligatory to become aware of these presuppositions, to bear in mind their being implemented in research, and to bring them into consideration when comparing the results of research. This requirement is ever more pressing since it is basically recognized today, in the humanities as well as in the social and natural sciences, that empirical research without presuppositions, as was demanded and thought to be attainable in the time of positivism, does not in fact exist. Without overlooking the differences between research in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences, it is common to all of them that one reaches scholarly results only within the framework of the specific raising of a question with which one approaches empirical reality. This does not mean that the results would be false, but they are

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partial results that stand in relation to the presuppositions contained within the framing of the question. In this respect, one can speak of the experimental character of historical-critical research. Now, in the natural sciences it is self-evident that the arrangement of the research is reported precisely in the communication of the results, since the object to be investigated and the process of the investigation stand in a functional relationship, and that the observation is already an intervention into the event that is to be observed. How much more must it be self-evident that one must be aware of the particular presuppositions of historical-critical research that are to be taken into consideration in the presentation of results and in the assessment of results that differ from them! But in this regard, the critical study of the Bible, in the eyes of those who come from the natural sciences, often seems to be located in a pre-critical stage. We have already pointed to the necessity of methodological awareness of the subjective presuppositions in the explanations of the criteria of historical inquiry about the earthly Jesus and in the doctrine of Jesus’ resurrection (see above 430f. and 558f.). If this demand now may be elevated fundamentally to the investigation of the whole of Holy Scripture, we may point back to elaborations presented in connection with christology, and summarize them briefly: (2.1) A precise analysis of the philological-historical method shows that it does not have to do with a purely formal method, but that it instead contains principles that have quite a considerable material effect on the results. Both of the principles that are inherent to the historical method, to which Ernst Troeltsch pointed at the beginning of the twentieth century, are self-evidently still valid today: “the similarity (in principle) of all historical events,” i. e., the correspondence between the history that is to be investigated and our own historical experiences, and the principle of a consistently historical interaction, and thus the explicability of individual historical events by the encompassing “web of correlated effects and changes.”3 These principles have largely proven themselves in historical research and are so self-evidently presupposed that they have practically assumed dogmatic status. But the truth of these principles cannot be verified either historically or philosophically. In the end, they assume the status of heuristic principles. (2.2) All research by individuals takes place in certain forms of thought that they do not first learn through tradition and schooling and that they do not acquire by engagement with the object of their research. Such forms of thought are already given in advance of everything. They are anchored in the psychological constitution of the human being. This does not have to do with special forms of the development of concepts, forming conclusions, and so on, but with fundamental anthropological forms that form the basis of all of them. Thus there are, e. g., various basic forms of the relationship of thinking to the other mental and emotional

3 [Troeltsch, “Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology,” 14–15. –Ed.] Cf. above 430 and 558f.

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processes, and in particular, to the I as the center of life. There are, furthermore, basic forms of the relationship of the I and the other, as also basic forms of the relation of thought and views, opinions, or perspectives. There are also various basic forms of a teleological movement of thought, a circular one, and superordinating and subordinating one.4 Other very different forms, e. g., in which time is experienced, considered, and expressed, also appear to be constitutionally-anthropologically anchored.5 In part, such very different forms of thought are obvious in a comparative analysis of the thought of various peoples, as well as of various individual persons within a people. Because a distinctive form of thought is rooted in the psychological constitution of human beings, it is largely not apparent to them. But it has a considerable effect on the results of their philological-historical research. (2.3) Human beings generally are not content with isolated, individual, empirical conclusions, but live in conceptions which more or less clearly encompass them, their context, and the history of humanity and of nature. The historian, too, brings such conceptions to the texts that are to be investigated, as well as to the results. Such conceptions might have been acquired by the researcher. As a rule, however, they are carried by larger intellectual movements, and it is obvious how strongly, e. g., the worldview of the Enlightenment, Herder’s organic conception of history, Hegel’s philosophy of history, the “mythic school” of Romanticism, as well as positivism, evolutionism, Marxism, and existentialism successively had their effects on the issues and results of their historical research.[ix] The more researchers allow themselves to be carried by the stream of their time, the more the presuppositions that form the worldview of that time appear to them to be self-evident. The effects of such conceptions in philological-historical research are so considerable that they must be brought to awareness. (2.4) Religious prejudices can also turn out to be sources of error in the investigation of biblical texts, and indeed not only due to a non-Christian religious commitment or an antichristian atheism but also because of the conviction that one has grasped the message of Holy Scripture and has experienced God. There are biblicistic and dogmatic conceptual frameworks in which Christians hide themselves from God’s presence, become deaf to his speaking, blind to his acts, and register the statements of the Bible only as a confirmation of their own convictions. It is of great importance that precisely Christians also become aware of their own personal and corporate presuppositions, study the statements of Holy Scripture again and again in a fresh way, and surrender themselves to the ever-new speaking of God taking place through his words delivered to us in Holy Scripture.

The requirement to become aware of the subjective presuppositions that are present within oneself and others is the requirement to be radically open to that which

4 Cf. Schlink, Der Mensch in der Verkündigung der Kirche, 20–101. [Cf. also Schlink, “Der Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.56 (ESW, 1.100). –Ed.] 5 Cf., e. g., John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (New York/Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974), 19ff.

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the authors of the biblical texts once communicated to their surrounding world and to be open to the claim about the future that they have raised with their statements, which transcends their immediate present. This radical openness does not imply the illusion that research is free of presuppositions, but it does imply that, when comparing various historical results with each other, one’s own subjective presuppositions must be relativized, and one must consider that which has the effect of being a presupposition in the historical research of others. By giving consideration to the plurality of presuppositions on the basis of which the investigation of the biblical texts is actually conducted, one may expect increasing precision in the results of research. If we look back on the preceding remarks about the issues that are to be investigated with philological-historical methods (1), and about the need to become methodically aware of subjective presuppositions (2), then these issues and methods are not fundamentally different from those with which philological and historical research has to approach ancient texts in other ways too. The preceding remarks remain within the framework of general hermeneutics, for despite the fact that these issues have been oriented entirely in the direction of the biblical texts, the decisive hermeneutical problem has not yet been dealt with here, namely, that of the truth of these statements about God. (b) The Interpretation of Holy Scripture The preceding section had to do with the investigation of that which the authors of the biblical text had to say to their surrounding world. The claim of their statements obviously reaches well beyond their contemporary context, for they report the acts of salvation that have taken place once and for all, which God accomplished not only for those who were alive at that time but also for all human beings of all times. The interpretation of Holy Scripture therefore cannot be limited to ascertaining what the authors wanted to say in their time. Rather, interpretation takes place only when the address that went forth to people living at that time is passed on as God’s address to us today. The interpretation of a biblical text for other people, however, presupposes that interpreters understand this text, i. e., that they have heard it as God’s address. (1) Understanding Holy Scripture In the history of biblical hermeneutics, the concept of “understanding” has undergone considerable changes: (1.1) Grammatical-philological understanding: For a long time, people were of the opinion that one arrived at the understanding of a text simply through the translation of the words of the biblical text into words of one’s own language. It has become evident, however, that this

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linguistic effort as such does not lead to understanding, but instead contains within itself a wealth of problems that require their own particular treatment. (1.2) Psychological understanding: Schleiermacher demanded that psychological understanding had to be added to grammatical understanding. He called for a re-experiencing, a re-production, a replication of the living event that once took place, the “production” of the text by the interpreting author. Following Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey interrogated texts in an effort to uncover the intellectual-personal life of the author that had taken a fixed written form in them.[x] (1.3) Historical understanding: In this orientation, the biblical texts are primarily used as historical sources. The understanding of the texts has to do primarily with verifying or falsifying the historical events to which they bear witness. (1.4) Sociological understanding: In the last decades it has become more and more selfevident that texts are to be questioned about the Sitz im Leben [life-situation] that they reflect. Understanding of texts requires knowledge of the context in which the author wrote and against which the author reacted. (1.5) In the struggle against historicism, attention was drawn from various quarters about the fact that everything that we have presented thus far cannot be characterized as “understanding” in the fullest sense. For example, the neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert demanded that comprehending the supra-individual, timeless meaning contained in the texts must be added to understanding as the comprehension of an individual temporal course of experience.[xi] Eduard Spranger argued that understanding only comes about by recognizing the objective values that are at work in the mental event and its linguistic expression.[xii] It has been pointed out that the understanding of mathematics texts takes place only when a judgment is reached concerning the mathematical legitimacy of the statements of the texts.

Within Protestant theology in the twentieth century, Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann—over against Schleiermacher and historicism—have strongly emphasized the necessity of understanding the “subject matter” [“Sache”] that is the concern of the biblical texts.[xiii] This “subject matter,” however, is God and his word that has gone forth into history. The biblical texts are witnesses to God’s historical revelation, through which God reveals himself today. Even when the biblical reports are about the history of human beings, they are still always about God’s word, namely, about the rebellious or obedient responses of human beings to God’s word and thus about the unveiling of our reality before God. This theological understanding is not added to the previously mentioned ways of understanding as a further way of understanding that stands alongside them. Rather, the grammatical, psychological, sociological, and historical understanding of Holy Scripture ultimately discloses itself only from the theological “subject matter.” This view does not deny that important results have been obtained in the study of the Scriptures—even when the divine speaking to which they have witnessed, and

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which took place through them, has not been acknowledged—results which have been established in part even in the struggle against theological prejudices. But in the effort to understand the “subject matter” with which the biblical texts have to do, it again and again becomes clear that the language in which they have been written, the experience that comes to expression in them, as well as their Sitz im Leben and the facticity of the historical events reported in them are determined by this “subject matter,” namely, by God’s word and deed. How do we attain understanding of the Holy Scriptures, namely, an understanding of their witness to God’s former historical speaking and acting as the assurance and claim of his present speaking and acting? If we investigate the biblical texts solely with text-critical, literary-critical, grammatical, structure-analytical methods, with tradition- and redaction-historical methods, with history-of-religion methods, comparative methods, and with still other methods that are serviceable for answering the investigative questions presented above, and if we, furthermore, make ourselves aware of the subjective presuppositions by which we investigate the biblical texts, we can then reach a certain reliability of philological-historical results and exclude a fair number of sources of error. But then there is still nothing said concerning the truth of the biblical statements and their validity for us today. Neither through the most sophisticated attempts to analyze the biblical text, nor through a self-critical effort to reach a radical openness to the text, do we attain a knowledge of the assurance and claim that God addresses to us today through the words of the Bible. This knowledge is God’s act, who by his free grace accepts our attempts and opens us up for himself. Through his Holy Spirit, God makes us into those who understand. The knowledge of the “foolishness of the word of the cross” as “God’s power and wisdom” is the effect of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 1.18; 2.10–13). The understanding of the word of Scripture as God’s address today may be explicated in three examples: Both in the Old Testament Scriptures and in the New, the acts of God are handed down that once took place and that also contain the promise that God will stand by these acts in the future and will act further for those to whom he gave this promise. This applies, e. g., to the establishment of the covenant with Israel and to the new covenant that God has established with Jesus’ death. The certainty that God accomplished these acts and that he actualizes them today through proclamation and the sacraments is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes the historical acts of God that have been handed down in the littera of the biblical writings certain as acts that have been done for us and to us. That which the authors of the Old Testament Scriptures announced to their contemporary context, and that which the New Testament interpretation of these Old Testament words announces to the church and to us Christians today as the word of God, does not correspond to our understanding of these Old Testament Scriptures. We already have pointed out above

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(cf. 569ff.) that the understanding of the Old Testament texts cited in the New Testament largely does not correspond to the historically demonstrable sense, but instead goes beyond the Old Testament understanding. It is true that quite a few writings of the Old Testament point beyond themselves to a coming one, but they do not make it unavoidably clear that they point precisely to Jesus and his fate. In many instances, the conclusion is unavoidable that the Old Testament texts cited in the New Testament Scriptures as witnesses to Christ were not originally about an expected coming one but about persons from Israel’s past, e. g., David, Solomon, a prophet, or the people as a whole. The understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures brought about by the Holy Spirit is not determined by their littera alone but from the disclosure that is bestowed through the resurrection of Jesus. The Holy Spirit gives knowledge of both the unity and the distinction between the two Testaments, and precisely in this way gives knowledge of the newness that has dawned in world history with the coming of Jesus. A third, still different example: Through God’s Spirit a one-time address directed to a person long ago in the past, as it is handed down in Holy Scripture, may become God’s address to a person today, as, e. g., the demand to leave everything and to proclaim the kingdom of God. Neither the methods of philological-historical exegesis nor the awareness of subjective presuppositions can be used to prove that such a demand, expressed many centuries ago, applies to this specific human being living today. But again and again such demands that are handed down in the Bible have encountered individuals with such force that it becomes inescapably clear to them that they would be disobedient to God if they did not follow this call. There is a personal, concrete guidance by God’s word in dealing with Holy Scripture.

The Holy Spirit thus works in the life of the church in widely differing ways through Holy Scripture. Indeed, in the New Testament Scriptures there are multiple instances that have been handed down of a speaking of the Holy Spirit that does not proceed from a word of Scripture but instead comes immediately to an individual or to a community (cf. above 821f.). The history of the church displays a number of examples as to how obedience to an inspired message that was independent of the word of Scripture led into error. But all three examples named here have to do with concretely applying that which has validity as an abiding commission of God to his people according to the witness of the traditions of the Old and New Testaments. The action of the Spirit, even in its freedom from the scripturally fixed letter, remains nevertheless in service to that to which the biblical texts bear witness, for the Holy Spirit teaches everything and reminds us of everything that Jesus said (Jn. 14.26; cf. 15.26; 16.14). Therefore, “reminding” means “making present.” In this respect, Holy Scripture remains the criterion for acknowledging the freedom in which the Holy Spirit calls for our obedience today. We may summarize our preceding reflections on the question as to how we are to arrive at an understanding of Holy Scripture in the phrase: we attain understanding

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by faith. To be sure, faith does not take places without questioning and investigating, praying and wrestling, surrendering oneself and attaching oneself to the word of Scripture. Nevertheless, all believers will confess that the certainty of their faith is not the result of their questioning, investigating, and attaching themselves to Scripture but is instead the gift of God who answers our questioning in the freedom of his grace, hears our prayer, and opens our ears. Of what use would binding ourselves to the word of God be, if God, already before our seeking, had not grasped us by his word? (2) Understanding and Interpreting Holy Scripture Knowledge of the divine address that comes to us today through the biblical word cannot remain silent. Rather, it presses on to become voiced in interpretation before others. If my own investigation of the Bible requires a clarification of the subjective presuppositions that I bring to that investigation, the interpretation of the Bible requires the effort to recognize the presuppositions that those for whom the Bible is to be interpreted hold. This effort is not only about individuals’ conscious decisions and failures, their hopes and despairs, but also with the mostly unconscious, psychophysical presuppositions by which they live and the worldviews by which they are conditioned. Whoever has understood God’s address through the Scriptures and wants to pass it on must step into the place of the one to whom they proclaim God’s word, and in this place endeavor to perceive what God wants to say to the other. Paul understood his ministry in the sense of such a self-emptying: “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9.20–22 [S]). Paul could thus ask the members of the church: “Friends, I beg you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are” (Gal. 4.12). But by no means can the interpreter bring it about that the others hear not only the biblical text, and not only the person who is speaking to them, but the God who is addressing them through the text. This is God’s sovereign act. God makes himself present. God brings about understanding through the Holy Spirit. (c) The Relationship between Methods of Research and the Event of Interpretation How are the efforts of doing philological-historical research and of arriving at a critical awareness of subjective presuppositions (cf. a.1 and a.2) related to the event of understanding and interpreting Holy Scripture (cf. b.1 and b.2)?

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Hermeneutics as instruction about the methods of interpreting Scripture and hermeneutics as instruction about understanding the biblical witnesses as the word of God belong together, and yet they are to be distinguished from one another. Research into the Scriptures is a human activity. The event of understanding Scripture as God’s word is God’s act. Research into the Scriptures must take place in obedience to God’s command and promise. But the event of understanding is grace, just as is that of the forgiveness of sins. A mixture of the two means nothing other than the mixing of human works and divine grace. Grace, however, cannot be merited by methods and works, no matter what kind they might be. Grace is freely given and can only be received. So while we can develop and use philological, historical, and epistemological methods, there is no pneumatological method of the interpretation of Scripture that human beings can develop and use themselves. We can only ask for the Holy Spirit and thank God for his grace. In this respect, both unpretentious readers and learned readers of the Bible find themselves in the same place.

B. Confession 1. Confession as a Response of the Church God’s historical act of salvation cannot remain without the response of those for whom it has taken place. This is the case in both the old covenant and the new. The center of the responses is confession.[xiv] The central response of Israel to God’s revelation was the confession: “Yahweh is our God.” This confession was bound to the praise of his foundational act of salvation: Yahweh was praised as the God who had brought Israel out of Egypt. This confession later was broadened by the praise of further acts of God’s saving help for his people, but also in remembrance of his judgments. The confession of the people and of the individual was therewith “two-sided: the confession of praise and the confession of sin.” The psalm of thanksgiving or the psalm of praise is called “toda” [‫]תּוֹ ָדה‬, as is the presentation of an offering which it accompanied.6 The history of the confession with which the church responded to God’s act of salvation through Jesus began entirely as a confession of Jesus. It has the same structure as the Old Testament confession. Jesus is confessed with honorific titles, especially as Christ, Son of God, and Lord. At first they were only occasionally joined together, but in later confessions they were regularly connected. They not only bore

6 Claus Westermann, “Bekenntnis II” (RGG3 , 1.990). [This noun is based on the Hebrew verb “to throw” or “to cast.” In this context, the noun form means “confession,” as in “giving praise to,” or as “offering thanksgiving in songs.” Cf. BDB, 392. –Ed.]

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the significance of titles but became names by which Jesus was called upon and glorified. Statements concerning Jesus’ history, especially concerning his death and resurrection, were added to the confession of Jesus’ name. These were expanded backwards to his birth, the incarnation of the Son of God, and forwards to his parousia (cf. above 431f.). In this act of confessing, three elements are combined: (1) In confession the self-surrender of believers to the one they confess takes place. In the basic form of Old Testament and early Christian confessions, the I of the one confessing and the act of that person’s confessing do not become the object of the confessional statement. The name of Yahweh and his acts as well as the name of Jesus and his history are the sole content of the confession. This is no non-existential objectification of the statements of faith. Quite the opposite: it is the extremely existential act of transferring oneself into the ownership of the present Lord. Just as in the pure form of doxology there is no mention of the worshiping human being but only of the God who is worshipped, so also in the basic forms of confession. Confession is thus praise and adoration (cf. above 122f.). This praise in self-surrender includes within itself the recognition of one’s own failings, the turning away from one’s own past, and the renunciation of wanting to be in charge of one’s life. The confession of Yahweh and the confession of Jesus Christ are thus at the same time the confession of sins. This confession of sins, however, is indeed implicitly contained in the earliest confessions but not explicitly spoken in words. (2) In confession believers bear witness to Jesus in their situation. The great significance of this element in the act of confessing follows directly from the saying of Jesus that is attested to four times in the Synoptic Gospels: “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; but whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God” (Lk. 12.8–9). This saying of Jesus reverberates in numerous other New Testament statements. With this understanding of confessing “before others,” one must think above all about those persons who deny Jesus’ message and who present a threat to his witnesses. But the duty of bearing witness through confessing applies beyond this to all those who have not yet heard of Jesus, to members of the community who have become uncertain, or to those who are threatened by false teaching. Thus, e. g., in the letter to the Hebrews, a congregation that had become weary is called in a special way to remain with its confession. There are negations that are also contained within this element of witness, namely, the rejection of false doctrines, false prophets, and antichrists. An anathema is implicitly contained in the confession. But it is not explicitly spoken in the original structure of the confession. (3) In confessing, the consensus with other believers is voiced. Even if the confession is made by only one believer, that one does not remain alone, but confesses

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in the community of the church. In confessing, the phrases “I believe” and “we believe” belong indissolubly together. This joining into the confession of the church takes place in two dimensions: first, as a joining into the confession of those who have gone before, especially the apostolic eyewitnesses, whose witness lies as the foundational authority for all later confessions; and second, as a joining into the confession of the brothers and sisters, the believers who live at the same time as we do. This element of consensus in the confessing of the church contains the separation from other worshiping and confessing communities. Only by understanding themselves as the people of God who are called out of the world, can believers proclaim to the world that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. Thus the responses of faith to God’s act of salvation are concentrated in confession: the praise of God and the proclamation to others. Even if in the acclamation, “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor. 12.3), doxology is expressed more strongly than proclamation, and if in the confession of Jesus to others proclamation is expressed more strongly than doxology, the element of self-surrender to Jesus, and thus the sacrifice of praise, is not lacking in it—just as, conversely, the responses of the worship acclamation are also a testimony in the presence of those who are assembled for the worship service. Since the responses of faith are concentrated in confession, it is understandable that within it sometimes one element and at other times another element stands out more strongly, according to the Sitz im Leben of the church. As a result, formulas of confession and liturgical formulas, as well as formulas of proclamation and of teaching, have been used in the church. That simple confessions about Jesus from the early period underwent a rich unfolding in the course of history, was not merely (or even primarily) the result of having to draw boundaries over against false doctrines; such boundary-making had already taken place within the New Testament Scriptures themselves, e. g., in the anti-Gnostic confessional statements in 1 John, and later in the anti-Marcionite statements of the Old Roman Creed, as well as in the anti-Arian statements of the Nicene Creed. Instead, every expression of praise pressed for a certain completeness of expression, as it appears, e. g., in the christological statements of the Nicene Creed and in the statement of the so-called Athanasian Creed concerning the attributes of the triune God. With the gospel’s advance into new cultural areas, the momentum of witnessing before others and the task of retaining consensus also required further elements of precision. This unfolding of the confession of Jesus at first took place by adding explicit statements concerning the confession of God the Father and the Holy Spirit that had been implicitly contained within it. In the years that followed, the christological confession thus remained the basis that had to be clarified ever more precisely. After the essential unity of Jesus and the Holy Spirit with the Father had been defined, and thus trinitarian dogma had been defined, the further clarification of christological dogma followed in the confession of Jesus Christ as truly God and

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truly a human being. But just as the Pelagian controversy was about the relationship between divine and human action, i. e., about the freedom and the bondage of the human will in attaining of grace, so the saving action of God through Jesus Christ also here remained the central issue. This issue was also at stake in the later discussions and debates about the sacraments, the doctrine of justification, and finally the efforts to provide a dogmatic definition of the church. It is not our task here to present the history of dogma. We must indeed, however, point to a few of the changes in the structure of the statements and to changes in the consensus about the statements that have taken place in the history of dogma, and which are important for ecumenical dialogue. (a) Structural shifts in dogmatic statements. Already in the introductory part of this dogmatics we proceeded from the idea that in confession all the basic structures of faith-statements are concentrated in a unique way: statements of prayer and of doxology, of proclamation and of doctrinal teaching (chap. 3.1). There we also pointed to structural changes in dogmatic statements that arose when at times one structure contained in the confession was emphasized more strongly and then at other times another one was emphasized, and we noted that the negative elements that originally were only implicitly contained in the confession came to the foreground in explicit statements, which then became independent. We thus pointed, e. g., to the shifts that announced themselves in the introductory words of the Chalcedonian Definition and the Athanasian Creed (chap. 3.2). An important structural shift also took place through the increasing weight that was given to explicitly negative dogmatic formulations. Thus, e. g., within the Council of Trent, the anathemas pronounced within the canons were accorded a more obligatory standing than the positive teaching in the decrees. Since structural shifts as a rule have consequences for the contents of dogmatic statements, there arises the task of translating the statements from one structure into another. This task has been pursued in a number of chapters in this dogmatics, such as, e. g., in the doctrinal sections about the concursus divinus (203ff.), sin (255ff.), theodicy (347f.), the kingdom of God (478ff.), the judgment according to works (611ff.), and law and gospel (779ff.). Since the doctrine of God as doxology (Part IV) follows the doctrine of the acts of God (Parts I–III), the consideration of structural shifts in dogmatic statements is also determinative for the overall task of this dogmatics. We have already pointed out that structural shifts in dogmatic statements do not take place in the same way in all churches. The Orthodox Church has continued to be most consistently defined by the liturgical-doxological structure of confession. Corresponding to this consistency is the fact that it answers the questions about the doctrine of the sacraments primarily by referring to the texts of the liturgy and to the way of mystagogical interpretation. By contrast, the confessional writings of the Orthodox Church that developed in the seventeenth century, which show a certain

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dependence on the didactic structure of Western catechisms, never reached the same prestigious status as the Constantinopolitan Creed and the liturgy as whole. Since the Pelagian controversy, the Latin development of dogma has largely distanced itself from existential, doxological confessing, and has taken a standpoint from which human and divine action, nature and grace, have been juxtaposed against each other in an objectifying manner and have been determined by their relationship to each another, as was also the case in the sacramental teaching about signs and “things.” The early Lutheran confessional writings are determined in their structure not by doxology but by proclamation, and consequently, in distinction to the Apostles’ Creed and the Constantinopolitan Creed, they did not become liturgical elements of the worship service (with the exception of the occasional liturgical use of Luther’s explanation of the Apostles’ Creed). Thus, e. g., the interpretation of the doctrine of justification in Melanchthon’s Apology of the Augsburg Confession, as has been mentioned already, is largely comforting, pastoral assurance about Christ’s act of salvation for consciences that have been made anxious and brought to despair by God’s law. It is also clear that Luther’s Large Catechism arose from sermons. By contrast, a structural shift from proclamation toward a scholastic objectifying of doctrine begins again in the Formula of Concord (1577). With such structural differences in view, a transfer from one structure to another is necessary in order to comprehend the material differences and agreements between the churches. If confession is understood as a concentration of all the responses of faith to God’s act of salvation, it may well cause amazement that it only became an element of the liturgy quite late. According to the ancient orders of worship, the eucharist was celebrated without a confession. The Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 received a fixed place within the worship service in the East only several decades after the Council of Chalcedon (451), and in the West only in the course of several centuries.7 Also in baptism, from the early period, the confession was not spoken by the baptismal candidate, as the older research had assumed. It is also not attested to in the New Testament Scriptures (with the exception of the textual tradition of Acts 8.37, which is probably later). Rather, it was customary in the early church that the confession was presented by the baptizer in the form of questions to the baptismal candidate, to which the latter responded affirmatively. After the development of the catechumenate, the declaratory confession of the one applying for baptism found its place at the conclusion of the catechetical instruction and, most likely, since the fourth century, in the baptismal service itself. In contrast to the older research, which had regarded the numerous confessions that had been handed down, especially in the East, as baptismal confessions for local churches, scholars today now recognize the theological-literary character of many of these confessions. They have to do in part with confessional formulations by bishops, who used them to present

7 Cf. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 348–357.

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their faith to other bishops and to congregations, or to synods, the recognition of which formulations meant the confirmation of church unity. These historical facts, however, do not call into question the fact that all the structures of faith-statement are contained in confession. After all, the numerous confessions that have been handed down from the ancient church, despite the differences in their catechetical, liturgical, and apologetic use, are all marked by the triadic or trinitarian “name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” and thus are oriented toward the act of salvation that is decisive for the entire future of humanity and is determinative for all speaking and acting—that act of salvation which God carries out through baptism.

(b) Changes in the Structure of Consensus. Since the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church is present in every local church, and since confession is one of the most basic responses of the church to God’s act of salvation, consensus with other churches belongs essentially to the confession of every church. This consensus can be expressed in various structures. The local congregations in early Christianity did not yet have firmly fixed formulas of confession. Even when all the members of the congregation confessed Jesus, this could take place with differing names and honorific titles and with varying reference to the events in Jesus’ history. It was thus possible that individuals would confess their faith in Jesus spontaneously with their own words in the midst of the congregation, and that such a confession would be recognized by the congregation as its confession with its “Amen” (cf. 1 Cor. 14.16). It was also possible, however, that individuals repeated a statement of confession that they had heard in the congregation and that was perhaps already gaining a fixed place in the life of the congregation. It is of great and fundamental significance that the consensus of believers was established not only through agreement in and with the same words but also by recognizing the same truth in varying formulations. During the first centuries, mutual recognition was the basic form of consensus. Without it, one could not speak of the unity of the faith and of the church. The mutual recognition of the same confession in differing confessional formulations was the elementary form of consensus not only within the same congregation but also between local churches and, beyond them, between territorial churches. They still remained so after confessions had assumed a more fixed form in a number of churches, as was the case in the middle of the second century in the Roman Church. Only around the end of the third century did confessional formulas become established in all churches, which did not agree with one another in their entire wording but indeed in their basic outlines and in numerous individual statements. Admittedly, such formulas did not achieve the same status in all areas of the church. Even if they were employed in catechetical instruction, and thus in connection with baptism, this practice did not mean that in every place and in the same manner they

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had become a normative authority for coming to a decision regarding contested questions of church teaching. One of the first to do this was Tertullian. The first confession that came into effect for the entire church is from the ecumenical council in Nicaea in 325, which was decided in a consensus between the bishops and the Christian emperor. This consensus consisted not only in mutual recognition of various regional confessional formulas but in one and the same wording. Admittedly, this did not mean that after the council this confession replaced the previously existing formulas of confession in all the churches. After 325, it had to do less with the adoption of the Nicene Creed than it did with the affirmation of the Nicene faith. This affirmation took place, e. g., in that, in the respective churches, the traditional confessions were supplemented with statements that expressed that which was specific to the Nicene Creed.8 The council of Nicaea thus did not do away with the traditional structure of consensus, i. e., the mutual recognition of the same truth in varying confessional formulations. On the contrary, consensus in the structure of one and the same formula only slowly established itself. This is the only way in which to understand that the Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, which was confirmed in 451, was called the Nicene Creed, even though it was not a revision of the Nicene Creed of 325 but had a different textual basis. The first and only confession that has established itself through the centuries in the same wording, and that is used in the entire church of the East and the West, including in the Sunday worship services, is the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. The complete identity of the wording, of course, was lost when the Western Church added the filioque [“and the Son”], which was rejected by the East.9 (c) Such shifts in the structure of consensus also resulted in changes to the structure of the validity of the confession, for with the establishment of the same confessional formula for all churches, the element of the existential witness of faith by individuals in their concrete historical situation receded behind the fundamental sameness of the situation of all people before God, and in the act of confessing there was a certain shift away from the personal surrender to God himself and toward the affirmation of a formula that was binding upon all. This shift affected the basic structure of doxology the least, for in doxology the ones confessing look away from themselves and praise God’s eternal glory. Such a shift, however, has considerable effects if the determinations of the relationship between divine and human action,

8 Cf. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 254–262. 9 [For a side-by-side comparison of the Greek and Latin versions of the Constantinopolitan Creed, see Denzinger, 150. Cf. BSELK, 49–50 (BC, 22–23). The Latin word filioque (“and the Son”) was added by the Western Catholic Church (at the Third Council of Toledo in 589) to this ancient creed to express the double procession of the Spirit “from the Father and the Son.” For Schlink’s treatment of this ecumenical issue, see chap. 26 below. –Ed.]

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as well as that between “things” and signs in the doctrine of the sacraments, are to be dogmatized. The various ways in which a confession can become obligatory for a Church are reflected in the structural changes of the statement, the consensus, and the validity. In the early period of the church, e. g., the origin of a confession could arise from a personal confession of a member of the congregation, from a prophetic witness, from an acclamation in the worship service, or from a catechetical teaching, any of which could then be adopted by the congregation, maintained, and then either entirely or partly adopted by other congregations. It also could be formulated by an individual bishop and sent to other bishops as a presentation of his faith and that of the congregation, where it could be affirmed and adopted more or less in its formulation. It could be submitted by a theological teacher or a bishop to a synod, where it could be made more precise and adopted in a resolution. Through the resolution of the synod, it would indeed receive a prominent authority for the local and regional churches, but it would also have to be received by the members of the churches. If it was proclaimed as binding only by a single individual overseer of pastors, its reception by the other leaders of local and territorial churches was all the more important. The way in which consensus was achieved can be organized variously in terms of church law. But even when agreement with the apostolic witness is most important for the validity of a confession, it becomes a binding dogma for the church only when the churches and their leaders collectively acknowledge and repeat it as a scriptural response to the disputed issue. In the ancient church the concept of dogma was still ambiguous. It could characterize words of God, of Christ, and of the apostles, as well as the teaching of the church, but also imperial decrees, philosophical opinions, and heretical teachings. The range of its meaning was so wide that Basil of Caesarea rejected the inclusion of the homoousion of the Holy Spirit in the confession (which he affirmed) with the explanation that this statement of faith has to do with dogma, and that dogma, in contrast to kerygma [proclamation] is not to be expressed publicly but be honored as a mystery.10 It is only since the eighteenth century that the understanding of dogma in the sense of a truth revealed by God and defined and proclaimed as binding by the church has established itself as a fixed theological term. That does not prevent one from describing early Christian confessions as already the beginning of Christian dogma, as is generally customary today. Much earlier than dogma, the term symbol became a widespread designation for a confession. It is probable that this term was first used to designate the baptismal questions and responses and later

10 Cf. Hermann Dörries, “Basilius und das Dogma vom Heiligen Geist” [Basil and the Dogma of the Holy Spirit], in Wort und Stunde [Word and Hour], 3 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966–1970), 1.118–144.

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the declarative baptismal confessions. From here symbols came to be understood also as signs of the covenant that God establishes with people in baptism, and thus as signs of belonging to the church. Obviously, dogmas have been settled by the church in a manner that differs from how the canon of the New Testament was settled, for with respect to the canon the church simply gathered writings that already existed, but it formulated the confession in its own words. It is true that the earliest confessions are already contained in the New Testament Scriptures. But for the church’s confession, it is essential that it does not restrict itself merely to reciting biblical confessions, but rather that it continues in its confessing, and that in the changed, historical confrontations it uses not only biblical terms but also concepts of its own time. As, e. g., the post-Nicene conflicts show, the formula, “according to Scripture,” was misused as a flight from the decision that was required at the time. Here the church had to give a response in its own words. While the canon of Scripture is closed, the history of confession proceeds further. 2. The Basis for the Authority of Dogma A confession has a binding authority for the church. The latter recognizes this authority by assigning a fixed place for the confession in the worship service and in the act of baptism, by communicating it in catechetical instruction, by justifying and explaining it in theological instruction, by making it obligatory in ordination, and by testing the church’s speaking and acting against the confession. By listening to the authority of dogma, the church expects clarity and instruction for its confessing today. (a) How is the authority of the confession grounded? Has the church granted it authority through its formulations and proclamation? No. Here, too, it does not have to do with the creation of an authority, but instead, in a manner that differs from the collection of the biblical writings, with the church’s reception of an authority that is given already by God. (1) The confession is grounded in the unique and decisive salvific act of God in Jesus Christ. Let us begin here with the saying of Jesus that is handed down multiple times in the Gospels: “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; but whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God” (Lk. 12.8–9). In confession the transfer of the ownership of oneself to Jesus takes place, the same Jesus who once appeared as the Son of Man, who will end the history of the world, and who will carry out the divine judgment. In the confession or denial of Jesus, the decision concerning eschatological acceptance or rejection is determined. In this respect, confession bears a validity that encompasses the future of those who confess and that determines their entire life. If the authority of the confession has its basis in

Confession

the earthly appearing of Jesus and in the announcement of his coming in glory, it thus has its basis at the same time in the message of the eyewitnesses to whom Jesus appeared as the risen one. For through the resurrection, God confirmed the truth of Jesus’ words and made him manifest as the one to whom power has been given to save those who confess him. The authority of the dogmas is also grounded in God’s act of salvation, which the simple, earliest Christian confessions unfolded in the adoration of the triune God and in the proclamation of his present saving action through word and sacrament. If we acknowledge Holy Scripture as the collection of the traditions of Jesus’ speaking and acting and of his fate, and if we acknowledge Holy Scripture as the collection of the earliest witnesses to the apostolic message of Christ, then that means that the authority of dogmas is grounded in Holy Scripture. In that these dogmas confess the one who is the center of Scripture, they are the binding norm for all proclamation and teaching, and for all prayer and worship. (2) In confession the self-surrender of believers to their Lord takes place. This selfsurrender takes place through the believing human being, and yet no one can boast in one’s act of surrender. After all, it is the work of the Holy Spirit, who awakened faith in them and granted them the courage for confessing. Self-surrender takes place indeed as a decision of human beings that no one else can take away from them. But it is still the case that in confessing, no human is alone. If the confession is the work of the Holy Spirit, then it is not the self-surrender of an individual. Rather, that person is surrounded and carried by the community of believers, whom the Holy Spirit has gathered and has awakened to confession. No one who confesses remains isolated, even if that person is spatially separated from other believers. Instead, individual Christians confess together with other believers, and they agree with the confession of the church—whether their witness is confirmed by the “Amen” of the church, or whether a visible and audible community of the individual with others is prevented. The consensus of the confession is comfort, help, and strengthening for every individual believer. That does not mean that the authority of the confession should have its basis in the agreement of human beings. The basis is solely Jesus Christ. It is indeed the case, however, that the consensus—in connection with the basis that is already given in Jesus Christ—has the significance of providing a validation, for in the community of believers the view of the individual is broadened, and any subjective one-sidedness of one’s confessing is corrected. The significance of the consensus, in relation to the question of the basis of the authority of dogma, admittedly would be misunderstood if one made this authority dependent on the majority within the church. Just remembering the numerous bishops and synods between the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Council of Constantinople in 381 makes clear that church majorities too can err. But the church may well trust that the Holy Spirit again and again will expose the errors that have arisen and will free believers from them, for the church has been given the promise: the Holy Spirit “will guide you into all the truth” (Jn. 16.13).

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(b) Because the confession has to do with the decision that the coming Christ will make concerning us, it encompasses the future of the church and of each individual. The church, with all its members, must prove itself in faithfulness to the confession. This must take place in a twofold way: (1) In the midst of the trials and tribulations, threats, and false doctrines of our time, we must hold fast the confession that our ancestors have made and with which we have agreed in our act of confession. In acknowledging it, we must test the present condition of proclamation, liturgy, and doctrine, and must expose and correct distortion. The confession here demonstrates itself to be an enhancement and a sign by which believers recognize one another (symbolum). Since, by its very nature, the confession has been given in words, confessional faithfulness cannot be reduced to a “spirit” or “sense” of the confession that lies hidden behind the words. A dissociation from the wording of the confession has led often enough to the dissolution of the confession as a whole. One must very well distinguish, however, between a greater or lesser proximity of the individual statements of the confession to the christological and trinitarian center of church dogma. (2) The confession of the church brings an obligation, not only through its content but also through the historical act in which the content has been formulated in words and proclaimed before the public. This means that the confession that has come down to us is an obligatory pattern of doctrine for the church. Just as our ancestors have made their confession, so we too, in our changed situation, must confess anew. Confessional fidelity demonstrates itself not only in the mere recitation of the dogma that has been received but also in that, in agreement with this confession, we go forward with new confessing. Indeed, there are times of religious and intellectual upheavals, in which a bare repetition of the dogmatic formulas that have been received would be in fact a denial of the confession that we owe to God and to human beings hic et nunc [here and now]. The dogmatic commitment of the church demonstrates itself in such situations in that it supplements dogma with further statements, which means that in some circumstances a correction of time-dependent and narrow ideas that we have inherited is unavoidable. In contrast to the biblical canon, which, as the collection of the earliest documents, is limited by its very nature, there is no temporal limit for confessional development. Admittedly, fidelity to the confession always means that the church remains dependent upon the living work of the Holy Spirit in its confessing and thus remains dependent upon the Spirit’s answering its unceasing petition for his gifts. 3. Basic Principles of Dogmatic Hermeneutics The issues in dogmatic hermeneutics have generally received less reflection than those of biblical hermeneutics. There is a dogmatic positivism that does not see the differences that exist between the original meaning of a dogmatic statement and its

Confession

meaning in a changed, later situation. Now one may object that the false doctrines of all times are ultimately identical, i. e., they all are merely differing forms of the constant attack of the world upon the kingdom of Christ. But this identity is not immediately evident. It must first be exposed. One can also point out that ultimately all dogmatic statements have to do again and again with the same confession of Christ. But this identity, too, as it is present within the varying, concrete attacks to which the Christian message is exposed, must always be confessed afresh in words. We must not overlook the fact that, for the most part, dogmas have arisen in very different ecclesial, cultural, and political situations. This difference can be so great that the wording of the dogma has become incomprehensible in the intervening period. How do we arrive at a knowledge of that which we today have to confess in agreement with our ancestors who have confessed before us and in agreement with the brothers and sisters who stand together with us at the same time in the struggle for the faith? This is the hermeneutical problem of the interpretation of dogma. Answering this question is not any easier than answering that of biblical hermeneutics. For while the writings of the Old Testament arose within a relatively small Near Eastern region, and those of the New Testament within the Mediterranean region, dogmas have their origin in quite different cultural situations, including in Africa and the Far East, where the independent development of confessions is just now beginning. While the New Testament writings arose within roughly one hundred years, the development of dogmas has taken place through a period of two thousand years. Dogmatic hermeneutics is also more difficult than biblical hermeneutics because the former presuppose the latter and cannot engage in discussion without constant reference to them, for the origin of dogma is the early Christian confession. Here, too, we must first ask what the church originally expressed with its confessions, and then, consequently, what its claim to validity means today. Here, too, a distinction is to be made between investigation and interpretation. (a) The Investigation of Dogma In the interpretation of dogmas there exists between the churches such great differences that here too the use of the most sophisticated methods of philologicalhistorical research is required. Within the framework of these basic features of an ecumenical dogmatics, it is not possible to develop a comprehensive methodology of the investigation of dogma. Instead, here too we will restrict ourselves to raising a few questions that remain important, even if the available historical sources do not allow an exact answer in every instance. Since both individual dogmatic decisions and the totality of these decisions may be characterized as dogma, it may be pointed out that the following inquiries are initially formulated with regard to individual

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dogmas. It is only from this starting point that a reliable knowledge of the totality of dogmatic authority to which the church knows itself committed can be obtained. (1) Philological-historical Investigation of Dogma Without attempting to provide a comprehensive listing of the questions to be raised, in the following we intend to point to the diversity of perspectives which must guide philological-historical investigation in a methodically precise manner: (1.1) The originally valid text of the dogma is to be established with consideration of all text-traditions. (1.2) Through the investigation of words and their fields of meaning, clauses and their connections to one another, and the stage of development of the language that is employed in the formulation of the dogma, one must strive to establish in a preliminary way the content of the text. A special significance thus comes to the structure of the dogmatic statements in connection with the question of the genre and form of the text, since conclusions on these matters may allow the possible use of the dogma in liturgy, proclamation, teaching, or other faith-statements of the church. (1.3) Which dogmatic decisions are presupposed by the text to be investigated, whether the text expressly refers to them, or whether it agrees de facto with its content? In which theological and church-historical situation did this dogma arise? Which discussions of the problem decided in the dogma have preceded it in the history of theology? (1.4) In which philosophical, cultural, and political situation did the dogma arise in history? (1.5) Against which false doctrines was the dogma originally directed (either because they harassed the church from the outside or arose from within the church)? (1.6) Which were the preliminary stages and sketches of the dogma? From whom, when, and where was it formulated? (1.7) In which way were the offices of leadership and of instruction, as well as the other members of the church, involved in enforcing the dogma? What significance did the reception of the dogma by the local churches have for its validation? How wide was the area in which the dogma had reached validity? What was its original Sitz im Leben [life-setting] in the church? (1.8) To what extent was the dogma to be investigated in agreement with dogmatic decisions that were reached with respect to the same problem in the same period in other areas of the church? (1.9) How did the history of the interpretation of the dogma unfold, its material broadening or narrowing, the change it underwent in its Sitz im Leben in the church, and the area in which it was held to be valid? (1.10) What are the points of agreement and the differences between the dogmatic decisions that have been reached in churches today with respect to the same problem?

Confession

(1.11) What weight does the dogma to be investigated have in relationship to all the confessional statements that are held to be valid? What is its proximity to christological and trinitarian dogma?

(2) The Investigation of Dogma as the Response to the Apostolic Message of Christ All churches base their confessions on apostolic proclamation and teaching. Despite this fundamental agreement about that basis, the specific bases considerably deviate from one another in some cases. For this reason, the investigation of dogma can never be limited to the dogmatic text itself but has to pursue the question: In what sense is the dogma based on the apostolic message and teaching? In other words, it must pursue the question about the extent to which the dogma corresponds to Holy Scripture. In all churches, providing scriptural proof is the first step in establishing the basis for a dogma. Even where an oral apostolic tradition is presupposed alongside it, freedom from contradiction between dogma and Holy Scripture is required in every instance. The inquiry about the agreement of a dogma with Holy Scripture is, for this reason, of such great ecumenical importance, that here too the most subtle methods of philological-historical research are to be used. We will restrict ourselves to pointing out a few of the basic elements of inquiry that are especially important for the investigation of the apostolic foundation of dogma: (2.1) Which biblical terms have been taken up into the dogma that is to be investigated? (2.2) Which terms have assumed the status of summarizing, overarching dogmatic concepts, to which other biblical terms related to the same theme are subordinated? (2.3) Which biblical statements are expressly cited? (2.4) Which biblical terms and statements that are important to the topic have been omitted from the dogma? (2.5) Which biblical groupings of texts have been given preference (e. g., Pauline or Johannine)? (2.6) Which perspective on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments is recognizable in the dogma? (2.7) Not only are the contents of the dogmatic and New Testament statements that correspond to one other to be compared but so too are the functions of the statements and their structure. (2.8) Which extra-biblical, especially philosophical, terms and statements have been taken up into the dogma? To what extent do they serve the apostolic message that is to be confessed? To what extent have they been changed by the biblical witnesses? (2.9) To what extent are dogmatic statements derived from biblical, dogmatic, and philosophical statements through the use of syllogisms? (2.10) How close to the christological center of the apostolic message and to the early Christian creeds is the dogma under investigation?

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These issues, too, must still be investigated in a much more sophisticated manner. It is by no means easy to arrive at clear results in every instance. For when considering the task and the historical nature of the dogma, the observation, e. g., that dogmatic statements are incomplete in comparison with the statements of the Holy Scriptures, cannot be readily asserted as an objection to the truth of the dogma.

(3) The Clarifying of Subjective Presuppositions for the Investigation of Dogma That which has been said in the discussion of biblical hermeneutics concerning the clarifying of subjective presuppositions applies here as well. In the investigation of dogma, too, the principles that are contained within the historical method, the forms of thought that belong to the constitution of the researcher, and the latter’s philosophical and theological convictions—all play an important role. These presuppositions must also be brought to awareness in the investigation of the history of dogma and brought to bear on the comparison between Scripture and confession. Dogmatic and philosophical pre-understanding is of considerable importance in this regard. (b) The Interpretation of Dogma (1) The Understanding of Dogma Just as Holy Scripture is only understood in its proper sense when its witness to God’s once-spoken word is understood as God’s word that goes forth to us today, and when its testimonies to God’s once-completed acts of salvation are understood as the means of his salvific action on us today, so dogma is only understood in its proper sense when it is understood as the church’s authoritatively true response today to God’s address and act that has happened and is happening. In dogmatic hermeneutics, too, one may speak of a grammatical, a psychological, a sociological, and an historical understanding. As in the investigation of the Bible, so also in the investigation of dogmas, through such efforts at understanding them, correct and indispensable knowledge has been achieved, and it is to be expected in the future. But absolutely crucial for understanding dogma is understanding the “subject matter” [“Sache”] that it is about. This understanding is not a new type that is added to the other types of understanding that have already been named, but it is only from the subject matter that the text, the origin, and the validity of the dogma in the life of the church can be understood. Only from the subject matter in the text does it become clear to what extent the controversies that took place in the formation of the dogma were about a conflict between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world, and thus about a conflict between the confession of Jesus Christ and the denial of him. Only from the subject matter can one recognize that dogma confesses the truth.

Confession

The “subject matter” that dogmas are concerned about is God’s salvific action in Jesus Christ. They are thus about nothing other than the subject matter of Holy Scripture. Confession is the common response of believers to God’s act of salvation. For this reason, in confession no other belief is added to the faith in the God to whom the apostolic message bears witness and who is at work in it. Instead, this very faith is confessed by the church with its words through the changes of history, and is unfolded and developed in adoration, prayer, witness, and doctrinal teaching. We thus do not believe in the dogma, but rather we believe with the church in the Lord whom the dogma confesses. How do we arrive at the certainty that the church confesses in its dogmas the same salvific act of God that the apostolic message has proclaimed? Just as little as we can make audible the address of God that goes forth to us today by means of philologicalhistorical investigation of Holy Scripture, so little are we able to demonstrate the binding validity of dogma today by means of a philological-historical comparison of the statements of dogma. Through such a comparison we can indeed discover agreements, instances of one-sidedness, and also exegetical errors within the history of dogma, but we cannot establish the binding truth of dogma. After all, dogmas are not interpretations of individual statements of Scripture that can be merely tested; in dogma there is always a concentration of the fullness of the biblical statements stated in just a few words. In one such concentration, the church, e. g., selected only a few christological titles out of a multiplicity of them and used them as summative, overarching concepts in the confessions. Something corresponding to this took place in the history of confession with respect to the multiplicity of the New Testament statements concerning the salvific significance of the death of Jesus. Such dogmatic concentrations would be misunderstood if they were to be regarded as one-sided emphases and abridgments. Rather, they are to be developed with respect to the biblical fullness in which they have their roots. But it is precisely the one-sided emphases and even the abridgments that we observe in dogmas, compared with the biblical witnesses, that could have been necessary vis-à-vis certain historical fronts in order to further the material clarity of the confession with one-sided intensity. There are even contradictory dogmatic statements—e. g., regarding the issue of the freedom of the will and its enslavement by sin—which were necessary as dogmatic rejections of opposing dangers to the faith. Moreover, it belongs to the essence of confession that the church confesses with its words, and, in addressing and debating new doctrinal errors, it also uses words that are not of biblical origin but that serve to clarify dogmatic statements. The examples that have already been presented make clear that an element of freedom belongs to confessing, a freedom that is grounded in faith in Christ. In this freedom, the church must with its own words confess the Christ whom the apostles proclaimed. Thus, the certainty of this identity of the truth proclaimed by the apostles and confessed by the church does not arise from philological-historical comparison.

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Rather, such certainty arises when we by faith let ourselves be taken up into the historical dynamic of the reign of Christ, which, through the message of the church, presses ever further into the world, refutes errors, and liberates the erring. Taken up into this historical movement of faith and witness, we must ask which opponents were actually involved in the great conflicts of the church, and to what extent over against them the church in its dogmatic decisions retained the content of the apostolic witness and confessed it afresh. Taken up into the historical movement of the confessing church, we will also recognize, through the act of confessing, to what extent the dogma that has been handed down is a model, a signpost, and a source of strength for this confessing, to which we today in the struggle of our time are obligated to offer. This knowledge is the gift of the Holy Spirit. (2) Understanding and Interpreting Dogma The understanding of dogma cannot remain silent, for it is about the truth of the confession of the church today, and thus about the confession of all members of the church. The task of this interpretation would be misunderstood if its fulfillment were sought solely in the interpretation of doctrines. Since all structures of faithstatement are concentrated in confession, the dogma of the church ultimately finds its interpretation in all the words of believers. Here, too, accordingly, as with the interpretation of Holy Scripture, it is required of us to step into the place of other human beings to whom we confess Christ and to take upon ourselves the alienation that is present between them and dogma. In times of profound upheaval, the distance between dogma—the situation in which it arose, the errors that it rejected, and the language in which it was formulated—and the dangers that threaten the church today can be so great that it becomes difficult to make dogma understandable as an aid in the present situation of church and world. It may then become the duty of the church to confess in new dogmas what must be confessed in fidelity to the apostolic confession. The evaluation and the recommendations of individual members of the church precede this fresh confession. Nevertheless, no individual and no group can supplement the dogma of the church with a new dogma. Only the church as a whole may do so. (c) The Relationship between the Methods of Research and the Event of Interpretation This relationship is basically the same in dogmatic hermeneutics as it is in biblical hermeneutics. The investigation of dogma is a human activity. Knowing and bearing witness to its truth is God’s grace. The requisite preunderstanding for the interpretation of dogma is faith in the apostolic witness to Christ.

Church Order

C. Church Order 1. Church Law as the Regulation of the Church The law in Israel was entirely sacred law, grounded in the revelation of Yahweh at Sinai. It determined not only cultic activity but all activity, including the political order. Even laws that had been taken over from Canaanite law after the conquest of the land, as well as those that had been taken over from Near Eastern royal law during the establishment of the monarchy, were subordinated to the worship of Yahweh and counted as his legal ordering. Whether the laws were formulated in the form of apodictic law (thus as divine commandments) or in the form of conditional law (thus with the announcement of the punishment mandated by God for the transgression), they increasingly encompassed the entire life of the people, and fully so in the casuistic interpretation by the scribes in the Halakah. In contrast, one finds no encompassing regulation of the congregation in the New Testament Scriptures, not even a regulation for admission to baptism and its administration. We find at most just scattered individual directives, which were spoken with respect to concrete occasions in the life of the community—e. g., in First Corinthians the prohibition against bringing a dispute before pagan courts (1 Cor. 6.1–11), the directives in relation to the question of marriage and divorce (1 Cor. 7.1–40), the obligation of the congregation to support those who proclaim the gospel (1 Cor. 9.4–14), the prohibition against participation in the meals associated with pagan sacrifices (1 Cor. 10.14–22), directives for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11.20–26) and for harmony with the charismatic witnesses in the worship assembly (1 Cor. 14.1–40). Even the decree of the so-called Apostolic Council contains no comprehensive regulation of the common life of Jewish and Gentile Christians. It restricts itself to the prohibitions against the consumption of meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meat that had not been drained of blood (which might have been added after the decision of the council), and from unchastity (Acts 15.20, 29). In a few places in the New Testament Scriptures there are directives that call for breaking off association with unworthy members of the community (e. g., 2 Thess. 3.6; 2 Jn. 10) and—admittedly rarely—even reports of deadly penalties for specific outrageous actions (1 Cor. 5.1–5; Acts 5.1–11). But it is not possible to reconstruct a comprehensive regulation of the church out of such scattered statements. This difference from Old Testament law is not to be explained simply with the observation that it was the result of a centuries-long development of legislation, while the regulation of the early Christian community was only in its beginning stage. A fundamental difference is evident here. Israel lived under God’s promise and God’s law. The church, however, lives from the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise that took place through the coming of Jesus Christ and

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the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Another fundamental difference from the Old Testament law consists in the fact that Israel had been promised an earthly land and an earthly kingdom, while the church is the force of the coming kingdom of God and has no abiding place in this world. When, with the death of the apostles, their speaking was silenced—a voice that had intervened to provide order in the concrete situations of the congregations—their directives were preserved and collected. But they also had to be supplemented. The unity of the church had to be protected over against the threatening dangers of controversy, the desire for power, disorder, and division that already had arisen in the apostolic period, and which continued in altered forms. The church was threatened not only by false doctrine but also by disorder. The need for a further development of church order was felt more urgently than had been the case in the apostolic period. Because of the various approaches to church order in early Christian congregations, and because of the many options that the basic structures of the church leave open for the form of church law—and naturally also because of the quite diverse historical threats to church order—the history of church law, even after the office of bishop had established itself nearly everywhere, proceeded differently in the various regions of the church. One only has to think, e. g., of the differing development of the Eastern and Western regulation of the metropolitan synods and of the patriarchates, or of the succession of papalism and conciliarism in the late Middle Ages. We cannot enter here into the history of church law. We have to restrict ourselves to highlighting the most important topics, with which every ordering of the church must occupy itself—topics that more or less clearly played a role already in early Christian congregations. If the center of the life of the church is the worship assembly, it makes sense to take it as the starting point for the systematic development of the issues of church law. In fact, it plays a central role in the directives of Paul, in the ancient-church regulations of the Didache (ca. 160), and in the Apostolic Constitutions (ca. 400), which summarized many ancient-church regulations. This also applies, e. g., to the Decretum Gratiani (ca. 1140), the third part of which treats the regulation of worship and the sacraments.[xv] Church law in the modern period is often treated one-sidedly as the constitutional law of the church. But in the last decades, it has been understood—both in the churches of the Reformation (e. g., by Karl Barth, Erik Wolf, and Hans Dombois) and in the Roman Catholic Church (especially by the Second Vatican Council)—from the perspective of the center of the church’s life in the worship service and the sacraments.[xvi] From this perspective, the following topics arise that are important for the life of the church: (1) The regulation of reception into the church through baptism. (2) The regulation of the worship assembly, especially the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The organization of the worship service and the times of church festivals.

Church Order

(3) The leadership of the worship assembly in its relationship to the servant ministry of other members of the congregation. At the same time, the question is raised about the calling into the church’s ministerial office in distinction from recognizing freely emerging charismatic ministries. (4) The service of love toward the poor and the sick, as well as the support of the congregation for those who serve them. (5) The regulation of the common life of Christians in marriage and in the family, and also of the relationships in the workplace. (6) The regulation of exclusion from the Lord’s Supper and of the procedure for the repentance of the lapsed and other coarse sinners so that they may be readmitted to the Lord’s Supper. (7) The regulation of the association of local churches in the same territorial area, including the ordering of their offices, as well as the relationships between offices and synod. (8) The ordering of the association of the territorial churches and the leadership of the universal church through synods, and the superordinating and subordinating of offices. (9) The relationship between church and state. In the New Testament Scriptures there are indeed instructions concerning the relation of Christians to a pagan and to an anti-Christian state, but cases in which Christians would be serving in secular offices of state power, and cases in which the church would have a say in the formulation and exercise of state law, are just as unforeseen in the New Testament as are cases in which the state would decree laws for the regulation of the church. Even if we cannot here pursue the checkered history of church-law decisions in these matters, we may point to three important structural changes that are no less significant for ecumenical dialogue than are the shifts in the structure of dogmatic statements. (a) The instructions concerning the questions of church order that are scattered in the New Testament Scriptures are, in view of their statement-structure, largely not to be differentiated from New Testament paraklesis. The directives were not encountered as legal injunctions but as exhortation grounded in God’s renewing grace. Because Christians are one body through baptism and the Lord’s Supper, they are coordinated to one another as members and, as such, should serve one another. Above all, members of the congregation are again and again reminded of their origin in Christ and in the Holy Spirit. Church order follows from this community that has already been given. To be sure, Paul speaks occasionally in the structure of an apodictic command, especially when he is reminding people of a saying of the Lord (e. g., 1 Cor. 7.10). Warnings and threats of judgment are also found in his writings. Occasionally, the New Testament hands down casuistic

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instructions for dealing with open sinners up to and including their exclusion from the congregation (e. g., Mt. 18.15–18). But these are exceptions. For Paul, the concept that is actually the opposite of “disorder” is not “order” but “peace.” Order is to serve the peace of God and the community of the Holy Spirit. Church order has to do with protecting the space in which and out of which the dynamic action of the Holy Spirit has its influence. The church regulations of the first centuries, from which the Didache has been handed down as the earliest, have a different statement-structure. They have to do above all, not with individual exhortations that are occasioned by particular deficits in a community but with generally formulated directives for morals and life, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, prayer and fasting, the selections of persons for office, the reception and rejection of prophets, etc. They have to do, then, with complexes of regulations for all areas of the life of the church. The structure of their statements is less that of paraklesis, in the Pauline sense, than that of commandment and description. Conformation to the structure and content of Old Testament law soon began (cf. 1 Clement), which then later had an effect in the establishment of the hierarchy of the church and the interpretation of the Christian worship service as a cult of sacrifice. Church regulations then received important, further definitions through the individual decisions of episcopal and synodical legal pronouncements (canons), to which were attached an authority that transcended an individual case, even if they were occasioned by particular cases. In the West, the legal decisions of the bishop of Rome attained special importance (decretals). Transmitted as definitive precedents, they played an important role in later pronouncements of church law. Since canons and decretals had arisen out of very different occasions and in very different circumstances, various inconsistencies and contradictions existed between them. A similar problem arose for church law as it did for scholastic dogma through the differences between the statements of the church fathers. It therefore became necessary to collect the canons and the decretals, to sift them, to bring them into agreement with one another, and to order them. This task also became obvious because Roman law had had an effect on some church-law provisions soon after the establishment of the imperial church and the consolidation of state laws was already well advanced. Gratian clearly recognized the task presented by the “Concordiantia discordantium canonum” [the concordance of discordant canons] and around the year 1140 systematically ordered the existing canons and papal decretals. Within Gratian’s book, these canons and decretals retained their independent validity as church regulations since the systematization that was employed from him onward had only the character of organized headings. By contrast, in the Corpus iuris canonici [body of canon law]—which was first developed by papal instruction in 1150 and whose latest version was authorized in 1983—the canons lost their individual significance and became in reality paragraphs

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in an encompassing system of church law. Roman Catholic church law presents itself above all in the Codex iuris canonici as “a single, unified, continuously executed order for church life that encompasses all essential questions.”11 “The Codex distinguishes itself from a secular book of law not by its structure but solely by its subject-matter.”12 (b) As in the history of the confession of faith, in the history of church order important shifts have taken place in the structure of consensus. In the earliest period, churches lived in unity without common orders of worship and orderings of ministerial office. There was, e. g., no common designation for the office that was conferred by the laying-on of hands in distinction to the freely emerging charismata in the congregation. This unity of the churches had its center in the confession of Christ, for in the execution of the variously ordered worship services and offices, the local churches recognized one another on the basis of the divine salvific action in Jesus Christ that took place within them and through them. In this case, the unity of the confession did not originally consist in the unity of the formulation but in the same Lord who was confessed with differing words. The structure of the recognition in difference was a basic structure of church unity, not only in the question of the confession but also in that of church order. In the course of history, the consensus concerning ministerial offices, at the local level and at the regional and ultimately the universal level, came more and more into the foreground. One may compare, e. g., the composition of the so-called Apostolic Council (Acts 15.22) with that of later synods, where only the bishops were recognized as having a voting right. Or one may compare the ancient church’s practice of electing a bishop by the congregation and the later practice of ordaining bishops through hierarchically structured church and even state offices without the cooperation of the congregation. These structural shifts include a change in the way in which regulations of church law are formulated and enforced. (c) With this structural change regarding consensus, a change in the understanding of the ranking of the topics in church law presented itself, especially in the relationship between the divine salvific action that takes place in the worship assembly and the functions of the ministerial offices. If originally the message of Christ, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper stood in the first place, and all offices and charismata were thus aligned toward servant ministry, in the course of a few centuries the question of the ordering of offices received such a high rank that—despite agreement in the message of Christ and mutual recognition of what takes place in the worship service—church divisions arose concerning questions about a hierachical ordering in the ministerial offices. On the basis of apostolic presuppositions, 11 Hans Barion, “Römisch-katholisches Kirchenrecht” [Roman Catholic Canon Law], Evangelisches Staatslexikon, 2d ed., ed. Roman Herzog et al. (Stuttgart: Kreuz, 1975), 1230. 12 Hans Dombois, Das Recht der Gnade: Ökumenisches Kirchenrecht [The Law of Grace: Ecumenical Church Law] (Witten: Luther, 1961), 19.

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however, differences in the ordering of offices do not have the same church-dividing importance as deviations from the confession of Christ. Exceedingly consequential shifts in the consensus resulted from the changed relationship between church and state. From the very beginning it was self-evident that the church, in obedience to God’s commission, was responsible for its own system of order. Nevertheless, through the fact that in the imperial church the responsibilities and boundaries of the empire and the church were largely brought into congruence, and that church regulations were taken up in part into the law of the state, difficulties arose for church order, which became entirely fateful when the emperor or other authorities of the state intervened with their own regulations in the dogma of the church, the order of the worship service, and the church’s ministerial offices. But church order did not become church law by being recognized by the state, nor was the state’s refusal to agree with a church regulation able to remove its binding authority for the members of the church. Under various Christian emperors, there also was an oppressed church and a dissent from within the church that was called forth by a consensus imposed by the state. According to Adolf von Harnack, the concept of ius ecclesiasticum [church law] is first to be found with Ambrosiaster, in which the influences of Roman law were at work.[xvii] From the second half of the fourth century, it began to spread as the “essence of legal commands secured by threat of punishment.”13 But church law did not begin with the emergence of this concept. Just as the history of the confession is characterized as the history of dogma, even if the concept of church dogma established itself only later, so also the early history of church order can be characterized as the history of church law. For the divine establishment of the new covenant in Jesus’ death, the assignment of the power of the keys to the disciples and to the church, reception into the church through baptism, and exclusion from the church were all legal acts. These legal acts were, in any case, fundamentally different from the legal acts of the state with respect to both their structure and their content. If one understands the justification of the sinner by faith in Jesus Christ as a divine, legal act that ruptures both the Old Testament law and secular law, then the real subject matter that was given to church law from the very beginning, and which ultimately all of its individual provisions have to serve, has been recognized. The use of the term church law [Kirchenrecht] is justified because the most important legal act of all has been at stake in the occurrence of the worship service from the very beginning, namely, the promise of the divine righteousness that has appeared in the vicariously representative death of Jesus. It is not only in the marginal cases of the judgment and exclusion of sinners from the congregation that church order

13 Ulrich Stutz, as quoted by Hans Erich Feine, Kirchliche Rechtsgeschichte [History of Church Law], 3d ed. (Weimar: Böhlau, 1955), 59ff.

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demonstrates itself to be church law, but also in the forgiveness of the sins of those who had deserved judgment. In any case, church law, according to its origin and its purpose, is clearly to be distinguished from the law of the state. Church law has its origin in the new covenant that has been established by God. The law of the state has its basis in the Noahide covenant.[xviii] Through the law of the state, God preserves sinful humanity in the midst of the dominion of sin and death (cf. above 293ff.). Through the righteousness proclaimed by the gospel, however, God delivers believers in Jesus Christ from the judgment into which they had fallen (see above 652ff.). If secular law is God’s instrument for containing the excesses of enmity between human beings, through the gospel God disrupts the power of enmity and hatred, and grants participation in the peace of the kingdom of heaven. As is well-known, Rudolf Sohm rejected church law because he judged it to be “contrary to the Spirit of God”: “church law stands in contradiction to the essence of the church.”14 Above all, he came to this conclusion by having in view only one kind of law, namely, that of secular law, and this as understood in the one-sided positivism of his time. For this reason, he could not characterize church order as church law. If, however, one understands the forgiveness of sins as a legal act that takes place through the gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, namely, as the acquittal from guilt and the remission of punishment, it then becomes clear that church law is a law of an entirely different kind. Sohm’s criticism has had a considerable impact, however, in relation to the extensive accommodation of church law to state law and its absorption into state law, as this took place with the emergence of the imperial church in the fourth century, and which is still present in a fragmentary way in some European countries. 2. The Authority of Church Law Church regulation encounters the members of the church with a binding claim to adhere to it. No member of the church is excluded from it, not even the leaders of the church. This authority of church law does not consist in the fact that it is formulated and established by human beings. (a) In its church-law regulations, the church is concerned with recognizing the prior authority of the divine commission. As an act of obedience to God’s saving purpose, the regulations of the church have their binding significance for all its members.

14 Sohm, Kirchenrecht, 1.1.

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(1) Foundational for all acts in the church is the commission that Jesus gave to his disciples: the missional proclamation with the authority to forgive and to retain sins, the task of baptizing and of celebrating the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of Christ. Also foundational for the order of the church is Jesus’ commandment to love. It is authoritative both for the common life of believers and for their service in the world. For the first congregations, this commission was specified by the apostles through their own directives, e. g., through exhortations concerning the sharing and celebration of the Lord’s Supper, installations of leaders for congregations, and directives concerning the service of other spiritually gifted persons. The apostles expected obedience not only to the commission given to them by the Lord but also to the directives that they gave in the Lord’s name to the congregations. In this matter, one must not overlook the distinction Paul made between the absolute authority of the words of the Lord and the lesser authority of his own directives (cf., e. g., 1 Cor. 7.10; 9.14). Hans Freiherr von Campenhausen has pointed out that for Paul all other arguments were of subordinate importance in comparison with the message of Christ (including the tradition of the words of the Lord).15 Thus for Paul, the Old Testament is never in itself a sufficient basis for making a decision regarding church order. “At the most, what appears possible to him, in any case, is only a supplementary appeal to the Law, which then may confirm a principle established apart from it.”16 Decency and custom are also not asserted as the ultimate norm. Even the appeal to the validity of a rule in all Christian congregations is not an ultimate decisive argument for its implementation.17 The ancient church continued along those lines when giving such directives. Thus it was pleased to designate its regulations as “apostolic.” And yet, in its history, it did not feel bound to maintain every apostolic directive, nor did it regard them as invariable in every respect. For example, the decision of the “Apostolic Council” handed down in the book of Acts, which had prohibited Gentile Christians from consuming “blood” and eating “the meat of strangled animals” (Acts 15.20, 29 [NIV]), had not been implemented permanently. The Pauline conception of the church as a community of freely emerging charismata (in relation to which Rom. 12.6–8 does not first mention “leader” but “prophecy,” and Eph. 4.11 does not first mention “pastors” but “prophets”—right after “apostles”) did not prevail in the following period. But that was also true of the understanding of the office

15 Hans F. v. Campenhausen, Die Begründung kirchlicher Entscheidungen beim Apostel Paulus: Zur Grundlegung des Kirchenrechts [The Establishment of Church Decisions according to the Apostle Paul: On the Foundation of Church Law], Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften [Reports of the Proceedings of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences] (Heidelberg: Winter, 1957). 16 v. Campenhausen, Die Begründung kirchlicher Entscheidungen, 40. 17 v. Campenhausen, Die Begründung kirchlicher Entscheidungen, 35.

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of the bishop in the Pastoral Letters, where the leaders of a local congregation are called bishops. In the history of church law, a certain freedom of the church becomes apparent, in a way that is similar to how the church exercised freedom in its dogmatic decisions in relation to apostolic teaching. In church law, profound changes to decisions that had been valid up until that point have been repeatedly taken. The task of missionary proclamation and thus of planting congregations was so universal and unbounded that a variety of options for fulfilling this task were available. (2) The work of the Holy Spirit, who gathers believers and builds the church, is promised to the missionary task. The central, christological basis for the regulation of church law is the Christ who rules through the Holy Spirit, who, in fact, is “the Spirit who makes alive” (1 Cor. 15.45). From this perspective, we must understand how much Paul gives attention with his directives to the effects of the Spirit in the congregations, such as, e. g., the distinctiveness of the spiritual gifts given to them and thus also the servant ministries that had come to life among them. Paul exhorts these servant ministries toward their mutual interaction, he warns against “enthusiastic” degenerations, but he especially gives encouragement to strive after the spiritual gifts and to make space for them. One can point to other examples of how Paul, through his directives, entered into the spiritual life of the congregations. Beyond such manifold effects of the Spirit, which do not take place in every congregation in the same way, one can recognize in the New Testament Scriptures ever-recurring directives for the spiritual life of the church, which arise from the dynamic action of the Spirit that takes place through the gospel and the sacraments—directives which have been described in the two preceding chapters as basic structures of the church. These basic structures, like the fundamental commission given by Christ, allow for various specific applications of church law. But church law is not lord over the Spirit. It must instead give consideration to the basic structures of the spiritual life of the church, secure free space for their effects, and guard them from manifestations of one-sidedness and from deterioration. (b) If church order is determined by the commission that Christ gave to the apostles and which he gives to the church at all times, and if church order serves the life of the church in its basic spiritual structures, then church order is of great help for the church community and servant ministry of later generations, for the experiences of the church, in its defense against the most varied of historical threats, have been expressed in it. No Christian should lightly regard these experiences and the consequences for church order that have been drawn from them. (1) All members of the church are obligated to maintain church order and are thus obligated to obey those to whom the office of leadership has been entrusted. The express acknowledgment of this obligation is rightly required of ordinands. With this instruction, however, one must observe that all offices and all members of the church are encompassed within the apostolic exhortation: “Through love

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serve one another,” “outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom. 12.10), “submit to one another” (Eph. 5.21). In whatever way the administration of baptism and the leadership of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper are ordered, each and every member of the church stands in the service of the Lord. If church law serves the living working of the Holy Spirit, that expresses itself in both the ordained and the spontaneous serving of the members of the church, it encounters us not as an over-demanding, alien, and unfulfillable law but as an aid and stimulus to joint mission work. (2) Church order requires not only a commitment to its content but also the readiness to continue ordering the church as the historical situation changes. This means an obligation to constant watchfulness: just as the church regulation arose for protection from those things that endanger church unity—through domineering, controversy, or “enthusiasm”—so the church at all times must give heed to the dangers that threaten it in its present time. It may thus trust that the Holy Spirit will open the church’s eyes and show it what measures must be taken. In another way, watchfulness calls for the intuition to detect what has developed alongside the church’s ministerial offices in the acts of servant ministries of spiritually gifted individuals [Charismatikern] and spiritual movements. They are to be tested. And they are to be given opportunities to be at work within the church, just as Paul did in Corinth. Watchfulness also means allowing one’s eyes to be opened by the Holy Spirit to see the urgent needs in the world that have been overlooked, the remediation of which must be addressed. The element of freedom that belongs to church law therewith requires a possibility secured by church law to supplement the prevailing provisions or to replace them with ones that are more appropriate for the task given by God in the changed, present situation. Despite any and all changes to church law, the commission to proclaim the gospel, to baptize, to gather for the Lord’s Supper, and to transfer the power of the keys, remains a directive for the church that has been given as a revealed, absolutely obligating, and non-negotiable divine law. All churches—both the Eastern and the Western, including both the Roman Catholic Church and the churches of the Reformation—have distinguished in church law between ius divinum [divine law] and ius humanum [human law]. Thereby, a distinction is made between a law that has been revealed once and for all by God, which is foundational and authoritative for the whole of church law for all times, and, on the other hand, whatever decisions of church law that have been formulated and established by human beings. Ius divinum is thus understood as the invariable constant within the history of law, and ius humanum as the historical variable. This distinction is an ecumenically significant commonality. But up until now it has not had such a strong effect as some had expected for the mutual rapprochement and unification of the divided churches. This has several reasons:

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The task of missionary proclamation, the power of the keys, the call to baptism, the invitation of the baptized to the Lord’s Supper, the task of gathering believers, and the ordering of their gathering have been understood by all churches as ius divinum. But beyond this, in some churches, regulations of human law, such as, e. g., the threefold offices of bishop, elder, and deacon, and the sevenfold number of the sacraments, are defined as divine law, even if they have not been commanded by Jesus Christ (with the exception of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and absolution). Even a certain apologetic inclination displays itself not infrequently in the life of the churches, to adjudge other elements of church law too as having the rank of absolutely binding divine law. Considerable differences thus exist in the understanding of ius divinum. The concept of ius humanum also lacks requisite clarity, for, according to the wording itself, ius humanum has a much broader meaning than what is meant by its material usage. According to the wording, it could also comprise such regulations which are imposed on the church by non-church authorities. Yet this Latin expression is not about human law in general but about the right of the church to establish regulations for the ordering of church life. Only in faith can one recognize problems and dangers, as well as the regulations with which they must be met. The matter of ius humanum is also not about a right of Christians to establish the regulations of church law in an arbitrary manner but about establishing regulations in obedience to the ius divinum. In what, however, does this obedience consist in a particular historical situation? The answer to this question can only rarely be gained by a formally logical deduction from the ius divinum. Rather, the church must allow its own situation and that of its context to be unveiled by the word of God and the Holy Spirit, and it must allow what is necessary to be said. In this respect, the concept of ius humanum does not signify a right that comes about solely through people, even if it does come about solely through Christians. The freedom in which human beings make decisions here is the freedom in Christ and in the Spirit of God. With the concept of human law, a process is designated, which in the decree of the “Apostolic Council,” is expressed in these words: “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” (Acts 15.28). The distinction between divine and human law thus does not mean a side-byside arrangement of two laws. It means instead the inquiry about divine law in the historical form of church law. Here it has to do with a dynamic, historical interrelationship of both in the advance of the kingdom of Christ in the world. If one keeps this special, spiritual, historical nature of church law in view, a great possibility opens up for recognizing differences in church law as a justified diversity within the unity of the church.

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3. Concerning the Hermeneutics of Church Law The issue of the hermeneutics of church law is determined by the difference between the original meaning of the decisions of church law at the time when they arose and their significance for the life of the church today. It is especially determined, however, by critical inquiry about the relationship of existing church regulations to the commission that was given by the Lord of the church. There could be, e. g., decisions of state-church law which originally furthered the servant ministry of the church that could be misused by an anti-Christian state as a legal basis for interventions in the life of the church. There could also be inner-church decisions—e. g., about the life-long bond between bishops and their diocese, or about the use of the Latin or Slavic languages in the liturgy, or about the obligation of the ordained to celibacy—that in a changed situation of the church could become an obstacle to carrying out the servant ministry that was entrusted to the church by the Lord. How do we attain knowledge of the order in which the church today is to undertake its servant ministry in obedience to God’s commission and in continuity with the church’s ancestors? If one pursues this question of the hermeneutics of church law, one must take into account that church order encompasses within it the acknowledgment of the biblical canon and church dogma, for its center is the order of the worship assembly, which lives from God’s word and gives God glory in its confession. At the same time, the biblical canon and dogma stand as an authority over against church law, since the commission given to the church by the Lord has been handed down through Holy Scripture, and since in confession all the statements of faith have been concentrated. A hermeneutics of church law thus cannot be separated from biblical and dogmatic hermeneutics. One could ask whether the issue of a hermeneutics of church law is to be entered into at all in the framework of a work on dogmatics. But ecumenical dialogue shows again and again that the understanding of the church is so tightly bound up with the defense of one’s own church order that ecclesiology cannot skip over this topic. Admittedly, we must restrict ourselves here simply to indicating an approach to the hermeneutics of church law. Since it is closely connected to biblical and dogmatic hermeneutics, and since these hermeneutics have already been considered with respect to their main features, we may now be brief. Here, too, one must distinguish between the investigation of church law and its interpretation. (a) The Investigation of Church Law It may be advisable to begin with the investigation of individual decisions of church law, and then focus on the large complex of topics, and finally examine the unique whole of church law that is under investigation.

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(1) Corresponding to the philological-historical investigation of biblical texts and dogmatic formulas, we must inquire about the original text; the grammatical sense; the pre-history; the ecclesial, cultural, and political situation in which the decision arose; the process of its formulation; its formal establishment; the formal and material influences of state law; the region in which the decision was originally held to be valid and how it was originally understood; the contemporary treatment of the same issue in church law by other churches; the history of the effects of the decision; the region where it is held to be valid today; the contemporary understanding of the decision in relation to the order of the worship service; and also the decisions about the same topic that are held to be valid today in other churches. (2) Corresponding to the inquiry about the reception of the statements of Holy Scripture in dogma, decisions of church law are also to be investigated from the standpoint as to whether they correspond to the New Testament traditions of the commission of Christ and to apostolic directives. This investigation means at the same time asking the question regarding the extent to which these decisions correspond to the basic structures of church life. Thus, e. g., one must ask about the biblical terms and regulations that have been taken up by church law and those that have been passed over by it, about the groupings of New Testament texts that have been preferred and those that have been passed over, about the perspective on the relationship between the Old Testament and the New that affects the decisions of church law, and likewise about statements from civil law and the philosophy of law that have been used as premises, alongside the statements of the New Testament, in order to draw conclusions for church law, etc. In these investigations, one must expect from the outset that decisions of church law are derived less directly and unequivocally from Holy Scripture than are dogmatic statements, since specific information about church order has been handed down only in fragments and differing forms in the New Testament Scriptures. Timebound questions of discretion play a much larger role in church law than they do in the history of dogma. One must, however, investigate whether and to what extent the decisions of church law remain within the possibilities circumscribed by the divine commission. From the perspective of the New Testament, there exist in principle many more possibilities than have been realized in fact within the positive church law of any single church body. Much of what is dogmatically possible has not been realized in church law. (3) The relationship in which the decisions of church law stand to the confession of the church must be investigated. Since confession is a response to the apostolic message of Christ, and church law is a response to the commission first given to the apostles, the ascertainment of correspondences and contradictions between church law and dogma is of great importance. Church law does not stand above the confession of the church but is to serve the speaking and acting of the church that accord with the church’s confession.

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(4) One must be made aware of the subjective presuppositions involved in the investigation of church law. The same perspectives apply here that have already been established in biblical and dogmatic hermeneutics (cf. 945ff. and 966ff.). The emphasis here must be on becoming aware of the general understanding of law and the unquestioned assumptions of the comfortable church customs and regulations that one follows. The preunderstanding of law, order, and community in the church and in the state must be clarified. (b) The Interpretation of Church Law Just as Holy Scripture is interpreted only when it is understood as the word of God, and just as dogma is interpreted only when it is understood as the true response of the church to God’s act of salvation in Christ and as the binding pattern for our confessing today, so church law is interpreted in the proper sense only when it is understood as an order that serves the commission given to the church by the Lord. “The legal-dogmatic doctrine of church law cannot limit itself to the systematic interpretation of the decisions of church law that have been established. Interpretation means the identification and recognition of their grounding in God’s commandment.”18 (1) Understanding Church Law Here, too, various concepts of apprehension might be employed. But it is not sufficient to subordinate the understanding of church law by making it a special case of general jurisprudence. One can speak of an understanding of church law too only when the “subject matter” with which it is concerned is understood, namely, the commission given by God to the church, and, in connection with it, the illumination of the situation of the church in the present world. This question is to be posed both with a view to the past situation, in which the decision of church law arose, and also with a view to the present, in which we live in the church order that has come down to us and in which we must fulfill the commission of the Lord that is valid for all times. (2) Understanding and Interpreting Church Law An interpretation of church law does not take place when one restricts oneself in a positivistic manner to the mere presentation of the content of legal decisions and the relationship between them—and also not when one asks further, in merely a 18 Erik Wolf, Ordnung der Kirche: Lehrbuch und Handbuch des Kirchenrechts auf ökumenischer Basis [Church Order: Textbook and Handbook of Church Law on an Ecumenical Basis] (Frankfurt a. Main: Klostermann, 1961). [Schlink did not provide a page number for this quote. A careful search for it in the book did not locate it. –Ed.]

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pragmatic manner and solely on the basis of positive church law, how the church may most securely get through the difficulties of the present situation of the world. The church is often more weakened by the avoidance of difficulties than it is by a violent persecution. Since church law can be understood in its binding truth only as a concrete, historical carrying out of the unchanging divine commission, all new problems—such as, e. g., the “social diaconate” and that of the ministry of women in the church—must be fundamentally regulated by this commission. This regulation can take place in a twofold manner: First, in the interpretation of the prevailing church order through concrete instructions and through new initiatives. As is the case with the service of leadership, so too the effective interpretation of church law is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Such interpretation is not about drawing formal logical conclusions from predetermined juristic premises but about being guided by the Spirit. Second, the duty may also arise, in view of new types of tasks in the church, to correct the decisions of traditional church law and to replace them with more appropriate ones, as has repeatedly taken place in the history of the church. From this perspective, as has been shown already, greater freedom exists for church law than for the interpretation of dogma. But just as the interpretation of dogma through the addition of further dogmatic statements is not the business of individual Christians but that of the church, so the standing regulations of the church cannot be changed by individual Christians but only by the church. The individual can only recommend this action of the church and prepare for it by alternative examples. (c) The Relationship between the Investigation of Church Law and Its Interpretation Ultimately, this relationship is none other than that of the relationship between research and interpretation in biblical and dogmatic hermeneutics, namely, the relationship between human work and divine grace. The appropriate pre-understanding for understanding church law is faith in the commission given by Christ. Concluding Remarks on These Hermeneutical Reflections A particular difficulty for ecumenical dialogue has resulted from the fact that biblical studies, dogmatics, and the study of church law have largely become independent of one another in the modern period and have partly diverged from one another. This detachment of the above-mentioned theological disciplines from one another has strengthened the tendency toward positivism in dogmatics and in church law, which uses biblical and church-historical statements to justify its conclusions but does not engage in a critical examination of the applicable dogma and church law. This development of independence, especially over against biblical studies, is one

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of the reasons why dogma and church law are regarded by many Christians not as an aid but as a hindrance for their common life in the faith. By contrast, we have attempted here to relate these three theological disciplines to one another and to make clear their mutual interaction. We did this because the answer to the question about the basis of the authority of the New Testament canon, of the confession, and of church law was given by referring to Jesus Christ, as attested to by the apostolic message, and to the work of the Holy Spirit. The concept of that which is apostolic was not thereby limited to the authentic testimonies of the eyewitnesses of Jesus, but also applied to the oldest echo of their message, which likewise has been handed down in the New Testament Scriptures. Here we have inquired again and again about the historical origin from which the collection of Holy Scripture and the development of dogma and of church law took its start. In ecumenical dialogue, it is insufficient if each church body merely insists upon the apostolicity of its dogma and its church law. Rather, its apostolicity must be demonstrated on the historically unique apostolic foundation. In order to make clear the mutual interaction of biblical studies, dogma, and canon law, we did not shy away from the appearance of schematism in the construction of biblical hermeneutics, dogmatic hermeneutics, and a hermeneutics of church law. In view of the different requirements that hermeneutics sets before the researcher in all three areas, it must not be forgotten that in the life of the church, Christians who have not been academically trained frequently have displayed greater alertness in listening to God’s present speaking through Holy Scripture and a clearer recognition of that which must be confessed and done today than some scholarly researchers. Nevertheless, it is indispensable that a precise investigation of the basis and the history of the church be carried out in order to reach a reliable judgment concerning what sort of diversity of expression of Christian life is possible within the unity of the church. In this respect, the special service of scholarly research is necessary to clarify the drive for unity that is widespread today, as well as to justify and carry out the unification. The preservation of the church thus does not take place without the action of the church, i. e., not without the engagement of all its members, each one according to the spiritual gift and ministerial office that has been given to that person. Nevertheless, the church is not preserved by this action of the church but by the triune God, who unfolds the riches of the grace of Christ in ever-new gifts of the Spirit in the church.

Church Order

Editor’s Notes to Chapter 21 [i] [ii]

[iii]

[iv]

[v] [vi]

[vii] [viii]

The first part of this chapter is based on several paragraphs from Schlink’s essay, “Christus und die Kirche.” Cf. SÖB, 1/1.98ff. (ESW, 1.146ff.). It is important to note that in this chapter the same German word and its cognates (bleiben, das Bleiben, etc.) is translated with two different but related English words: “endure” and “abide.” See The Critical Edition of Q, ed. James M. Robinson, Paul Hoffmann, and John S. Kloppenborg, Hermeneia, ed. Milton C. Moreland (Minneapolis: Fortress; Leuven: Peeters, 2000). The New Testament “antilegomena” (i. e., those writings that were “spoken against” or disputed in the early church) included Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. See Athanasius’ Paschal Letter XXXIX (NPNF 2 , 4.551–552). For three days in October 1518, Cardinal Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469–1534), the papal legate, questioned and debated Martin Luther about indulgences. In response to humanist and Protestant use of the Scriptures, Cajetan turned to the study of the Scriptures as well, often making use of philological and historical research to cast a surprisingly “modern” critical eye on some biblical texts. For Luther’s critical judgments about the canonicity of some biblical books, e. g., James, see his prefaces to the Old and New Testaments (LW 1 , 35.235–411). See also Gerhard Henning, Cajetan und Luther: Ein historische Beitrag zur Begegnung von Thomismus und Reformation [Cajetan and Luther: An Historical Contribution to the Encounter between Thomism and the Reformation] (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1966). See Athenagoras (2d cent.), A Plea Regarding Christians, in Early Christian Fathers, ed. and trans. Cyril C. Richardson (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 308. See Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Andrew Bowie, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1998), 9–15, 24–29, and 90–131.

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[ix]

[x]

[xi] [xii]

[xiii]

[xiv] [xv]

For an example of a rationalist, Enlightenment-era approach to history, see Johann Martin Chladenius (1710–1759), Allgemeine Geschichtswissenschaft [Science of History] (Leipzig: Lanck, 1752). The “Enlightenment worldview” was classically described by Kant in his 1784 essay, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What Is Enlightenment?’,” in Kant’s Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 54–60. For Herder and Hegel, see Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), Against Pure Reason: Writings on Religion, Language, and History, trans. Marcia Bunge (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993); and Georg W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. John Sibree (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1991). For the so-called “Mythic School” (“mythische Schule”) in the later period of German Romantism (ca. 1820s–1860s), and for positivism, see editor’s note 6 at the end of the Introduction to chaps. 12 and 13. For the conception of history by Karl Marx (1818–1883), see Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, 2 vols. in 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976). While Schlink did not explicitly reject the main lines of the neo-Darwinian theory regarding the evolution of species, he was critical of purely materialistic and naturalistic worldviews (“evolutionism”) that frequently accompanied articulations of that theory. When Schlink used the term “existentialism,” he often linked it to Bultmann’s existential approach to biblical hermeneutics, history, and eschatology. See, e. g., Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), “The Rise of Hermeneutics,” in The Hermeneutic Tradition, ed. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift (Albany, NY: State University Press of New York, 1990), 101–114. See Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936), Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft [Cultural Study and Natural Science] (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1921). See Eduard Spranger (1882–1963), Die Grundlagen der Geschichtswissenschaft: Eine erkenntnistheoretisch psychologische Untersuchung [The Foundations of Historical Scholarship: An Epistemological-Psychological Investigation] (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1905). Among Bultmann’s many essays on theological hermeneutics, see, e. g., “The Problem of Hermeneutics” (1950), in Rudolf Bultmann: New Testament & Mythology and Other Basic Writings, ed. and trans. Schubert M. Ogden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 69–93. For representative examples of Barth’s focus on “die Sache” of the biblical revelation, over against historicist views, see CD, I/1.324–333; III/1.76–94; and IV/2.478–483. Cf. Schlink, “Der Struktur,” SÖB, 1/1.33–39 (ESW, 1.76–83); and “Der Kult,” SÖB, 1/1.120–122 (ESW, 1.170–171). Gratian (d. ca. 1160) is often considered “the father of Western canon law.” His collection of papal decretals and other documents of Western church law, called the Decretum Gratiani, contains nearly 4,000 patristic texts, conciliar decrees, and papal pronouncements. For a modern edition, see Corpus Iuris Canonici [Body of Canon Law], 2 vols. in 1 (Graz: Akad. Publisher, 1959).

Church Order

[xvi]

[xvii]

[xviii]

Cf. Barth, CD, IV/2.676–726 (“The Order of the Community”); For Erik Wolf (1902–1977, a German jurist, law professor, and church historian), see footnote 18 below. See also Hans Dombois (1907–1997, a Lutheran legal scholar), Ordnung und Unordnung der Kirche [Order and Disorder of the Church] (Kassel: Staude, 1957). Adolf von Harnack, Ius ecclesiasticum: Eine Untersuchung über den Ursprung des Begriffes [Church Law: An Investigation into the Origin of the Concept] (Berlin: Prussian Academy of Sciences, 1903). “Ambrosiaster” is the name given to an unknown fourth-century author of a set of Latin commentaries on the letters of Paul. All but one of the manuscripts are ascribed to St. Ambrose, but his authorship has been denied since the sixteenth century. See Gen. 9.1–17. Included in the precepts here are the abstinence from eating flesh with blood in it (v. 4), the prohibition of murder (v. 5), and the recognition of civil authority (vv. 5–6a).

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Chapter XXII: The Unity of the Church and the Disunity of Christendom[i]

1. The Dangers of Ecclesial Self-Preservation The delimitation of the biblical canon, the formulation of dogmas, and the establishment of church orders are decisions of the church on its course through history. Each of these decisions was about defending against certain threats, whether they invaded the church from the outside or arose even from within the church itself. But neither the biblical canon, nor dogma, nor church law, are primarily a defense and a delimitation; rather, they are an expression of the will of the church to remain with Christ and to serve him in the world. The importance of Scripture, confession, and church order for the church’s abiding with Christ cannot be overestimated. To be sure, the church does not remain with Christ merely by possessing Holy Scripture, dogmatic formulas, and legal regulations, but it does so by correctly using them. The responses that the church presently owes to God in words and deeds always go beyond what is fixed in dogma and church law. The life of the church in Christ is inherently richer in witness and teaching, in prayer and adoration, and in the servant ministry of believers toward one another and in the world, than can be fixed in dogma and church law. But the biblical canon, dogma, and church law are an extremely important protection for the preservation of spiritual life. They serve to keep the church grounded in the events that founded the church and in the apostolic witnesses. If one wants to appreciate the importance of the biblical canon, dogma, and church law for church life, then it is of course necessary to take seriously the structural shifts that have taken place within the whole of church life by means of the delimitation of the biblical canon and the progressive establishment of settled creeds and church order.[ii] Looking back on the three parts of the previous chapter, the following should be emphasized: If the term gospel originally signified the oral message of salvation, it now has become a designation for certain writings within the New Testament canon. The foundational message of the apostles is no longer encountered as their living, oral voice, but rather it is transmitted in writing. If Paul had contrasted the New Testament ministry, as the ministry of the Spirit, with the ministry of the letter (2 Cor. 3.6ff.), the message of the New Testament is now based on the written letters [characters] of the New Testament Scriptures. If, in Paul’s assessment, “prophecy”—the concrete word of God that warns, exhorts, and unveils hearers in their respective situation—is predominate among the other early Christian types of witness, now

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the reading of Holy Scripture, scriptural interpretation, and thus doctrine are given greater importance. If confession was originally the center in which the various statements of faith are concentrated, it was the case that with the further unfolding of confession in the history of dogma there took place a structural shift with respect to its orientation. The focus was no longer only about confessing God’s salvific act in Jesus Christ and worshiping God. Instead, now doctrinal statements were made about God and then also about human beings and the church. But this more or less changes the original structure of confession, in which the address of God and that of humans are united in a peculiar way. A structural shift has also taken place in another way. If confession was originally the act of the believer’s self-surrender to Christ in agreement with the confession of the community of believers, whereby in early Christianity a certain space was left open for the spontaneity of the individual in formulating the confessional statement, now, with its further development, the credal confession confronts the believer with the wording of the doctrinal norm that must be obediently accepted, even if the believer’s concrete situation has changed since the dogma was formulated. A structural shift has also taken place with the further establishment of settled church order. If we find in the New Testament Scriptures a great variety of ways in which the church’s ministry was organized, that ministry became increasingly restricted over time. If the ministry of the apostles and congregational leaders was originally surrounded by the servant ministry of freely emerging charismata, now special callings into the church’s ministerial office come to the fore. The ministerial office is then increasingly responsible for further appointments to the ministries in the congregation so that the spontaneously emerging servant ministries of the independent charismata are restricted with respect to their possible influences. Since the biblical canon, dogma, and church law have their roots in the worship service and serve to keep the worship assembly with Jesus Christ, the structural shifts just mentioned find their basic expression in the changed structure of the worship service. While the course of the Jewish worship service, with its readings from the Scriptures and the wording of its prayers, was determined to a large extent with respect to individual days, Paul’s statements about the worship service of the church in Corinth show an astonishing freedom in the manifold utterances of prophecy, doctrine, speaking in tongues, etc. Now, of course, one may not use this information to make sweeping generalizations about the worship service in early Christianity. One should also not overlook the fact that in the New Testament letters, and indeed also in the Pauline ones, there are elements of the tradition that had their setting in the worship service. Individual liturgical pieces (acclamations, confessions, hymns, and other prayers) were repeated quite early on, especially in connection with baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The structural shift in the course of the history of Christian worship consists, for one thing, in the gradual process

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of establishing the settled sequence and wording in the worship service at the expense of spontaneous witnessing and praying from the heart, until ultimately all such expressions vanished, except for the sermon. Along this line, the scriptural readings for the various worship services of the church year were settled once and for all, and ultimately the sermon was largely no longer regarded as a necessary part of the service. At the same time, there was a structural shift with regard to the people who were active in the worship service. In Paul’s letters to the church in Corinth, the pneumatic-spontaneous participation of all those present is assumed in principle, without mentioning a particular leader of the worship service. In the period that followed, the church’s ministerial office of leadership became more and more definite. Although the Didache already presupposes the election of bishops and deacons,1 there is still the instruction to allow the prophets to “give thanks as much as they like,” and thus the important function to exercise the eucharist in spiritual freedom.2 According to Justin, only the head of the congregation is to say the thanksgiving and the prayers, and all others are to assent to him with their “Amen!”3 According to The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (ca. 200), the responses of the congregation to the words of the bishop were fixed in the wording of the responsories.[iii] Further structural shifts took place the more people strove for, and in some cases also enforced, uniformity in the order of worship, the biblical canon, dogmas, the ordering of church offices, and even the language used in the church in certain locales and ultimately throughout the whole church. These structural shifts are by no means altogether negative. In part, they arose because of the increasing temporal distance from the earthly history of Jesus Christ and from the early Christian witnesses, as well as because of the increasing spatial expansion of the church. It became more and more difficult and urgent to preserve the continuity and the identity of the church through space and time. Making progress to establish the fixed limits of the biblical canon, to adapt to those limits, and to establish fixed wording in creeds and church orders, was understood to protect that unity. But there are also dangers associated with these structural shifts that must be seen clearly—dangers which, paradoxically, arose precisely from decisions that the church had made in order to remain faithful to its origin and to preserve its unity. These dangers become even greater the more the necessity for hermeneutical reflection on the historicity of the church’s speaking and acting is downplayed and not taken seriously:

1 The Didache, 15.1–2. [Holmes, 366–367; cf. Niederwimmer, The Didache, 200. –Ed.] 2 The Didache, 10.7. [Holmes, 360–361; cf. Niederwimmer, The Didache, 155. –Ed.] 3 Justin Martyr, First Apology, 65, 67. [FOTC, 6.105, 107. –Ed.]

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(a) From the delimitation of Holy Scripture and the progressive establishment of settled dogma and church law there has arisen the danger that the richness of the expressions in the church’s life is narrowed [eingeengt]. Possession of the biblical canon can lead to a suppression of the living voice of the gospel and of the prophetic witness in favor of the prescribed reading of Scripture and of a doctrinal interpretation of it. This suppression takes place completely when the reading of Scripture in the worship service is carried out in a language that the congregation can no longer understand (e. g., in Latin or Old Slavonic). The development of the confession in comprehensive dogmatic statements can lead to a suppression of spontaneous and concrete confessing toward a given historical front and to the reduction and underestimation of the other statements of faith, in the middle of which the confession was originally voiced. In this way, dogma can at the same time suppress awareness of the multiplicity within the biblical witness and actually replace it. The progressive establishment of a settled ordering of church offices can lead to restricting the “laity’s” responsibility to that of obeying the church’s ministerial office and to transforming the ecclesial structure of community into a system of hierarchical ordering. The more dogma and church law are comprehensively settled into fixed forms, and the more that free space for here-and-now confessing and acting is restricted, the greater the danger is that the church no longer perceives what God is calling it to do in a given moment and what it owes the world in word and deed in a given historical situation. (b) The more the delimitation of the biblical canon, the formulation of dogmas, and the establishment of church order have the effect of narrowing or even suppressing the free and concrete words and deeds of the charismata, the more the gaze of the church is directed away from the future—and thus also away from the present, which is the future that is beginning now—and directed toward the past. It is true that at all times the gaze of the church is directed backwards, namely, toward the foundational act of divine salvation in Jesus Christ, but this remembrance, by its very nature, entails both a certainty about the presence of the exalted Christ and an expectation of his parousia. The backward gaze of faith is always also at the same time a looking forward in hope. But the more that doctrine replaces prophecy, and dogma replaces Holy Scripture, and the ordered ministerial office replaces the servant ministry assigned to every believer, the more the focus is drawn back to the historical decisions in which the church carried out those delimitations. This need not mean that the statements about the parousia will be done away with, but there arises the danger that they will lose their existential significance and fade away vis-à-vis the weight of church history, which is becoming ever more extensive, and in view of ecclesial decisions, which are becoming ever more comprehensive, and which now determine the further speaking and acting of the church. As important as it is for the church to learn from its history, if its bearing is only oriented backwards, there is then the danger that it will fail to recognize the temptations

The Dangers of Ecclesial Self-Preservation

that forcefully enter it in a new form, and it will fail to do what God calls it to do in the present moment. (c) The more comprehensively the church is established by decisions about dogma and church law, the greater the danger is that it will no longer meet its contemporaries primarily as the force of the saving Kyrios but as an expression of past constellations of intellectual history. The great dogmatic decisions of the church took place in breakthroughs by means of the religious and philosophical ideas of the time. In these breakthroughs, such ideas were also used to articulate church doctrine. The latter therefore bears the vestiges of those historical disputes from the time of their origin. That observation is not an objection to their truth, but if the church restricts itself to offering traditional dogmatic decisions as a direct solution to new problems that have surfaced in situations that are completely different from earlier ones, then those ideas that had originally been ruptured in those breakthroughs are simply repristinated, and they then acquire all too easily a weight of their own, which hampers the response of faith to new problems. So, e. g., Thomistic theology was widely viewed by nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought as a representative of the same Aristotelian philosophy that it had originally ruptured and then had used in its ruptured form in service to Christian doctrine. Similar examples can be cited from the history of all churches, including the Reformation ones. The same applies to church regulations, which were also established vis-à-vis certain historical fronts, partly in opposition to the customs and legal regulations of the time, and partly by adapting to them. The more the problems of the ordering of the church at the present time are approached one-sidedly and solely by adhering to earlier decisions, the greater the risk is that the church will fail to do the servant ministry that it is called upon to do today and will encounter its present surroundings as an exponent of a past legal order. Beyond individual philosophical and legal ties, it is true that precisely where the gospel has at one time grasped and transformed the cultural and political life of a people, the danger arises that such a Church will no longer be encountered as the people of God who have been called out of the world but rather as an advocate for a certain culture that is now long gone. But that would mean that the church itself is then standing in the way of the gospel’s advance into other areas of culture. One should not underestimate the danger that a Church’s conceptual housing, which has become historical, will become so heavy that it can hardly move forward. (d) Such dangers become all the greater the more a uniformity is sought with respect to church doctrine and regulations. One needs to acknowledge the usefulness of common formulations and regulations for the preservation of the unity of the universal church, but if a comprehensive and detailed uniformity of dogma and church law is sought, then it cannot fail to be the case that the distance between these formulas and regulations from the concrete historical problems in the various domains of the church becomes ever greater, and their relevance in helping to solve

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these problems becomes ever lesser. The danger is becoming ever greater that the church is frozen in a comprehensive uniformity of its orders of worship, its dogmas, and its church law. (e) But the very nature of the church, as the force of Christ’s lordship and as the eschatological people of God, is completely obscured when it makes use of secular power to preserve itself and tries to enforce Christ’s lordship with the help of such power. In the end, it makes no difference whether the church actively grabs secular power, or whether it allows itself to be taken into service by secular power. In both cases, the danger arises that the church no longer encounters the poor and the disenfranchised as a handmaid of Christ but rather as the executor and beneficiary of secular power. It then does not encounter the non-Christian peoples and religions as a witness to the truth but as the ideological backbone of secular empires. The mission then turns into a crusade, and conversion into a political and cultural submission. The message of the kingdom of Christ, which is not of this world, will then no longer be heard, even if it continues to be proclaimed. All these dangers do not come upon the church by means of a frontal attack from the outside by the surrounding world. They also are not the result of attacks from within the church against the biblical canon, dogma, and church law; rather, they arise paradoxically, namely, by adhering to decisions about dogma and church law. Indeed, they do not arise only through the use of secular power, not only through the church’s own identification with a certain culture, but rather they are evident already in the one-sidedness with which the church’s identity is seen in church decisions that are fixed in formulas, raised to a timeless validity, and understood in an unhistorical manner. These are specific dangers within the church, into which the church imperceptibly slips through its all-too-comfortable use of means that are intended to serve its remaining with Christ. These shifts in relation to the basic structures of the church are so obvious that they do not even need to be remarked upon as such. In view of the geographical spread of the church and the differences in its historical situation, does it not make sense to put the formulaic, tangible elements of church life in the foreground and to strive for uniformity in decisions about dogma and church law? Is not the unity of the church much easier to ascertain and to hold on to when using the same formulas and regulations, as opposed to basing it on a multiplicity of speaking and acting within the church? Is not adapting to notions about unity within secular law the surest way to preserve the church? When the temptation contained in these questions is no longer recognized, a profound change takes place in the relationship of the church to the promise given to it regarding its indestructibility, for now the church no longer expects to be preserved solely by God, who stands by his promise, but by insisting on the decisions it has made in the course of history. But this results in a shift from believing in God the Preserver to trusting in one’s own works of self-preservation.

The Scandal of a Disunited Christendom

When this happens, there arises not only the danger that the vision of the church will be blurred to what God is calling it to do today, but it will also be blurred to the knowledge of brothers and sisters who are called into service by the same Lord, and who aim their witness about Christ toward other historical fronts. There is an unhistorical commitment to the biblical canon, dogma, and church law that no longer sees the multiplicity of witnesses, advances, and orderings brought about by God. If the church seeks to secure its unity through uniformity and by adapting to secular regulations—at the expense of the living voice of the gospel and of the living diversity of the Spirit’s action—then it stands to reason that the catholicity of Christ’s action is no longer recognized. Divisions can thus arise through such decisions, the intent of which should be to preserve and strengthen church unity. If the church takes the path of self-preservation, then it is inevitable that its eyes are also blurred to the concrete needs of the world, and that it is neglecting to do servant ministry in the world, a ministry for which it was sent by God. Focused on its own preservation, it encounters other human beings no longer as the mouth and instrument of Jesus Christ, who gave himself up for the world, but as a social structure that is just as preoccupied with itself as other groups. The church is not only constantly threatened by these dangers but it has also succumbed to them many times in the course of its history.

2. The Scandal of a Disunited Christendom If in the reflections of this chapter we understand the term Christendom to mean all people who call upon Jesus Christ and who refer to themselves as Christians, then Christendom presents itself as a multitude of separated church bodies with different traditions. In connection with the previous chapter about the preservation of the church, and from the perspective of what is constant and what is changeable, we must first make a purely formal distinction between tradition that is settled in its wording and tradition that is more or less the free acts of handing on what has been received. From this point of view, one can speak of three areas of tradition that surround each other like concentric circles, without being strictly separated from each other in their details: Holy Scripture (the biblical canon), confession (dogma), and the fundamental regulations of church order (church law) should be emphasized as tradition in the narrower sense. They act in a special way as constants in the life of Christendom, especially in the worship services. However, this aspect of constancy, as it is settled in wording, holds true for Holy Scripture to an incomparably higher degree than it does for dogma and church law, for the biblical canon is settled in its wording and in its limits, while dogma and church law undergo changes by means of later supplements.

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The example of outstanding teachers and pastors of the church (church fathers, church teachers, founders of religious orders, reformers, et al.) can be described as tradition in the broader sense, whose scriptural interpretations, catechesis, and accounts of Christian doctrine, as well as whose further development of church order, especially the order of the liturgy, have had a formative effect on future generations. This broader tradition also includes events in the history of the church (such as, e. g., the victory of the Orthodox over the iconoclasts, or the dawn of the Western Reformation, or the emergence of churches in the “third world”), which are still commemorated in Christian festivals, as well as decisions that were made in conflict with the state and that safeguarded the freedom of the church. The sermon and catechesis that are concretely delivered and that presuppose the above-mentioned traditions, theological research and the thorough examination of newly arisen issues, the prayers of the worship assembly that respond to current special needs and hopes, as well as the personal piety of the individual—all this is then to be designated as tradition in the broadest sense. This broadest concept of tradition also includes, e. g., pastoral letters to Christians and concrete pronouncements in relation to the state, as well as action taken anew each day in the service of love. Tradition in the broadest sense is thus the living stream—flowing down through the centuries—of all the effects that proceed from God’s unique act of salvation in Jesus Christ. In Christendom, differences exist in all areas of the tradition. Not all Christian communities have the same biblical canon. This is true not only with respect to differences in the demarcation of the Old Testament Scriptures (e. g., between the Roman Catholic, the Reformed, and the Evangelical-Lutheran Church) but also with respect to deviations from the usual demarcation of the New Testament canon (e. g., in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church).[iv] There are also differences with respect to many dogmatic decisions, and even the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, which is recognized by almost all churches, is not confessed with the same wording and with the same interpretation (the issue of the filioque). There are also considerable differences between a more hierarchical ordering of church offices and one that is more synodical. Moreover, the same people are not held in esteem as models of piety and doctrine in all parts of Christendom. All this has then had an impact on worship life and personal piety and has had consequences for how the church conducts itself in the world. In addition to the differences in the content of the traditions that exist in Christendom, there are also differences in the weight that is accorded to the various types of tradition in the separated parts of Christendom. There are Christian communities that are based primarily on the liturgy, others that are based primarily on dogma, others that are more focused on special experiences of personal piety, and still others that understand themselves primarily on the basis of the continuity of a particular ordering of ministerial offices. There are communities for whose life

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the careful cultivation of a tradition that has grown over the centuries is of great importance, and others that are only slightly interested in such a matter and that live from the immediate realization of the biblical witness. Consequently, there are different degrees of reflection on tradition, including the paradoxical situation in which some parts of Christendom that are uninterested in tradition are actually more strongly tied to it than others that are clearly aware of it and that gain a greater freedom to make new and necessary decisions precisely through their reflection on tradition.[v] In any case, there are traditions everywhere in Christendom, even if some Christian communities express themselves as spiritualistic, anti-dogmatic, and as opposed to church offices. For this reason, one must distinguish between actual tradition and the concept of tradition. Differences within the traditions and differing valuations of traditions need not necessarily lead to divisions. In the first centuries, churches that delimited the nascent New Testament canon differently and that used different formulations of the creed, different liturgies, and different orderings of ministerial offices lived together in full church unity. For centuries, e. g., the various statements about the procession of the Holy Spirit had no church-dividing significance for the relationship between Eastern and Western Christendom. But there are also separations that are necessary and that not only cut off individuals but also entire groups from unity with the church. The two most important New Testament traditions about such divinely commanded expulsions are the anathema that the apostle Paul called upon the Judaizing false teachers who were confusing his congregation: “If anyone proclaims to you a message of salvation different from what you received (from me), let that one be accursed!” (Gal. 1.9 [S]; cf. v. 8). No less expulsive was the judgment of 1 John concerning the Gnostics: Anyone who does not confess that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” is not from God but of the spirit of the antichrist (4.2–3; cf. 2.22f.). In both cases the issue was apostasy from Jesus Christ. Anyone who does not confess him as the incarnate Son of God, as the Savior of the Jews and the Gentiles, is separated from the worshiping community of believers. The confession of Christ was also the crucial issue in the struggles and divisions in the centuries that followed. In the struggle between Athanasius and the Arians, the issue was indeed about the preservation or dissolution of faith in Jesus Christ and about the being or non-being of the church. The later, specifically Western disputes about grace and the justification of the sinner by faith were also about the confession of Christ. Quite early on, however, divisions also occurred for entirely different reasons. The history of the divisions that took place in Christendom cannot be presented here. They are dealt with in symbolics and the studies of church confessions, denominations, and sects. However, a systematic overview shows that—apart from Marcion’s rejection of the Old Testament and his drastic interference in the selection and text of the New Testament Scriptures, as well as isolated recent attempts to remove

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the Old Testament Scriptures from the canon of Holy Scripture—the differences in the delimitation of the canon had less of an effect on dividing the church than did differences in dogma. Next to the questions of dogma, contradictions in the practice of penitential discipline and in the ordering of the church’s ministerial offices led to church schisms, whereby questions about a hierarchical jurisdictional ordering came more and more to the fore. Differences in carrying out the worship service, such as, e. g., determining the date of Easter, but also differences about using unleavened and leavened bread and even about how one should cross oneself were given church-dividing significance. Personal and regional claims to power, as well as national and political differences (e. g., liberation movements within the Byzantine Empire) have also had a church-dividing effect. The previous chapters on the church (chaps. 19 and 20) repeatedly pointed out the dangers to the continued existence of the church that result from damaging the basic structures of the church—e. g., the necessary unity between the church’s separation from the world and its engagement with the world. Not infrequently, Christendom has succumbed to one of these dangers. The most paradoxical cause of divisions, however, has been repeatedly desiring to preserve the unity of the church through uniformity and centralism, for it is precisely because of this that entire regions have been excluded from unity. Ultimately, when dealing with the history of church separations—not only of the “magisterial churches” but also of the many smaller church bodies, e. g., the innumerable “independent churches” in Africa—one gets the impression that there is nothing that has not caused divisions in Christendom at one time or another. If one asks in which cases did existing differences break the unity and in which cases did they not, then there are great difficulties in answering this question systematically. It is obviously true that the unity of the church has its lasting existence in the Spirit-induced unity of the faith in God and Christ. Divisions, however, have also arisen where agreement in confession was not in doubt. Indeed, it seems that in the course of church history, awareness of the relative significance of the reasons why separations were carried out has decreased and in part has even been downright lost. On the other hand, christological heresies that the ancient church had rightly rejected are now tolerated again in a new form within some Christian communities. There is still no systemization of the events and reasons that have led to separations in the history of Christianity. But it is unlikely that such a systemization would be able to show in a compelling, logical way why differences that had not undermined church unity for centuries suddenly took on a church-dividing significance. Here one comes up against an irrational impetus. The relationship of the separated churches to one another can be quite varied. Separation is essentially the abolition of communion in the Lord’s Supper. This can mean that separated parts of Christendom deny the validity of the other’s Lord’s Supper, but it can also mean that even without this denial, they simply no

The Scandal of a Disunited Christendom

longer celebrate the Supper together. Correspondingly, the same also holds true with respect to the mutual denial of the validity of ministerial offices and of the actions carried out by them or, as the case may be, with regard to the refusal to make use of the servant ministry of the other side’s offices that are still nevertheless recognized. It is also possible that only the one community denies the validity of the other’s Lord’s Supper and ministerial offices, while the other continues to acknowledge the validity of the other’s Supper and offices. The classic classification of divisions into schisms and heresies is insufficient to characterize the extremely diverse relationships between the divided churches. For example, according to the Roman Church, the Orthodox Church is a heretical Church since it rejects several of the Roman Church’s dogmas, in particular the infallibility of the pope. Nevertheless, the Roman Church recognizes the ministerial offices and sacraments of the Orthodox Church, and thus treats it in fact not as a heretical Church but as a schismatic one. Even more diverse is the degree of demarcation between the churches of the Reformation, including the Anglican Communion, and of their onesided or mutual openness toward each other. Moreover, it must not be overlooked that there are also internal divisions within an ongoing community that are also incompatible with the nature of the church. Think, e. g., of the factions that Paul rebuked which had formed in the Corinthian congregation (1 Cor. 1.10–16 and 11.17–19; cf. also, e. g., Rom. 14.1–15), which have their counterparts also today in many churches. If we were now to ask why the separated parts of Christendom are related to one another in such varied ways, this question is also very difficult to answer systematically, and here too one would soon encounter irrational impetuses. Nevertheless, several trends can be identified that have played a significant role in the history of these divisions: (a) If the divisions were originally about the confession of Christ and thus about faith, erroneous faith, and apostasy from the faith, and if the early Christian disputes about circumcision, food, and feast days were still closely related to acknowledging Jesus as Lord, in the course of history, as has already been mentioned, the causes for those divisions became more and more detached from the christological center, and separations were carried out for various other reasons, even when there was agreement in the confession of Christ and of the Trinity and in the conduct of the worship service. (b) Because a schism in Christendom is ultimately only justified if it concerns a matter of apostasy from Christ, and since other reasons for a division cannot be justified before God, those who are divided try to justify the division in these other cases by accusing the other side of apostasy. If formal unity is dissolved, then the understanding of the other side seldom stays focused on the conflict that actually gave rise to the division but is interpreted as a conflict about the faith. Divisions in the church are so horrible that they can only be endured if they are interpreted

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as a matter of obedience to God. A fundamental distinction must therefore be made between the historical reason for a division and its subsequent theological justification. (c) Because there is only one church, each of the divided parts of Christendom endeavors to understand itself as the one church and to secure its own unity through further dogmatic demarcations, through independent developments in church law, through special features of the liturgy, and by tending to its own tradition. From this understanding of church unity there follows an increasing self-isolation and a growing lack of interest and alienation toward the other divided parts, also in view of what is still held in common between them and in view of what is taking place among them along similar lines with respect to what is new. (d) On the basis of these presuppositions, reunification appears possible to both sides only if the one side returns to the other and becomes what the other itself is, whereby too little consideration is given to the fact that the divided parts have both changed since the initial time of the separation. So it is understandable that efforts to reunite the divided parts, where both communities encounter each other in freedom, have very seldom led to a positive outcome. On the other hand, it is true that divisions have been overcome many times by state power, whether through state-enforced unions (e. g., when the Austro-Hungarian Empire forced areas of the Orthodox Church to join with the Roman Catholic Church, or when the Prussian monarchy united the Lutheran and Reformed churches) or through violent repression and eradication. (e) The divisions have often caused serious damage to those involved, especially when it was not about confessing or denying Jesus Christ, and both sides professed the same trinitarian faith, for through the theological delineations that were made to justify the separation, the richness of the truth has usually been reduced on both sides. One-sided emphases were now mistaken for the whole, and catholicity became a particularity that was defined by the conflict. For the most part, the result was extensive blindness to the work of Christ beyond the boundaries of one’s own confessional group and blindness to one’s own shortcomings. Nothing calls into question the credibility of the message of Christ as does the disunity of Christendom. How can the message of God’s love for the world be true if Christians do not even love one another? How can the message of God’s act of reconciliation in Christ be true if it is proclaimed by those who live unreconciled with each other or even fight against each other publicly? It is a scandal that Christendom, with its divisions and antagonisms, offers the world the same spectacle as we see in the juxtaposition and conflict of nations and states. Because of the divided state of Christendom, Jesus’ victory over the world is denied, and the world’s divisions and hostilities become legitimized.

The Question Concerning the One Church in a Disunited Christendom

3. The Question Concerning the One Church in a Disunited Christendom In the course of the twentieth century there has arisen in Christendom an increasing, even avalanche-like restlessness about its divided condition.[vi] The question of whether all the separations really took place for Christ’s sake and of whether, where this was the case, they were carried out with such humility and love that the erring could have recognized that Christ was seeking them, does not leave many Christians at ease. More and more Christians perceive the state of fragmented Christendom as a disgrace and shame before God and humans, and as a sin. Voices from all parts of Christendom have expressed this publicly. Not only should the declarations of the World Council of Churches be remembered in this respect but so also should, e. g., the speech of Pope Paul VI at the opening of the second period of the Second Vatican Council.[vii] Along with this restlessness there has arisen a growing sense of the working of Christ and the Holy Spirit in those Christian communities from which we are cut off. The walls between many divided confessional groups have begun to become transparent, and the voice of the Good Shepherd has been heard from the mouths of those from whom it had not previously been expected.[viii] The desire for rapprochement, even a longing for community and unity, awoke. There were various reasons for this awakening of ecumenical questioning and desiring. One of them was the shame about the role of Christians in both world wars and the recognition of shared Christian responsibility for justice and peace in the world. Another reason was the profound impression made by the martyrdom of many Christians in the twentieth century who were persecuted for their faith and who came from church bodies whose vitality had previously been questioned. In addition, there was the realization that Christendom is becoming an ever-smaller minority of the world’s population and that it is therefore necessary to stand together. But the ecumenical movement cannot be understood solely by such insights. The decisive factor is that it is a spiritual movement—the desire to confess Christ together, to praise God, to petition the Holy Spirit, and to celebrate the Lord’s Supper with one another, as well as to proclaim to the world the salvation in Christ and to help the needy and oppressed, and to do so together. The ecumenical movement would be misunderstood if one sought to derive it solely from political, social, and pragmatic reasons connected with the church’s self-preservation.

Now notions about the desired unity are quite diverse and to a large extent very unclear. The question concerning the unity must therefore first be clarified by means of several delimitations: It is out of the question that the totality of all people who refer to Christ and call themselves Christians could be acknowledged as the one church. For this reason, the World Council of Churches, in which most Christian communities assemble,

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has also always refused to be identified with the una sancta, for there will always be communities that wrongly appeal to Jesus Christ. The church must always be on guard against false prophets and false apostles. It is also out of the question that any part of Christendom could identify itself exclusively with the one holy church and deny that the one church extends beyond the limits of its own church body. So also, in its Decree on Ecumenism, the Second Vatican Council not only acknowledged the working of the Holy Spirit upon individual Christians who do not belong to the Roman Church, something it had done earlier, but now also spoke about churches beyond the Roman Catholic Church.[ix] Also excluded is the view that the unification of the separate parts of Christendom should be restricted to the disposition of faith and love and, in addition, that this unification can only be expected from the coming Christ. There can be no doubt that God wants such a unity of believing, which is visible already now in the participation that takes place in the worship service, in the community of church offices and charismata, and in joint servant ministry to the world. Between these excluded extremes, one must look for the one church within the whole of Christendom, taking into account all its parts—regardless of their size and influence. In this way, Christendom is used here as a term that is defined by the self-understanding of the people involved (see above 997), while church denotes the one people of God, the one body of Christ, the one temple of the Holy Spirit. If, in the context of our way of framing the question, Christendom is used solely as a descriptive term, whereby the matter of whether the groups belonging to it are rightly or wrongly invoking Jesus Christ remains open, so church is a theological term that contains an evaluative judgment about the salvific action of the triune God that takes place in those groups. The presupposition for all attempts to look for the one church in fragmented Christendom is the belief that the church is at all times “the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” Because the triune God created it, preserves it, and has promised that it will remain until the end of the world, no divisions in Christendom can ultimately destroy the unity of the church. As it has only one Father, lives under the lordship of the one Christ, and is preserved by the one Holy Spirit, it cannot cease to be the one church. The divisions in Christendom can indeed distort and darken this unity, and even make it almost invisible, but they cannot destroy it, for this unity is given by God. On the basis of this presupposition, the one church is to be sought in the midst of divided Christendom. The formulation of that task, which has become so urgent for many Christians today, cannot therefore be that they have to restore the unity of the church, for the church is essentially one. The task can only be to discover the unity that is given by God in the midst of Christendom and to remove the distortions that cover it up so that the unity that is given by God becomes visible in the world.

Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Traditions of Christendom

In looking for the one church in the midst of divided Christendom, two tasks must be distinguished: (1) recognizing the unity in the midst of divided Christendom; and (2) representing the recognized unity by establishing formal church agreement. In other words, the first thing to ask is: Where is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, of which I became a member through baptism, also found beyond the boundaries of the Church in which I received baptism? Then the question is: What steps are necessary to ensure that the recognized unity is given proper form, that the community of believers is the image of the community of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and their love for the world? These two tasks belong together in an irreversible sequence. If one skipped the first task, one would not come to a true unification. The actualization of unity in the establishment of formal church unity presupposes the recognition of the reality of church unity that is given by God, just as the imperative of all New Testament exhortations presupposes the indicative of the divine act of salvation that has occurred. And just as faith in the indicative and obedience to the imperative are impossible without the Holy Spirit, so also is the fulfillment of the two abovementioned ecumenical tasks. Only God’s Spirit can remove the complacency, the obstinacy, the lazy thinking, and the lack of imaginative love that oppose unity. Before these two tasks can be addressed, however, we must clarify from which presuppositions and with the aid of which criteria the one church can be recognized within fragmented Christendom. So the following two sections provide basic reflection on those facts that for all parts of Christendom are of decisive importance for answering this question about discerning the one church in the midst of divided Christendom.

4. Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Traditions of Christendom As varied, conflicted, vast, and confusing as the traditions and concepts of tradition are within Christendom, they are invariably embraced by two acts of God from which they cannot escape. They all come forth from the one act, regardless of whether they are truly based on it or not. They all are approaching the other act of God, regardless of whether they are expecting it or not: All Christian communities come forth from God’s act of salvation, which is accomplished in the birth, work, death, and exaltation of Jesus Christ.[x] All are thereby placed under the promise of grace. At the same time, however, human piety is radically called into question by this salvific event, and the distinctions between the pious and the godless, between the righteous and sinners, are reversed with breathtaking sharpness. The righteous ones rejected Jesus, while sinners welcomed

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him. The pious ones treated Jesus as a sinner and brought him to the cross, while the murderer who was crucified with Jesus was, according to the tradition, the first to recognize the dying Jesus as the Savior. All Christian churches are heading toward the parousia of Jesus Christ. The gospel proclaims not only the Christ who has come but also the Christ who is coming. It proclaims that at the end of the path that all people take through the world stands the Lord as victor over the world and all its opposition. Then he will gather his own from all countries and nations and times to celebrate “the great feast” with them. Christ will come to redeem his people. He will come, however, not only as the Redeemer but also as the Judge, and not only as the Judge of the world but also as the Judge of Christendom. “We must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5.10 [L]).[xi] Then the Lord will say to some, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father,” and to others, “Depart from me, you who are cursed” (Mt. 25.34 and v. 41 [S]). Then will he carry out a separation that will cut deeper than all other separations which we people on earth undertake. In contrast to this separation at the Last Judgment, the church separations are also only provisional, and despite all their seriousness, they lack eschatological finality, for the separation that Christ will undertake at the end of the world goes right through all churches. No part of Christendom can count on remaining undivided then. Even to those who have eaten and drunk before him and have heard his word (Lk. 13.26f.), even to those who have prophesied in his name and have done great deeds, the Lord will then say, “I never knew you; all of you depart from me” (Mt. 7.22f.). All parts of Christendom and their traditions are surrounded by these two acts of God, and indeed inescapably so. Whatever traditions that the Christian communities have received and lost, developed and invented through the centuries—they come from the final victory of Jesus Christ on the cross, to which nothing can be added, and they go toward the parousia of Jesus Christ, in which his victory will be revealed to all people. Are we Christians aware of the scandal of Jesus’ death on the cross when we extol salvation? Or have we weakened and downplayed in our traditions the scandal of our origin and adapted it to the religious, ethical, and political needs of worldly self-affirmation? Is Christendom aware of the coming one?[xii] Does it watch in expectation for the coming Lord? The church has grown older than the apostles had supposed. While Christendom has not ceased to make mention of the return of the Lord in the creed, the ardor in the expectation and the haste with which to meet him have diminished for many. Has not Christendom clung to this earth for too long? Does it still see itself as the eschatological people of God who are called out of the world and who, in a world that is coming to an end, are going out to meet their Lord? Or is it imprisoned by its history, as in an armored vehicle, and has become a part of this world again?

Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Traditions of Christendom

It is not the fact that all Christian traditions are actually embraced by Jesus Christ, the one who has come and who is coming, that makes Christendom the church. This being embraced not only applies to Christendom but also to the world. It, too, is inescapably embraced by both divine acts. But the church is there, where people are again and again called into question by their Lord and cleansed through repentance and faith. The memory of the Christ who has come and the expectation of the Christ who is to come are not only a consolation but also a shock—we are not only confirmed by them but also shaken, for we are being asked whether we really live by God’s grace or by our works through which we want to secure the construction of the church. To address the question about the one church within divided Christendom, it is crucial that we let ourselves and our unquestioned assumptions be shaken. This is the presupposition for seeing the separated traditions of Christendom in a new way. One could object here: Christ does not just question the church! After all, it is his body and thus an inseparable part of himself! And yet Christ and the church are not simply identical. It is his body, but only he is the head of the body. He is not simply merged with the church, but, living in it, he is at the same time its Lord and its Judge. In this way, he not only encounters individual Christians but also entire churches, admonishing, warning, even threatening them: “Repent…. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Rev. 2.5; cf. v.16). “Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth… Be earnest, therefore, and repent!” (3.16 and 19). The Holy Spirit, too, not only dwells in the church but encounters it as the Lord. He calls to remembrance the Christ who has come, and he arouses the expectation of the one who is coming. In doing this, he not only comforts the churches but also warns and judges them: “Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches” (Rev. 2.7 et passim). The question concerning the one church presupposes not only the certainty of its indestructible reality but also the question of whether we will let ourselves be governed by the Holy Spirit.[xiii] The eschatological calling to account of Christendom by the coming Christ found its expression in the distinction between the visible and the invisible church—a distinction that recurs in the history of ecclesiology in numerous other pairs of terms. Thus, e. g., a distinction has been made between the church as the external body, to which dead members also belong, and the body of the living members. There is also the distinction between the mixed society of saints and sinners and the communion of saints. In the Lutheran Confessions there is a corresponding distinction between the church in the broader sense and the church in the proper sense (ecclesia late and ecclesia proprie dicta); between the external church, to which the wicked and hypocrites also belong, and the church of the true believers; between the church, to which members of the kingdom of the devil also belong,

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and the church, which is the kingdom of Christ.4 While the relationship between the invisible and the visible church has also been interpreted in the Platonic sense of the contrast between idea and earthly reality, the true meaning of these pairs of terms is eschatological, and reference to the parables of Jesus has again and again been made in this context: God will separate the true members of the church from those who only appear to be members, like separating the good stalks from the weeds, the wheat from the chaff, the good fish from the bad, the wise virgins from the foolish ones. Therefore, the one-sided manner by which, e. g., Bellarmine[xiv] emphasized and asserted the visibility of the church over against the Reformers’ use of the Augustinian concept of the invisible church should not obscure the fact that (1) both sides expected the final judgment that will come upon the members of the church, and then the subsequent separation; and that (2) both sides knew that while the church can indeed expel blasphemers but not hypocrites, gross sinners but not hidden ones, it must not anticipate the separation that will take place at the eschatological harvest announced in Jesus’ parables; and that (3) the community of those who truly believe, the saints, the living members of the body of Christ, exists within the earthly church. To put it pointedly, one can say that even if the invisible church is hidden in the visible church until the last day, and even if true believers cannot be separated by the church itself from those who are hypocrites, it is still the case, according to the Reformation understanding, that the invisible church is visible in the visible church. For where the gospel is proclaimed and the sacraments are administered, we can trust that these actions do not fail to produce the fruit of faith, justification, and the new obedience, although only the coming Christ will finally make the reality of these fruits manifest.

5. Apostolic Tradition and the Traditions of Christendom If the remembrance of Jesus’ death and second coming is taken seriously, then this will mean the unsettling of how all parts of Christendom take for granted their appeal to Jesus Christ and of how they understand themselves as belonging to him. But there are also unsettling events that serve not to renew the church but to disintegrate it. We must therefore ask more precisely whether and to what extent the apostolic witness to Christ has been preserved in the separate traditions of Christendom, for the apostles, as the commissioned eyewitnesses, are authoritative for the church’s witness to Christ for all time. Their witness is the abiding criterion for knowing the instructions of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the many voices of this world. The question concerning the church is not already answered by the

4 Cf., e. g., Apol. VII.16–20 and 28f. [BSELK, 404–409 (BC, 176–178). –Ed.]

Apostolic Tradition and the Traditions of Christendom

self-understanding of the various parts of Christendom. Rather, they must all be critically examined against apostolic tradition. With respect to the fundamental acknowledgment of the abiding, normative position of the apostles, Christendom is in agreement. But where is the apostolic tradition to be found? The most common answer is that it can be found within the broad stream of traditions of Christendom. If, in view of what is literally unchanging and what is changeable, we differentiated above between a narrower, a wider, and the broadest range of tradition, then all these ranges in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church must be determined by apostolic tradition. As has already been pointed out, apostolicity plays a fundamentally unique position among the other attributes of the church.[xv] Apostolic tradition is encountered in the authentic wording of the writings of the apostles—or of their disciples and of other witnesses close to them—in Holy Scripture. These direct and indirect apostolic witnesses are different from all other constituent parts of the tradition in that they have not undergone any change since their collection and especially since the delimitation of the New Testament canon, but (apart from textual variants) they have been handed down in the same wording through the centuries. But this does not yet adequately answer the question concerning apostolic tradition, for the New Testament Scriptures were originally available to their readers not only as historical traditions of Jesus but as a call to faith in Jesus, not only as a doctrine of the gospel but as a call of the gospel, not as a “letter” but as a “viva vox,” as “the Spirit who gives life.”5 Expressed in Pauline terms, the apostolic message encounters its audience not only as “doctrine” but as “prophecy,” namely, as the revealing, saving, and exhorting word that encounters those so addressed in their concrete situation. But for us today, the words of the New Testament Scriptures come as doctrine that has been handed down. The apostolic gospel is thus not solely handed down through the remembrance of its previous proclamation but also through the concrete proclamation taking place in our situation and thus as a living word of God—indeed, just as Jesus’ Last Supper is not only handed down through the report about this meal but also through the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

5 [Cf. 2 Cor. 3.4–6. The view that the gospel is “viva vox,” “a living voice,” is a recurring theme in Luther’s theology. For example: “And the word gospel signifies nothing else than a sermon or report concerning the grace and mercy of God merited and acquired through the Lord Jesus Christ with His death. Actually, the gospel is not what one finds in books and what is written in letters of the alphabet; it is rather an oral sermon and a living Word, a voice that resounds throughout the world and is proclaimed publicly, so that one hears it everywhere….” (“Foreword,” Sermons on First Peter [ca. 1522], WA, 12.259.8ff.; LW 1 , 30.3 [trans. modified]). –Ed.]

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These simple statements make it clear that neither the formula “sola scriptura” [“scripture alone”] nor the formula “sola traditio” [“tradition alone”] is sufficient as an answer to the question about where the apostolic tradition is to be found. As such, the first formula does not express the need for tradition through the viva vox evangelii [living voice of the gospel], while the second formula does not express the difference between that which is contained in Holy Scripture and later traditions. Both formulas, therefore, need to be supplemented and differentiated. We cannot discuss here in detail the history of the changes to the concept of tradition and the changes in defining the relationship between Scripture and tradition. Only the most important stages of this history will be highlighted here: The canon of the New Testament Scriptures had emerged to demarcate it from Judaizing false teachers and especially Gnostic false teachers who relied on (in part secret) oral apostolic traditions. The church, on the other hand, collected the original written traditions of the words, acts, and fate [Geschick] of Jesus and the message of the apostles, and it discarded the others. That not all the traditions that were known at that time are included in the New Testament Scriptures, the latter themselves state (cf., e. g., 2 Thess. 2.15). But these oral traditions, which continued alongside the Scriptures, were apparently no longer accessible with respect to their wording by the time of Tertullian and Irenaeus, and they had merged into the stream of the church’s proclamation. In any case, the early church fathers based their teaching about the faith on the Holy Scriptures, and they understood the orally transmitted regula fidei [rule of faith] and the creed not as an independent, further authority with an additional content that was different from Scripture but rather as concurring with Scripture or even directly as providing an encapsulating interpretation of it. Thus the church fathers bore witness in many statements that Holy Scripture contains everything necessary for the knowledge of the faith. The exception here were only a few customs that are not mentioned in Scripture, which are mostly of a liturgical nature, e. g., the baptism of children, making the sign of the cross, praying in the direction of the east, the mixing of wine and water in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, all of which were traced back to oral apostolic tradition. The basis for being certain about the sufficiency of Holy Scripture for the teaching of the faith was so self-evident that deeper, fundamental reflection on the relationship between Holy Scripture and oral tradition was viewed as unnecessary at the time. In medieval scholasticism, too, the sufficiency of Holy Scripture was taken for granted, as can be seen from numerous basic affirmations. The dialectical juxtaposition of varying quotations from the fathers, using the method of “sic et non” or “videtur quod” and “sed contra,” shows that people were not blind to the differences among the church fathers nor to the differences between them and Holy Scripture.[xvi] But in the responses (respondeo) that followed, Holy Scripture was asserted as the decisive authority, even if it is obvious that there was a widespread tendency toward harmonizing the fathers and Holy Scripture. So, e. g., Thomas Aquinas taught that theological scholarship “properly uses the authority of canonical Scripture as a necessary argument, and the authority of the other teachers of the

Apostolic Tradition and the Traditions of Christendom

church as one that may properly be used, though merely as probable. For our faith rests upon the revelation made to the apostles and prophets, who wrote the canonical books, and not on a revelation made to other teachers.”6 The same holds true for Anselm of Canterbury, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, and others.[xvii] Only on the fringes of scholastic theology did voices arise which questioned the sufficiency of Scripture for the faith of the church and the necessity for it to be supplemented by oral apostolic traditions. Here—and not in the ancient church—is where the Tridentine formula has its roots.7 The Reformation doctrine of the sufficiency of Holy Scripture is based on the teaching of the ancient church and the scholastics. When Luther, e. g., taught in the Smalcald Articles that “the Word of God should establish articles of faith and no one else,” this was not an innovation.8 What was new was the sharpness with which scriptural authority was asserted against “traditions.” However, it should not be overlooked that, e. g., in the Augsburg Confession and its Apology, the term traditions only refers to “ceremonies” and cultic and legal regulations that had been introduced by human beings, which had increased considerably in the course of the Middle Ages and which were required to be observed as necessary for salvation.9 These requirements were expressly rejected as obscuring or even denying the message of the justification of the sinner by faith in Jesus Christ. In contrast to these human traditions, the Augsburg Confession and the Apology expressly acknowledge the symbols of the ancient church and the dogmatic resolutions of the four first ecumenical councils, including the Chalcedonian Definition, not because of their age or because they were conciliar resolutions but because of their conformity with Holy Scripture. For this reason, too, the Augsburg Confession and other confessional writings expressly repeat the ancient church’s rejections of heresies. The harmony between the church fathers and Holy Scripture, which

6 Aquinas, ST, I.1.8. [trans. modified to reflect Schlink’s translation of the Latin original. –Ed.] 7 Cf. Josef Ruppert Geiselmann’s overview of the history of the ancient and medieval church’s doctrine of the sufficiency of Holy Scripture in relation to the faith, as well as the beginnings of the teaching about its insufficiency, Die Heilige Schrift und die Tradition: Zu den neueren Kontroversen über das Verhältnis der Heiligen Schrift zu den Nichtgeschriebenen Traditionen [Holy Scripture and Tradition: On the Recent Controversies about the Relationship of Scripture to Unwritten Traditions], Quaestiones Disputatae 18, ed. Karl Rahner and Heinrich Schlier (Freiburg: Herder, 1962), 222–256. [The first three chapters of this book have been translated as The Meaning of Tradition, trans. W. J. O’Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966). The Tridentine formula was set forth in the fourth session (8 April 1546): “Following the example of the orthodox fathers, the council accepts and venerates with like feeling of piety and reverence all the books of both the Old and New Testament, since the one God is the author of both, as well as the traditions concerning both faith and conduct, as either directly spoken by Christ or dictated by the Holy Spirit, which have been preserved in unbroken sequence in the catholic church” (Tanner, 2.663 [trans. modified]; cf. Denzinger, 1501). –Ed.] 8 SA II, 2.15. [BSELK, 734 (BC, 304). The original reads: “This means that the Word of God—and no one else, not even an angel—should establish articles of faith.” Cf. Gal. 1.8. SA II, 2.13–15 was not part of Luther’s original text of 1537. He inserted it in the version that was published in 1538. –Ed.] 9 [See esp. AC XV (BSELK, 108–109 [BC, 48–49]); AC XXVI (BSELK, 150–161 [BC, 74–81]); AC XXVIII.36ff. (BSELK, 191–201 [BC, 96–103]); and Apol. XV (BSELK, 520–541 [BC, 223–230]). –Ed.]

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had been self-evident in the Middle Ages, could no longer be presupposed in the age of humanism, given its more precise linguistic and historical questions and insights, and some interpretations of Scripture from the ancient church were sharply criticized. But the church fathers were investigated with special respect, and agreement with them, under the critical norm of Holy Scripture, continued to be highly valued. In contrast to Luther and Calvin, Melanchthon was more inclined to acknowledge the consensus of the first five centuries as an authority because of its age. Moreover, the criticism of numerous cultic and legal traditions did not rule out the fact that many of them were retained for the sake of their usefulness and for the sake of love (merely compare, e. g., the Lutheran baptismal liturgy). Calvin’s Reformation went much further in its elimination of “ceremonies.” What was fundamentally new about the Reformation’s position on the issue of apostolic tradition had less to do with the doctrine of the sufficiency of apostolic tradition in Holy Scripture and more to do with its focus on the gospel, which, on the basis of Scripture, is proclaimed as a present, living voice through which God’s unique act of salvation is effective in the present. The one-sided concept of tradition that emerged in the Reformation was later considerably expanded. In his Examen Concilii tridentini, Martin Chemnitz differentiated eight types of tradition, namely: (1) Holy Scripture; (2) its transmission through the church; (3) the apostolic symbol; (4) the continuity of the interpretation of Scripture by the fathers; … and finally (7) church rites and customs.10 But as much as Chemnitz acknowledged the dogmas and fathers of the ancient church as authorities, it is nevertheless clear that he still refused to acknowledge these traditions as a further independent source of the faith alongside Holy Scripture. In the same way, the Formula of Concord (1580) holds that the three symbols of the ancient church, the Augsburg Confession, and the other confessional writings of the Lutheran Reformation are to be subordinated to Holy Scripture, which is the “one (sole) rule and guiding principle.”11 In contradiction to the Reformation understanding of Scripture, the Council of Trent taught that the gospel—“the source of all saving truth and norms of conduct”—is contained

10 Martin Chemnitz, Examen Concilii tridentini (Frankfurt a. M: Feierabend & Hvder, 1565–73). [ET: Examination of the Council of Trent, 4 vols., ed. and trans. Fred Kramer (St. Louis: Concordia, 1971). Chemnitz was a German Lutheran Reformer, theologian, and co-author of the Formula of Concord, but he is perhaps best known for this careful analysis of the doctrinal decrees of the Council of Trent, as the latter had been interpreted by the southern prelates who had participated in the Tridentine discussions. Schlink left out Chemnitz’s fifth, sixth, and eighth types of tradition, namely, (5) apostolic dogmas and teachings that are not explicitly stated in Scripture but which are authentically drawn from the Scriptures (e. g., infant baptism); (6) the “catholic consensus of the fathers” that agrees with the teaching of Holy Scripture; and (8) “traditions which pertain both to faith and morals and which cannot be proved with any testimony of Scripture but which the Synod of Trent nevertheless commands to be received and venerated with the same reverence and devotion as the Scripture itself ” (Examination of the Council of Trent, 1.249–273). –Ed.] 11 Cf. the introduction to the FC SD, “Of the Succinct Outline [summarischen Begriff ], Basis, Rule, and Guiding Principle.” [German. BSELK, 1308 (BC, 526 [trans. modified]); cf. BC, 528–529. –Ed.]

Apostolic Tradition and the Traditions of Christendom

“in written books and unwritten traditions.” All biblical books and the oral traditions “that have come down to us, having been received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ himself or from the apostles by the dictation of the Holy Spirit” are to be acknowledged “with the same sense of devotion and reverence.”12 The preliminary draft to the council contained the formulation that revealed truth was “partly” (partim) contained in Holy Scripture, “partly” (partim) in oral tradition.13 Even though the council decided upon “et” [“and”] instead of the original “partim-partim,” after the council this “et” was mainly interpreted in the sense of “partim-partim,” i. e., in the sense of acknowledging two independent, complementary sources of revelation. In this way, various possibilities remained open for expecting a greater knowledge of the truth from Holy Scripture or from oral tradition. The polemical teaching of the Counter-Reformation, especially under the influence of Bellarmine, stressed that Holy Scripture lacked sufficiency and was incomprehensible, and it placed greater significance on oral tradition. In his investigation of the various historical interpretations of the Tridentine formula, Geiselmann came to the conclusion that the “et,” as far as the faith is concerned, should be interpreted in the sense of “totum-totum”: The truth of divine revelation is “wholly [ganz] in Scripture and wholly [ganz] in tradition.”14 Scripture is insufficient only with respect to customs, practices, rites, etc., and needs to be supplemented by oral traditions. Whether the Council of Trent meant the “et” in this sense cannot be proven. But the Second Vatican Council has allowed the interpretation of the “et” in the sense of “totum-totum.”15 This means that in matters of faith the authority of tradition is identical with the authority of scriptural interpretation. This interpretation corresponds to a new understanding (influenced by German idealism) that recognized the unity of Scripture and tradition in the organic process of the life of the church. In the nineteenth century, the Tübingen Catholic theologian Johann Evangelista Kuhn, in particular, pointed out that apostolic tradition takes place in the church’s living proclamation and that in it the word of God is present in its entirety.16 In the twentieth century there was a significant shift in other church bodies as well, away from a one-sided interest in tradition as that which safeguards the components of apostolic doctrine that stay the same, and a shift toward an interest in the living fulfillment of tradition—whether

12 Denzinger, 1501. [Trans. modified; cf. Tanner, 2.663. –Ed.] 13 [See Concilium Tridentinum, Diariorum, Actorum, Epistularum, Tractatuum Nova Collectio, 13 vols., ed. the Görres-Gesellschaft (Freiburg: Herder, 1901–2001), 5.31ff. –Ed.] 14 Geiselmann, Die Heilige Schrift und die Tradition, 282. 15 [Cf. Dei verbum (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation [Tanner, 2.971–981]). For Schlink’s criticism of this dogmatic constitution, see NK, SÖB, 1/2.165–78 (ESW, 1.468–78). –Ed.] 16 Cf. Josef Geiselmann, “Das Konzil von Trient über das Verhältnis der Heiligen Schrift und der nicht geschriebenen Traditionen” [The Council of Trent on the Relationship between Holy Scripture and Unwritten Traditions], in Die mündliche Überlieferung [The Oral Tradition], ed. Michael Schmaus (Munich: Hüber, 1957), 200–206.

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through the Reformation churches’ viva vox of the gospel handed down in Scripture,17 or through the living implementation of the sacred liturgy based on biblical and ancient-church traditions.18 In this respect, the formula “totum-totum” signifies an important convergence of the separated parts of Christendom on the issue of apostolic tradition. And yet this convergence still does not represent an agreement, for compared to the differences within the ancient church, the traditions of the Eastern, Roman, and Reformation churches have diverged much further from each another over the centuries. The convergence has more to do with the abstract concept of tradition than actual traditions. Also, the important question about the line between original apostolic traditions and those that arose later in the church is either not answered (as at Trent) or answered differently across the various parts of Christendom. In addition, the need to base apostolic tradition on the historical words and acts of the apostles is viewed very differently if the New Testament Scriptures alone are designated as apostolic tradition, or if they along with the consensus of the ancient church are designated as such, or if a doctrine that is based neither on the explicit statements of Holy Scripture nor on the tradition of the ancient church in the earliest centuries is called apostolic tradition.19 Above all, however, there remains the question of whether the formula “totum-totum” is supposed to assert the agreement between Scripture and tradition as a postulate or as a fact. If the latter is meant, then each of the separated parts of Christendom remains trapped in its own tradition, and each can only call out to the other: “Leave your tradition and join mine; then we are one.” The formula “totum-totum” can also be misused to justify a traditionalistic positivism.

Fruitful ecumenical dialogue is only possible if at least some common presuppositions exist between those who are separated. Since there is no precise consensus about the question regarding the relationship between Scripture and tradition in

17 Cf. Gerhard Ebeling, Die Geschichtlichkeit der Kirche und ihrer Verkündigung als theologisches Problem (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1950 [ET: The Problem of Historicity in the Church and Its Proclamation, trans. Grover Foley [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967. –Ed.]); and Kristen Ejner Skydsgaard, “Schrift und Tradition,” Kerygma und Dogma 1 (1955): 161–79. [ET: “Scripture and Tradition: Remarks on the Problem of Tradition in Theology Today,” Scottish Journal of Theology 9 (1956): 337–358. –Ed.] 18 Toward this end, cf. Viorel Mehedintu, Offenbarung und Überlieferung: Neue Möglichkeiten eines Dialogs zwischen der orthodoxen und der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche [Revelation and Tradition: New Possibilities for a Dialogue between the Orthodox and the Evangelical-Lutheran Church] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980). See, e. g., the reference to Georges Florovsky, who describes faith as a basic element of the Orthodox tradition, “which differs in no essential way from the faith given in Scripture, except that in tradition it becomes a living faith” (230). 19 For the latter, cf., e. g., the dogmatization of the “assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary” with body and soul into heavenly glory, as proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in his apostolic constitution, Munificentissimus Deus (1 November 1950). [See Denzinger, 3900–3904. –Ed.]

Apostolic Tradition and the Traditions of Christendom

Christendom today, let us start with a few facts that exist across almost all church bodies, which can provide a basis for ecumenical dialogue: (a) Despite all the differences in their traditions and in the ways they define the relationship between Scripture and tradition, the separated parts of Christendom have in common the authentic tradition of the apostolic message and doctrine in Holy Scripture. Throughout Christendom, the biblical apostolic traditions occupy a superlative and incomparable position, as Scripture readings, as sermon texts, in catechesis, and as the foundation for dogmatic teaching. In the life of Christianity, the authority of the Bible has actually increased compared with other traditions. So, e. g., at the Second Vatican Council biblical arguments played a much greater role than was the case at Vatican I. Likewise, in the ecumenical movement for “faith and order,” biblical-exegetical work has become more sophisticated and fruitful and has acquired greater weight than it earlier had. Such observations do not imply the formulation of a scriptural principle, but it should be noted that—similar to how the relationship between Scripture and tradition is defined in principle in the various parts of Christendom—there is increasing factual interest in not only asserting the agreement between one’s own tradition and Scripture (or at least the lack of a contradiction between one’s own tradition and Scripture), but also proving it and making it clear from the perspective of Holy Scripture. This interest has been strengthened by the rediscovery of the ancient and medieval church’s doctrine of the sufficiency of Holy Scripture. (b) Straight across Christendom there is today more interest in the literal sense of Holy Scripture, i. e., in knowing what the authors of the biblical texts had wanted to say, than was the case in the past. The interpretations of Holy Scripture had diverged widely in the separated parts of Christendom because the biblical texts were interpreted according to various rules of a multi-layered meaning in Scripture, and thus they were interpreted largely allegorically. Research into the literal sense of Holy Scripture, however, using newer philological and historical methods, has achieved a precision that had not existed before. Many conflicts between scriptural interpretations have been overcome in Christendom today, and even with respect to such conflicts that have been considered insurmountable for centuries, such as, e. g., between the Reformation and Roman Catholic interpretations of the Pauline doctrine of justification, a consensus is beginning to emerge. There is incomparably greater agreement today in biblical-exegetical work than in discussions about traditional dogmatic controversies. To be sure, the observation of more and more agreements in biblical-exegetical work does not yet imply a de facto consensus about the hermeneutical issue of a typological, allegorical, and other scriptural interpretation or about a justification for the question of a “deeper” or “fuller” meaning of Scripture that is not directly expressed by the littera. Nevertheless, the growing consensus in the philological-historical interpretation of Scripture, and

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the greater confidence regarding the clarity and perspicuity of Holy Scripture that is associated with it, is an important shared presupposition for ecumenical dialogue. (c) Extremely important, then, is the further uncovering of the multiplicity of statements in Holy Scripture concerning one and the same topic. For example, above we pointed to the variety of names, honorific titles, and designations of dignity for Jesus, to the manifold statements about the salvific significance of Jesus’ death, as well as to the manifold statements about God’s salvific action through the gospel, to the multiple descriptions of the church, and to the different details in the New Testament concerning the ordering of the church’s ministerial offices. For many of these topics, the differences cannot be harmonized. Instead, their differences point to the inexhaustable abundance of the divine salvific action. These differences likely offer more possibilities for selecting comprehensive, basic theological concepts, dogmatic definitions, and church-law regulations than have been realized so far in the history of the church. (d) Differences between the church fathers are also viewed now in a much more precise way. Today it is no longer possible to speak of a self-evident and general consensus among the fathers, as was customary for centuries. Here we are faced with a “consensus” which, even after the heresies of that time were excluded, embraced considerable differences and contained the possibilities for various subsequent theological and church developments. So, e. g., some of the differences between Irenaeus and Tertullian, and between the Cappadocians and Augustine, portend the later divergences between Eastern and Western traditions. (e) Dialogue between the separated traditions of Christianity has received a further new presupposition through more precise insights into the historicity of the process of transmitting tradition. These insights came about particularly through research into the redaction history of the biblical writings, especially the Gospels, and through fuller inclusion of the liturgy and proclamation in research about the history of dogma. While tradition was previously understood primarily to mean the transmission of more or less fixed formulas and content, now the great importance of the viva vox evangelii is acknowledged. The same holds true for prayer in relation to the traditional liturgy, as well as for decisions about church leadership in relation to traditional church law. Apostolic tradition takes place as an historically living re-implementation of what is handed down in unchangeable wording in the New Testament Scriptures. (f) In the course of church history, it became more and more self-evident that differences in dogma had to lead to church divisions. But from the multiplicity of the biblical witnesses and of the teachings of the church fathers, as well as from the historical vitality of tradition, there arises the possibility of a great variety of church traditions in the unity of the apostolic tradition—including a variety of dogmatic definitions. Indeed, there is even the necessity for such diversity. Hence, Christendom would be guilty if each of its parts persisted in its own traditions,

Recognizing the One Church in a Disunited Christendom

would refuse to seek the apostolic tradition in the other parts of Christendom, and would refuse to speak the gospel to people who have not yet heard it in new words that penetrate their current situation. The above statements do not indeed imply a consensus in principle about defining the relationship between Scripture and tradition. But they contain such far-reaching de facto commonalities that ecumenical dialogue is possible from here, in which the participants may inquire in a new way about the one apostolic church that is in the parts of Christendom that are separated from them. On the basis of these shared presuppositions, we should now address the two basic ecumenical questions about recognizing the one church in divided Christendom and about representing this unity in the unification of the separated parts.

6. Recognizing the One Church in a Disunited Christendom Since the introductory part of this dogmatics has already set forth a few fundamental statements concerning “the task of an ecumenical dogmatics” (chap. 3.3), and since, moreover, all its chapters raise the question of the unity of the statements of faith in the separated parts of Christendom, we can be brief in answering the question about recognizing the one church in a divided Christendom. We may also assume that there is agreement between the methods that have proven themselves in the work of the WCC, on the one hand, and the instructions for ecumenical conduct that were given by the Second Vatican Council in its Decree on Ecumenism, on the other.20 Of course, in the endeavor to recognize unity, the issues, the presuppositions, and the priorities will differ in their details, depending on which parts of Christendom are seeking one another, e. g., if the Roman Catholic or the Evangelical-Lutheran Church is taking up ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox churches, and these differences will also require special methodological reflection. In the following, however, only those aspects are to be emphasized which must be taken into account in every ecumenical endeavor. (a) Repentance in View of One’s Own Community Recognizing the unity of the church is not possible without repentance. It is of course easy in general to demand of Christendom that it must repent in order to achieve unity, and this demand has often been made. But most of the time one

20 For the latter, cf. the second chap. of Unitatis redintegratio. [Decree on Ecumenism (Tanner, 2.912–915). –Ed.]

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only thinks that the other Christian communities should allow themselves to be called into question and that they must repent. But instead, we must first surrender ourselves to being called to account by God. Repentance must first be carried out as one’s own repentance. This repentance has to be done on the basis of a self-examination under the apostolic tradition. In doing so, one cannot restrict oneself to the biblical statements that have always been used to justify one’s own church body. Rather, this repentance has to take place through a fundamental and comprehensive self-criticism under the richness of the Bible’s christological statements, under the fullness of the Spirit’s working that is attested to there, under the manifold statements about God’s salvific action through the gospel, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the other means of grace, and under the multiplicity of ministerial offices and the other charismatic ministries. This repentance must also take place by acknowledging the New Testament’s statements about the future glory that is already granted now. In light of this standard, we have to examine not only the processes that led to the separation, not only the manner in which our church body then asserted itself over against those separated from it, and how it operated alongside them, but we have to examine in particular the state of our church body today: to what extent were the new findings and expectations actually realized that were decisive for the separation? There is a traditional boasting about the separation, even though the positive impulses that caused it have ceased to exist. Our faith and our life, our worship and our engagement with the world, our traditions in the narrower and broader sense—all these we must self-critically place under the standard of the fullness of the apostolic witness and directives. If we look closely and honestly at ourselves and our church body in the presence of God, we will discover many shortcomings and recognize many obscurations of the one holy church in our own midst. We can only plead, “Lord, have mercy.” It is quite common to apply this call to repentance only to individuals. But just as the Old Testament prophets’ call to repent went out to the whole people of Israel, so there are also New Testament calls of repentance directed to entire churches. (b) Hope Regarding the Other Christian Church Bodies As those who repent, we should turn to the other Christian church bodies in love and hope. We should not initially focus on the shortcomings of others and on justifying our separation from them. Rather, we should put the inherited prejudices aside and make a new beginning by inquiring about how the other community actually lives. Here, too, the question must not be restricted to the time when the separation arose, nor to the subsequent events of living next to one another and being opposed to each other. Above all, the focus must be on the current shape of the other church

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body. It could very well be the case that here, too, considerable changes have taken place since the initial separation. So one must not be content with first impressions but must dig deeper to inquire about what is essential and to try to comprehend as a living whole the church body that is separated from us. When it comes to the issue of faith, one should not restrict oneself to the analysis of dogmatic propositions, for it is quite possible that what is lacking in them might be found in the liturgy, in hymns, and in the witness of personal piety. Likewise, the question about the inner communal life of the other church body cannot be restricted to the study of its church order. In every Christian community, there are spiritual events that have not been raised to the level of conscious theological reflection or placed under church law, and yet they have had a powerful influence on the community. On the other hand, one must also reckon with the possibility that—because of the dogmas and church orders that one expects to find—some expressions of faith and love are missing in the other community. The standard by which we have to measure others is the same apostolic tradition to which we ourselves must be subject to, namely, to the whole multiplicity of its witnesses and directives. In view of this standard, the primary question is not about what is missing in the other church bodies, but rather what are the witnesses to Christ and the spiritual gifts that are living in the other communities that we are lacking; what is taking place at the center of those communities but is perhaps only a marginal phenomenon in ours. Instead of distancing ourselves from the others, we should open ourselves up in such situations to learn from and receive from the other. (c) The Copernican Turning Point in Viewing Christendom Let us examine ourselves first, and only then examine the parts of Christendom that are separated from us. Let us examine ourselves in the willingness to repent, and then examine others in the hope of discovering grace at work there. If we do both types of examining under the apostolic standard, then that will entail a profound change in the usual way both sides mutually view one another. For it is generally the case that, when one asks about the church in the rest of Christendom, one inquires about the “elements” of one’s own Church that are in the other Christian communities.[xviii] Then one uses one’s own church body as a standard for judging the other churches. This starting point lies very close at hand because we are certain that, through the baptism we have received here, we have become members of the one true church, and, through God’s word and the gift of the Lord’s Supper in our Church, we will be built up as members of the body of Christ. But if we only inquire about “elements” of our church body that are in the other Christian communities, then we will not see their reality in the totality of their life, and our call for unity can then only be: “You must become as I am.”

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On the other hand, recognizing the church in other Christian communities requires a turning point that can be described as a Copernican revolution. We are no longer to regard the other Christian communities as if they move around our Church as the center, just as before Copernicus the planets were understood as revolving around the earth. Instead, we must recognize that together with the other communities, we circle around Christ, like planets circling around the sun, and receive light from him. This turning point in thinking about the church is essential if we are to move forward in ecumenical matters. We are not to compare the others against ourselves, but rather to compare ourselves, together with them, against the apostolic witness to Christ, and only in this way, on the basis of Christ, recognize our own reality as well as that of the unfamiliar. We have to learn to see ourselves from the outside, so to speak. In this way, it can happen that we recognize within our own church body greater conflicts than exist between it and some of those who are separated from us. The call for unity can only be: “Let us be converted to one another!” (d) Ecumenical Dialogue No Christian community can escape the problem of the one church in a fragmented Christendom. Each community will have to pursue inquiry and research into the history, worship, dogmas, ordering, the works of love, and the social-political action of the others. Such inquiry, however, usually becomes fruitful only if it is not undertaken merely from one side. Instead, inquiry from both sides must meet in dialogue. The priority here is dialogue with the community from which ours has directly separated—in contrast to separations that we ourselves did not make but have only inherited. Thus, e. g., the churches of the Reformation themselves did not bring about the separation from the Orthodox Church; rather, the Reformation arose within the Roman Church, which had long since been separated from the Byzantine Church. Dialogue between those who have brought about a separation in the past is most urgent because this is where the wound is most painful and the rapprochement is most difficult. The events of the separation, which have been handed down not infrequently in a distorted manner, and the theological declarations, confessions, and dogmas of both sides, which have often been misinterpreted, must be jointly examined for their truthfulness, and interpreted anew. Such bilateral dialogues between the parts of Christendom that have directly separated from one another should be situated within the more comprehensive dialogue among many or all Christian communities. While it is true that bilateral dialogues can be conducted in a more nuanced manner than multilateral ones—given that, despite their opposing positions, they hold some presuppositions in common from the time of their separation—they are in danger of getting bogged down in details that have no connection to the larger multilateral discussion, and they are

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in danger of losing sight of the totality of church teaching and Christian life. In both bilateral and multilateral situations, however, the dialogue should not only be conducted between theologians but should include the participation of other competent members of the relevant Christian communities. (e) The Hierarchical Ordering of Dogmatic Statements[xix] In ecumenical dialogue, all issues that are disputed between the separated communities are to be addressed. It should be noted that not every issue is equally close to the center of the Christian confession. With this perspective in mind, we take up what has been described by the Second Vatican Council as the “hierarchy of truths”: “When comparing doctrines (of the separated churches) with one another, one should remember that in Catholic doctrine there exists an order (ordo) or ‘hierarchy’ of truths (‘hierarchia’ veritatum), since they vary in their connection with the foundation of the Christian faith.”21 Under “veritates” [truths] are to be understood the components of Roman Catholic doctrine, specifically the propositions of dogma. The concept of “hierarchy” recognizes a ranking of these truths, that is, a structure of irreversible relations of superiority and subordination, of determination and of being determined of the individual dogmas in relation to one another. Similar distinctions can also be found in Luther, who spoke of “chief articles” or “highest articles” of the faith, and in post-Reformation Protestant Orthodoxy, which distinguished between “fundamental” and non-fundamental doctrines.[xx] Since the plural term truths is not found in either the Old Testament or the New—truth is God’s faithfulness and steadfastness, yes, God himself and Jesus Christ as God’s revelation—it is preferable that we speak here of a hierarchical ordering of dogmatic statements. According to the Decree on Ecumenism, the highest governing truth is the “foundation of the faith”: “…faith in God, one and three, in the incarnate Son of God, our Redeemer and Lord.”22 With this statement the Roman Catholic Church falls in with the World Council of Churches, which has in its “Basis,” as a condition for membership, the confession of Jesus as “God and Savior” and the willingness to work together “for the glory of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”23

21 Unitatis redintegratio, sec. 11. [Tanner, 2.915 (trans. modified). –Ed.] 22 Unitatis redintegratio, sec. 11c and sec. 12. [Tanner, 2.915 (trans. modified). –Ed.] 23 [“The Constitution and Basis of the World Council of Churches,” adopted at Amsterdam (1948), reprinted in Documents of the Christian Church, 3d ed., ed. Henry Bettenson and Chris Maunder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 426–427. The Basis is the shared point of reference for all WCC member churches. It was revised in 1961 (to make it a more trinitarian confession) and in 1975 (to clarify the WCC’s functions and purposes). –Ed.]

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If we ask further, “What are the subordinate dogmatic statements (or ‘truths’), and what are the rankings that thereby have to be distinguished?,” the Decree on Ecumenism provides no answer. The council ceded these questions to further theological work. If one proceeds from the “foundation of the faith,” then one must certainly say that here one must think not only of the immanent Trinity but also of the economic Trinity on which it is noetically based. One must thereby think of the act of creation by God the Father, the act of redemption by the Son, and the re-creating action of the Holy Spirit, just as, in view of the statement about “the incarnate Son of God, our Redeemer and Lord,” his death, resurrection, and parousia must also be taken into account. These statements, too, belong to the “foundation.” Moreover, the Christian faith is not only concerned about the acknowledgment of facts but also about their salvific significance and about the appropriation of this salvation through the gospel and the sacraments. The doctrine of the Trinity and the salvific action of the triune God upon humans are so closely connected that Luther designated the doctrine of the justification of the sinner by the triune God as the chief article, and less so the doctrine of the Trinity in and of itself. But if we then inquire further, e. g., from the perspective of acknowledging the divine salvific action, about how in baptism the rebirth relates to the water, and about how in the Lord’s Supper Christ’s body and blood relate to the bread and wine, these issues could be described as secondary topics in comparison to the saving action of God himself. That is even more true, e. g., for the rites that accompany baptism, such as applying salt and oil, making the sign of the cross, and the like. If one also keeps in mind that the New Testament Scriptures use a great multiplicity of expressions to attest to the salvific significance of Jesus and to God’s salvific action through him and the Holy Spirit, and that therefore numerous possibilities arise for choosing what will serve as the overarching dogmatic concepts, one will recognize that the use of different dogmatic terms for one and the same issue is of secondary importance compared to the fundamental dogmatic acknowledgment of Jesus’ vicarious self-giving for the world. (f) Hierarchical Orderings in the Church’s Life The hierarchical ordering of dogmatic statements is not only about the ordering of their subject matter but also about their rank in the overall structure of the church’s life. If we assume that the worship assembly is the center of the church’s expressions of life, then the dogmatic statement can indeed be voiced in this center in the structures of confession, acclamation, doxology, and witness, and thus it can have a prominent position in the life of the church. However, as statements of doctrine, dogmatic statements are not usually expressed in the worship service itself but are assigned to serve it. In this way, the doctrine of the gospel serves the proclamation

Recognizing the One Church in a Disunited Christendom

of the gospel. Likewise, the doctrine of baptism and that of the Lord’s Supper serve the proper administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In a similar way, one can also speak of a “hierarchy” of church orders. This becomes clear, e. g., when one considers the priority that questions about the church’s ministerial office often take in ecumenical dialogues. As has already been mentioned (cf. 900f.), we find that in the New Testament Scriptures there is neither a firmly established term for the office of church leadership, nor is there the same ordering of ministerial offices in all congregations. Instead, we encounter a great multiplicity that cannot be reduced to a single order. In comparison, e. g., to the firmly established basic structures of the New Testament’s statements about the salvific significance of Jesus’ death, the New Testament’s statements about the charismata and the church’s ministerial offices show less agreement in their structure. Obviously, in early Christianity this issue was not perceived to be as pressing as the christological center of proclamation. As important as the callings into the ministerial offices and the freely emerging charismata were from the outset for the life of the church, they were still assigned to serve the witness to Christ in the world and the worship assembly. They were not a central issue in the same way that the gospel was. A hierarchical ordering is also found in the New Testament’s statements about the mission of Christians in the world. Most prominent is the exhortation to bear witness through word and deed to Christ’s act of salvation. There is also no lack of directives as to how the Christian should behave in relation to the existing political and social structures in the world. What is lacking, however, is the demand to change the existing social and political orderly structures. The primary concern is the salvation of humankind from the divine judgment into which humans have fallen, the salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. From this salvation, there is also then the expectation of a new relationship with other human beings. But the decisive change of this world is only expected with the coming parousia of Jesus Christ. The New Testament exhortations to serve the preservation of the world do not focus on the preservation as such but on the future new thing, toward which God is preserving the world. One could continue with further examples. However, it should have become clear by now how important it is in ecumenical dialogue to observe the hierarchical ordering of dogmatic statements and the vital functions of the church. (g) The Result of Joint Inquiry and Research At the very least, wrong notions that one had of the other are corrected, notions behind which one had hidden from the other, and which one had used as a defensive justification against the other. When this rubble that has accumulated between the Christian communities is cleared away, one comes to recognize with shame

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and astonishment that in many cases Christ is also at work beyond the boundaries of the church body in which we are members—saving, forgiving, healing, giving life. Although Christendom is divided in manifold ways, Christ has not ceased to demonstrate himself to be the one Lord, even in Christian communities that are separated from one another. And through their proclamation, peoples who knew nothing of him are led into the powerful realm of his grace. Although Christ condemns the disunity of believers, he is working in the separated Christian communities. Even if they deny one another’s authority to forgive sins, he forgives sins in them. Even if they do not recognize one another as the body of Christ, through their baptism he incorporates people into his body. Although they do not relate to one another as members of one body, he grants them his sacramental body. The Lord condescends so deeply to the separated ones, that he still serves them when they are not one. He does not allow every separation that has occurred in Christendom to be a separation from him. Through the working of the same Spirit, a unity of the separated ones persists, beyond which their division does not reach, and which is not undone by their division. If under the norm of the apostolic message we recognize the working of Christ and the Holy Spirit within fragmented Christendom, not only will individual insights ensue about the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, but so too will new discoveries, for this church is present where, in agreement with apostolic tradition, the gospel is proclaimed, baptism is administered, and the Lord’s Supper is celebrated. The many divided and scattered parts of Christendom cannot be discussed here in detail. We have to restrict ourselves to fundamental observations and will highlight three basic types of response to the question about the one church in the midst of the divisions of Christendom: (1) There are divisions within Christendom that are not about the antithesis between confessing and denying Jesus Christ but are rather about different unfoldings of the one confession of Christ vis-à-vis different historical fronts, in which Christ had to be confessed in varying ways. The separated belong together, like the four different Gospels or the manifold witnesses to Christ in the New Testament letters. In addition, the multiplicity of spiritual gifts was not the same in every early Christian community (cf., e. g., Rom. 12.6ff. with 1 Cor. 12.4ff.). Where this is recognized, one cannot dispute that the other community belongs to the one holy church of God. (2) There are other divisions in Christendom that are not about the antithesis between confessing Christ and denying him but are instead about one-sided emphases, stagnation, and shortcomings. Here it often becomes clear that the one-sidedness of one community is the answer to the one-sidedness of the other from which it has separated. Then one discovers a complementary relationship between these separated communities, in which one community is a necessary corrective and a necessary complement to the other. Some differences have only become conflicts

Representing the One Church in the Unification of the Separated Churches

through the refusal to correct them, through the subsequent separation, and then to each side’s claim that it is itself the whole church. Where this is recognized, one cannot dispute the presupposition for ecclesial reunification. (3) Of course, the result of ecumenical dialogue can also be the realization that the difference between the separated is so profound that the necessity for the division is confirmed. In fact, the church has not been given the promise that it will always advance on its way toward the coming Christ free from the hostility of false prophets, false teachers, and their followers. Above all, however, an immeasurable spiritual treasure, hidden by the divisions of Christendom, opens up to us, which has unfolded from the apostolic foundation within the history of Christianity. We discover the catholicity of the one church, which is not fully represented today in any of the particular churches. If at the beginning of the inquiry about the one church in the midst of a divided Christendom there was an indefinite hope and feeling or an unsettled emotional experience, the result, by contrast, of the research that was called for in the previous sections consists of well-founded and verifiable observations. This recognition of the unity of the separated in Jesus Christ—and thus the recognition of the one church in divided Christendom—is more than merely a theoretical finding. It already entails receiving from others, sharing in the grace given to others in Christ, and letting others participate in what Christ has given to us. Changes are already taking place in relation to one another. The fear of the other is disappearing. A collegial community has begun, even if the division has not yet been overcome.

7. Representing the One Church in the Unification of the Separated Churches The second task is to make the recognized unity visible by removing that which disfigures and obscures this unity. As exhilarating as the discovery of the church beyond the boundaries of one’s own Church is, neither a new understanding, nor friendship, nor collegial solidarity, nor shared spiritual experiences can replace the unity that God requires of us, for the recognition of unity is not yet the removal of the shame of disunity. Rather, the deepest abyss of this disgrace is only perceived when the oneness in Christ that is hidden under the separation is discovered. If the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church has been recognized in a Christian community that is separated from us, then we must not be content with this recognition, for God wants the visible unity of believers. The center of this visible unity is communion in the Lord’s Supper and in the joint service of love that proceeds from it. Full liturgical communion in word and sacrament is the common goal that is shared by the churches assembled in the WCC and by the ecumenism of the Roman Catholic Church.

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Which steps are necessary for reunification?[xxi] Depending on the prehistory at the time of the separation, and depending on the form that the separated churches have taken since then, the nature and sequence of the individual steps will be different. This is true also for such agreements and joint actions that generally begin one way or another before the reunification of the separated churches, such as, e. g., cooperating in the social sphere and advocating for peace, offering mutual help in times when the churches are facing a special need, agreeing on the same translation of the Lord’s Prayer and other important parts of the liturgy, occasionally worshiping together, coordinating missionary work, and witnessing to Christ publicly together. We will not engage these issues of behavior in advance of the unification, nor will we engage the particularity of the steps that, e. g., would be necessary for the unification of the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches or of one of these churches and the churches of the Reformation. Instead, we will restrict ourselves here, too, to those steps that are necessary in every case. The steps for unification differ from those for recognizing unity, given that the latter are usually worked out by individuals and commissions that are made up of members of the relevant Christian church bodies. The unification, however, is to be carried out by the participating churches as a whole, indeed, through those organs that are empowered to make such decisions according to the order of the relevant church. (a) The Necessary Consensus in the Confession of Faith The unification of the separated churches is not possible without their agreement in the faith. This consensus must be expressed in clear terms. The central response of faith to God’s act of salvation in Christ and the Holy Spirit is confession. This response has been interpreted in further statements of dogma. If one would seek to bring about the unification of churches already on the basis of feelings of togetherness, it would soon break apart again, and additional divisions would likely arise. The substantive issue in this consensus must not be restricted to those dogmatic conflicts that led at one time to the emergence of the separation, or by which a separation that arose for other reasons was subsequently justified, for it could be that in the central statements of faith—about which there was agreement at the time of the separation and immediately afterwards—conflicts arose since then that are just as profound or even more profound than the traditional conflicts that had once caused the separation. Of course, the consensus need not contain the answer to all dogmatic questions, but it must resolve the traditional doctrinal conflicts in relation to the central statements of the faith. For this reason, the indispensable condition for the unification of the separated churches is consensus on the trinitarian and christological confession and thus

Representing the One Church in the Unification of the Separated Churches

consensus on confessing the mighty deeds of God the Creator, the Redeemer, and the New Creator—deeds which God has accomplished once and for all and which he is constantly accomplishing for us humans through his preserving action, through his redeeming action by word and sacrament, and through the renewing action of the Holy Spirit. Related to this is consensus on acknowledging the divine commandments. This consensus can be expressed either through joint affirmation of an older confessional formulation that had already been handed down, or through an agreement [Konkordie] proclaimed jointly by the unifying churches, in which they use new statements of faith to replace the dogmatic statements that had previously separated them. (b) Consensus on the Mutual Recognition of Confessional Statements Consensus is commonly understood to mean agreement in the faith as expressed in the same words. But this understanding is not the only possible one, and it is in fact relatively late in terms of church history. There was no joint formula that was shared by all the churches, neither in early Christianity nor in the first centuries of the church. The original form of a transregional consensus did not consist in the uniformity of the formula but rather in the mutual recognition by the churches across the regions that the different regional formulas had the same content (or at least did not contradict each other). One thinks of the coexistence of the various christological confessions in the early Christian congregations and of the multitude of local confessions handed down from the ancient church, especially in the Eastern Church. With respect to the consensus in the mutual recognition of the differently formulated statements of faith, ascertaining the same content is of decisive importance. Moreover, statements that are ascertained to be in substantive agreement through mutual recognition do not necessarily have to be set forth in the same structure as the theological statement. So, e. g., consensus in the understanding of sin is not necessarily based on mutual dogmatic-doctrinal statements about sin but can also be ascertained on the basis of dogmatic-doctrinal statements, on the one hand, and in statements from the applicable liturgy of repentance, on the other. The same holds true, e. g., when comparing dogmatic teaching about the Lord’s Supper, on the one hand, with liturgical statements from the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, on the other. As is well known, the Eastern Church has been much more cautious in defining solemn dogmas than the Roman Catholic Church has been, and some questions about the faith in the Eastern Church were resolved not by dogmaticdoctrinal propositions but by settled statements in the liturgy. Ascertaining the unity of the faith in the form of a mutual recognition of the different formulations of the faith is not a paltry simplification of the consensus

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that is formulated through one and the same wording, nor does it mean taking the question of truth any less seriously. Such a mutual recognition requires the same amount of care in researching the origin of both sides’ formulations and the dogmatic content thereof, as does the consensus that is expressed through the same words. Such a consensus expressed in the same words has the advantage of being a clearer sign of the unity of faith, by which the believers can recognize one another and by which the world can recognize the unity of the believers. On the other hand, however, the richness that is disclosed to faith through God’s act of salvation can be expressed to a greater degree through the consensus in the mutual recognition of the differently formulated statements of faith. As such, both forms of consensus mentioned here belong together in principle and are usually also together in reality in the efforts toward unifying the churches. (c) Recognition of Church Ministry Defined by God’s Commission Consensus is commonly understood above all to mean agreement with the statements of the confession and dogmatic teaching. A distinction has to be made here between the doctrine of the gospel and the proclamation of the gospel, between the doctrine of baptism and the administration of baptism, between the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper and the celebration of the Supper, etc. Dogmatic teaching is intended to serve the divine salvific action that takes place in the church. Because of these important distinctions, consensus in dogmatic propositions is not sufficient to unify the separated churches. Rather, a further condition that needs to be met is the mutual recognition of God’s salvific action in the ministry of the churches that have been previously separated but are now striving for unification. If the center of the church is the worship assembly, this means first and foremost mutually recognizing what happens in this assembly. Of course, it is not possible to ascertain what is happening in each local worship assembly of the churches who are aiming to unite. However, the regulations for Scripture readings and sermon texts, the instructions for proclamation, and the liturgical regulations for baptism, the Lord’s Supper, repentance, and ordination, as well as the other acts of blessing, do in fact allow conclusions to be drawn as to whether the other Church can be met with the confidence that its ministry is determined by God’s commission. Along with recognizing the salvific action of God in the ministry of another Church, its ministerial offices are also to be recognized, through which the worship assembly is led and the Church members’ life together is ordered and supported. The recognition of the ordained as standing in apostolic succussion is not based solely on their special calling but on what they speak and do in God’s mission. There are greater possibilities for recognizing the orders of worship and the orderings of ministerial offices, even with significant differences, than there are for

Representing the One Church in the Unification of the Separated Churches

recognizing consensus in different dogmatic formulas, for the latter, by their very nature, are less mutable in the life of the church, while there have always been major changes and differences in the liturgy and in the orderings of ministerial offices, including, e. g., in the understanding of apostolic succession within the unity of the church. To be sure, even with these greater possibilities, the mutual recognition of consensus in the confession is still a condition for church unity. (d) The Removal of the Mutual Anathemas For the unity of the church, it is not necessary to agree about answering all theological questions. In every church body there are differences between questions that are answered by dogma and other questions that are left open. Thus, within the unity, there are always differing theological schools and opinions. For this reason, free space must also be ensured in every church agreement. By contrast, retaining anathemas within the church would be a contradiction in terms, for through the anathema an individual or many members, or even an entire community, are excluded from the church and handed over to God’s judgment. Therefore, all anathemas that exist between separated churches must, without exception, be canceled upon unification. This postulate is already contained in the requirement for dogmatic consensus and the mutual recognition of church ministry. But it goes beyond that, insofar as anathemas cannot only be used to reject teachings and regulations but also to reject social and political principles and decisions, something that has happened many times in the history of the church. The removal of an anathema is no more a matter of the free discretion of the church than is its confession, and therefore it requires careful examination and justification, as does the formulation and proclamation of a new consensus. From the multitude of possibilities for legitimately removing an anathema, only the following will be emphasized here: An anathema pronounced over against the decision of another church body becomes obsolete when the Church that pronounced the anathema publicly states that the other Church did not teach this doctrine or no longer teaches it. (This applies, e. g., to the interpretation of the scholastic formula ex opera operato in the Lutheran confessional writings, as well as to several canons from the Council of Trent that are directed against the Reformation doctrine of justification.) An anathema is, of course, always obsolete when, in view of an issue whose contrasting treatment had led to an anathema, a consensus is worked out between the affected churches and is publicly held to be valid. An anathema can also be removed, e. g., by the fact that the churches involved agree that the same dogmatic or canonical or socio-ethical-political decision is recognized as necessary by the one church but only as a possible option by the other—in other words, when the churches mutually concede to each other that

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there are different qualifying reasons and a different obligating validity for this decision. An interesting step in this direction was Joseph Ratzinger’s suggestion: From the Orthodox perspective, at least according to one view, the monarchical papacy means a destruction of the ecclesial structure as such, in the wake of which something different and new takes the place of the old Christian form…. In this perspective, the Western Church no longer appears in the form of local churches led by bishops who, in their collegial unity, refer back to the community of the Twelve Apostles; rather, it appears as a centrally organized monolith in which the new legal idea of “the perfect society” has destroyed the old idea of a succession in community…. Whoever stands on the ground of Catholic theology certainly cannot simply declare the doctrine of primacy to be null and void, especially not when he tries to understand the objections and, with an open eye, acknowledges the changing import of what can be historically ascertained. On the other hand, however, he cannot possibly regard the form of primacy defined in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the only possible and necessary one for all Christians…. In other words: Rome must no longer insist that the East accept the doctrine of primacy, even as it was formulated and followed in the first millennium… Unification could take place here on this basis: on the one hand, the East refrains from fighting against the Western development of the second millennium as heretical, and accepts the Catholic Church as legal and orthodox in the form that it has taken in this development, and, conversely, the West recognizes the Church of the East as orthodox and legal in the form that it has maintained.24

(e) The Necessity of Self-Correction Due to today’s more precise theological and historical research into dogmas and church orders, as well as into the social-political interrelationships and responsibilities of the church, and because there is a clearer understanding of the great multiplicity of starting points and possibilities in the New Testament Scriptures for later developments of dogma and church law, more opportunities exist today for the separated churches to recognize and acknowledge a unity of the church amidst the different forms of the church than in earlier centuries. Nevertheless, in most cases an agreement between separated churches will not be possible without the relevant churches undergoing self-correction. Whether a consensus comes about through joint recognition of the same formula or through mutual recognition of different formulations, it will often provide a clear reinterpretation of the older, traditional statements about the same issue. A reinterpretation,

24 Joseph Ratzinger, “Prognosen für die Zukunft des Ökumenismus” [Forecasts for the Future of Ecumenism], in Bausteine für die Einheit der Christen 65 (1977): 7 and 10.

Representing the One Church in the Unification of the Separated Churches

however, often also entails altering the rank that the statements in question have within the totality of previous dogmatic statements and church orders. Beyond altered interpretations and a new ranking of statements, even changes in wording cannot always be avoided, as is obvious, e. g., when an anathema that was previously in place is removed or, even more radically, when traditional dogmatic, church-law, and social-political decisions are replaced by new joint formulations. In any case, however, a church agreement signifies a change in one’s previous ideas about the other Church, and thus also a change in one’s own self-understanding. There is deep resistance on the part of some Christians against the church’s selfcorrection. They fear that changes in their church body of whatever kind will make them insecure in their faith and unsettle their sense of security in the church. Some church leaders fear that a Church that opens up to other churches, and thus gives room to a greater variety of statements and orders, will be more difficult to hold together and to lead, and that its particularity will dissolve into pluralism. But if, however, at the time of the unification one’s gaze is firmly fixed on the Lord of the church, who wants the unity of all believers, and if the confession of Christ is at the center of every step toward unification, then what appears to be an insecurity turns out to be the strengthening of certainty. Greater diversity turns out not to be a threat but rather a strengthening of unity, and giving up one’s comfortable stubbornness turns out to be a participation in the forward-moving dynamic of Christ’s kingdom. In the struggle for church unity, in obedience to Jesus Christ, what seems to be a loss turns out to be a greater treasure, and what seems to be unsettling provides a foundation. (f) The Reception of Communion in Worship With the public declaration of consensus and the mutual recognition of the church’s ministry taking place within the divine mission, and with the removal of all existing anathemas, the decisive conditions for church unification are fulfilled. But if the center of church life is the worship assembly, then unification takes place above all in the reception of full communion in worship. It will then no longer be restricted to an ecumenical service of word and prayer, as it was before, but it will also take place in the common reception of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. This reception will then take place not merely in exceptional admittance to the Lord’s Supper of the other Church but on the basis of a mutual invitation of the united churches to all their members and on the basis of the blessing and distribution of the gifts jointly administered by the pastors of the united churches. This communion in worship involves at the same time the mutual forgiveness of what the churches have done to one another during the time of their separation. The energy with which the churches had previously separated, troubled, and defended themselves against each other is now set free for their members to turn

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to one another in love and for joint service in the world. Through unification, the members of the church come closer to the purpose given by the Lord: “…that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (Jn. 17.21, cf. v. 23). The resulting unity is not an absorption of one church body into the other. It lets each of the unifying churches maintain a high degree of their individuality that has developed on the apostolic foundation. After removing the oppositions that had existed between them, the previously separated churches are entitled to retain, e. g., their particular forms of confessions, their worship liturgy, their order of ministerial offices, and their catechumenate. None of the unifying churches ceases to be the Church to which God has given special gifts and which he used as his instrument, even in the time of separation. This unification also does not require a change within each of the previously separated churches regarding their jurisdictional-hierarchical ordering in their ministerial offices. The churches thus united also do not live in an unchanged, independent coexistence with one another. Through consensus in the faith and full communion in worship, the gifts that each of the relevant churches have received are made accessible to the whole church and are united with the gifts of the others for the sake of joint ministry. The mutual recognition of ministerial offices—even without a jurisdictional ordering of the ministerial offices of one church body over those of the other—results in a joint commitment to ministry. And the overseers of pastors [Oberhirten]—even without one of them being jurisdictionally ordered above the others—will cultivate communication and consultation with the aim of jointly comforting, strengthening, and leading congregations, and of offering a shared witness to the world. The peculiar nature of this unity is not the uniformity of faith statements and worship services, nor a pyramidal, judicial, over-and-under ordering of ministerial offices. It is not the coexistence of independent churches who merely have an external connection to each other, nor is it a merging, whereby each church body loses its distinctive contour. Rather, it is community in the same faith, in the mutual ministry of the united churches to one other, and in their joint servant ministry to the world. In relation to the critical question of whether such a community can be described as the unity of the church, it should be pointed out that the metropolitans and patriarchates of the first centuries also had no jurisdictional authority over each other prior to the start of the disputes about a universal primacy and when their jurisdictional authority began to extend beyond their own patriarchal boundaries. Even then, however, there was no formulation of faith-confession and of the liturgy that was common to all church areas. Nevertheless, the ancient church still understood itself to be the one church. That the unity of the churches is possible even without a central jurisdictional authority set over them is demonstrated in the

Representing the One Church in the Unification of the Separated Churches

history of the Orthodox churches, which essentially retained the patriarchal order of the ancient church and preserved the unity of the church through centuries of severe oppression. The differences, however, between unity in the ancient church and contemporary conceptions of church unity should not be overlooked: community between metropolitans and patriarchs in the ancient church emerged relatively quickly within the unity of the church, while community between the churches today is being striven for after many centuries of separation. Corresponding to this is the fact that the differences in questions of doctrine and the order of worship are more profound today than they were then. Also, the structures in church law regarding the metropolitans and patriarchates in the ancient church were not as different as they are today, e. g., the jurisdictional authority of the pope over the Roman Catholic Church compared to the much more limited jurisdictional authority of the ecumenical patriarch over the Orthodox churches or that of the archbishop of Canterbury over the Anglican Church. Another difference of great practical importance is the fact that the authority of bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs in the early church was assigned to a certain geographical area, whereas today most church bodies are spread to all parts of the earth, so that in many cases the congregations of the same place are subject to completely different church leadership. (g) Growing Together in Unity Even when unification is reached through joint confession of the faith, acceptance of full communion in worship, and the recognition of ministerial offices, seeking the unity of the church does not cease to be an ongoing task. It requires further strengthening. If, in the ancient church, unity between pastors and overseers of pastors was strengthened through synods, so also today a clear desire for shared speaking and acting in synods has come to life again in connection with the endeavors for uniting the separated churches. In order to hold such synods, there needs to be shared provisions in church law for their convocation, composition, leadership, deliberations, and decision-making, as well as for the proclamation, reception, and implementation of the resolutions that they put into effect. A policy must also be determined by means of which the previously separated churches can demonstrate their unity through joint speaking and action in the period between synods. This is about the issue of a universal leadership that protects the particularity of the gifts that God has given the previously separated churches and at the same time brings the churches together more fully. Although some models for such a leadership are already being considered (whereby there is the risk that false alternatives between a synodical ordering and one based on primacy will appear again), I will not comment on these questions here, as they are likely to be premature. I will restrict myself to the following five theses:

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(1) The question of the stage at which the churches are today on their way to unity has to be answered very differently, both with respect to the various church bodies and with respect to the geographical regions. Viewed as a whole, the separated churches are still in the process of striving to recognize the one church in the separated parts of Christendom, and they are not yet in the process of representing the recognized unity through unification. Nevertheless, in agreement with Heinrich Fries and Karl Rahner, one can say already now that it is a “real possibility.”25 (2) Because of recent ecumenical work, the following thesis is defensible, namely, that among the Orthodox churches, the Roman Catholic Church, the churches of the Reformation, including the Anglican and Methodist churches, as well as the Old Catholic Church, no such dogmatic disagreements exist that would have to be maintained for the sake of faith in Jesus Christ and for the sake of faithfulness to the apostolic tradition in the New Testament, and that could justify the continuation of these church divisions. (3) The task of coordinating these churches jurisdictionally under a universal leadership—churches that have been separated from one another for centuries and have become independent in very different forms—would be such a novum in church history that probably none of the well-known church orders from the past or the present could come into consideration without change as a model for the universal leadership of the united church. (4) Various formal orderings for a universal coordination and leadership are possible. In any case, however, the basic structures of the relationships between Peter and the other apostles (cf. above 884ff.), between the apostles and the church (cf. above 886f.), and between later officeholders and the church (cf. above 907ff.), are authoritative for every universal leadership of the church: In apostolic succession, the pastor stands at the local, regional, and universal level (1) facing the church on behalf of Christ; (2) together with all members of the church under Christ, dependent on his grace; (3) pastors carry out their ministry in partnership with the other ministerial offices and charismata of the church; (4) through the servant ministry of the latter, pastors also encounter the divine demand for joint recognition of the apostolic tradition. (5) In the present situation, the most urgent task, both of those churches that are still separated and of those that are already united, is to grow into Christ and to pray that the Holy Spirit would awaken in people a sense of the working of Christ in the other churches, and would grant them the gift of an open heart for this working. In view of this question about the ordering of a universal leadership, one cannot

25 Heinrich Fries and Karl Rahner, Einigung der Kirchen—Reale Möglichkeit, Quaestiones Disputatae 18 (Freiburg: Herder, 1983). [ET: Unity of the Churches: An Actual Possibility, trans. Ruth C. L. Gritsch and Eric W. Gritsch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985; New York: Paulist, 1985). –Ed.]

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disregard in which churches and in which of their members this sense and this gift are most strongly alive. The most urgent gift is to grow together spiritually in faith and love. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 22 [i]

[ii] [iii] [iv]

[v]

For Schlink’s prior treatment of this theme, see his brief chapter, “Die Einheit der Kirche und die uneinige Christenheit,” in Basileia: Walter Freytag zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. J. Hermelink and H. J. Margul (Stuttgart: Ev. Missionsverlag, 1959), 403–408, and a later and more substantive chapter, “Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit der Kirche (ein Entwurf),” in Christliche Einheit: Forderungen und Folgerungen nach Uppsala, ed. Reinhard Groscurth, Studien des Ökumenischen Rates 7 (Geneva: WCC, 1969), 34–54; ET: “The Unity and Diversity of the Church: Preliminary Treatise,” in What Unity Implies [Geneva: WCC, 1969], 33–51.). The latter essay was written in the aftermath of the Fourth Assembly of the WCC, which met in Uppsala, Sweden, 4–20 July 1968. Its theme was “Behold, I Make All Things New.” While Schlink was troubled by the socio-political activism that accompanied this assembly, he welcomed the WCC’s attention to the unity and catholicity of the church within the context of God’s actions in history, and he affirmed the assembly’s bold claim that the church is to be the sign of the coming unity of humankind. On the following “structural shifts,” cf. Schlink, “Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit,” 49 (ET: 47). See Bradshaw et al., The Apostolic Tradition, 38–41. The Roman Catholic Vulgate includes Tobit, Judith, additions to the book of Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (Jesus Sirach), Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, additions to the book of Daniel, 1 Maccabees, and 2 Maccabees. 1 Esdras (= 3 Esdras in the Vulgate [where 1 and 2 Esdras refer to Ezra-Nehemiah]), 2 Esdras (= 4 Esdras in the Vulgate), and the Prayer of Manasseh are included in the Vulgate’s appendix. While Luther left out 3 Esdras and 4 Esdras (“they contain nothing that one could not find better in Aesop or in still slighter works”), he did include, in an appendix to his 1534 translation of the complete Bible, the other apocryphal books listed above. “These books are not held equal to the Scriptures but are useful and good to read” (WA, DB, 2.547; LW 1 , 35.337). Calvin and the Reformed tradition excluded the Apocrypha and restricted the Old Testament canon to those books in the Hebrew Tanak. Beyond the twenty-seven traditional books, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church includes additional books in its New Testament canon, including material about “church order” from the Apostolic Constitutions and the letters of Clement. Cf. Schlink, “Ökumenische Konzilien einst und heute,” SÖB, 1/1.266–67 (ESW, 1.323).

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[vi] [vii]

[viii]

[ix] [x] [xi] [xii] [xiii] [xiv]

[xv] [xvi]

Cf. Schlink, NK, SÖB, 1/2.1ff. (ESW, 1.341ff.). Cf. Schlink, NK, SÖB, 1/2.37ff. (ESW, 1.363ff.). For the Italian and Latin versions of this speech by Pope Paul VI (29 September 1963), go to: http://w2.vatican. va/content/paul-vi/it/speeches/1963/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19630929_conciliovaticano-ii.html. (accessed 2/3/2021). Cf. Schlink, “Das wandernde Gottesvolk,” SÖB, 1/1.204, 208 (ESW, 1.259, 263); “Wandlungen im protestantischen Verständnis der Ostkirche” (“Transformations in the Protestant Understanding of the Eastern Church”), SÖB, 1/1.222 (ESW, 1.277); and “Aufgabe und Gefahr des Ökumenischen Rates der Kirche,” SÖB, 1/1.23 (ESW, 1.64). Cf. Unitatis redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism, Tanner, 2.910–912, 915–920). This paragraph and the next were taken from Schlink’s essay, “Die Einheit der Kirche und die uneinige Christenheit,” 405. The remainder of this paragraph was taken verbatim from the second full paragraph of Schlink’s lecture, “Das wandernde Gottesvolk,” SÖB, 1/1.202 (ESW, 1.257–258). This paragraph and the next two were taken from Schlink’s essay, “Die Einheit der Kirche und die uneinige Christenheit,” 406–407. Cf. the section on “the indestructibility of the church” in Schlink’s earlier essay, “Christus und die Kirche,” SÖB, 1/1.98–100 (ESW, 1.146–148). For Robert Bellarmine’s sixteenth-century defense of the Roman Church as “the visible church” on earth, see his work, De controversiis Christianae Fidei, II.180–183 (ET: 109–114). See also Schlink, “Christus und die Kirche,” SÖB, 1/1.97–98 (ESW, 1.145–146). For Peter Abelard’s scholastic method of “sic et non” (“yes and no”), see his book of the same title (ca. 1121), in which he juxtaposed seemingly contradictory propositions/quotations from the Bible and the church fathers on various topics of the Christian faith. Abelard proposed resolving these apparent contradictions in three ways: (1) by historicizing them to determine their proper relationship in light of their differing contexts; (2) by ranking them in terms of their relative authority (acknowledging that church fathers could error); and (3) by using rational principles and reason to discern the traditional truth within the contrasting statements. See Peter Abelard, Sic et Non: A Critical Edition, ed. Blanche B. Boyer and Richard McKeon (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977); Yes and No: Peter Abelard’s Sic et Non, 3d ed., trans. Priscilla Throop (Charlotte, VT: MedievalMS, 2008). As the scholastic method developed further in the medieval period, formal debate about disputed questions (Quaestiones disputatae) became a key feature of university theology. A controverted question would be posed by “the master,” usually after he had lectured on the issue in question. A senior student would then be called upon to respond (“respondeo”) to the carefully argued objections by other students, who would begin their counterpoints by using language like, “videtur quod non” (“it seems that [your argument] does not…”) or “sed contra” (“but against (what you say)…”). Following this formal repartee, the master would summarize the nature of the question and provide his own solution (“determinatio”) to the problem. Peter Lombard’s four-volume Sentences (ca. 1150) follows the same basic method as

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[xvii]

[xviii] [xix]

[xx]

[xxi]

Abelard’s Sic et Non in that it too sets forth pro and con statements from the Bible and the church fathers about various disputed questions and then seeks with the aid of a dialectical method to demonstrate how such contradictory statements (“sentences”) could be brought into harmony. The structure of Aquinas’ Summa theologiae (begun in 1269 but left unfinished at his death) reflects this same methodology. He begins with a question (an article), makes an assertion, states objections to the assertion, and then offers a response that includes replies to the specific objections Cf. Anselm of Canterbury, “Letter to Pope Urban II on the Incarnation of the Word,” (ca. 1094), in A Scholastic Miscellany, 97–99; Anselm, Cur Deus homo, I.18; II.19 (St. Anselm: Basic Writings, 234–235, 299); Bonaventura, Breviloquium, 1–23, esp. 16–18; and Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, prol., pt. 2 (“On the Sufficiency of Holy Scripture”), sole question (“Whether the supernatural knowledge necessary for the wayfarer is sufficiently handed on in Sacred Scripture?”), in Opera Omnia, 1.59–87. Portions of this paragraph and the next were taken from NK, SÖB, 1/2.240 (ESW, 1.526; cf. “Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit,” 36–37 [ET: 35–36]). Portions of this section were taken from Schlink’s lecture, “Die ‘Hierarchie der Wahrheiten’ und die Einigung der Kirchen,” which he delivered on 10 October, 1972, at the Ecumenical Institute for Advanced Theological Studies in JerusalemTantur. For Luther, the “lofty articles” (“hohen Artikeln”) deal with the divine majesty (SA I), while “the first and chief article” is about Jesus Christ and his redemption for us (SA II). In his Large Catechism, Luther refers to the Apostles’ Creed as “the chief articles of our faith” (“Die Heuptartickel unsers Glaubens,” BSELK, 924 [BC, 384]). The conclusion to the doctrinal articles of the AC (German text) refers to those articles as “the principal articles” (“heupt Artikeln,” BSELK, 130 [BC, 60]); cf. the heading to these articles in the Latin version: “Chief Articles of Faith” (“Articuli fidei praecipua,” BSELK, 93 [BC, 37]). For the distinction between “fundamental” and “non-fundamental” articles of Christian doctrine, see Schmid, 74–78 (ET: 92–99). According to David Hollaz, “fundamental articles of doctrine” are “so necessary to be known that, when they are not known, the foundation of the faith is not savingly apprehended or retained” by human beings. Non-fundamental articles of doctrine “are parts of Christian doctrine about which one may be ignorant or deny, and yet be saved” (as quoted in Schmid, 74 [ET: 92]). Cf. Schlink’s similar analysis of these “necessary steps” in NK, SÖB, 1/2.224–35 (ESW, 1.514–522).

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1. The End Time of World History The end time is often understood as the last chapter in world history immediately before the return of Jesus Christ. But the end time has already begun with Jesus’ earthly coming, and it is encompassed by his first and second advent, for in Jesus’ resurrection the unquestioned assumptions of world history have already been ruptured and its temporal impermanence has already been overcome. In the older textbooks of dogmatics in all the churches, there is a doctrinal section on the signs of the end or the parousia. The following signs are named in different sequences: the proclamation of the gospel to all nations, the appearing of the Antichrist, persecution of Christians, apostasy, world wars, and cosmic catastrophes. Not always, but often, the conversion of the Jews is also mentioned under the signs of the end. Since the entire period between Jesus’ resurrection and his return is the end time, this part of doctrine did not lead to absurdity just because from the beginning Christians have again and again referred to historical figures of their time as the Antichrist, such as, e. g., Nero, Muhammad, degenerate popes, Napoleon, or Hitler. Antichristian enmity belongs to the whole of the end time, and Christendom is called to understand the nature of this temptation and to resist it. At the same time, however, these signs in the end time herald an increase in evil, suffering, and corruption right through to the end of world history. All these statements are handed down in the New Testament Scriptures, as well as in church teaching, not for the purpose of calculating the date of Christ’s return but as concrete calls to vigilance and readiness for the Lord, who will come suddenly and unpredictably. Moreover, the signs are ambiguous: the gospel is voiced as one among many messages of salvation. The antichristian power appears at first to be an exhilarating, peace-bringing, orderly power, the suppression of believers seems to be a sensible way of getting rid of troublemakers, and apostasy a necessary act of prudence. Only faith recognizes the signs of the parousia, just as only faith saw the signs of the beginning of God’s reign in the healings by the earthly Jesus. But even believers continue to be ignorant about the moment of the parousia, even if they recognize its signs in their surrounding world. This part of doctrine generally plays only a minor role in the thinking of people today, although some scientific analyses of the present have offered a glimpse of catastrophes of apocalyptic proportions. Theologians have especially objected to this traditional part of doctrine by noting that here individual biblical statements from very different textual contexts have been brought together eclectically and that

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some of them stem from Jewish-apocalyptic sources. These objections cannot be dismissed out of hand. Nevertheless, there is deep meaning in this piece of doctrine if one does not start with the individual New Testament statements and attempt to harmonize them, but rather proceeds from the gospel as the power of God at work in history. The gospel is not merely a message of God’s salvific act in Jesus Christ. Rather, through this message God carries out his salvific action. The gospel not only announces liberation to human beings but it liberates. In this way, by faith, human beings are freed from the mythologies and ideologies that have blocked their view of reality. Liberation through the gospel brings about a new understanding of the family, society, and the state, and it enables a new order of life together for the liberated and with other people. But it also brings about a new relationship toward the non-human environment, by liberating people for research so that they can make meaningful use of their scholarly findings. Because believers no longer need to fear the demons of the world, the demythologized world has become for them, in a new way, an object of knowledge and organization [Gestaltung]. The gospel calls people to faith, but it does not compel faith. It exhorts people to be faithful, but it does not force a believer to remain a believer. There is a possibility of turning away from Christ. It can take place in different stages. People can turn away inwardly without giving up their external affiliation to Christianity. They know about the Christian presuppositions of the culture in which they live, and they consider the church to be irreplaceable, but they reject Jesus’ call to discipleship. Turning away from the Christian faith can also take place through the de facto restriction of one’s thinking to what is empirically ascertainable, and thus it consists of an atheism that thinks it no longer needs God to cope with the problems of humankind and the world. This practical atheism can certainly be connected to tolerance, even if the church is now regarded more and more as a thing of the past and as a subculture. The same holds true for some forms of principled atheism that go beyond practical atheism. For all that, mere empiricism, agnosticism, and skepticism, as well as the various forms of de facto or principled atheism, are not a sufficient basis on which humans can live in the long run. All this is again and again just a transition to arbitrary frames of meaning for personal life and, beyond that, for humanity. After turning away from Christ, these views usually came about through absolutizing a portion of empirical knowledge (e. g., in materialistic, evolutionistic, racist, and pansexualistic worldviews). By ideologizing a portion of knowledge, however, not only is realistic knowledge of human beings and their surrounding world lost, but so too is the norm for human coexisting. This is how the postChristian person arises, who is liberated by faith in Christ but now makes use of this freedom without any connection to Christ. At the same time, post-Christian people continue to be shaped by the message of the gospel, in that the kingdom of righteousness and of peace announced by Jesus is still kept in mind, but they now

The End Time of World History

try to establish it on their own initiative. This is how anti-Christian personalities and movements arise, which seemingly accept the demands for human freedom but then put them down by force. They use ideologies for their own purposes in such a way that they become like the “principalities” and “powers” mentioned in the New Testament, which rule humans and enslave them.1 Where this happens, the church must come forth as the intolerant disturberof-the-peace. Insofar as it does not adjust and accommodate its message, it will be suppressed and persecuted, and apostasy will be the result for those who want to escape such things. If anti-Christian hubris is fully developed, then the view toward the basic needs of every life also becomes more and more obscured, and ever more violent, intrusive actions and ever more brutal wars are undertaken. A sense of proportion in the use of technical achievements will also be lost, and the possibility for catastrophes of cosmic proportions will arise. Following the suffering of Christians and the suppression of the warning word of God, a “great tribulation” will also come upon non-Christians, upon humanity as a whole. In all of this, the gospel proves to be the power of God that works like a two-edged sword. Its propagation has a twofold effect: it makes alive, and it kills; it liberates, and it binds. When addressed by the gospel, individuals never get over what they were before. This is completely true of those who had accepted it and then later denied Christ. While they will not become pagans again, they will be marked as post-Christian and anti-Christian people. This is true not only of individuals but also of nations and cultures that were once grasped by the gospel. If, in one’s thinking, one assumes the effective power of the gospel, then one arrives at statements about the future that are similar to those found scattered in the New Testament Scriptures. The most important thing, however, is the interpretation that is given to these events in early Christian tradition: “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he (the Son of Man) is near, at the very gates” (Mk. 13.28f. [S]). “When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy… So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (Jn. 16.21f.) In the book of Revelation, too, all the horrific visions of hubris and suffering are a comforting preparation for the coming of Christ. At the same time, the parables of the fig tree and the birth contain an aspect of necessity, which is also found in the announcements in the Synoptic Gospels and Revelation about the suffering at the end time: It “must” take place (Rev. 1.1). The same “must” is again found in the announcements about the signs, as in Jesus’

1 [See Eph. 3.10; 6.12; Col. 1.16, and 2.15. –Ed.]

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announcements of suffering (e. g., Mk. 8.31). This is the “must” of divine destiny. The church must walk the same path that Jesus walked, through suffering to glory. But it does not first have to pave the way, for that way has been paved by the Lord. In the church’s suffering, his victory is present and manifests itself before the world. The expectation of the “conversion of the Jews” as a sign of the end, a view that is not generally held, is based on the Pauline statement, “a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved…” (Rom. 11.25f.). Nothing is said here, however, about how this eschatological process of salvation will be accomplished. In any case, Christendom may indeed hope that the coming Jesus will encounter the Jews who rejected him as Christ, as the one who mercifully fulfills their messianic expectations that they had held during the time of their rejection of Jesus.

2. The First Creation and the New Creation The beginning of the new creation is Jesus Christ. He was the first to fulfill the purpose that the Creator had given human beings and to receive in his resurrection the transformation of earthly humanity into the glory of eternal life. The new creation has grown and continues to grow into the community of those who believe in Jesus Christ and who were given into his death through baptism so that they may also participate in his resurrection life. Relevant here is the expectation, “If the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, dwells in you, then God, who raised Christ Jesus from the dead, will also make your mortal bodies alive through his Spirit, who dwells in you” (Rom. 8.11 [S]). The new creation is still hidden in this world: the new life under suffering and dying, the new glory under inconspicuousness and shame. The work of the Holy Spirit takes place in the midst of the ambiguity of the working of other spirits in this world. The unity of the church is hidden under divisions, its holiness under sins, its catholicity under various limitations. The new creation is present, but believers can only speak dialectically of themselves as new creatures: “As dying and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Cor. 6.9f.). The new creation is now still hidden under the opposite. It is recognizable only by faith. But when Jesus Christ appears in his glory, then the new creation will be revealed; then, as Judge, he will carry out the great separation and remove everything that now hides and suppresses the new creation. Then the new creation will be completed. This consummation means more than merely an unveiling of what was previously hidden. The consummation of believers will in fact take place in their transformation into the same immortal life of the risen Jesus. And yet, in this consummation the

The First Creation and the New Creation

same new creation will be revealed that the believer has already been granted, hidden under the visible—the same new life in which the believer already lives. The same resurrection will happen to believers that was promised to them in their baptism (Rom. 6.4, 5, 8), and about which they can be certain that it has already taken place in their baptism (Col. 2.12; 3.1). If by the term world we understand the creation that is in rebellion against God and that has fallen into judgment, then the consummation of the new creation means the end of this world. Jesus’ return will end the history of this world. Consummation, however, does not mean merely the liberation of the creation from the dominion of sin and the powers of corruption, nor merely its restoration to the originally “good,” indeed, “very good” creation that God had created it to be. The resurrection from the dead is not proclaimed as the restoration of the “first man” but as the creation of a new human, namely, as the transformation into the sameness of the “second man,” Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus Christ faces “the first” “earthly” man as the “heavenly” man, so also those who have been raised with Christ will live in a new way. What was originally commanded and promised in creation will be fulfilled in the new creation. Since humans cannot be separated from their connectedness to non-human creatures, and since these are affected by humankind’s turning away from God, the expectation of the new creation cannot be restricted to the expectation of the new humanity. In what sense can one speak of a new act of creation by God? It is true that the new creation, like the one at the beginning, takes place in the freedom of God’s love, but if the first creation took place without any other preconditions besides God himself, and if it was, in this sense, a “creation out of nothing,” then the new creation already presupposes the first creation and takes place in what has been created. If this divine activity is nevertheless called a new creation, this is justified because here too there are no preconditions besides God himself that are the basis for his creative activity. The new creation is also about being called out of nothing, which, to be sure, is to be understood in a different sense from what happened in the first creation, i. e., as a calling of humans out of their enslavement to death and as the redemption of creation from the dominion of nothingness. The nothing out of which God calls, as the one who is creating anew, is the self-destruction of creatures, out of which he renews them and makes them alive. In that God, as the Creator, is not working like he did in the beginning, to create “out of nothing,” but is working as the Creator in spite of nothing and against nothing, his working through the Holy Spirit to make alive and to fulfill is equally creating in the truest sense of the term, namely, the revelation of the same creative power and love by which he created the universe at the beginning and has since maintained and governed it. In the following sections, we presuppose the separation that will take place in the coming judgment and the binding of the powers hostile to God (chap. 13.C), and we inquire first about the consummation of the new humanity that will take

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place in the resurrection to eternal life. It is expected by all churches, from God’s re-creative action.

3. The Resurrection to Eternal Life Since we live in this world, and our language is shaped by our perception of this world, it is easier to make statements about the death of human beings than about the resurrection to eternal life. At least it is easier to make statements about what will no longer be after death than to describe the life of those who are resurrected. That is why one must be careful not to cross the existing boundaries on one’s own initiative, be it by unfolding one’s own wishes, or by adopting ideas from Jewish-apocalyptic or Hellenistic philosophy or from some other religious or philosophical context. But it is indeed the case that the expectation of the resurrection to eternal life has a solid historical basis in the broad witness of the New Testament to the appearances of the risen Jesus, who, as taken from this world, immediately turned to his own who had previously lived with him. This caring commitment of the risen Christ has become not only the basis for recognizing the salvific significance of his death but also for recognizing the identity between the way of the disciples and his own way. The saying of the earthly Jesus now also stood—fulfilled in his resurrection—as a promise about their future: “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it” (Lk. 17.33 par.). Jesus’ command to follow him and to take up the cross now also became the promise of resurrection for those who followed him. With great consistency Paul not only inferred this promise from Jesus’ resurrection, but, conversely, he also understood that denying the future resurrection of deceased Christians was a denial of the resurrection of Christ (1 Cor. 15.13ff.). “If the dead are not raised, Christ is not raised” (v. 16). The message that the future resurrection will correspond to the completed resurrection of Jesus is the decisive presupposition and the hermeneutical key for the doctrine of the resurrection to eternal life. Just as Jesus’ resurrection was not the return to a continuation of earthly life, given that he appeared as one who had been removed from earthly limitations and transferred into a new way of existence, so also the resurrection of his own to eternal life is not to be expected as a restoration of their earthly life but as a transformation into the same new mode of existence that he has. Paul thus described the way of Jesus as well as that of his own with the following contrasts: “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15.42–44). The resurrected body will not be like the earthly body, in whose weakness the power of Christ was already strong. It will be a body that is changed by God’s power and whose weakness has ended. It will

The Resurrection to Eternal Life

also not be like the earthly body, whose glory is hidden under humiliation and shame, but it will be a new body, transformed and illuminated by God’s glory, whose humiliation and shame have been removed. The physicality of the resurrected body was proclaimed with great certainty by Paul and by all early Christian preaching, in contrast to the Greek understanding of the body as the prison of the soul and the understanding of death as a liberation of the immortal soul from the body. In these statements, the term body does not mean the human body in distinction from the human soul, but rather it refers to the whole human body and soul with all its organs. Regardless of how theological and philosophical anthropology understand the structure of the human being, the doctrine of the resurrection, like the doctrine of creation, is about the whole human being. Just as the risen one encountered his own as one who perceives and knows, hears and answers, gives and receives, so, in the same way, the risen ones will one day be those who so perceive and know, hear and answer, receive and give. The abilities for communication are part of the abiding essence of the human being. But at the same time, it is true that the “physical body” perishes in death, and the “spiritual body” will arise (1 Cor. 15.44). Even if the Holy Spirit is already working in the earthly human, the spiritual human will be differentiated from the earthly human in that the Holy Spirit renews the whole person of body and soul, and reigns throughout it. Then the temptation of humans, the contradiction between willing and doing, and the struggle between human flesh and God’s Spirit will be over. Then, to speak with Augustine, the human being will no longer have the possibility of “posse non peccare” [being able not to sin], as in the beginning, and no longer live in the prison of “non posse non peccare” [being unable not to sin], as under the dominion of sin, but will live in the freedom of “non posse peccare” [being unable to sin].2 In the course of the history of theology, attempts have been made in various ways to determine more precisely how the identity and difference of the earthly and the risen body relate to one another. In the struggle against Hellenism and Gnosticism, which rejected the physical resurrection, the identity of the resurrected body with the earthly body was increasingly asserted, right down to its material identity. The early church’s confession of the “resurrection of the flesh” has increasingly been interpreted in the sense of a restoration of human beings in the very same flesh in which they had previously lived on earth. By contrast, Origen and, in a different way, Thomas Aquinas grounded the identity of the earthly body and the resurrected body not in the bodily material but in the idea of the human being, i. e., in the “forma” of the human being.3 Hence, the undeniable possibility was also kept open 2 [See, e. g., Augustine, De correptione et gratia (CSEL, 92.219–280; Rebuke and Grace, WSA, I/26.132ff. –Ed.] 3 [See, e. g., Origen, On First Principles, chap. 6 (“The End” [Greek] or “The Completion of the World” [Latin]), 245–155; and Aquinas, ST, Supp. to III.79–86. –Ed.]

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that those who had died, whose earthly body had been completely destroyed, could attain a bodily resurrection. But even with this Aristotelian starting point, the abiding “forma” of the human being, as it was understood, could still be developed through quite extensive and contradictory statements about the material identity of the earthly body and the resurrected body.4 With Luther, the resurrection was understood more in the sense of the Pauline statement about transformation.[i] Since the Enlightenment, the expectation of the resurrection has dissolved into the notion of the immortal soul or even of the persistence of the disembodied person, while in the twentieth century, on the other hand, the notion of a complete end in death and a complete new creation in the resurrection was developed by individuals. If the basis for the statements about the future resurrection is the resurrection of Jesus, the question arises as to whether these later reflections remain within the scope of the differences found in the accounts of the appearances of the risen Jesus. In these accounts, it is striking that precisely where the identity of his body is most strongly emphasized, namely, in the summons of the risen Lord for Thomas to touch his body and his wounds, the transcendence of the risen Christ beyond the limits of earthly corporeality is also very clearly attested to: “Although the doors were shut,” the risen one stood among the disciples (Jn. 20.26). On the other hand, according to the accounts in Acts, even though Paul did not see the body of the risen one when he was called (Acts 9.3ff.), he experienced the hearing of his voice and the radiance of his glory through such an amazing appearance of the whole of Christ that he became a witness to the bodily resurrection. In later reflections, the mystery of the identity between the earthly body and the glorified body of Christ, as attested to by the New Testament traditions, has not been widely preserved. Consequently, not only has the content of the statements been changed, but the focus has shifted, as has the line of inquiry. If one investigates the New Testament statements about the future resurrection to determine more precisely those elements of the human that remain unchanged and those that will be changed, one finds in those statements no precise answer to this question—despite their strong emphasis on the identity between those who were previously dead and those who are resurrected. The biblical writings are not interested in such statements about the human being. Rather, the content of the early Christian message is about God’s action, who will raise the dead and transfer them to eternal life. It is true that Paul asked the question, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” He answered it by pointing to the seed from whose death the plant grows and to the difference between the bodies of the different living things and between the glory of the different stars

4 Cf., e. g., Aquinas, ST, Supplement to III.80.

The Resurrection to Eternal Life

(1 Cor. 15.35ff.). But at the same time, he labeled such a questioner a “fool” (v. 36), and he made it clear through his very different comparisons that this question is not an independent topic. Rather, his statements are shaped by the fact that we are included in the dynamic of divine action: “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven (the image of Christ)” (v. 49 [S]; cf. Rom. 8.11). The Pauline statements about the resurrected are focused on God’s action of resurrecting them and on the glorified life into which they will be transferred through the resurrection. The New Testament statements about eternal life are centered on the fact that it will be a life with the exalted Christ. This life is heralded in very diverse statements, whereby the metaphors and parables that are used are largely based on the Old Testament. This diversity, however, does not fall apart into pieces. Rather, three dimensions are emphasized in it, in which the promised life of the resurrected will take place: (a) Then the beatitude will be fulfilled: “You will see God” (Mt. 5.8). “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13.12). Then God will no longer be hidden in the mysterious processes of world history. Then he will also no longer be hidden under the lowliness of the earthly Jesus or under the ambiguity of the Spirit’s earthly work—also no longer under the distinction between law and gospel or under the earthly elements of the sacraments. Then the benevolence of his world governance, Jesus as the Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit will no longer be recognizable only by faith. Then the distinction between law and gospel and the hiddenness of grace in the sacraments will be gone. Then, in Christ and through the Holy Spirit, we will see the glory of the love that God always was, always will be, and in which he accomplished his work as Creator, Redeemer, and New Creator. Should one try to determine more precisely the manner of this seeing, one cannot restrict it to a single function of the human being, or refer to it as knowing (so Thomas Aquinas) or as loving (so Bonaventure and Duns Scotus) or (using Augustinian terminology) as fruitio Dei [enjoyment of God].[ii] Rather, it is about the whole person being embraced and permeated by the glory of divine love. With this seeing, humans will not cease to face the infinity and immeasurability of God as finite creatures, and their seeing will not be able to encompass and measure God’s essence. Rather, precisely because God’s essence is being seen here, this seeing will be a never-ending event that is again and again newly exhilarating. That is why the adoration of God by the resurrected will take place in praise that is ever new. (b) Then the promise that Jesus will celebrate the Lord’s Supper together with his disciples in the kingdom of his Father (Mt. 26.29) will also be fulfilled. He will then gather all those beyond the circle of his disciples who have been raised to life for the “great supper” in the kingdom of God (Lk. 14.15), for the “marriage of the Lamb with his bride,” the church (Rev. 19.7; cf. Mt. 22.2ff.), for community in the

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“heavenly Jerusalem” (Rev. 21.22ff.). Eternal life will be communion with the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles; it will be the communion of the glorified from all times, whether members of the church, the devout of the old covenant, or others who have been waiting for Jesus Christ. Then the divisions under which the unity of the church is now hidden will end. Then the hypocrites and the dead members who are now concealing the holiness of the church will also be excluded. Then the conflicts between nations and generations will be overcome, and the sequence of the old and the new covenant will also be transposed into the unity of God’s people. In the resurrection from the dead, the people of God, composed of Jews and Gentiles, will step forth without blemish to live with Christ in the presence of God. The New Testament statements about the community of the risen ones are, above all, statements about their communion with Christ. But in Christ there will also persist the communion of the glorified with one another. Earthly history will remain present in the risen ones, just as it is present in the risen Christ. In the communion of the risen ones, all that God has accomplished for each individual will be encountered. Joint praise of God will thus take place in manifold voices. Because of the boundlessness of God that offers itself for viewing, and because of the richness of the manifold deeds of divine lovingkindness that have been received by humankind throughout the millennia, that praise will be inexhaustible. (c) At the fringe of the New Testament statements about the life of the risen ones there is also the announcement that the risen ones will judge and have dominion over non-human creatures. “Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? …That we are to judge angels?” (1 Cor. 6.2f.). Pointing in this same direction is the promise, “If we have died with (Christ), we will also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Tim. 2.11f.), as does the announcement in Revelation that those who were first to rise will reign with Christ (Rev. 20.6). In these three dimensions of eternal life, the threefold purpose that was given to human beings from the beginning comes to fulfillment: the purpose of offering the response that is in the image of God, of participating in the community that is in the image of God, and of exercising the dominion that is in the image of God. For the fulfillment of this threefold purpose to be in the image, eternal life was promised. While human beings had failed to meet this purpose, it was fulfilled by Jesus, and it will reach its further fulfillment through the transformation of believers into the image of Jesus Christ. That purpose has already begun, hidden in this earthly life, and it will be completed in the coming resurrection to eternal life. This transformation into the image of Jesus Christ is the transformation into God’s image. With this transformation, believers participate in the eternal life of God; indeed, they are taken into the divine life, for through his resurrection Jesus has been revealed to be the Son who has been with the Father from eternity and who became

The Creation of the New Heaven and the New Earth

human in order to fulfill obedience in our place and to open up eternal life to us. Also, the Holy Spirit did not first come into being at Pentecost but is God’s eternal Spirit. Through the historical mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and through the eschatological consummation, human beings are taken into the eternal communion of love, the communion of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and thus into the life of the divine glory. In this sense, the Greek fathers spoke of the deification of human beings (θεοποίησις [theopoiēsis]). The eternal life of the risen ones remains different from God’s eternal life. God is the fullness of life from eternity to eternity, and he does not need the creatures in order to be the Living One. The eternal life of the risen ones, however, has its beginning and its continuation solely in that God allows them to participate in his life. This difference is also preserved in the Greek-Orthodox statements about the “deification” of the human being (cf. above 665f.). The “deified” human is not God but God’s image, and as such the deified human is both distinguished from God and permeated by the divine life. The concept of the eternal life of the glorified is to be defined by this being taken into the trinitarian divine life. As communion with God, who always was and always will be, the eternal life of the risen ones, although it has a temporal beginning, will never end. It will, however, be inconceivably more than merely an endless existence. It will be participation in the fullness of the triune divine life.

4. The Creation of the New Heaven and the New Earth In terms of their beginning, human beings cannot be separated from the nonhuman creation. The turning away of the former from God also had an impact on the latter. Even if the term world (κόσμος [kosmos]) was used by Paul and in the Gospel of John to denote sinful humanity that has fallen into corruption, this term has a breadth that extends beyond humanity to include non-human creatures as well. It thus seems obvious from the outset to expect, together with the resurrection of the dead to eternal life, the restoration of the other creatures who are sighing under futility. The Old Testament promise is thus emphasized in the New Testament book of Revelation (21.1; cf. also 2 Pet. 3.13): “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered…” (Isa. 65.17 [NIV]). The expectation of a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. 21) is closely tied to the expectation of the resurrection of the dead (Rev. 20). The divine promise is now entirely comprehensive: “See, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21.5). The announcement, e. g., that is handed down as a saying of Jesus regarding the restoration (παλιγγενεσία [paliggenesia], Mt. 19.28) that is tied to the Last Judgment also points beyond the human realm.[iii] It should be noted that nowhere in the New Testament announce-

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ments of the new creation is there any mention of a “new world.” The “world” is the culpably disfigured creation. It is passing away. The new creation, however, is heralded in words that are used in the Old Testament accounts of creation and the creation psalms to summarize the whole of what has been created: everything and heaven and earth. This is the sum and substance of the universe created and ordered by God. The expectation of a new heaven and a new earth is, to be sure, only voiced at the fringes of early Christian proclamation, and yet, it is this expectation of a new creation that goes beyond the resurrection of the dead that is of great fundamental importance. Here, too, it makes sense to ask about the identity and the difference between the previous creation and the new one. Answering this question is of course even more difficult than answering the question about the identity and difference of the body of the resurrected ones compared to their earthly existence, for the answer to this latter question was based on the widely attested appearances of the risen Christ. If God’s Son became human and also remained human as the risen one, then drawing conclusions from his resurrection with respect to the future resurrection of the humans who belong to him are not only possible but required. But it is impossible to draw conclusions from Jesus’ resurrection in the same way with respect to the future form of the non-human creation, for the inert creation and the living plant and animal creatures do not have the indestructibility that is given to the personal, spiritual creatures at their origin. It is therefore understandable that the New Testament statements about the new creation of the non-human creatures diverge to a much greater extent than do those about the new creation of the human being. On the one hand, there are statements about a total discontinuation of the previous creation and a totally new creation (e. g., Rev. 20.11; 21.1; 2 Pet. 3.10). There is no question here of a continuity in what is created. On the other hand, such a continuity is presupposed if Paul expected the future liberation of the creation that is now subject to the bondage to decay (Rom. 8.21).

The task of announcing the new creation is not to describe it but to announce the act of God, the New Creator, by which the purpose for which he has created the universe comes to fulfillment: the adoration of God by all creatures in the multiplicity of their possibilities and in their mutual coordination.

5. God Is All in All When the world’s powers of corruption are bound and the new creation is completed, then “God will be all in all” (1 Cor. 15.28 [NEB]).

God Is All in All

This last statement of Paul, where he enumerates the final events (v. 20–28), does not mean the end of creatures, as if they were taken back again into God, from whom they had their origin. No, the whole work of Christ was indeed aimed at the fact that creatures who had succumbed to death should have eternal life. Paul’s statement also does not mean that God would then be absorbed into the creatures and would no longer be different from them. No, the difference between the Creator and creatures will always remain. Even if this Pauline passage is reminiscent of similar statements by the Stoics, it is not a pantheistic statement.[iv] God, who remains distinct from all creatures, will be in all creatures. In this respect, the term all [alles] which is used twice in this concluding word of Paul, does not mean the same thing in both places. God is all in an infinite sense. The created all, however, is finite. God is already all [alles] in himself, but the created universe [All] is through him. In the finite universe [All], the infinite God will be all [alles]. Now already from the beginning of creation, God was active in everything that had been created. Without his constant creative action, nothing created would have lasted for a moment. This is true even of creatures in their rebellion against God. In this respect, it is true of all creatures, regardless of how they behave toward God, that they are in him. In this sense, Luke included the Stoic-Hellenistic statement in Paul’s speech on the Areopagus: “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17.28).5 Life in God the New Creator must be distinguished from this present life in God the Creator and Preserver. This will not only be a life in him—despite our life against him—but a life in him and for him and with him, a life not in contradiction to him but in harmony with him, for in Jesus God brought about a new in-dwelling in the universe. In Jesus he not only worked as the Preserver of people, but in him he became human. The new humanity has begun in Jesus, which, despite its contradiction and its enslavement to death, is no longer merely in God but corresponds to God by assenting to God and by thanking and praising God for his deeds of lovingkindness, and through the Holy Spirit it participates in God’s eternal life. The new humanity, which has become subject to the Father with the Son, will be raised into God’s glory and permeated by it.

5 [This statement was likely made by the sixth-century BC philosopher-poet Epimenides. See F. F. Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles (London: Tyndale, 1951), 338. –Ed.]

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Editor’s Notes to Chapter 23 [i]

[ii]

[iii]

[iv]

See, e. g., Luther, “Second Sermon at the Funeral of the Elector, Duke John of Saxony” [1532], LW 1 , 51.251–255; “Commentary on First Corinthians 15” [1534], LW 1 , 28.181–182, 200–203. Cf., e. g., Aquinas, ST, I.12; II/1.1–5; Bonaventure, Commentaria in Librum Quartum Sententiarum, d. 49, p. 1, a. un., qq. 1–5, concl., in Opera Omnia, 4.1000–1002; Antonoie Vos et al., eds., Duns Scotus on Divine Love: Texts and Commentary on Goodness and Freedom, God and Humans (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003); and Augustine, Confessions, X.23–29 and XIII.13–19 (WSA, I/1.259–263, 350–355). For further analysis of the beatific vision in Augustine, Aquinas, and Bonaventure, see Hans Boersma, Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018). The Greek term παλιγγενεσία refers both to the “state of being renewed with a focus on a cosmic experience, renewal,” and to the “experience of a complete change of life, rebirth” (BDAG, 752). Cf. Mt. 19.28; and Tit. 3.5. Cf. Macrobius (fl. 400), Saturnalia, 1.20.11 (“Hercules as the sun ‘which is in all and through all’”). For similar statements from antiquity, see Hans Conzelmann, First Corinthians, trans. James W. Leitch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 275 (footnote 112).

Chapter XXIV: The Confession of God the New Creator

1. The Holy Spirit, the New Creator How do we respond to God’s activity to create anew? By confessing the Holy Spirit to be the New Creator—“the Lord, the giver of life” (Constantinopolitan Creed). If we confess faith in the Holy Spirit, we cannot overlook the fact that in the New Testament Scriptures—despite their many statements about the working of the Spirit—there is no confession of faith in the Holy Spirit which, in its structure, corresponds to the numerous christological confessional statements there. The Holy Spirit is not named as the one who is to be confessed but as the author of the confession (cf., e. g., Mk. 13.11 par.), above all, of the confession of Christ (e. g., 1 Cor. 12.3). In contrast to the invocation of Christ (e. g., 1 Cor. 16.22 and Rev. 23.20), there are no invocations of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament Scriptures, nor are any petitions offered to him for his coming. Rather, God the Father (e. g., Lk. 11.13) is asked to send the Holy Spirit. In addition, there are no glorifications of the Holy Spirit in the structure of doxology and the hymn, the means by which God the Father and Jesus Christ are worshiped and praised. The main reason for this may be found in the fact that the Holy Spirit does not encounter humans in the same way as Jesus Christ does. The latter faces human beings, while the Holy Spirit works in them. Dwelling in them, the Spirit always points to the one in whom God became human once and for all. God’s Spirit was poured out at Pentecost and is poured out again and again in all times and peoples to awaken the confession of Christ. Thereby, the Spirit does not come in a certain, unchanging form, but rather comes like the blowing of the wind (Jn. 3.8). Moreover, what was already explained at the beginning of the doctrine of the new creation need not be repeated here, namely, the difference between the incarnation of the Son of God and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (see above 809f.). When all churches confess in their creed faith in the Holy Spirit, going beyond what is stated in the New Testament, and when they not only pray to God for the gift of the Spirit but call upon the Holy Spirit himself, “Come, Creator, Holy Spirit!,” these actions are not done arbitrarily since the presuppositions for them are found in the New Testament statements themselves. But the differences between New Testament confessions of Christ and the statements about the Spirit as the author of these confessions must not be forgotten. (a) Through the Holy Spirit, whose outpouring has continued since Pentecost, God is carrying out his work to create anew. Through the Spirit, he breaks through the deafness and blindness of humans and opens them to the knowledge of the

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salvific act in Jesus Christ and to faith in him. Through the Holy Spirit, God unites believers with people of the new covenant and enlists them in witnessing to Jesus Christ throughout all the world. Through the Holy Spirit, God will raise those who believe and transform them into the image of the risen Christ. In this way, through the Spirit, God brings about a new creation in humans and gives them a share in eternal life. Through the Holy Spirit, he makes possible what is impossible for the human spirit because of its imprisonment in guilt and the judgment into which it has fallen. This outpouring of the Spirit began already before Pentecost, in God’s action upon Jesus. According to all the Gospels, the Holy Spirit came down on him in his baptism by John. With the authority of the Holy Spirit, Jesus preached and healed (especially emphasized in the Gospel of Luke, cf., e. g., 4.18), and, as the exalted one, Jesus sent the Spirit. That is why in the New Testament Scriptures the Holy Spirit is referred to both as God’s Spirit and as Christ’s Spirit, both as the Spirit of the Father and as the Spirit of the Son. Both God and Jesus, who was established in the power of God, take hold of people who have fallen into judgment, forgiving, liberating, and renewing them through the Holy Spirit, and leading them to the consummation in the resurrection to eternal life. God the Father and the Son are present in the power of the Spirit who is creating anew in the midst of humanity. (b) The Holy Spirit, whose outpouring has continued since Pentecost, is not only referred to in the New Testament Scriptures as the power by which God and the exalted Christ make people alive, but rather the Spirit himself is also attested to in many statements as the one who makes alive. He not only encounters people as an agent of God, but he also faces God on behalf of people. “We do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (Rom. 8.26). “Through him we call, Abba, Father” (v. 15 [S]); indeed, the Spirit calls in our hearts, “Abba! Father!” (Gal. 4.6). The Spirit not only encounters people as an agent of the exalted Christ, but he faces Christ by bringing about in believers the confession, “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor. 12.3). Together with the church, he prays to Christ for Christ’s coming (Rev. 22.17). With the Spirit facing God the Father and Christ in such a personal way, it is impossible to reduce the numerous New Testament testimonies about his personal working in humans to statements about the power of God and Christ. That the Holy Spirit speaks, teaches, remembers, gives instructions, warns, convicts, punishes, etc.; that the Spirit “allots his gifts to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses” (1 Cor. 12.11)—all these statements make the acknowledgment of his own personal working essential. “Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” This appeal, which recurs seven times in Rev. 2–3, invites you to hear the seven letters of Revelation as the promise and judgment of the Holy Spirit himself.

The Holy Spirit, the New Creator

But in the speaking of the Spirit, in contrast to the speaking of God and the risen Christ, the speaking I of the Spirit is not emphasized. Missing, e. g., are “I am” statements that were characteristic of Yahweh in the old covenant, and which are of central importance in the Gospel of John as words of Jesus. The Holy Spirit points away from himself to the Son, and thus at the same time to the Father. He concretizes and makes present the words of Jesus in the hic et nunc [here and now] of the people who are being addressed and leads them through the Son to the Father. In this way, he connects believers with the Father and the Son and takes them into the one facing them and who is with them. Working independently in humans—in a way that is different from the human spirit—the Spirit is entirely turned toward God the Father and the Son. (c) Just as the lordship of Jesus Christ is not in competition with the lordship of God the Father, so also the Spirit’s making alive is not in competition with that of God and Jesus Christ. Taking place here is one action of creating anew through the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s action of creating anew, even as his own personal action, is no different from that of the Father and the Son. The same “just as,” by which the Father’s and the Son’s making alive is designated as one action (Jn. 5.21), also applies to the Holy Spirit. Even in the personal facing of the Spirit to the Father and the Son to each other, the willing of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit is one willing. The illumination, renewal, sanctification, and gathering of the Holy Spirit is at the same time the action of the Father and the Son. Beyond the unity of action, all churches confess the unity of the Spirit with God the Father and the Son, just as the Father and the Son are one. Just as the Father is in the Son in the work of redemption, and the Son in the Father, so in the work of the new creation God the Father and the Son are in the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is in the Father and in the Son. If God has himself in the Son, and if the Son has revealed God the Father, so the Spirit reveals God the Father and the Son, for he awakens the knowledge of God revealed in Jesus Christ. If God is revealed in Jesus in the hiddenness of a human who encounters us, and in human words which bear witness to him, then in this hiddenness—and precisely in it—God is revealed through the Spirit who awakens the faith that “sees” God’s glory in the hiddenness of Jesus and the gospel. The unity of the Holy Spirit with God the Father and Jesus Christ results inescapably from the numerous statements about his action as the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. In addition, however, it is also expressed directly in the Johannine identification: “God is spirit” (Jn. 4.24), and in the christological and pneumatological statements of Paul: “God made ‘the last Adam,’ Christ, a life-giving spirit’” (1 Cor. 15.45 [S]), and: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3.17). That the church, in contrast to the New Testament statements, also confesses the Holy Spirit in its creed, has its basis in the baptismal formula (Mt. 28.19). Since here

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the one name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is spoken above the person to be baptized, it makes sense to confess the Spirit after the Father and the Son. And yet the confession of the Spirit does not constitute a formal adaptation to the confession of God the Father and Jesus Christ. It was also of great importance for the genesis of the pneumatological confession that the Spirit not only is active as the power of God and Christ in humans, but that at the same time he faces humans by comforting, calling, and warning them. In this way, he encounters human beings inside as personally facing them, just as God encounters the human being from the outside in Jesus Christ. From this perspective, too, it made sense to confess faith in the Spirit. This was done in the Old Roman Creed and in the Nicene Creed with the simple words: “I believe in the Holy Spirit.”1 In Constantinople in 381, the aspect of facing human beings was emphasized more strongly by the addition: “…the Lord and giver of life.”2 Since all structures of the statements of faith are concentrated in the confession, that the Holy Spirit is also to be called upon and worshiped could not be left out. However, this development likely did not consistently take place because of the mention of the Spirit in the creed. In any case, as can be seen from the protests at the time, i. e., at the time of the Council of Constantinople, the adoration and glorification of the Spirit, together with the Father and the Son, may have been common in Cappadocia and probably also in Constantinople, but not generally. Directly addressing the Spirit as “you” in prayer probably became generally established only later.

2. The Eternal Spirit of God The outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus’ followers at Pentecost was not the beginning of the work of God’s Spirit in history. Rather, he was already active in the history of Israel and in what has taken place in all created life. (a) Thus, according to Old Testament traditions, God’s Spirit awakened heroic saviors (such as Gideon, Samson, and Saul) when Israel was facing threatening situations. While here it was a matter of these people being taken into temporary service to meet specific situations, notions about a more permanent spiritual gift arose with the institutionalization of kingship. In contrast to early ecstatic groups of prophets, the speeches of the pre-exilic biblical prophets were rarely attributed to the action of God’s Spirit. Decisive for them was being commissioned by God’s word and preaching this word in opposition to the ecstatic visions and dreams of the false

1 [For this phrase in the Old Roman Creed (the Romanum) and the Nicene Creed (the Nicaenum), see Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 102, 155–166, 216. Cf. Denzinger, 16, 125–126. –Ed.] 2 [The Constantinopolitan Creed, Denzinger, 150; Tanner, 1.24; BSELK, 50 (cf. BC, 22–23). –Ed.]

The Eternal Spirit of God

prophets. Only after the exile was the speaking of prophets, teachers, and psalmists more closely tied to the effects of the Spirit, although of course these were limited to just a few individuals. An outpouring of the Spirit upon all members of the people (Joel 2.28–29) and the Spirit-wrought resurrection of the people (Ezek. 37) were only expected in the future. Beyond God’s salvation to Israel, in the old covenant all created life was understood to be the effect of God’s Spirit. Human life came into being through the breath of God (Gen. 2.7; Job 33.4), and it remains dependent on God not withdrawing his Spirit. “If he should take back his spirit to himself, and gather to himself his breath, all flesh would perish together, and all mortals return to dust” (Job 34.14f.). Animal life, too, has its origin and continuing existence in the action of God’s Spirit. “When you send forth your spirit, they are created”; “When you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust” (Ps. 104.30, 29). In the church’s tradition, Gen. 1.2 has typically been interpreted in such a way that God’s Spirit contributed to the creation of the universe and the overcoming of the tohu wabohu. There is controversy today about whether this passage merely mentions a mighty storm as a third element in the description of the state before God’s first act of creation through the word. However, other Old Testament passages about creation speak of the connection between God’s Spirit and word, such as, e. g., Psalm 33.6: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.” Apart from Gen. 1.2, it is clear that God’s Spirit stands over creatures in sovereign freedom, and in the giving and taking of life, just as God the Creator is differentiated from all created things. It is true that in the New Testament Scriptures the Old Testament statements about the Spirit’s creative work in the beginning do not play a role. The New Testament statements about the Holy Spirit are entirely focused on his action to renew and create anew. But both the New Testament statements about the one who creates anew and the Old Testament statements about the Creator of this earthly life attest so adamantly to the power of the Spirit that is given to all creatures, that he is praised by all churches as the eternal Spirit. (b) As the eternal Spirit, the Holy Spirit has his eternal origin in God the Father. He has the same origin as the eternal Son. Just as the eternal Son cannot be separated from his origin in God the Father, so neither can the Holy Spirit. From this vantage point, there arises the question of how the origin of the Spirit relates to the origin of the Son. Does the Spirit come solely from the Father, or from the Father and the Son? This question led to the dispute over the filioque, which played a major role in the genesis of the schism between the Eastern and Western churches, and it is still an issue even today. It should be noted from the outset that the New Testament Scriptures contain numerous explicit statements about the historical procession of the Holy Spirit from the exalted Christ, but none about his eternal procession from the Son. In this respect, the

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statements about the participation or non-participation of the Son in the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit lie on a different plane from the confession of the procession of the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Father. Since different interpretations of trinitarian dogma played an important role in the conflicts over the filioque, the discussion of the question of the filioque should be postponed until the conclusion of the doctrine of the Trinity (see chap. 26.7).

(c) Because the Holy Spirit is the eternal Spirit, his unity with God the Father and the Son cannot be restricted to the time of his action at Pentecost and after Pentecost, nor to the earlier time of his action in creation and the old covenant. Rather, the eternal unity of the Spirit with the Father and the Son is to be praised. If God has become revealed in Christ through the outpouring of the Spirit, then this revelation will only be recognized when the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and of their being-in-one-another, is confessed as an eternal being-in-one-another and an eternal oneness.[i] The statement, “God is Spirit,” cannot be restricted to God’s historical action through the Spirit upon creatures. Rather, God’s being an eternal Spirit is to be confessed. Thus the holiness of the Spirit is the same as that of the Father and the Son. He is light and life, just as God the Father and the Son are. Thus the Holy Spirit is of one being with God the Father and the Son. While it is true that the word ὁμοούσιος [homoousios = “of the same being”] is not used in the statements of the Constantinopolitan Creed about the Holy Spirit, the content is unequivocally confessed: the Holy Spirit is “worshiped and glorified at the same time with the Father and the Son.”3 All the perfections of God are to be praised also as perfections of the Holy Spirit. Editor’s Note to Chapter 24 [i]

Schlink’s German term Ineinandersein (“being-in-one-another”) translates the Greek term περιχώρησις (perichōrēsis = lit. “dancing around”), which is used in trinitarian theology to refer to the mutual “being-in-one-another” of the three divine Persons. The Latin equivalent is circumincessio.

3 [Cf. “…and in the Spirit… co-worshiped and co-glorified with the Father and the Son…” (Tanner, 1.24 [trans. modified]; cf. Denzinger, 150). –Ed.]

FOURTH PART The Doctrine of God

Chapter XXV: The Adoration of God[i]

1. Thanksgiving for God’s Acts We have to thank God for his mighty deeds. For example, the people of the Old Testament covenant gave thanks again and again in their psalms for their deliverance from Egypt and for the gifts of Mount Zion and the Davidic kingship. In addition, this thanksgiving also focused on God’s covenant with Abraham and God’s act of creation in the beginning. In the church, God’s act of redemption through Jesus Christ is the central focus of everlasting thanksgiving. This thanksgiving, too, was not without reference to God’s act of creation in the beginning, which he accomplished through the pre-existent Christ, the mediator of creation. So, too, the eucharistic prayer in the Lord’s Supper is not only a remembrance of Jesus’ death, but it also has become a prayer of thanksgiving in the unfolding of the liturgy, which encompasses all of God’s acts from the creation of the world to the return of Christ. The mighty deeds of God—such as the creation in the beginning as well as the old and new covenants—were unique acts, but each of them is at the same time the promise that God will extend and complete what he has begun. Giving thanks for the unique acts of God is therefore also giving thanks for God’s preservation of creation, the growth of God’s people, and the promised consummation of the new creation. In giving thanks, the one praying thus reminds God of his mighty deeds, and lifts them up before him. They are the reason for trusting that God will hear our prayers and intercessions and will continue to act for us and our neighbors, just as he once did for the ancestors. Thus the Psalter contains not only thanksgiving for the acts that God has done in the past, but it is full of thanksgiving for the salvation that those praying have received through the same God who once saved Israel. Almost without exception, the New Testament letters also begin with thanksgiving for the grace that was bestowed upon the congregation that was addressed by the same God who offered up his Son once and for all for the world.

2. Doxology We would not thank God in truth, however, if we only looked at what we have received through his action and at what we can continue to expect for ourselves and for others from his further action. Instead, giving thanks for God’s acts takes place in the adoration of God. For this reason, the Hebrew language does not have a special

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word for thanksgiving alongside adoration; rather, the summons to give thanks is included in the summons to offer adoration. In the New Testament Scriptures, different words are used for thanksgiving and adoration, but they are closely related. We cannot give thanks for God’s acts without praising God himself. God is to be praised as the Lord, who freely has accomplished, is accomplishing, and will accomplish his mighty deeds. In his freedom he created the universe. In his unfathomable forebearance he has preserved humanity, even though it turned away from him and became enslaved to death. Solely because of his free mercy did he liberate the Israelite tribes and make them his covenant people, even though Israel was “the fewest of all peoples” (Deut. 7.7) and a “stubborn people” (Deut. 9.6). In the freedom of his steadfast love, God sent his Son, even though Israel had broken the old covenant, and he poured out the Holy Spirit, even though Jews and Gentiles had nailed Jesus to the cross. None of these acts is grounded in the good behavior of people. Rather, God accomplished them despite human opposition. Nor can any of these divine acts be necessarily derived from a previous one. Through each of them God thwarts the consequences of human sin and surpasses the human expectations that are raised by his promises. God is always more than his acts. God did not first become the Lord by creating, preserving, and governing the universe that is different from him; rather, as the Lord that he is, he created, preserves, and governs the universe. He also did not first become the Lord when his reign broke into this world through Jesus’ message and when he exalted Jesus as Lord over the universe. He certainly did not become the Lord only after people believed this message and confessed Jesus to be the Lord. Rather, as the Lord that he is, he has done his work of redemption, and he will complete it in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nor did God become a lover only when he called creatures into being, to whom he then turned in love, but rather as the one who is love, he gave them life, redeemed them, and will fully renew them. The patience with which God preserves sinners, the mercy with which he accepted Israel, and the love with which he offered up his Son for the world are decisions of one and the same love that God has always been. Because of the mighty deeds of his power and love, God is to be acknowledged as the Lord, who is omnipotence and love forever and ever. The acknowledgment of God himself is contained in all statements about God’s acts, for the acknowledgment that he was and always will be prior to his acts is contained in the acknowledgment of the freedom in which God has accomplished, is accomplishing, and will accomplish his acts. The acknowledgment of God himself is also included in every prayer, for those praying call upon God as the Father who already knows what they need before they ask him. Indeed, God knew them already before they were born. That God himself is to be distinguished from his acts is most clearly expressed in doxology (cf. above 116f.). Doxology is grounded in God’s historical act of salvation, but because of that act of salvation it praises God as God. In its basic form it exclaims, “To God is the glory!” (indicative), or also, “To God be the glory!”

Doxology

(optative)—the latter, however, not in the sense that God was only granted glory through the doxology; rather, what is praised here is the glory that God is and has forever and ever, and what is thus prayed for is that all worship this glory.[ii] It is true that in doxology the acts that serve as the reason for which God is glorified are occasionally mentioned. This is especially true of the adoration of God and Christ in praise and hymns, which in the broader sense can also be described as doxological responses of faith. But doxology does not stop at adoring the divine acts; rather, it praises the eternal Lord who has accomplished them. The acts are not so much the content of the adoration as the occasion that prompts it. “Glory and honor and thanks” are given to the one “who lives forever and ever” (Rev. 4.9f.). The same God who has revealed himself in his mighty acts is worshiped as the Eternal One. Just as God’s accomplished acts are a presupposition for but not the actual content of doxology, so neither are God’s future acts the content of doxology. God is instead worshiped as the Lord, whose selfhood [Selbigkeit] encompasses and determines the past, present, and future of the world. Corresponding to this is the fact that in doxology the “you” recedes when addressing God, and God is praised above all in the third person, as “he,” for doxology is about the adoration of God himself, whose existence does not depend on us as his counterpart. Rather, he is “forever and ever” the same Holy, Almighty, and Loving One. The meaning of doxology would be misunderstood if one were to take the statements about God himself to be a product of the doxological structure of the statement. The same misunderstanding has already been rejected at the end of each of the first three main parts of this dogmatics, namely, in the explanations about the eternal Father, the eternal Son, and the eternal Spirit. What is implicitly presupposed and contained in all theological statements, regardless of the structure that those statements take, simply comes to explicit statement in doxology. Every prayer, every witness, every confessional statement has its truth and power from the fact that God has freely turned himself toward the world, indeed, has come into it. The adoration of God himself is closely related to giving thanks for his mighty deeds, for on the basis of his acts we recognize God’s eternal power and love and, conversely, we recognize his acts as decisions of this loving power. At the same time, however, a distinction must be made between God himself and his acts, since he freely accomplishes his acts without any external or internal necessity. If no distinction is made between God himself and his acts, then inevitably his acts will eventually no longer be recognized as God’s acts; instead, they will dissolve into statements about the world and human beings. With respect to a cosmic universality, this takes place in pantheism, and with respect to the human domain, it takes place in generalizing about mystical experiences of the unity between God and the self. This dissolution can also take place when God is understood to be the correlate of the world and human beings, as if God exists only in relation to what is created.

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In yet another way, the contrast between God and humankind is abolished when world history is understood to be God’s self-unfolding, for example, as the path by which the unconscious divinity reaches personal consciousness.[iii] By contrast, all churches differentiate between God himself—as God is in his eternal unconditionality, freedom, and selfhood—and God’s acts of creation, redemption, and new creation. No church has dispensed with confessional and doctrinal statements about God himself in his eternal identity. When statements about God himself are no longer wagered, that is, when doxology falls silent in the church, then also prayers and witness become weak and emaciated, as do doctrine and the confession of faith.

3. The Adoration of God as a Sacrifice of Praise In doxology, God is the be all and end all. The “I” of the person who sings the doxology recedes entirely before God. While the “we” of the worshipers is not always absent in the wording of the adoration, this “we” is directed away from itself toward God. One does not ask anything for oneself, nor does one pay attention to the act of one’s adoration by making this act the object of the doxological statement. The basic form of doxology is not, “God, I praise you,” but, “God be praised!” That the I of the worshiper and the act of the one worshiping are generally absent in the wording of the doxology is the extreme expression of the surrender of the person to God, who encounters the person through the divine acts. Here people are silent about themselves, although they speak, for in doxology they offer themselves to God as a sacrifice. If, in the old covenant, the adoration was originally tied in a special way to the offering of the cultic sacrifice, then—in the wake of the prophetic preaching of judgment against reliance on animal sacrifices—this self-surrender of the people through adoration has been called for as the sacrifice that is well-pleasing to God. This understanding also remained vital in the early Christian community, as well as throughout church history. Because the ones offering adoration offer themselves as a sacrifice to God, they are silent about themselves. Doxological statements often sound strangely objective, but it is precisely in this turning away from the human that they are most existential. They are not about setting forth general, metaphysical propositions, but rather they are statements in which human beings surrender themselves to the one to whom they owe everything, the one whom they praise as the eternally living Lord. In this sacrifice of praise, the whole person is offered up to God, the person’s heart and members but also the person’s ideas about God and the words used to speak of God. They are shaped by the perceptibility of the world. God, however, is invisible. God is not a part of the world, but the Lord of the world. Even if our thinking and speaking transcend space and time, we can only express this transcendence

The Adoration of God as a Sacrifice of Praise

in spatial and temporal concepts and words. God, however, is the Lord of space and time. While our thinking and speaking involve comparisons and distinctions, God is immeasurable. God is not a counterpart that we could walk around, look at, and describe as an object in this world. Whenever God encounters us, he is the one who encompasses us. If we think we have understood God and have grasped him in words, the reality of God himself far surpasses our thoughts and words. All our concepts and words, which we have gained from our experience of the world, turn out to be inadequate, contradictory, foolish, and void in the face of God. God is always greater. Again and again, however, theology has tried to begin with the experience of this world and with the concepts determined by it, and from there to arrive at statements about God’s essence [Wesen]. Then negation takes on tremendous importance: God is incorporeal, invisible, unlimited, infinite, unimaginable, inexpressible, etc. Such negative statements can already be found in the Old Testament, e. g., in invocations to God: “none can compare with you”; “your wondrous deeds and your thoughts” are “more than can be counted” (Ps. 40.6). “You hem me in, behind and before… Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it” (Ps. 139.5f.). When the Old Testament belief in God and the Palestinian message of Christ entered the Hellenic world, such negative statements were given great weight. In the Old Testament, enhancement [Steigerung], by which God is praised above everything known to humans, has played a greater role than the negation of the human possibilities for knowledge: God is the highest and most powerful, the absolutely righteous one, the one who alone is steadfast, etc.[iv] This seems to correspond to how later Christian theologians taught the way of eminence (via eminentiae) alongside the way of negation (via negationis) in order to move from inner-worldly experiences and concepts to statements about God’s essence.[v] In contrast to the Old Testament, the starting point for this Neoplatonic method is obviously not God’s historical salvific action but a general, natural knowledge of the Good which, in the course of its enhancement and becoming surpassed, is considered worthy of designating God’s essence. Indeed, this way of eminence is more open to criticism than has generally been recognized in the history of Christian theology. To be sure, the knowledge of good and evil is given to all people in their hearts by God the Preserver, but this knowledge has been suppressed and obscured again and again by the desires, disobedience, and self-righteousness of human beings. Often enough, people refer to what is neither good nor just nor love as good, just, and love. In addition, the via eminentiae has been questioned because the relative consensus that once existed in the Mediterranean world about the nature of the Good, which had been influenced by Greek philosophy and first spread in the church, no longer exists. The gospel has now advanced into completely different cultures, in Africa, America, and the Far East, whose notions about what is good and evil sometimes diverge widely.

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Dionysius the Areopagite [Pseudo-Dionysius] connected causality to the ways of negation and enhancement.[vi] This threefold pattern was used extensively by both medieval and old-Protestant scholasticism. But if one consistently goes to the end of the ways of enhancement and negation, are any substantive statements about God as the ultimate cause still possible? In the end, is it not merely the acknowledgment of God as an attribute-less cause and an ineffable reason that would be left? Basically the same problems are contained in abstract definitions of God’s essence, which have been taken up in manifold ways in the history of theology, such as, e. g., “highest being” (summum ens), “pure actuality” (actus purus), “highest good” (summum bonum), but also “spiritual being” (ens spirituale), “spiritual essence” (essentia spiritualis), “unconditioned Spirit” (spiritus independens), etc.1 But how do the divine Being and the world’s state of being, divine action and inner-worldly causes-and-effects, as well as the Spirit of God and the human spirit, relate to one another? Here, too, the via negationis has been followed, and here too negation ultimately calls the use of the via eminentiae into question. God is “he himself ” in a completely different sense than the human being, for human beings have their life from God, and their “wanting-to-be-themselves” [“Selbst-sein-wollen”] signifies a turning away from God. God, however, is the one who is free. He is in himself the fullness of life. All churches agree that a definition of God, in the strict sense of the word, is impossible, especially because God cannot be subsumed under any general concept or term. We are encompassed and defined by him, but we cannot encompass and define him. If one takes as one’s starting point the human experience of the world and of the self, as well as the central metaphysical concepts

1 [For “summum ens,” see, e. g., Aristotle, Metaphysics, XI.7, in Basic Writings of Aristotle, 861ff.; Anselm of Canterbury, Monologium, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, 83ff.; and Johann Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces: On the Nature of God and the Trinity, trans. Richard Dinda (St. Louis: Concordia, 2007), 93–95. For “actus purus,” see, e. g., Aristotle, Physics, VII-VIII, and Metaphysics, XII.6–10, in Basic Writings of Aristotle, 340ff., 877ff.; Aquinas, ST, I.2–4; and Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces: On the Nature of God and the Trinity, 93. For “summum bonum,” see, e. g., Plato, The Republic, VII.517ff., in Plato: The Collected Dialogues, 749ff.; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, 935ff.; Plotinus, Six Enneads, trans. Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), 26–27; and Augustine, De natura boni (CSEL, 25/2.855–889; The Nature of the Good, WSA, I/19.325–345). For the use of “ens spirituale” and “essentia spiritualis” in the Lutheran dogmatic tradition, see, e. g., Philip Melanchthon, Loci communes (1543), trans. J. A. O. Preus (St. Louis: Concordia, 1992), 19ff.; Martin Chemnitz, Loci theologici, 2 vols., trans. J. A. O. Preus (St. Louis: Concordia, 1989), 1.58ff.; Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces: On the Nature of God and the Trinity, 97–99; and Abraham Calov, Systema locorum theologicorum, II.178–191. For the dogmatic description of God as “spiritus independens,” see Calov, Systema, II.177; Johann Baier and C. F. W. Walther, Compendium theologiae positivae, 3 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1879), II.14 (1.1, §6); and David Hollaz, Examen theologicum acroamaticum, I.1.16. –Ed.]

Adoration of the Divine Name

that are based on that experience, then it follows that God is not only “above being” (ὑπερούσιος [hyperousios]) but “without being” (ἀνούσιος [anousios]).2 Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler, d. 1677) may be cited as one of those who, in the course of church history, came to an end on the Neoplatonic path of the knowledge of God: “One does not know what God is. He is not light, not spirit, not truth, unity, one, not what one calls divinity, not wisdom, not understanding, not love, will, goodness, no thing, no non-entity [Unding] either, no being, no mind.”3 God’s being has here become so indefinable that it is equated with nothing: “God is nothing. No one touches him here now. The more you reach for him, the more he will slip away from you.”4 If this were the case, the adoration of God would have to fall silent.

4. Adoration of the Divine Name But God did not remain silent in his acts. He accomplished them through his word, and he makes them known through his word. In our speaking to God and about God, we do not remain dependent on the notions and words that we gain from our experience of the world. Adoration is possible because God, in his caring commitment to human beings, has adopted human ideas and words, put them into his service, transformed, and renewed them. God entered human language in his speaking; indeed, “the Word became flesh” (Jn. 1.14). Because God became human in Jesus Christ, we do not need to take offense at the anthropomorphic biblical statements about God’s “strong arm,” “helping hand,” “seeing eye,” etc.5 Through Moses and the prophets, God made known to humans not only his acts, promises, instructions, and threats, but also himself: “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of slavery” (Exod. 20.2 [S]). If we take

2 [“But what God is in his essence and nature is absolutely incomprehensible and unknowable… [W]hen we would explain what the essence of anything is, we must not speak only negatively. In the case of God, however, it is impossible to explain what he is in his essence. It is better to make statements about God’s being far removed from all things. For he is not of the same class as those things that are, but he is above all beings and above being itself. For if all forms of knowledge have to do with what exists, certainly that which is above knowledge must be also above essence [ὑπερ ούσιαν]…” (John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4 (FOTC, 37.170–172 [trans. modified]). Cf. Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991). –Ed.] 3 Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler), Aus dem Cherubinischen Wandersmann [From the Cherub-like Wanderer] (Leipzig: Inselverlag, n.d.), 26. 4 Angelus Silesius, Aus dem Cherubinischen, 6. 5 [See, e. g., Ps. 89.10; Exod. 13.16; Num. 11.23; Isa. 40.2; 59.1; Gen. 6.8; Deut. 11.12; 2 Sam. 15.25; Pss. 11.4; 34.15; and Isa. 49.5. –Ed.]

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seriously as revelation the words that God has spoken about himself through Moses and the prophets and finally through Jesus Christ, then answers to the question, “Who is God himself?,” are not only possible but required. Humankind needs only to take up the words with which God has revealed his glory and love. All of God’s speaking about himself is concentrated in the revelation of his name. God’s name is the word that is appropriate to God because he himself has made it known to people. God’s revealed name is the word put into people’s mouths by means of which it is possible for them to call upon God as “you” and to praise him as “he himself.” With this name God wants to be sought and found. To this name he wants to respond. The revelation of the divine name is an historical act in which God uses a word in human language to designate himself. The word need not be new. It is likely that the Old Testament name of Yahweh was based on an older word-stem (the Kenite hypothesis). But God linked this word to his promise and his commandment and thereby gave it a new meaning, namely, Yahweh, who wants to lead Israel out of slavery and, as this Savior, promises it to continue to be present to and for this people. In ancient Israel, the name of Yahweh was understood to be the present reality of Yahweh himself. Later, Yahweh and his name became frequently differentiated, whereby the name was understood partly as an instrument of the God who dwells in heaven and partly as his representative on earth. Even older is the wording for God’s name in the New Testament. God is designated as θεός [theos] in the Greek world too, and he has been called Father in many religions. The special meaning of the name Father in the New Testament is based on the fact that Jesus proclaimed God uniquely as the Father and because God confirmed Jesus uniquely as his Son. Just as the Old Testament name of Yahweh was understood to be identical with Yahweh and at the same time differentiated from him, so Jesus the Son is one with God the Father and at the same time differentiated from him as the Mediator. Jesus is now confessed with the same title kyrios that the Septuagint had used to translate the Old Testament name of Yahweh, and God is invoked as “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”6 One must remember that neither the invocation of Abba nor the confession of Jesus as Lord is mere human words; rather, they both are the effect of the Holy Spirit. Because of this salvation-historical action of God the Father in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, believers have “the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” on their lips. This threefold name is handed down initially in the command to baptize in Mt. 28.19 and in the Didache’s instructions for baptism.[vii] It then found widespread use in all churches beyond the context of baptism, e. g., at

6 [See, e. g., Rom. 15.6; 2 Cor. 1.3; 11.31; Eph. 1.3, 17; Col. 1.3; and 1 Pet. 1.3. –Ed.]

Adoration of the Divine Name

the beginning of every worship service and as adoration at the end of every psalm prayer. Christendom’s adoration of God is focused on this name. Neither in the old covenant nor in the new did the adoration of God take place in the mere repetition of the revealed name. Rather, through the revelation of the name of God the people of God received a spontaneity to praise God also in their own words. In its adoration of Yahweh, Israel thus made use of honorific titles and designations of dignity that were used for the gods in Israel’s Semitic environment, especially by the Canaanites. This is particularly true of the divine name El, including its various additions, such as, e. g., El-Elyon (God Most High) and El-Olam (God the Eternal One).[viii] Even names that were native to foreign cults, such as Melech, Adon, and occasionally even Baal, have been used to denote Yahweh.[ix] This need not be seen as a violation of the prohibition on worshiping foreign gods. Rather, by transferring these names to Yahweh, the myths behind them were destroyed. In the adoration of Yahweh, the names of these foreign gods underwent disempowerment, and they received a new meaning. As in christology, a distinction must be made here between names [Namen], honorific titles [Hoheitstitel], and designations of dignity [Würdebezeichnungen]. Something like what happened with the Semitic El took place during the transition of Christian congregations away from Judaism in Hellenistic areas, when those communities adopted the common Greek title of theos to designate the Father of Jesus Christ and increasingly also to designate Christ himself. This title, too, underwent a radical transformation over against Greek mythology and philosophy. In this way, by making use of foreign titles for God to bear witness to the revealed name of God, divine truth hidden in religions and philosophies is liberated—truth that is witnessed to all human beings through creation but which has been more or less misunderstood by all. In the adoration of the revealed name of God, the foreign gods are carried along like prisoners in a triumphal procession in which the true God, the Father of Jesus Christ, is praised. The same thing basically takes place in the adoration of the divine attributes. It is not restricted to those that have been handed down as statements of God about himself, including the manifestation of his name and of his promises and requirements. This adoration, too, happens beyond the adoration of further attributes. In the teaching of the church, the attributes of God are also referred to as perfections. What a strange plural! But God’s perfection is immeasurable, and our statements about his perfection are imperfect. That is why we can only praise it with a multitude of statements about attributes. Notions about the perfect, the good, the right, the sublime, and the beautiful—all human beings have them because of the self-revelation of God in creation, even if they are more or less obscured in everyone. Here, too, the truth distorted in these notions is uncovered by God’s revelation, and the ways of negation and enhancement no longer lead to an empty concept of causation, or even to that of nothing, but to a further unfolding of adoring praise.

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God always surpasses our notions. We always must sacrifice them to him—including the notions that we have of him because of God’s word. The revelation of his name does not end God’s incomprehensibility, but through this revelation God has made himself invocable and predicable in his incomprehensibility. With the revelation of his name, God has not ceased to be a mystery, but this mystery is not an inexpressible emptiness. It is instead “manifestly great” (1 Tim. 3.16 [L]). God can neither be defined nor concealed. In Old Testament psalms as well as in New Testament doxologies and in the history of the church’s liturgy, the adoration of God is expressed with an ever-new plerophoria in which the inexhaustibility of the divine perfection is praised. The inexhaustibility of God, which has become invocable through the name, is the driving force for the superabundance of exuberant statements of praise. For this reason, adoration is in no way degenerate if, e. g., it is accompanied by wordless jubilation and dancing, as happens in many African congregations.

5. Adoration from the Depths Reflection on the adoration of God would be incomplete if it were to ignore the place in which we begin to sing it. We are still on the way in this world, not yet at our destination, not yet in the promised homeland. We find ourselves suffering the trials and tribulations [Anfechtungen] of faith; we are not yet beholding God’s glory. In this sense, early church theologians made a distinction between the theologia viatorum and the theologia comprehensorum, the theologia patriae. In our theological thinking it is absolutely impossible for us to take up the position of God himself and to proceed from his self-knowledge. In this sense, a distinction needs to be made between the theologia archetypa, which belongs to God alone, and the theologia ektypa, which is made possible for us by God. That is why doxology is not possible without the plea, “Kyrie eleison!” As long as we live in this world, we are in dire straits, be it hunger, failure, disease, or persecution. Even the satiated and the successful, the healthy and the popular, know the destructive feeling of futility and meaninglessness. Meanwhile, no misery can come upon humans apart from God. Even if God seems to be idly looking on, the matter still is about what he is doing, since nothing happens that he cannot prevent. But what he does cannot be detached from the validity of his commandments and his intended purpose for human beings. Hence every misery calls human beings into question about their conscious or unconscious sin. It cannot be overlooked either that the biblical writings bear witness not only to God’s mercy but also to God’s wrath, to his hatred of sin, and to his deadly dreadfulness. Again and again in prophetic preaching, God’s wrath is announced, indeed not only as a threat from the prophets but as an announcement by God

Excursus: On the Issue of Theological Analogy

himself. Corresponding to this is the fact that the Old Testament psalms of lament are filled with experiences of divine wrath. The New Testament Scriptures, too, are by no means only a witness to God’s love; they also witness to God’s wrath. Thus Paul, e. g., at the beginning of his letter to the Romans, proclaims not only the revelation of God’s saving righteousness (1.17) but also the revelation of God’s wrath (1.18), and he announces the end-time judgment as a “day of wrath” (2.5 et passim). This is the depth from which the believer begins to sing the adoration of God. Doxology cannot be separated from the cry, “Out of the depths I call, O Lord, to you” (Ps. 130.1 [L]). We cannot extol God’s love without acknowledging the legitimacy of God’s wrath against the sinner. We cannot praise the bestowal of his righteousness without admitting his judgment is correct. We cannot glorify his gracious presence without acknowledging his inescapability, and we cannot bear witness to his truth and faithfulness apart from the dreadfulness with which God disrupts the meaningful connections we have imagined, behind which we try to hide from him. Consequently, the doctrine of God is faced with the question of the relationship between God’s love and his wrath, between God’s gracious presence and his inescapability, between God’s truth and his irrational dreadfulness. Most existential is the question: How do these oppositions apply to me? Does not God become even more of an unknown through these oppositions than when this already happens through our notions and words shaped by the world? Is not God himself called into question by means of these oppositions?

Excursus: On the Issue of Theological Analogy With the considerations in the previous sections of this chapter (sec. 3–5), we have moved into the issue of the correspondence between human language and divine reality and thus between creaturely existence and God’s being. This issue of the analogia entis [analogy of being] is not an ecumenical issue insofar as on its own it has not become the cause of church divisions in the course of church history. The differences in addressing this question have generally maintained the character of schools of thought in theology, which have often even cut straight across the separated churches. For this reason, we may be justified in dealing with this issue here if we merely make a few observations: Common to all churches is the acknowledgment of correspondences between God and creation, since the latter was created for the glorification of God. This is especially true of human beings, since God created humans in his own image. What is also largely held in common is the understanding of the analogia entis, in the sense that there is such a correspondence between the divine being and creaturely being that the difference is greater than the agreement.

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What is disputed is the degree to which humans and their environment are distorted by sin and the world’s corrupting powers and to what extent the correspondence that was originally given can be recognized by means of natural reason. What is thus disputed is the question about whether this knowledge is only revealed on the basis of the revealed word and thus as an analogia fidei [analogy of faith]. The latter view is found primarily in Reformation theology but also in some Roman Catholic theologians—but conversely, the Thomistic starting point in the analogia entis, which is knowable by natural reason, has also been adopted in old-Protestant scholasticism. These differences correspond to those relating to the issue of the natural knowledge of God (cf. above 278f.). A more detailed discussion of the problem of the analogia entis cannot be detached from consideration of the different structures of theological statements. If one approaches the issue of analogy from this point of view, in many respects there arises the need for a more precise differentiation. This can be explained using the following examples. (a) A noun [Nomen] can generally signify a word or a designation, but it also can specifically signify a proper name. A noun can be used to describe, denote, and define but also to address, greet, and petition. A name can be given by me to those whom I encounter, but it can also be communicated to me by those others, and by using it I recognize these others as those who have introduced themselves with this name and who want to be addressed in this way. These important differences have hardly played a role in the history of the issue of analogy. A Nomen Dei [name of God] is, e. g., according to Thomas Aquinas, predominantly the word with which humans designate God, not God’s historically revealed name with which he wants to be invoked. (b) The issue of analogy has often been discussed one-sidedly in terms of God’s existence, essence, and attributes compared to the existence, essence, and attributes of creatures, especially in terms of the corresponding substantives and adjectives, although the analogia entis is based on the divine acts and words, which require creatures to have a corresponding response in their acts and words. In general, no distinction is made between a descriptive use of action words and their current use in the assurance and claim of God. (c) Compared to the issue of analogy posed by theological words and simple theological sentences, the issue of analogy in theological conclusions has been discussed relatively little throughout the history of theology. While logical conclusions from the premises of two theological propositions (or from a philosophical proposition and a theological one) have played a major role in theological thinking, people have hardly ever asked the fundamental question: To what extent does the logical consistency in the divine action, which is absolutely unique in its steadfastness, correspond to our rules about logical conclusions? For example, there are issues in the doctrine of predestination that cannot be approached with the same deductive method that is self-evident in logical reasoning about inner-worldly causal connections. That predestination has become a nightmare for many is related to the fact that statements about election by grace and those about rejection were deduced with a certain degree of self-evidence to form parallel conclusions (cf. chap. 30).

Dogma and the Doctrine of God

(d) One and the same concept of analogy is insufficient to express the various correspondences between human words and the divine reality. The classic definition of the analogia entis as a correspondence in which the difference is greater than the agreement does not apply in the same way to all theological statements; rather, a distinction must be made here in greater detail. The relationship between earthly fathers and sons can be so broken that the correspondence between it and the communion of God the Father and the Son has been lost and can only be restored by God’s grace. Likewise, love between humans can become so egotistical that it no longer corresponds to God’s love, but stands in opposition to it. But wherever the Spirit of God is at work, wherever the “love of God is poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 5.5 [L]), the relationship between divine and human love is much closer than the classic definition expresses. Love in the community of believers is the working of the same Holy Spirit who is the bond of love between God the Father and the Son. (e) Moreover, it is also true for the discussion of the issue of analogy that there is no position from which such a discussion is possible, from which one could compare humans and God and determine their relationship theoretically. We are called by God again and again. In the act of acknowledging our sins, we must confess our opposition to him, and by believing in the gospel of God, we have to confess our transformation into his likeness.

6. Dogma and the Doctrine of God In all churches the confession of the one threefold name of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is held to be valid as a binding dogma. The unfolding of this confession did not take place with the same words in the Eastern and Western churches. But in addition to many substantive agreements, all churches also hold in common that the confession of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is to be followed by statements about the acts they have accomplished. Having ecumenical authority is the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (it is widely referred to in orders of worship as the Nicene Creed, while more recent history-of-dogma scholarship refers to it as the Constantinopolitan Creed), which originated in the East and is also confessed by the Western Church (of course with the addition of the filioque). The use of the Apostles’ Creed, on the other hand, is restricted to the Western Church, although the Eastern Church has no substantive objections to it. Both creeds have been used liturgically and in catechesis. Even today, they are offered to God as a faithful sacrifice of praise—whether in baptism or in the service of the word or in the service of Holy Communion. Their structure is shaped by the unity of adoration and public witness that was inherent in the confession from the beginning. It should be noted, however, that neither the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed nor the Apostles’ Creed uses the concept of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity

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certainly follows from both creeds, but it is only implicitly attested to by them. It belongs to a higher level of abstraction than the two stated creeds themselves. On the other hand, it is formulated with great clarity in the so-called “Athanasian Creed” (“Symbolum Athanasianum”). But this document has only found widespread use in the West. Also, it was not written by Athanasius, but presupposes the theology of Ambrosius and Augustine. In contrast to the Constantinopolitan Creed and the Apostles’ Creed, here the confession of the individual trinitarian Persons is not followed by statements about their acts (apart from the christological section), but rather the interest is primarily focused on the eternal unity of God in the threeness of the Persons. Much more extensive and varied than the concentrated sentences in the creeds are statements of theological doctrine (or, as was increasingly said since the seventeenth century, statements of dogmatics). The Old Testament doctrine of God had already been interpreted by Alexandrian Judaism using Hellenistic philosophy. Echoes of Greek popular philosophy can also be found in the New Testament Scriptures (e. g., Rom. 1.19ff.) and even more so in Ignatius of Antioch.[x] Philosophical ideas were consciously absorbed by the Apologists. Later, Clement of Alexandria began to make systematic use of Greek philosophy (especially middle-Platonism).[xi] This involvement with Greek philosophy was especially due to the fact that in the struggle against polytheism an ally was sought in philosophical monotheism. Moreover, despite their very different origins, statements about being and essence in Christian doxology and those in philosophical metaphysics seemed to be in harmony with one another. Discussion and debate with the various schools of Greek philosophy—especially with the basic metaphysical theses of Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and Neoplatonism—has shaped the history of the doctrine of God in Eastern and Western Christendom up to modern times. Since the work of Adolf von Harnack, the view that the history of the Christian doctrine of God may be understood as the history of a Hellenistic adulteration of the message of Jesus and the New Testament gospel has become widespread, and not only within Protestant theology.[xii] Already in the theology of the Apologists in the early church, some have perceived not only an apologetic adjustment and accommodation to philosophy but also an extensive surrender of the Christian message to philosophy. By contrast, we see more clearly today that at that time the issue was primarily about the advance of the Christian message into the Hellenic domain. The history of the doctrine of God took part in the dynamic of the gospel that was proclaimed in new areas, where, as a living word, it fundamentally ruptured, refuted, and made use of prevailing pre-understandings. This process, which is already recognizable in the New Testament Scriptures, continued in the ancient church, albeit with varying degrees of intensity. This dynamic can also be found in medieval scholasticism. It would not be fair, e. g., to Thomas Aquinas if one were to accuse him of abandoning the Christian doctrine of God to Aristotelian

Dogma and the Doctrine of God

philosophy; rather, both his Summa theologiae and his Summa contra Gentiles represent a great advance into the Arabic-Islamic and Jewish world that was shaped by Aristotelian philosophy. It is not possible within the framework of these basic principles to describe the eventful debates that teachers of Christian doctrine had with the various Greek schools of philosophy.7 We will restrict ourselves here to a few fundamental observations that are also important for the advance of the Christian message into other cultures: (a) The Christian doctrine of God did not simply take over Greek philosophical theology, but engaged it critically and ruptured it in essential ways. Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus had understood God’s transcendence within an eternal unity of God and the world. God is the origin of the world in the sense that God is the supreme principle within a system in which God and the world are permanently coordinated and mutually dependent upon each other.[xiii] But God’s independence from the world remained hidden to philosophical theology. Christian teaching opposed that philosophical understanding with the message of the act of creation by the eternal God and of the temporal beginning of the world. If Greek philosophical theology was concerned with an eternally structured ordering of God and the world, Christian doctrine bore witness to God as the Lord, who freely decides to preserve the world and govern its history. Although it has taught the Creator’s immanence in the world, it has, in this connection, emphasized again and again the difference between God and the world, and it has highlighted how God personally faces creatures. Time and again it has resisted the temptations of a cosmic pantheism and of a humanly grounded philosophy of identity. (b) Through these and other profound corrections, the truth contained in philosophical ideas about God was unveiled, which God attests to all people, but which has been obscured by all people in one way or another. By acknowledging God’s free and personal facing toward the world, the real meaning of the unity and eternity of God became clear, as did the simplicity of God. On the basis of the historical revelation, personal and positive statements became more prominent than negative ones in understanding the attributes of God. At the same time, reflection in Greek philosophy about issues of conceptuality, logical inference, and ontology helped to clarify Christian teaching. This was especially true for the doctrine of the Trinity. As can be easily shown in the details of its history, this was a struggle in which the terms that were used were further differentiated, and, with their help, the interpretation of the dogma reached a more precise definition, which, in just a few words, excluded

7 For the first centuries, cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Die Aufnahme des philosophischen Gottesbegriffs als dogmatisches Problem der frühchristlichen Theologie,” in Grundfagen der systematischen Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), 296–346. [ET: “The Appropriation of the Philosophical Concept of God as a Dogmatic Problem of Early Christian Theology,” in Basic Questions in Theology, vol. 2, trans. George H. Kelm (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1971), 119–183. –Ed.]

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a multitude of false teachings. That the Christian doctrine of God was unfolded by using key philosophical concepts of the time, attested to the universality of the revelation of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. (c) Of course, one must also raise the question of whether, in the history of the Christian doctrine of God, Greek philosophy has been critically ruptured with requisite consistency. Obviously, this did not always fully take place. The personal aspect in the doctrine of God that is characteristic of the historical revelation—especially in the statements about the unity of God—is largely obscured by impersonal concepts such as esse, essentia, substantia, and actus purus, or by neuter terms such as summum bonum. Corresponding to this is the fact that for centuries the revealed name of Yahweh (Exod. 3.14) was interpreted one-sidedly in a metaphysical and ontological way, as unchangeable being, and Yahweh’s promise to be there for Israel, which is given with this name, was overlooked. Thereby, the positive attributes of God revealed by the historical acts of salvation were largely obscured by an emphasis on the negative attributes that went beyond the biblical witnesses, such as had emerged in the Neoplatonic process of making inferences about God based on the reality of the world. In this process, the negative attributes, such as, e. g., “the immutability” and “the impassibility” of God, took on a meaning that was difficult to reconcile with the acknowledgment of the incarnation and passion of the Son of God. Particularly fatal was how the biblical concept of God’s righteousness was no longer interpreted in its original sense as God’s gracious covenantal faithfulness and community, but was done so in the legal-philosophical sense of distributive, compensatory, and retributive justice. (d) But even where philosophy received penetrating criticism, and the use of philosophical terms resulted in formulations of Christian doctrine which, through their precision, helped clarify the Christian knowledge of God, such dogmatic formulations could later become an obstacle in the life of the church, namely, when the philosophical presuppositions that were valid when the formulations were created were lost, whether they were no longer acknowledged or no longer known. Then the philosophical terms that were used were no longer understood as signs of the universality of the message of Christ advancing into the world, but rather they locked the message in a ghetto and hindered the church from responding to the challenges of a changed intellectual situation. For example, in the West, not only the Roman Church but also the Lutheran and Reformed churches still clung to Aristotelian scholasticism even when it was perceived to be outdated because of the emergence of the modern natural and human sciences and the new philosophies based on them. The same crisis that made the christological “doctrine of the two natures” incomprehensible in the eighteenth century also called into question the traditional form of the doctrine of God and even the doctrine of the Trinity. The very thing that had contributed to the clarification of the Christian doctrine of God

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in the early church, namely, the critical use of philosophical theology, now had the effect of a foreign intrusion on the Christian message that hindered it. (e) These difficulties had less of an impact on the statements of the creed, i. e., on dogma itself, than on the interpretations of it in the theology of the early church and medieval scholasticism. While in this crisis all churches (with very few exceptions) maintained the creed of the ancient church, in the modern history of theology, in addition to defenses of the traditional doctrine of God, there have also been various new approaches to the doctrine of God that are based on biblical and patristic presuppositions and even modern philosophical ones. As an excellent example of a critical penetration of the scholastic doctrine of God through the use of the biblical witnesses, reference may be made to Karl Barth’s teaching about the reality and the perfections of the triune God.8 Certainly, it cannot be overlooked that some of these new approaches maintained such an anti-scholastic bias that Christian statements about God himself were called into question. But as a doxological response to God’s historical acts of salvation, the statements about God himself have their own place in the life of the church, and therefore they have by no means become obsolete by being detached from metaphysical concepts. One of the most important reasons for the dwindling certainty about God in the modern age is that the detachment from traditional metaphysics has given rise to an unsubstantiated uncertainty regarding the church’s speech about God himself. Here we will only refer to three characteristic examples from the realm of German Protestant theology, which of course have had an impact far beyond the borders of this area: In his dogmatics [Glaubenslehre], Schleiermacher proceeded from the pious “feeling of absolute dependence” and described God as the primary cause of this feeling. From this starting point, statements about God remain remarkably vague. “None of the attributes that we ascribe to God is to designate something particular in God; rather, they are to designate only something particular in the way in which the feeling of absolute dependence is to be referred to God.”9 This corresponds to the fact that Schleiermacher relegated the doctrine of the Trinity to an appendix (§§170–172) and rejected the doctrine of the immanent Trinity since it “is not an expression that immediately conveys Christian self-consciousness….”10 Since Schleiermacher spoke of God only in the correlation between the primary cause and the pious consciousness or, in some cases, the world, he was unable to speak of God himself in his freedom over against human beings and the world, and even God’s love was strangely depersonalized.

8 Barth, KD, II/1, §§28–31. [CD, II/1.257–677. –Ed.] 9 Schleiermacher, CG, §50. [1.255 (ET: 1.279). –Ed.] 10 Schleiermacher, CG, §170. [2.458 (ET: 2.1019). –Ed.]

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In a completely different way, the acknowledgment of God himself was called into question by Schelling’s doctrine of the God who is becoming.11 The basis for God’s existence is his dark longing to give birth to himself, his unconscious urge to become conscious. God needed the world’s turning away [Entlassung] from him, as well as its development and its withdrawal, in order to become a real, more perfect, personal God, who is wisdom and goodness. In God, the perfect, i. e., God’s identity as spirit, emerges from the imperfect, i. e., from the unconscious impulse or, in other words, out of indifference about the difference between God and the world. In another way, Hegel, despite his solemn commitment to trinitarian dogma in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, also presented God’s life as a process in which the universe, humanity, and its history were understood as the otherness of God, and the reconciliation of this difference was understood as a process in which God becomes aware of himself as self-knowing spirit [Geist].12 Here, too, God himself is concealed in his freedom through the interpretation of the opposition between God and the world as a necessary division for God’s becoming. The most radical rejection of metaphysics in theology came from Albrecht Ritschl.13 He expanded the concept of metaphysics in such a way that ultimately all statements about God himself were designated as metaphysical, and statements about God were restricted to his historical acts and aims. For example, his book, Instruction in the Christian Religion, lacks a specific doctrine of God.14 In its place is the doctrine of the kingdom of God, wherein brief explanations about the “thoughts of God” are subordinate, and there is no longer any mention of the triune God. Given his origins in the school of Ritschl, it was clear that Adolf von Harnack considered many things in his history of dogma to be a foreign intrusion from Hellenism, when in fact these had their basis not only in the New Testament but already in the doxological statements of the Old Testament. As a continuation of Ritschl’s teaching, which was radicalized in existential-philosophical terms, Rudolf Bultmann’s rejection of all “general statements about God” can also be cited, as can his thesis: “[W]hen the question is raised of how any speaking of God can be possible, the answer must be, it is only possible as talk of ourselves.”15

11 Schelling, Philosophie und Religion (1804). [Cf. footnote 5 in chap. 6 above. –Ed.] 12 Hegel, V. [Hegel, LPR. –Ed.] 13 Albrecht Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik (Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1881). [ET: Three Essays: Theology and Metaphysics; Prolegomena to the History of Pietism; Instruction in the Christian Religion, trans. Philip Hefner (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2005). –Ed.] 14 Ritschl, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, 3d ed. (Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1886). [Cf. footnote 17 in the introduction to chaps. 12 and 13. –Ed.] 15 Rudolf Bultmann, “Welchen Sinn hat es, von Gott zu reden?,” in Glauben und Verstehen, 2d ed., vol. 1 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1954), 33. [ET: “What Does it Mean to Speak of God,” in Faith and Understanding, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 61. –Ed.]

The Starting Point and Organization of the Doctrine of God

The course of the encounter between the Christian doctrine of God and Greek philosophy, which is only briefly outlined here, has a fundamental ecumenical importance for furthering Christian proclamation into new cultures and for the encounter with completely different religious and philosophical notions about God. Many African and Far-Eastern Christians today refuse to study ancient Western philosophy first to be able to understand the church’s dogmatic teaching about God. Instead, they demand a formulation of faith in God that arises from their encounter with the presuppositions of their own pre-Christian religion and philosophy. To be sure, the encounter between faith in Christ and Greek philosophy has an abiding priority insofar as it began already in the New Testament Scriptures. This priority, however, is normative not only in the sense that the substantive content of the New Testament statements has an abiding authority but also in the sense that that initial encounter serves as a paradigmatic obligating norm: Just as the early Christian message penetrated critically and winsomely into the area of Greek thought, this same message is also to be proclaimed critically and winsomely in the completely different areas of African and Far-Eastern cultures. In doing so, it must also remain aware of the danger that arises for the further orientation of the message about Christ when there is insufficient critical inquiry about elements of a pre-Christian understanding and when Christian doctrine is unthinkingly tied to those elements. The content of the apostolic message remains the immutable norm.

7. The Starting Point and Organization of the Doctrine of God Where should an ecumenical doctrine of God take its starting point in today’s situation? Just as all parts of these “basic features” of an ecumenical dogmatics begin by first mentioning the acts of God in order then to confess God himself on the basis of his acts, so too, in the various sections of the doctrine of God, we must proceed again and again from his acts. In this way, access to knowledge of the eternal unity of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is opened through the acts of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the New Creator, and access to knowledge of the eternal divine attributes is opened through the peculiar nature of his creative, redeeming, and re-creating action. Moreover, just as in this dogmatics as a whole, so also in the doctrine of God, the starting point is with the gospel and thus with the historical revelation of God in Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ is the final revelation of God, after which no other follows, and the revelation that is still pending is the universal appearing of Jesus Christ in the very glory into which he has already been transferred through the resurrection from the dead. This does not deny that God revealed himself first to Israel. But in Jesus Christ, the reign of God that God promised Israel has broken into the world. By starting

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with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, we also do not deny that through the creation God has revealed himself to all human beings and continues to do so again and again. But even “though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened” (Rom. 1.21). In Jesus Christ, God has brought to light the truth hidden in the errors of religious and philosophical notions about God. After God revealed himself through his Old Testament and New Testament word to be the same one who has given witness to himself to all people through the works of his creation, we cannot rule out that the doctrine of God should begin with the truth hidden in the world’s religions and philosophies. But even that starting point would in fact be starting with God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, i. e., not with the various religious and philosophical notions about God as such that have emerged in human history, but rather with the divine truth that appeared in Jesus Christ, which is more or less hidden in those notions. Different possibilities for approaching the doctrine of God lead to different possibilities for organizing it. We need to note that no Church has established a definite organization for it dogmatically. As with the organization of christology, so too with the doctrine of God, there have been very different ways of organizing it, as is indeed shown in the history of theology. The issue of organization in the doctrine of God is more difficult than in christology, for the latter is given a solid, irrefutable basic structure through the chronological sequence of humiliation and exaltation. But God comes upon us in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit in the eternal unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We, however, can only talk sequentially regarding what happens to us as one act in the event of revelation: (a) The doctrine of the Trinity and that of God’s existence, essence, and attributes have been coordinated with one another in different ways. A significant turning point in the history of theology took place with Thomas Aquinas. While his scholastic predecessors, such as Peter Lombard, Richard of St. Victor, Alexander of Hales, and Bonaventure (in his Breviloquium), began the doctrine of God with the Trinity, Thomas began with the doctrine of God’s existence, essence, and attributes, and he let the doctrine of the Trinity come afterwards.[xiv] Thomas justified this sequence with the fact that the doctrine of God’s being, essence, and attributes can be derived rationally from the proofs for God and through inferences drawn from the rationally knowable unity and simplicity of God, while the Trinity can only be known on the basis of the historical revelation of salvation.[xv] Thomas, however, thought that even the three divine Persons could be derived from the essence of God that is naturally knowable, namely, from God’s simplicity, knowing, and willing.[xvi] Despite the protest of Franciscan theology and especially the Reformers against this natural theology, the old-Protestant dogmaticians generally reconnected with the Thomistic structure for the doctrine of God.

The Starting Point and Organization of the Doctrine of God

An ecumenical dogmatics, however, cannot allow its structure and conceptuality to be determined by the presuppositions of one philosophy. The religious and philosophical presuppositions in which the Christian message is to be proclaimed today are incomparably more divergent than they were at the time of high scholasticism and during the seventeenth century in the West. Today there is no metaphysics that would be shared by all peoples, and it is also not possible to summarize the quite varied religious and philosophical notions of humankind in such a way that this would create a single metaphysics that could count on being accepted by everyone. Even Paul Tillich’s attempt in this regard, in his Systematic Theology, retained a syncretistical Western design.16 The unfolding of Christian doctrine, however, must take place in its own way in the various human cultures. That is why these basic principles of an ecumenical dogmatics should not begin with one of the various forms of “natural theology,” but with the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, which is to be proclaimed and praised in every setting, and with the doctrine of the Trinity. This revision of the traditional Thomistic order is impressively carried out for other reasons by Karl Barth17 and in the Roman Catholic dogmatics text, Mysterium Salutis.18 Starting with the doctrine of the Trinity also has an advantage in that the doctrine of the attributes of God is not curtailed by following the method of making inferences from experiences in this world. Rather, this doctrine receives its content from God’s acts of salvation and from the eternal unity and communion of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (b) The decisive statements of the doctrine of the Trinity have already been presented in the last chapter of each of the preceding three main parts, namely, in the explanations about the confession of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the New Creator. The considerations in the first chapter about the knowledge of the revelation of God in his hiddenness have already led to statements about the Triune One, who has given himself to be known in Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit. Already from its first chapter this dogmatics has been shaped by the doctrine of the Trinity, and it is now a matter of summarizing and explicating what is in this doctrine, i. e., what has already been said in the previous three main parts about the acts of God, and then, in the conclusion to each of those parts, what has been said about the confession of the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That this summarizing only takes place here in the fourth part and not, as is usually the case, at the beginning of the doctrine of creation, is an attempt to make this dogma, which has been retained as a doctrinal formula but has largely become alien in its

16 See Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951–1963). 17 See Barth, KD, I/1, §§8–12. [CD, I/1.295–489). –Ed.] 18 [Raphael Schulte et al., “Die Selbsterschliessung des dreifaltigen Gottes” (The Self-disclosure of the Triune God), in Mysterium Salutis, II.47–397. –Ed.]

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content, understandable anew in its decisive importance for church unity, namely, as the doxological response to God’s mighty deeds. (c) Organizing the doctrine of the attributes of God is a particular problem since this issue is about God’s perfection. God’s perfection is one, but at the same time all of God’s essential attributes are rightly called perfections (perfectiones). This variety seems to contradict the concept of perfection. But God’s perfection does not consist of the composition of many perfections; rather, his one perfection manifests itself in a variety, which we can talk about only sequentially. That God’s perfection is immeasurable follows already from the large number of statements about the attributes with which God is extolled in the Old and New Testament Scriptures as well as in the liturgy of the church. But because all of these statements are about the perfection of the one God, they often overlap and often cannot be precisely demarcated from one another (such as, e. g., love, goodness, grace, and mercy). Ultimately, as manifestations of the one divine perfection, they all are interrelated. The difficulty in arranging the doctrine of the perfections consists in the fact that only in a sequence of our statements are we able to bear witness to what overwhelms us in one act of divine revelation and that we must decide which of the perfections will be emphasized as overarching concepts, and which of the others will be subordinated. Organizing the doctrine of God’s attributes has been done in very different ways in the course of the history of theology. For example: by distinguishing between positive and negative attributes, but the positive ones contain negations at the same time, and vice versa; by distinguishing between the attributes of divine being and those of divine doing, but God’s being is already active independently of his acts of creation, redemption, and new creation; by distinguishing between the attributes of divine knowing and those of divine willing, but knowing and willing are uniquely interrelated in God. According to language used in both the Old Testament and Paul, God’s knowing is at the same time God’s loving election. Then there are several ways of classifying them that ultimately point to one fundamental distinction, namely, between those attributes that are immediate and those that are mediated: attributes of originlessness and of bestowing, attributes of aseity and of caring commitment, attributes of the freedom of God and of God’s love. We will here follow this latter way of classification and keep in mind that none of the ways of classifying God’s perfection can provide the sole distinction since each of them is about the one divine perfection. In whatever way one tries to organize the attributes of God, and regardless of how many of them one brings up for discussion (within the framework of these “basic features,” this can only be done to a limited extent), one must always keep in mind the immeasurability of divine perfection.

(d) If we proceed from the historical acts of God, then it cannot be overlooked that humans also encounter God’s wrath and God’s dreadfulness, God’s fury and zeal. The numerous biblical statements about this pressing reality, as well as the

The Starting Point and Organization of the Doctrine of God

same experiences that have happened again and again in Christendom through the centuries, make it impossible to keep silent about this encounter in the doctrine of God. Such statements are mostly ignored in the doctrine of the attributes of God, but this is probably one of the reasons why many Christians today are so helpless in the face of the horror of world history, and why talk of God’s love seems to them to be empty. For this reason, in these basic features of an ecumenical dogmatics, we will discuss not only God’s omnipotence and love but also God’s wrath, and we will inquire about their relationship to each other. (e) These three types of divine attributes are addressed in the three chapters that follow the one on the doctrine of the Trinity. The immediate attributes of divine freedom are discussed first, under the heading, “The Lord.” Then comes discussion of the attributes of his wrath and his dreadfulness, under the heading, “The AllConsuming God.” Finally, we address the attributes of his love, righteousness, wisdom, and faithfulness, under the heading, “The Self-Giving God.” These three chapters are to be introduced by pointing to God’s holiness, for in it all three dimensions of the divine attributes are concentrated. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 25 [i]

[ii]

[iii]

This chapter echoes many statements that Schlink made in his RGG3 entry on the dogmatic understanding of God. See Schlink, “Gott VI. Dogmatisch,” in RGG3 , 2.1732–1741. Indeed, that entry provided a kind of outline for this fourth part of his dogmatics. In addition, Schlink made use of sentences and phrasing from his earlier essay on the christology of the Chalcedonian Definition, especially the sections on the relationship between doxology and dogma. See Schlink, “Die Christologie von Chalcedon im ökumenischen Gespräch,” SÖB, 1/1.80–87 (ESW, 1.127–134). Schlink’s initial phrase, “Herrlichkeit ist Gott,” is not found in Luther’s translation of the Bible. A close parallel, however, is found at Lk. 2.14, where Luther used the synonym “Ehre” (honor, glory). See also Ps. 29.9; Ezek. 3.12; and Eph. 1.12, 14. For close parallels to the second phrase, “Herrlichkeit sei Gott,” where Luther again used “Ehre” and not “Herrlichkeit,” see Deut. 32.3; Josh. 7.19; 1 Sam. 6.5; 1 Chron. 16.28–29; Pss. 22.23; 29.1–2; 57.5, 11 et passim. See also Lk. 19.38; Rom. 11.36; 16.27; Gal. 1.5; Eph. 3.21; Phil. 4.20; 1 Tim. 1.17; 6.16; 2 Tim. 4.18; Heb. 13.21; 1 Pet. 4.11; 5.11; 2 Pet. 3.18; Jude 1.25; Rev. 1.6; 5.12–13; and 7.12. See Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 58ff.; idem, LPR, 3.61ff.

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[iv]

[v]

[vi] [vii]

The German word Steigerung is difficult to translate in this context. The term literally means “rising” or “climbing up,” as in “ascending.” Within the context of Christian Neoplatonism, it can be described as an “anagogical” or “uplifting” method of theological analysis by which terms and concepts for God offer a point of comparison that becomes “enhanced” or “intensified” in relation to thinking about God. Ultimately, the terms are transcended and surpassed in the ascent from what is perceived to what is known and, finally, to what is “unknown.” As the theologian “climbs higher,” the via negationis denies and moves beyond all human concepts and attributes for God. Thus Steigerung also implies “climbing up a gradation.” In this same paragraph, Schlink used Steigerung to translate the Latin term eminentia (lit. “standing out,” “projecting out,” e. g., as in the projection of a prominent mountain peak), e. g., the via eminentiae, the “way of eminence.” While the English term “comparison” might also work, I have chosen to translate Steigerung as “enhancement” or “eminence” to capture the nuance of “intensification” that occurs as the Neoplatonic theologian “climbs up” the theological “ascent” of making comparative affirmations about God. For example, Thomas Aquinas distinguished between the via negationis (way of negation) and the via eminentiae (whereby human perfections pre-exist in God “in a more eminent way”). The via negationis denies that any of our concepts can be affirmed of God. “Now, because we cannot know what God is, but rather what he is not, we have no means for considering how God is, but rather how he is not” (Aquinas, ST, I.3). The via eminentiae, however, uses analogy to think and speak about God (see ST, I.1.9–10; 1.3–4). According to Thomas, while creaturely perfections are in God (since God is their source), they are not in God (who is infinite) in the same way that they are in God’s creatures (who are finite). “Since therefore God is the first effecting cause of things, the perfections of all things must pre-exist in God in a more eminent way” (ST, I.4.2). Such perfections are in God in a manner that is completely incommensurable with their presence in creatures. While “negative” or “apophatic” theology is fundamental in Eastern Christian theology (e. g., see esp. Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Palamas) and is essential for Aquinas as well, the analogical via eminentiae is more characteristic of Western theology (cf. ODCC, 88 [“apophatic theology”]). See, e. g., Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology, in PseudoDionysius: The Complete Works, 50ff., 108ff., 136ff. et passim. The Didache, 7.1, 3 (Holmes, 354–355; cf. Niederwimmer, The Didache, 125–130). The formula in the Didache is identical with the one in Mt. 28.19. “The agreement of the formulae is not explained by the Didache’s quoting Matthew’s Gospel but—naturally—by their common dependence on the liturgy” (Niederwimmer, The Didache, 127).

The Starting Point and Organization of the Doctrine of God

[viii]

[ix]

[x]

[xi]

[xii] [xiii]

[xiv]

[xv] [xvi]

While Elohim (‫ )ֱאל ִֺהים‬and not El (‫ )ֵאל‬is the most common biblical term for God, El does occur frequently in the Bible, especially in Job and in poetic passages. El was the supreme god of the Canaanite pantheon in the second millennium. His name was often qualified by an epithet. For example, Melchizedek was “a priest of El-Elyon” (‫)ֵאל ֶﬠְל ֽיוֹן‬, a title that was associated with Jerusalem (cf. Gen. 14.18–20). According to Gen. 21.33, Abraham calls the Lord El-Olam (‫ )ֵאל עוֹ ָֽלם‬at Beersheba. Other epithets included Shaddai (“the one of the mountains”) or Creator of the earth. See M. H. Pope, El in the Ugaritic Texts (Leiden: Brill, 1955). For the use of Melech (‫ֶמֶלך‬, “king”), Adon (‫ָא ֣דוֹן‬, “master,” “lord”), and Baal (‫ָבַּﬠל‬, “ruler,” “lord,” “husband,” “owner”) in reference to Yahweh, see, e. g., Judg. 9.1ff.; Exod. 23.17; Josh. 3.11, 13; Ps. 97.5 (“Adon of all the earth”); 1 Kings 1–2 (“Adonijah” = “Yahweh is the Lord”); Isa. 1.24; Song of Sol. 8.11 (“Baal-hamon”); 2 Sam. 6.2 (“Baale-judah”); cf. 2 Sam. 4.4; 1 Chron. 8.34; and 9.40 (“Merib-baal”); and Ps. 68.4 (“…who rides upon the clouds” was originally an epithet for Baal). For the influence of Hellenistic ideas on Ignatius, see Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 15–17. It is likely “that the philosophical elements in [Ignatius’] doctrine of God were mediated through Hellenistic Judaism,” especially Philo (Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 17). For Ignatius’ adoption of Hellenistic terms to explicate his doctrine of God, see Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 18–20. For the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on Clement’s doctrine of God, see Salvatore R. C. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). Cf. Harnack, History of Dogma, 1.48ff. See Plato, Timaeus, 27ff. (Plato: Complete Dialogues, 1160ff.); Aristotle, Physics, VII–VIII (Basic Works of Aristotle, 340–394); and Plotinus, The Six Enneads, the fifth and sixth ennead (ET: 208–360). See Peter Lombard, The Sentences, I (ET: The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. Giulio Silano [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2010]); Richard of St. Victor, De Trinitate (ET: On the Trinity, trans. Ruben Angelici [Eugene: Cascade, 2011]); Alexander of Hales, Summa universae theologiae (ET of portions of it: A Reader in Early Franciscan Theology, ed. and trans. Lydia Schumacher and Oleg Bychkov [New York: Fordham University Press, 2022]); and Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I (ET: 27–57). Cf. Aquinas, ST, I.1–43. See Aquinas, ST, I.1. See Aquinas, ST, I.3, 12, 19.

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Chapter XXVI: The Triune God[i]

1. God the Father, the Eternal Origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit The doctrine of creation (Part I) began with God’s act of creation in the freedom of his love (chap. 4.1), and it concluded with the confession of faith in God the Creator. We confess the Creator when we confess God the eternal Father, the Almighty, as the Creator (chap. 10). Faith cannot be limited simply to acknowledging that God has acted and continues to act as the Father through his work as Creator. Rather, it confesses that God is the eternal Father. The doctrine of redemption (Part II) began with God’s free election of Israel (chap. 11) and with the sending of his Son into the world in the freedom of the divine love (chap. 12.A.1). This part concluded with the confession of faith in God the Redeemer. We confess the Redeemer when we confess Jesus Christ, God’s eternal Son, our Lord, as the Redeemer (chap. 17). Faith cannot be content merely to acknowledge that Jesus, in his resurrection from the dead, was established by God as the Son because of his earthly activity. Rather, it confesses that Jesus is the eternal Son of God, who became a human being in order to redeem us. The doctrine of the new creation (Part III) began with God’s free act of love in pouring out the Holy Spirit (chap. 18.1), and it concluded with the confession of faith in God the New Creator. We confess the New Creator when we confess the Holy Spirit to be God’s eternal Spirit, who proceeds from the Father of the Son (chap. 24). Faith cannot be limited simply to acknowledging that the Holy Spirit acts on us in his work of creating anew, nor to the fact that he was previously active in Israel and in all living things. On the contrary, faith confesses the Holy Spirit to be God’s eternal Spirit, which was poured out upon people “when the time was fulfilled.”1 These confessional statements are not three separate confessions but three statements of one and the same confession. None of these confessional statements are solely about God the Father or God’s Son or the Holy Spirit. Rather, each of them is about the unity of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. All churches confess the one God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, and who has acted, is presently acting, and will act in the future as the Creator, Redeemer, and New Creator. The work of creation is done by God the Father through the Son and the Spirit. The work of redemption is done by God’s Son as the one sent by the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. And the work of authoring

1 [Cf. Gal. 4.4; Mk. 1.15; and Eph. 1.10. –Ed.]

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The Triune God

the new creation is being accomplished by the Holy Spirit as the one poured out by the Father and the exalted Christ. (a) All churches teach that God the Father is the “eternal origin,” “the cause,” “the source” from which the eternal Son of God and the eternal Spirit of God have proceeded. In connection with New Testament statements, a distinction is thus made between the “generation” or the “birth” of the Son and the “procession” or “spiration” of the Holy Spirit. But God the Father himself is without origin. The difference between the procession of the Son and that of the Spirit is very clear in salvation history. The incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus’ birth and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost were different events temporally and substantively. (In the technical language of dogmatics: the unio hypostatica between the divine nature and the human nature in Jesus, the Son of God, does not correspond to the unio hypostatica of the Holy Spirit and the people upon whom the Spirit is poured out and in whom the Spirit dwells. The indwelling of the Spirit in humans is thus referred to as the unio mystica; cf. above 819).[ii] But all churches teach not only a salvation-historical procession of the Son and the Spirit from God the Father; they also teach an eternal procession. However, as clear as the difference is between the temporal procession of the Son and that of the Holy Spirit, and as necessarily as the distinction between the eternal procession of the Son and that of the Spirit emerges from the New Testament statements about the pre-existence of the Son and about the Holy Spirit, it is difficult to determine more precisely the difference between the eternal “generation” of the Son and the eternal “procession” of the Spirit. We must be content with Augustine’s oft-quoted passage that this mystery will only be revealed to the “perceiving spirit” of the glorified.2 (b) Because God is the eternal origin of the Son and the Spirit, he never works alone from eternity to eternity, but is always in communion with the Son and the Spirit. Even these are never alone, nor working alone, but are always referring back to their origin, namely, to God the Father. Because this origin is the same, the Son and the Spirit are also in an eternal relationship and are working in relation to each other. This interrelationship is very clear in salvation history. For example, the incarnation of the Son of God, the empowering of Jesus in baptism, and his resurrection from the dead took place through the Holy Spirit. In all of this, the Holy Spirit acted upon the Son of God. On the other hand, the exalted Jesus received authority from God to send the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus was established “at the right hand of God,” in God’s power, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is done by God through the exalted one and, in this sense, by God and the exalted one. The Holy Spirit is

2 Augustine, De Trinitate, XXV.45. [CCSL, 50a.524; The Trinity, WSA, I/5.430 (trans. modified). –Ed.]

God the Father, the Eternal Origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit

therefore called both God’s Spirit and Christ’s Spirit, both the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son. It is much more difficult to arrive at statements about the eternal relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit. That there is such a relationship follows from the fact that they have their common origin in God the Father. This “that” [“daß”] is also not disputed among the churches. But there are no direct statements in the New Testament Scriptures about the nature of the eternal interrelationship between the Son and the Spirit, and about whether it includes a participation of the Son in the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father. For this reason, drawing speculative inferences from biblical, dogmatic, and philosophical presuppositions plays a greater role in the discussion of this issue—but especially regarding the overall conception of the doctrine of the Trinity and determining the relationship between God’s historical revelation and his eternal reality. (c) All churches not only confess that God the Father is the eternal origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and is therefore never without the Son and the Holy Spirit, but they also confess God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to be the one God. They praise the one God in the distinctiveness of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and they praise the distinctions among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the unity of God. Both statements belong inseparably together and are united in their inseparability in the confession of the triune God. In the following, the doctrine of the Trinity is to be grounded in two parallel columns of ideas, each of which begins with the historical revelation and thus with the historical acts of God. After having already set forth fundamental statements about the doctrine of Trinity in the introductory part of the doctrine of the knowledge of God (chap. 1) and then in the final chapters of the three main parts of this dogmatics, we can be content in the following two sections with two parallel columns of theses from which the dogma of the Trinity arises. The laying of the foundation for the doctrine of the Trinity begins primarily with the triadic statements in the New Testament (e. g., Mt. 28.19; 2 Cor. 13.13; Eph. 4.4–6), as well as with those Gospel reports (e. g., Mk. 1.9–11 par.) and epistle texts (e. g., Rom. 8.15–17) that bear witness to God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit in relation to each other. This is especially true of the farewell discourses in John’s Gospel (Jn. 14–16). Beyond these particular passages, however, there is a basic trinitarian structure to New Testament tradition and proclamation in general.

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The Triune God

2. The Unity of God in the Distinctiveness of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit 3. The Distinctiveness of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in the Unity of God 2. The Christian faith confesses the unity of God in the distinctiveness of the Father, the Son, and of Holy Spirit: (a) The gospel proclaims God’s act of salvation in Jesus Christ, his Son, in whose appearance the reign of God has dawned, in whose death God has reconciled the world to himself, and in whose appearances, as the risen one, God’s glory has appeared. As a message about this act of salvation, the gospel itself is at the same time an act of salvation, namely, God’s saving action word [Tat-Wort], proof of the reign of the exalted Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit, who opens hearers for faith and renews them. In this way, the revelation of God takes place as one act of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (b) Faith in the gospel recognizes all of God’s acts in creation, redemption, and the new creation as acts of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God, who accomplished salvation in Christ and through the Holy Spirit, already created the universe in the beginning through the Son, and gave life through his Spirit. With Christ’s parousia, he will complete the new creation through the Spirit.

3. The Christian faith confesses the distinctiveness of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the unity of God: (a) The gospel proclaims God’s act of salvation as the sending of the Son into the world by the Father and as the Son’s obedience to the Father. The contrast between the Father and the Son emerges most strongly in the tradition of Jesus’ praying (especially in Gethsemane and on the cross). Also, the exalted one is proclaimed, albeit by divine authority, as the one who is distinct from the Father and who subjects the world to the Father. Also, the Holy Spirit also acts as the Spirit of the Father and of the Son at the same time in contrast to the Father and to the Son, in that he cries, “Abba,” in the hearts of believers, and confesses the Lord Jesus Christ. (b) Even if all the divine acts are at the same time the acts of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they are not so in the same way: Not God the Father, also not the Holy Spirit, but the Son of God became a human being. Not God the Father, also not the Son, but the Holy Spirit is poured out upon all flesh. While acknowledging the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in all the works, these works nevertheless belong to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit in differing ways.

The Distinctiveness of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in the Unity of God

(c) When the Father, like the Son and also like the Holy Spirit, is attested to in the New Testament as the sanctifying and vivifying one, as the one commanding and judging, it bears witness not to three but to one sanctifying and vivifying, commanding and judging God and Lord. No act of God can be assigned exclusively to the Father or to the Son or to the Holy Spirit. Opera trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa [The outward works of the Trinity are undivided] (Augustine).[iii] (d) On the basis of his acts, God is called upon by the one “name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Whether the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit is called upon, all prayers are nevertheless directed to one and the same God, not to a plural you [Ihr] but to the one divine you [Du]. For this reason, baptism does not take place in the multiple names of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but in the one name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

(c) Although the one sanctifying and vivifing, commanding and judging God is confessed, and none of his acts can be attributed exclusively to the Father or to the Son or to the Holy Spirit, nevertheless, in a special way, the Father is confessed as the Creator, the Son as the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit as the New Creator.

(d) When addressed in prayer, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not only addressed as one God but are also to be distinguished. God the Father is addressed “in the name of Jesus.” The cry of “Abba” and the confession of Christ are voiced in the power of the Holy Spirit. The prayer of the church is answered in that the church knows it has been taken into the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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The Triune God

(e) On the basis of his acts, God is thanked by praising the same attributes of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the perfection of which God is distinguished from all creatures. On the basis of the biblical witness, the holiness, omnipotence, love, and righteousness of the Father are to be confessed as of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. None of these attributes can be assigned exclusively to one divine Person. Faith confesses not only a similarity between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit but also their essential unity.

(f) The adoration of God is not restricted to the unity of the divine working and of the divine attributes that are revealed in this working, but it praises the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as the one eternal God. This unity is utterly unique and incomparable—not a unity of parts, not a unity of a type, also not merely the unity of the origin of the Son and the Spirit from God the Father. Rather, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the one God himself, the eternal “I am.” They are not merely united; rather, they are one.

(e) In the adoration of the essential unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the eternal distinctions among the divine attributes that are revealed in the historical relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit to one another is not abrogated: the eternal fatherhood, sonship, and spirituality of God. With respect to the distinctions among the personal attributes, it makes sense to accord in a special way to the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit also the perfections in which God is distinguished from the world. Even though none of the divine perfections can be assigned exclusively to one divine Person, such appropriations are nevertheless meaningful with regard to the special acts of the Creator, Redeemer, and New Creator. In this sense, the omnipotence of God the Father, the wisdom of the Son, and the love of the Holy Spirit have often been praised in a special way. (f) The one God is praised in acknowledging the eternal distinctions among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. According to the New Testament witnesses, this distinction cannot be reduced to the difference of the divine modes of appearing and acts. Rather, it consists in the eternal relationship to one another, being for-one-another, and inone-another, in the eternal communion and mutual interpenetration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Trinitarian Dogma

4. The Trinitarian Dogma The parallel columns of statements in the two preceding sections belong inseparably together. Both the unity of God in the distinctiveness of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and the distinctiveness of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the unity of God are to be praised. The acknowledgment of the unity of God and of the distinctions in God has been focused and expressed in the concept of the divine Trinity. The most widely used confessions of the triune God are the NicenoConstantinopolitan Creed and the Apostles’ Creed. In both of them, however, the concept of the Trinity is missing. Here God the Father, Jesus Christ, God’s Son, and the Holy Spirit are confessed, one after the other. But they are not referred to as Persons or as hypostases, nor are they related to the number three. Also missing is any explicit definition of their unity as a substance or an essence. But, indeed, the unity is implicitly contained in the fact that, in the one faith, God the Father, God’s Son, and the Holy Spirit are confessed. To be sure, in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed Jesus Christ is referred to as “of one being” with the Father, but this term is missing from the pneumatological statements in the confession. Thus here and in the Apostles’ Creed, the triune God is confessed without explicitly naming him the Triune One. This is striking given that much earlier Tertullian had already created the foundational trinitarian formula, which then acquired enduring authority in Western Christendom: God is “una substantia—tres personae,”—“unitas in trinitate.”3 In the East, too, Origen had already used the term trias to refer to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and he used the terms of one being (οὐσία [ousia]) and hypostasis to define their relationship.[iv] Tertullian and Origen taught this in the struggle against two different, indeed opposing fronts: Tertullian against the Jews and Hellenistic schools of philosophy, which accused the Christian faith of tritheism (or ditheism), while Origen against modal Monarchianism, which understood Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit only as temporary modes of God’s appearing and working, or as energies of the one God, but did not acknowledge them as distinct Persons and as hypostases subsisting in themselves. Against these two fronts and independently of each other, Tertullian and Origen represented the oneness [Einheit] in God’s threeness [Dreiheit]

3 Cf. especially Tertullian’s treatise, Adversus Praxeas. [Tertullian’s Treatise against Praxeas, ed. Evans: “...that they are all of the one, namely by unity of substance, while none the less is guarded the mystery of that economy which disposes the unity into trinity…” (132); “…So the close series of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Paraclete makes three who cohere, the one attached to the other. And these three are one , not one , in the sense in which it was said, I and the Father are one, in respect of unity of substance, not of singularity of number...” (169). Tertullian was the first to use the Latin term trinitas. –Ed.]

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The Triune God

and the threeness in God’s oneness. But both theologians did so in a subordinationist sense: According to Tertullian, God was originally alone and only allowed the Logos and the Spirit to come forth from his substance for the purpose of creation and revelation, although in relation to the world they are of the same substance as the Father. According to Origen, the Logos and the Holy Spirit encounter humans as having one being with the Father, but with respect to God they are already the first transition from him to creation, from the one to the many. They are hypostases that are subordinate to God, who are not immutable like God. While subordinatianism soon receded in the Latin Church, it spread in the Greek Church through many speculative developments and through simplifications of Origenistic doctrine, and it seemed to gain dominance for a time in the form of Arianism. The course of this struggle, in which ultimately the acknowledgment of the essential unity of the Son with the Father prevailed first and then that of the Holy Spirit, has already been pointed out in the final chapters of the second and third parts. For the history of the doctrine of the Trinity, it is significant that Athanasius was so strongly oriented toward having the acknowledgment of the essential unity of Father and Son accepted, that he understood the words essence and hypostasis to have the same meaning, and he was not interested in a special term for denoting the distinctiveness of the Father, Son, and Spirit, although he acknowledged this distinctiveness. The final precise definition of the trinitarian formula, which excluded both tritheism and modalism, as well as subordinationism, was made on the basis of the understanding between Athanasius and the so-called “Young Nicene” party, whereby the Synod of Alexandria (362) was of particular importance.[v] This understanding was also affirmed by the bishop of Rome. Once the consistent distinction between God and creatures had been firmly established, the distinctions among God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit were again given greater attention and the terms that would then have abiding significance were defined: God is one οὐσία [ousia] and three ὑποστάσεις [hypostases] (or πρόσωπα [prosōpa]).[vi] The Latin terms one substantia (essentia, natura) and three personae were then associated with these Greek terms as synonyms. It is difficult to understand that substantia and ὑποστάσις [hypostasis] originally had the same meaning, namely, “that which is underlying independently as a basis.”[vii] Accordingly, this trinitarian phraseology had to be defended in the West against a tritheistic misunderstanding of the Greek formula, and defended in the East against a modalistic misunderstanding of the Latin formula. It is understandable that these basic terms of the trinitarian formula were not included in the church’s creed as long as they were incumbered with subordinationist implications. But given that already prior to the Council of Constantinople in 381 and before the final formulation of the Apostles’ Creed the trinitarian formula had been made more precise and had clearly demarcated many erroneous notions about God, it is striking that its basic terms (apart from ὁμοούσιος) were not included in the creed. This is particularly noticeable in the East, for here theological reflection had a much stronger influence on the development of the confession than that in the West. But precisely by the reluctance of the creed to include carefully conceived, precise, and delimiting terminology, the relationship between

The Trinitarian Dogma

the structure of confession and that of doxology has been preserved. Demarcations also take place in adoration, but they happen implicitly, namely, in the exclusive surrender of believers to the God revealed in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Doctrine, however, explains the Christian faith in God by discussing and disputing notions about God, the oneness, essence, substance, etc., in one’s cultural setting. To this extent, it is right that faith in the triune God comes to be stated differently in the creed from how it is stated in the trinitarian doctrinal formula.

Regarding the dogma that is common to the Eastern and Western churches (apart from the filioque), one must distinguish among the theologians who interpreted this dogma. Here the differences between the Cappadocians and Augustine are of great ecumenical importance, for, to the present, the former have defined the trinitarian dogma in the Eastern Church, and the latter has done so in the Western Church. The trinitarian theology of the Cappadocians is characterized by beginning with God the Father as the “origin,” the “source,” the “cause” of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, both of which are direct and independent “outgoings” [Ausgänge] from God.[viii] The unity of the divine essence results from the unity of this origin. The three hypostases thus face one another as differentiated in the unity of the essence, as existing in themselves. This trinitarian conception follows from God’s different working in salvation history and makes the action of the Creator, the Redeemer Jesus Christ, and the renewing Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation understandable as the action of one and the same God. Here there is also room in trinitarian thinking for the personal contrasts among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as they have been handed down in the history of Jesus in the Gospels and as they are attested to in the New Testament letters and in Revelation. Augustine’s doctrine of the Trinity, on the other hand, is defined by starting with the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The essential unity is defined, not by proceeding from the Father as the principle of the Son and the Spirit but by proceeding from the Trinity as one principle. This means that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not only of one being but are one (not merely unum but unus).4 Accordingly, the distinctions among the three Persons and the particularities of their actions in salvation history recede in importance. The personal aspect of their intra-divine facing each other is hardly expressed in the doctrine of the Trinity itself. Through the distinctions among the intra-divine abilities and functions, such as memoria [memory], intellectus [intellect], and amor [love], the traditional concept 4 [“Not merely unum (one [essence]) but unus (one [God]).” In support of this conclusion, see, e. g., Augustine, De fide et symbolo (CSEL, 41.3–32; Faith and the Creed, WSA, I/8.155–174) and De Trinitate, V.12–15 (CCSL, 50.218–223; The Trinity, WSA, I/5.198–200). See also Rowan Williams, “De Trinitate” in Augustine through the Ages, 845–851. –Ed.]

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of person is largely pushed aside. The acts of creation, redemption, and creating anew are in the same way the acts of the triune God (the Trinity became a man in Jesus and is the power of renewal and love poured out since Pentecost). The special nature of the working of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation, and of their relationship to one another, is more concealed than maintained by Augustine’s trinitarian starting point. Here we can only provide a sketch that compares types, similar to what was done above with respect to the unique emphases in the Eastern and Western understandings of the humiliation and exaltation of the Son (621ff.). In the context of these “basic features” of an ecumenical dogmatics, the finer differences between the Eastern and Western trinitarian theological traditions, as well as the frequent overlapping between the two, cannot be discussed in more detail. In order to avoid misunderstandings, let us merely point out that Augustine firmly maintained the procession of the Son and the Holy Spirit from God the Father, and that the Cappadocians in no way reduced the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to a unity of origin and a commonality of attributes. Even if Augustine seems to have known little of the Cappadocian theologians, it should not be overlooked that the Greek doctrine of the Trinity has again and again had a strong influence on that of the West and that, e. g., the concept of perichoresis, as defined by John of Damascus, namely, of the interrelation of each hypostasis to the other two, has also been adopted by the Western doctrine of the Trinity.[ix] It should be noted, too, that not only Augustine but also theologians in the Eastern Church referred to the Holy Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son.

That the typical differences shown between the Eastern and Western doctrines of the Trinity have persisted, despite all the changes in the history of theology, can be accounted for in part by the various underlying historical debates (by the aftermath of Origenism, which was rejected in the East, and by the aftermath of Modalism, which was rejected in the West), as well as by the traditionalism that was cultivated on both sides. But there is a question of whether these differences were not already evident in the special nature of the trinitarian formula itself, for it is situated at the extreme limit of what can be said about God. This is already clear when unity and trinity are equated, which seems to contradict all logic. It should be noted that the oneness relates to the substance or the essence, while the threeness relates to the Persons or the hypostases. But the appearance of contradiction is exacerbated by the fact that substance and hypostasis ultimately mean the same thing, namely, “that which exists in itself.” Thus, e. g., Anselm of Canterbury, in the preface to his Monologium, appealing to the authority of the Greeks, maintained that one could also speak of the supreme Trinity as consisting of three substances.5 If one

5 [Anselm, Monologium, prol. (PL, 158.143; in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, 83). –Ed.]

The Trinitarian Dogma

also retains the Latin designation for the unity of God as una substantia, then the trinitarian formula could also be that God is one substance in three substances. In an analogous exaggeration, one could come up with a formulation that uses the modern concept of the personal God, namely, that God is one Person in three Persons. Some have concluded from this that the trinitarian formula is absurd. More appropriate is the observation that the trinitarian formula cannot be stated with one sentence and with one conceptuality. It must be interpreted in terms of both trinitarian distinction and trinitarian unity. None of these interpretations should be isolated and made absolute. Rather, it is precisely in their interconnection that they bear witness to the mystery of God. Both statements are not opposed to each other because of the difference between their two starting points. Rather, they complement each other. The one complements the other by protecting it from misunderstandings. In fact, throughout the first millennium these differences between the Eastern and Western doctrine of the Trinity were not perceived to be divisive for the church, and even subsequently the dispute over the doctrine of the Trinity has usually been restricted to the filioque. One of the limitations of the ancient church’s formula was the fact that the aspect of personal encounter, which emerges so clearly in the traditions of God’s historical acts and in Christian piety, is hardly expressed in the basic Greek and Latin terms that were used. The terms essence, substance, and hypostasis are of a very general nature. While they can also have a personal meaning to them, they do not express this explicitly. In addition, the trinitarian term persona does not mean person in our sense of the word. Moreover, it has been widely interpreted in the Augustinian tradition in the sense of a general concept of relation. From this vantage point, it should not be surprising that the basic terms used in the ancient church’s doctrine of the Trinity became largely incomprehensible when, in modern times, Greek metaphysics, from which these terms had been taken and by means of which they had acquired their theological significance, lost their value, and a new understanding of the human being developed. What emerged was the idealistic concept of personhood and, more recently, the concept of personhood that is defined by the I/Thou relationship.6 In the confrontation with pantheism, there was increasing talk of a personal God, not only in Protestant theology but also in Roman Catholic theology. This interpretation of the una substantia meant that the concept of person, which had previously been used to refer to the threeness, now referred to the oneness in a different sense. If a personal God was now spoken of, this corresponds to the

6 See Martin Buber, Ich und Du (Leipzig: Insel, 1923) [ET: I and Thou, 2d ed., trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). –Ed.]; and Ferdinand Ebner, Das Wort und die geistigen Realitäten [The Word and Spiritual Realities] (Innsbruck: Brenner, 1921). [The Austrian philosopher Ferdinand Ebner (1882–1931) and the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965) made significant use of the I-Thou relationship, both in terms of the relationship between God and human beings and between human beings themselves. –Ed.]

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Augustinian tradition insofar as the triune God had already been referred to as a unus. The result of emphasizing this personal aspect of the oneness of God—also in the Augustinian tradition—was the weakening of the personality of the three Persons. For example, Karl Barth replaced the concept of person in the early church formula with that of a “mode of being” [“Seinsweise”] (see below), and Karl Rahner interpreted it through that of the “distinct manner of subsisting.”7 Of course, the statements about the inner-trinitarian relationships then contradict the witness to the historical vis-à-vis of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as this is attested to in Jesus’ praying, in his obedience to the Father, and in his being forsaken by God on the cross, as well as in Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit as the other Paraclete. In Eastern Orthodox theology, on the other hand, the personal distinctions among Father, Son, and Spirit are still emphasized, and for this reason the conceptuality of the modern I/Thou philosophy has occasionally been used and critically expanded.8 Even in the modern transformation of trinitarian conceptuality, the differences in the ancient church between Eastern and Western trinitarian theology continue to complement each other.

5. The Mystery of the Divine Fullness of Life If one considers the richness of the biblical witness to the vis-à-vis, the intertwining, and the unity in the historical acts of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and if one further considers the richness of the certainty, the joy, and the hope which comes from believing in God through the message of Christ and the Holy Spirit, then the trinitarian formula about God himself seems pallid and paltry. What seems to have emerged from the richness of the historical, divine salvific action and the experience of this salvation by faith is only an abstract, contradictory, and ultimately absurd definition of the eternal God. Undoubtedly this is the impression that not only non-Christians have, but even many Christians themselves. But it would be a gross misunderstanding to try to understand the trinitarian formula as a definition of God. All churches teach that God cannot be defined. It is important to remember that a formula can be concise and abstract for a wide variety 7 See Barth, KD, I/1.379ff. [CD, I/1.359ff. –Ed.] and Karl Rahner, “Der dreifaltige Gott als transzendenter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte” [The Triune God as the Transcendent Primordial Basis of Salvation History], in Mysterium Salutis, II.389ff. [ET: The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel with an introduction by Catherine Mowry LaCugna (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 103ff. –Ed.] 8 This is done, e. g., by the Romanian-Orthodox dogmatician, Dumitru Staniloae, “The Ausgang des Heiligen Geistes vom Vater und seine Beziehung zum Sohn als Grundlage unserer Vergöttlichung und Kindschaft,” in Geist Gottes—Geist Christi: Ökumenische Überlegungen zur Filioque-Kontroverse, ed. Lukas Vischer (Frankfurt am Main: Lembeck, 1981), 161–163. [ET: “The Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and His Relation to the Son, as the Basis of our Deification and Adoption,” in Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ: Ecumenical Reflections on the Filioque Controversy, Faith and Order Paper 103 (London: SPCK; Geneva: WCC, 1981), 185–186. –Ed.]

The Mystery of the Divine Fullness of Life

of reasons. For example, brief mathematical formulas are derived from investigating many physical, chemical, and astronomical processes in order to explain these occurrences. The abstractness and brevity of summary statements can, however, also stem from the fact that the overwhelmingly extraordinary nature of the “thing” under consideration leaves people speechless. This is precisely the case with the trinitarian dogma. Despite all efforts at precision with the terms and concepts, it renounces a definition of the reality of God in the face of the immeasurable power and love of his speaking and acting. None of the basic terms that were taken from the philosophical language of the time and used in the Greek and Latin versions of the trinitarian formula have retained their original meaning. All have gone through a process of transformation that was determined by God’s revelation. Even the numbers no longer have their original meaning in the trinitarian formula. Above all, this has always been stated with respect to the oneness of God. Since the one God is utterly unique, his being one is beyond any series of numbers, while the mathematical number one assumes a series of numbers. In light of this, the number three in the trinitarian formula has not remained unchanged either, since the oneness of God’s being that is beyond every number is completely present in each of the three Persons. The numbers in the doctrine of the Trinity do not mean what numbers otherwise mean. The one of the unity and the threefold one in the threeness cannot be calculated like other numbers but are in an utterly singular relationship to one another. The reason for the apparent paltriness and contradictory character of the trinitarian formula is that the eternal fullness of God’s life, which is what the formula is about, exceeds our imagination. It can only be adored by us. And yet this adoration cannot be offered to God only in silence, for he himself did not remain silent; he revealed his name. In his words and deeds, the mystery of the fullness of his life comes to light. We must sacrifice our notions and words to this historically revealed mystery and let them be transformed by it, and thus put them into the service of adoration. The trinitarian formula keeps space open for this adoration. So it makes sense to unfold the trinitarian dogma in further statements about the eternal fullness of God’s life. This has been done in a number of ways: (a) All churches have witnessed to the divine fullness of life by proceeding from the original relationships among the Persons of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, which are focused upon in the trinitarian dogma. In this way, churches have differentiated between two eternal “productions” in God, namely, the eternal “generation” of the Son and the eternal “spiration” of the Holy Spirit through God the Father. This implies at the same time the eternal peculiarities (idiomata) in God, of Fatherhood, Sonship, and the being of the Spirit. The “productions” also contain two twofold relations (the issue of the filioque will be postponed here for the time being), namely, the relationship of the Father to the Son (generatio activa) and that of the Son to the Father (generatio passiva), as well as the relationship of the Father

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to the Holy Spirit (spiratio activa) and that of the Holy Spirit to the Father (spiratio passiva). By contrast, the lack of an origin for the Father deserves special mention. That lack of origin and the four relations are traditionally referred to together as the five “notiones” that distinguish the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit in the oneness of God.[x] Consequently, God is in unity the one who begets and the one who is begotten, the one who gives life and who receives life. Productivity and receptivity are not mutually exclusive in him. (b) The revelation of God in his historical speaking and acting makes possible further statements about the fullness of God’s life beyond the original relationships contained in the formula of the Trinity. Of great importance here was Augustine’s “psychological doctrine of the Trinity.”9 He started with the distinctions among human memoria [memory], intellectus [intellect], and voluntas [will] (etc.) and then interpreted the three divine Persons as analogous to these three faculties and their implementation in God. This corresponds to the weakening of the contrast among the Persons in Augustine’s trinitarian understanding of their unity. This understanding of the Son as God’s knowing, and of the Holy Spirit as God’s willing and loving, has long been maintained in the Western tradition. It can be found, e. g., in Thomas Aquinas and in the old-Protestant dogmatics.[xi] If, however, in connection with the Cappadocians, one proceeds from the personal vis-à-vis among the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as it came to light in God’s historical revelation, then it makes sense to speak of the mutual relationships of knowing and loving among the three divine Persons and not to restrict these relationships to memory, knowledge, and willing. In this way, the Father can now be understood as the one who loves, the Son as not merely the one who is beloved by the Father but as the one who loves the Father again, and the Holy Spirit as the love shared by both. In the same way, the Father is now understood as the one who knows, the Son as not merely the one who is known by the Father but who knows the Father again, and the Holy Spirit as the knowledge shared by both. In this way, too, the Son is praised as not merely the word expressed by the Father but as the answer given to the Father by him, and not merely as the one glorified by the Father but as the one who glorifies the Father again. One could proceed further on the basis of the historical revelation. The fact that in this line of thinking the Holy Spirit is not talked about so much as a personal vis-à-vis to the Father and the Son but rather as the commonality in their facing one another, corresponds to the peculiarity of his working in salvation history to serve the coordination of the Father and the Son.

9 [See Augustine, Confessiones libri XIII, XI–XIII (CCSL, 27.194ff.; The Confessions, WSA, I/1.284–380); and De Trinitate, IX-XV (CCSL, 50.292–380; 50a.381–535; The Trinity, WSA, I/5.270–437). –Ed.]

The Trinitarian Dogma as the First and Last Statement

(c) If, on the basis of the historical revelation, one inquires into the eternal productions and the eternal personal relationships, then one can sense the roots of God’s attributes. The glory, love, righteousness, and wisdom with which he encounters people in his historical speaking and acting did not first arise with creation. They are the free consequence and revelation of the eternal glory, love, wisdom, and righteousness that consist in the eternal unity and in the eternal solidarity [Füreinander] of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. All of God’s revealed perfections are the historical effects of the eternal perfection of the Trinity. Thus the love of God the Father and Jesus Christ for the world, and the exhortation to the disciples to love one another, have their basis in the eternal love of the Father for the Son (Jn. 17.26), and the exhortation to Christian unity has its basis in the perfect unity of the Father and the Son (vv. 21ff.). (d) The divine I is not an isolated I but contains in itself the contrast of I and Thou and is I and we at the same time. That is why the “self-love” of God is something completely different from the self-love of a human being, for God’s eternal love is the mutual love between the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. That is also why the eternal righteousness of God cannot be compared with the self-righteousness of a human being. Rather, it consists in the eternal correspondence between the Father and his image, the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The eternal divine fullness of life thus ruptures the notions that we have of the personal I based on our inner-worldly experiences. Because God is the vast fullness, metaphors from the realm of nature can also be used in service to the witness to him (e. g., God is the source, the river, the sea), as can even neutral abstractions (e. g., God is being, the essence, the highest good). The center, however, remains God’s revealed promise, “I am….” In the dogmatics of all churches, the Trinity has always been referred to in a special way as the mystery. This mystery is not hidden; it is revealed by God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that God thereby ceases to be a mystery. Rather, he is revealed precisely as the mystery. While he has not thereby become definable, he has not remained unmentionable, for God has revealed the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Revelation of the mystery does not mean that nothing can be said about God. On the contrary, this mystery can, may, and must be proclaimed to all the world.

6. The Trinitarian Dogma as the First and Last Statement The trinitarian dogma can only be understood in terms of the worship and adoration of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as the one God. But the trinitarian formula itself is not adoration. Rather, it is the formulaic, concentrated result of reflection. It is important to note this difference, even if over time the trinitarian

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formula was incorporated into the church’s adoration. So now we can inquire about the place that the dogma of the Trinity has within the totality of the statements of faith: (a) The trinitarian dogma presupposes the mighty deeds of God, their tradition and proclamation, and the resulting community of believers who thank God for his acts and who praise him. As a result of reflecting on this doxology, the trinitarian formula is the last statement. To be sure, it is the penultimate statement insofar as it is a statement of faith and not yet the vision of the glorified. But within the theologia viatorum [theology of sojourners], it is the last statement, since the other statements of faith precede its genesis. (b) In terms of content, the trinitarian dogma is the first statement, for it confesses God, who was above everything else and who gave existence to everything. He was the first before we knew him, before we were. As the one who is eternal, he is the first, who has established the beginning of this world. As the first, he is at the same time the last and the one who is always present: “I am the first and I am the last” (Isa. 44.6). This Old Testament word of God is also attested to as a word of the exalted Christ (Rev. 1.17f.). From a noetic perspective, the trinitarian dogma is the last statement. The triune God is known on the basis of his acts of creating, redeeming, and creating anew. From an ontic perspective, it is the first statement, for it confesses the eternal God, who in the freedom of his love has accomplished his mighty deeds and will accomplish them. In this perspective, the doctrine of the Trinity belongs at the beginning of dogmatics. It was only placed here at the end because it has become alien to many people, and an attempt should be made here to open up access to it through God’s historical acts. (c) As the first and last statement, the trinitarian dogma is the comprehensive defense for all statements of faith—not only for statements of church doctrine and proclamation but also for prayer and worship. If one keeps an eye on the variety of witnesses and prayers that are concentrated in the trinitarian dogma, and if one also considers the many rejections of erroneous statements about God that are also concentrated in this dogma, then the important service that it provides to all faith-expressions in the life of the church becomes clear. It serves the church by witnessing to it about the vastness that is revealed through the mystery of the divine fullness of life, and by showing it the limit beyond which it would miss this vastness. The doctrine of redemption would fall to pieces if Jesus’ death were no longer acknowledged to be the vicarious death of the incarnate Son of God, and the doctrine of the new creation would fall to pieces if God’s Spirit no longer was expected to be the one who creates anew. (d) If, in terms of its content, the trinitarian dogma is the first statement, it is still not the first statement in the sense of a premise from which the acts of God could be deduced by way of logical inferences. His acts of creation, redemption, and new

The Ecumenical Significance of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed

creation do not necessarily follow from the doctrine of God’s eternal oneness in the threeness. Rather, these are to be acknowledged as free decisions of those who are in themselves already the fullness. The path to doxology and the dogma of God’s eternal Trinity summarized within doxology sets out only from God’s historical acts. These acts receive elucidation by dogma, but not a compelling justification. That is also why Karl Rahner’s thesis (“the ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity, and vice versa”) is not unambiguous.10 Obviously, the eternal trinitarian God is the same one who revealed himself in the historical acts. Obviously, the immanent and the economic Trinity are also identical insofar as the eternal triune God is only knowable on the basis of his salvific action in the economy of salvation. And yet this thesis is ambiguous insofar as it does not exclude the interpretation suggested by Hegel that the immanent Trinity could not exist without God’s salvific working in the economy of salvation and that God needs the world in order to become the triune God.[xii] (e) The trinitarian dogma is an important defense for all statements of faith, but it cannot replace them. There have been times in church history when this dogma was taught correctly and yet people hungered for grace and were left without the certainty of being loved by God. The trinitarian dogma must not be detached from the proclamation of the gospel. It must not be forgotten that the motive of Athanasius, in his struggle for the essential unity of the Father and the Son, was not a speculative one but a soteriological one. If access to the trinitarian dogma is to be opened up to those who are distant from it, it will not be established by the dogma itself but by the gospel of Jesus Christ, through which God demonstrates himself to be present in the power of the Holy Spirit. But wherever faith arises, adoring praise of the unity of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit will always follow, and in the reflection on this praise, paramount religious and philosophical terms of the respective cultural environment will always be ruptured and taken into service. The authority of the trinitarian dogma does not demonstrate itself through the transmission of the ancient church’s formula, but rather when, in the midst of the multitude of religions and philosophies, it is interpreted anew again and again on the basis of the message of Christ.

7. The Ecumenical Significance of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed The only confession of the triune God that is widely used in the whole ecumene [Ökumene] is the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381.[xiii] While the Apostles’ Creed, which is widely used only in the Western churches, can also be called an

10 See Rahner, “Der dreifaltige Gott,” in Mysterium Salutis, II.328. [ET: 22. –Ed.]

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ecumenical creed, insofar as its content corresponds to the faith of the churches in the East, it is not used by them and is largely unknown there. The Constantinopolitan Creed, however, is confessed in the Orthodox and other Oriental churches, as well as in the Roman Catholic Church, the churches of the Reformation, and the Old Catholic Church. It is thus uniquely the ecumenical symbol of Christendom. It owes its widespread use not only to its content but also to its shape [Gestalt]. In it, the basic structure of early Christian creeds has been retained, in which the adoration of God and the witness to people are concentrated. This creed is authoritative in the life of the churches, both as a liturgical confession and as a teaching norm. Its dissemination was also helped by the fact that (apart from the use of ὁμοούσιος) it does not contain the technical terms of the trinitarian formula, which are difficult for many to understand, and which arose in the course of dealing with Greek philosophy, and instead it keeps to biblical statements. Of course, the Eastern and Western texts of this creed do not agree on one word that was added later to the Western text: “filioque” [“and the Son”]. Its addition is considered heresy by the Orthodox Church, and its rejection is rejected as heresy by the Roman Church. Thus, in the midst of the ecumenical community that uses this creed, this word has acquired a church-dividing significance. It concerns the issue of whether the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit is from God the Father alone or from the Father and the Son. The most important steps that led to the separation of the churches were as follows: Before the councils of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381, and even afterwards, the church fathers taught the procession of the Holy Spirit “from the Father,” “from the Father through the Son,” and “from the Father and the Son,” without these different formulations being described as conflicting. It is particularly striking that some Greek fathers, especially Epiphanius and Cyril of Alexandria, often spoke of the procession of the Spirit “from the Father and the Son,” while, on the other hand, Latin fathers, such as Tertullian and Hilary, used the formula “from the Father through the Son.”11 The formula “from the Father” at that time had no exclusive meaning in the sense of “solely from the Father.” In addition, the historical and the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit were not initially distinguished.

11 [See the ambiguous Greek phrase about the Spirit’s procession that appears in the second and longer of the two creeds that is included at the end of the Ancoratus by Epiphanius: “We believe in the Holy Spirit… who proceeds from the Father and receives from the Son…” (NPNF 2 , 14.164 [trans. modified]). In chapter seven of his Ancoratus, Epiphanius states that the Spirit “is from the very being of the Father and of the Son.” For Cyril of Alexandria’s statements about the Spirit’s procession, see Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, 28–30, 68, 214, 231, and 237. For Tertullian’s phrase (“from the Father through the Son”) see, e. g., Against Praxeas, 4 (Tertullian’s Treatise against Praxeas, 134). For Hillary’s understanding of the double procession of the Spirit, see his treatise, De Trinitate, II.29f.; VIII.19f. (PL, 10.69f., 250f.; On the Trinity, NPNF 2 , 9.60, 143, and 145). See also Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 358–367. –Ed.]

The Ecumenical Significance of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed

In the fifth century, the filioque was inserted into the text of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in Spain (see especially the decisions of the synods of Toledo in 589 and 633).[xiv] In all likelihood, during the struggle against the Arianism of the Goths, the unambiguously anti-Arian statements of the creed had to be reinforced. In the East, this insertion into the text was not initially perceived to be church-dividing, just as the Spanish Church had also not intended in any way to separate itself from the Byzantine Church. Even before this, maintaining the Nicene faith did not imply that it was confessed everywhere with the same wording. Not infrequently basic statements from the Nicene Creed were inserted into older confessional texts that were already in use. The filioque can also be found among the Franks in the eighth century. A dispute about the addition broke out around the year 800 when, in a joint worship service held by Eastern and Franconian monks at the St. Saba Monastery in Jerusalem, the differences in the wording of the creed became obvious. While Pope Leo III agreed to the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, he asked Charlemagne in 808 not to include the filioque in the liturgical text of the creed. The theological differences were intensified, with serious consequences, in the ninth century by the Byzantine patriarch Photius, in the dispute over the legitimacy of his office. He interpreted the Western filioque to mean that the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son is as from two principles, and he rejected this as heretical. At the same time, he restricted the procession from the Father through the Son to the historical sending of the Holy Spirit, and he taught that the eternal procession of the Spirit is “from the Father alone” without any involvement of the Son. The unity of faith that had existed for centuries, despite various interpretations of the procession of the Spirit, was thus denied. At that time, there arose a schism between Rome and Byzantium that was already decades old. Under pressure from the German emperor Henry II, Pope Benedict VIII added the filioque in 1014 to the text of the creed of 381. An interpretation thus became a dogma. This was followed in 1054 by the schism between the Eastern and Western churches, which still exists today. It is now widely acknowledged that this schism was not primarily the result of theological and liturgical differences regarding the issue of the filioque, but mainly the result of church-political conflict between the papacy in Rome and the ecumenical patriarchate in Constantinople, as well as the result of world-political discord between the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and the Byzantine Empire, which led to alienation and, ultimately, to the schism between the Greek and Latin churches.[xv] While a church schism can only be justified ultimately before God if the issue involves a deviation from the truth of the faith, theological and liturgical differences that had previously existed within the unity of the church now took on the meaning of mutually exclusive dogmas. In addition, there was the serious accusation of the Greek Church that the pope had assumed the right to change the decision of an ecumenical council, which had for centuries been undisputed in all the churches. The papacy has been accused of having broken the bond of love between the Western and Eastern churches by its arbitrary addition to the creed. The theological difference between East and West was further exacerbated by the Second Council of Lyons in 1274, which was supposed to bring about union with the Greeks. In

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view of Photius’ accusation, the Western position was made more precise: “…the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles, but from one.”12 In addition, it was declared most solemnly: “We condemn and disapprove those who presume to deny that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son.”13 On the other hand, the Greek rejection of the filioque in the Middle Ages was intensified by Gregory Palamas, namely, through his differentiation between the Holy Spirit and the uncreated divine energies.[xvi] Even the more recent attempts at union have not put an end to this schism.14 The widely regarded “Theses on the filioque” by the Russian theologian Vasilij Vasiljević Bolotow—which (recalling the variety of voices among the church fathers) suggest that the filioque should be considered merely as a theologoumenon [theological opinion], in contrast to the dogma of 381—met with resistance in the Orthodox Church.15 On the other hand, the Roman Church has not reversed its solemn rejection of those who reject the filioque, even if Pope Benedict XIV in 1755 allowed the Eastern Churches united with Rome to use the original text. In our day, awareness of this opposition has been kept alive not only by church leaders but also by important individual theologians, such as, e. g., the Russian Orthodox emigrant Vladimir Lossky and the Reformed theologian Karl Barth.16 In these disputes, even arguments from the older polemics continue to have an effect, namely, on the Orthodox side, that the filioque led to the subordination of the Holy Spirit and the codification of the church, and, from the side of Western theology, that the rejection of the filioque led to the detachment of the Spirit from the word of God and to degenerate forms of mysticism. To make matters worse, after Vatican I, the rejection of the filioque became a beacon for many Orthodox in their struggle to defend the ancient church’s episcopal-synodical church order over against the papal claim to possess the highest jurisdictional authority and infallibility.

The schism between the Eastern and Western churches is thus about two theological issues: the dogmatic issue of the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit, and the canonlaw issue of the leadership of the universal church. We will restrict ourselves here to the dogmatic issue.

12 [“Constitution on the Most High Trinity and the Catholic Faith,” the second session of the Second Council of Lyon, May 1274 (Denzinger, 850 [trans. modified]; cf. Tanner, 1.314). –Ed.] 13 [Denzinger, 850; cf. Tanner, 1.314. –Ed.] 14 Cf. Reinhard Slenczka, “Das filioque in der neueren ökumenischen Diskussion” [The filioque in Recent Ecumenical Discussion], in Glaubensbekenntnis und Kirchengemeinschaft [Confession of the Faith and Church Unity], ed. Alexandre Ganoczy, Karl Lehmann, and Wolfhart Pannenberg (Freiburg i. Breisgau: Herder; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 80–99. 15 Vasilij Vasiljević Bolotow, “Thesen über das filioque,” Revue internationale de Théologie VI (1898): 681–712. 16 See Vladimir Lossky, La procession du Saint Esprit dans la doctrine trinitaire orthodoxe [The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine] (Paris: Setor, 1948); and Barth, KD, I/1.500–511. [CD, I/1.477–487. –Ed.]

The Ecumenical Significance of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed

In ecumenical dialogue about this issue, the main difficulty is that the New Testament Scriptures do not contain any direct statements about the eternal relationship between the Son of God and the Holy Spirit, and absolutely no statements about the participation of the Son in the eternal procession of the Spirit from God the Father. But the connection between Jesus Christ and the historical sending of the Spirit from the Father is abundantly attested. As we have already emphasized, a distinction must be made between the earthly and the exalted Jesus. According to what has been handed down, the earthly Jesus was not a giver but a receiver of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was begotten by the Holy Spirit, he received the Spirit in baptism, he preached and healed by the authority of the Spirit, and he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. But the exalted Jesus is proclaimed as the one who sends the Spirit that comes from God. Since Pentecost, the Holy Spirit has been poured out from the Father through the exalted Son, and thus is from the Father and the Son. These witnesses, however, are not referring to the controversial eternal procession of the Spirit but to the historical procession of the Spirit. Consequently, no direct answer to this controversial question can be obtained from the interpretation of the New Testament Scriptures. Even though both sides sought to prove their own doctrinal teaching again and again by interpreting New Testament statements, especially Jesus’ farewell discourses in the Gospel of John, more comprehensive theological premises in fact played the decisive role. The two most important ones should be pointed out here: (a) A different understanding of the trinitarian dogma. Common to the Eastern and Western churches is the trinitarian dogma, but its interpretation was different in the wake of the Cappadocians and, on the other hand, in the wake of Augustine. The former understood God the Father as the origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit, while in the Augustinian tradition the triune God was understood as the principle of unity. It is understandable that the Cappadocian starting point led to the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, while Augustine’s led to the procession from the Father and the Son. When Eastern fathers spoke of a procession of the Spirit from the Father through the Son and, in this sense, spoke of a procession from the Father and the Son, they did not want to designate the Son as a second principle next to God the Father, nor as a principle together with God the Father. (b) A different understanding of the historical revelation. Common to the Eastern and Western churches is recognition of the revelation of the eternal triune God in his historical salvific action, but across the churches there are differences in the clarity of the statements that can be drawn from God’s historical revelation concerning the eternal God himself. For example, on the basis of the historical revelation of the name of God, very different conclusions have been drawn about the eternal God. Some have inferred from this name the eternal namelessness of God. Others have inferred from it that the historically revealed name is valid merely as an analogy. Still others have understood the historically revealed name as God’s self-revelation

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in the sense that this is the eternal name of God himself, with which he is reached and praised for all eternity. It goes without saying that these different premises also have various consequences for the issue of the filioque. If, under the influence of Neoplatonism, the distance between historical revelation and the eternal God is emphasized, then it is quite remote to infer from the historical sending of the Holy Spirit through the Father and the Son the eternal procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son. But the more that the being of the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is recognized in God’s historical salvific action (as was done, e. g., by Karl Barth), the more it makes sense also to speak of the eternal procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son. However, it remains to be considered here that the historical sending of the Holy Spirit, according to the New Testament witnesses, did not take place through the earthly, but through the exalted Jesus, and that therefore the question can arise about whether the eternal generation of the Son through the Father and the Holy Spirit should not also be taken into consideration to make a formally, logically identical conclusion about the procession of the Spirit. If one takes into account that these two premises were not revealed but are rather different interpretations of the historical revelation, and thus are already inferences that are drawn from existing traditions, it becomes clear that the dispute over the filioque is about inferences drawn from inferences, whereby the different inferences on which the premises are based cannot be logically, convincingly derived from the biblical witnesses. Such inferences drawn from other inferences are an insufficient basis for the definition of a dogma that determines the boundary between faith and heresy. If one further considers that the differences between the theologies of the Trinity by the Cappadocians and Augustine originally had no church-dividing significance, and that the differences in defining the relationship between historical revelation and the eternal God did not divide the church but went across it, then no churchdividing significance can be assigned to the inferences from these differences, all the less since they are inferences for a very special issue within the shared trinitarian confession. Thus the first World Conference on Faith and Church Order, which took place in Lausanne in 1927 with the participation of Orthodox theologians, affirms that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is to be acknowledged as the common basis of all churches, without the issue of the filioque having been mentioned. Does this mean that it is superfluous to discuss this issue? Not at all. But we must distinguish between different types of theological thinking that are legitimate within the church. Theological thinking geared toward establishing and interpreting dogmas is not the only type. In addition, there is speculative thinking in the churches about questions that are prompted by Holy Scripture or by dogmas but are not answered by Scripture or dogma. To be sure, the concept of speculative theology has come into disrepute in the domain of the Protestant Church due to German idealism and its speculative attempts to derive Christian dogma

The Ecumenical Significance of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed

from philosophical principles. But there is also a kind of speculative thinking further about a matter, which is legitimate when it is based on the historical revelation attested to in Scripture. For example, following such a process, Anselm of Canterbury, in his book Cur Deus homo, inquired about the necessary presuppositions for God to have liberated humans from guilt. Starting from historical revelation, speculative thinking has again and again inquired further about the inner-trinitarian relations among the three Persons in the unity of God. Some of the previous statements about the divine fullness of life also emerged from such further inquiry. Such further thinking about the Trinity has its roots in meditation, and indeed, with respect to the issue of the filioque, it is a matter of intellectual meditation that is highly sophisticated. If one, e. g., delves into the very different lines of thinking by Roman Catholic, Greek and Russian Orthodox, Old Catholic, Reformed, and other theologians who have recently published on this topic through the Commission on Faith and Order, then this diversity is initially confusing.17 But by thinking more carefully about it, there is a positive effect (if one disregards the schism in the church), for here there is a further inquiry, by means of which the inner-trinitarian relations emerge all the more clearly as the mystery of the divine fullness of life. Through more precise examination, one also encounters some convergences. For example, we should remember the ancient Roman Catholic distinction, which goes back to Augustine, that God the Father is the principium sine principio [source without a source], and the Son is the principium ex principio [the source from the source], the principium principatum [the source derived from the source].[xvii] This distinction converges with the phrase “per filium” [through the Son]. Reference should also be made to the medieval Greek theologians Gregory of Cyprus and Gregory Palamas, who spoke of an eternal “rest of the Spirit in the Son” and an eternal “radiation of the Spirit through the Son,” statements that approach the idea of the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit also from the Son.18 Such interpretations do not remove the difference, emphasized since Photius, between the procession of the Spirit from the Father alone or from the Father and the Son, but it becomes clear that these differences are about a special form [Gestalt] of the same apparent contradiction that is contained in the concept of the Trinity and that brings forth varying complementary statements. The multiplicity of arguments for and against the filioque is also about the divine fullness of life that is beyond any human definition.

Incomparably more important for the unity of the church than the speculative meditations about the filioque is that the original statements of the NicenoConstantinopolitan Creed—either with or without the filioque—are preserved by

17 Geist Gottes—Geist Christi. [Cf. footnote 8 above. –Ed.] 18 See Staniloae, “Der Ausgang des Heiligen Geistes,” in Geist Gottes—Geist Christi, 158ff. [“The Procession of the Holy Spirit,” 180ff.]; cf. Boris Bobrinskoy, “Das Filioque gestern und heute,” in Geist Gottes—Geist Christi, 115ff. [ET: “The Filioque Yesterday and Today,” in God’s Spirit, Christ’s Spirit, 143ff. –Ed.]

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all churches, not as dead, traditional formulas but as living statements of the faith. The creed of 381 is ecumenically authoritative, both through the wording in which it was formulated by the fathers and through the historical act of formulating it, by means of which it emerged to set itself apart over against the errors of its time. We remain true to the creed when we interpret its traditional wording to confront the errors of our time, just as the fathers did to the errors of their time. It is thus significant that the World Council of Churches has included two decisive elements of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in the formulation of its “Basis”: the confession of Jesus Christ as “God and Savior” and the “praise of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”19 Editor’s Notes to Chapter 26 [i] [ii]

Some sections of this chapter were taken directly from Schlink’s RGG3 entry on the doctrine of the Trinity. See Schlink, “Trinität—IV. Dogmatisch,” RGG3 , 6.1032–1038. The hypostatic or personal union (sometimes also called the unio personalis) refers to the union of the two natures in the person of Christ, as defined by the Chalcedonian Definition (see Denzinger, 302; Tanner, 1.83). According to the old-Protestant dogmaticians, the hypostatic union of the Spirit and those regenerated by the Spirit is a unio specialis. They then called it the unio mystica. This mystical union takes place in and through the regeneration of the human being by the Spirit. Hence, it is also called the unio spiritualis. A qualifying phrase was sometimes added to the unio spiritualis, namely, “sive praesentia gratiae tantum” (by the presence of grace alone), to distinguish it (the union of believers with God) and the hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ. For the understanding of the mystical union among the Lutheran dogmaticians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Schmid, 306–310 (ET: 480–486).

19 [“The Constitution and Basis of the World Council of Churches,” adopted at New Delhi (1961), reprinted in Documents of the Christian Church, 426–427. –Ed.]

The Ecumenical Significance of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed

[iii]

[iv]

[v]

For the textual basis of this Augustinian principle, as it came to be defined in medieval Western theology, see Augustine, De Trinitate, I.7–10, 12–15; IV.30; and XV.5 (CCSL, 50–50a.34–49, 201–203; 463–467; The Trinity, WSA, I/5.69–76, 175–176, 397–399). For example: “…the Trinity works inseparably in everything that God works…” (I.8); “…the Trinity which is equal in every respect likewise also works inseparably, being in its nature unchangeable and invisible and everywhere present” (XV.5). This principle became formalized in conciliar statements of the Roman Church and served as a basic presupposition in medieval Western scholastic theology. See Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God For Us (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 96–99. According to the Lutheran dogmaticians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who also accepted this Augustinian formula, there are three opera ad extra: creation, redemption, and sanctification. See Schmid, 99 (ET: 133). Cf., e. g., Origen, The Commentary on the Gospel of John, VI.17 (ANF, 9.367). For his use of ousia and hypostasis, see, e. g., Commentary on the Gospel of John,” II.2, 10 (ANF, 9.323, 333); On First Principles, I.2.1–13; I.3.1–8 (Butterworth, 15–39); and On Prayer, XV.1 (in Alexandrian Christianity, ed. John Ernest Leonard Oulton and Henry Chadwick [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1954], 269). In early EasternChristian thought, the terms ousia and hypostasis were synonyms for “existence” or “essence,” but Origen also used hypostasis in the sense of “individual subsistence” (“We consider therefore that there are three hypostases: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and at the same time we believe nothing to be uncreated but the Father” (Commentary on John, II.6 [ANF, 9.328]). For Origen’s possible use of the term homoousios, see the fragmentary comment on the letter to the Hebrews, as quoted by Johannes Quasten, Patrology, 3 vols. (Westminster, Maryland: Spectrum, 1960–1962), 2.78. Schlink here adopted a distinction made by some twentieth-century German historians of dogma who identified an “Old Nicene” party and a “Young Nicene” party in the wake of the First Council of Nicaea. See, for example, Friedrich Loofs, Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte, 2 vols., 5th ed., ed. Kurt Aland (Halle-Saale: Max Niemeyer, 1951), 1.201–205. According to Loofs, the “Old Nicene” party was led by the priest Paulinus who had been loyal to the long-deceased Eustathius, while the “Young Nicene” party was represented principally by “the three great Cappadocians,” Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa. For criticism of this nomenclature, see Jaroslav Pelikan, Historical Theology (New York and London: Hutchinson with Corpus, 1971), 94–95.

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[vi]

The Greek term οὐσία [ousia] refers to the “essence,” “substance,” or “nature” of a thing. See F. E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon (New York: New York University Press, 1967), 149–151. While it is used only once in the New Testament (Lk. 15.12f.), where it means “property” (BDAG, 740), in classical Greek literature this word also refers to “stable being, immutable reality,” to the “substance,” “essence,” or “true nature” of a thing, hence, to “substantiality” (LS, 1274). The term ὑποστάσις [hypostasis], in its transitive sense also means “the essential or basic structure/nature of an entity, substantial nature, essence, actual being, reality” (BDAG, 1040; cf. LS, 1895; Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms, 92–93), but in its intransitive sense it refers to “that which settles at the bottom, sediment” or to anything set under, i. e., to “a foundation or substructure” (LS, 1895). In this intransitive sense, hypostasis is the exact philological equivalent of the Latin terms subsistentia or substantia. Until the fourth century, the term hypostasis was never equivalent to the Latin persona or to the Greek πρόσωπον [prosōpon]. The latter term means “face, countenance, front, façade,” but also “mask” or even “character” in a play (see LS, 1533). The term can also be rendered as “individual” or “individual person.” Until the time of the Cappadocians, Eastern theologians used hypostasis interchangeably with ousia, but the Cappadocians made a clear distinction between them. Their formula is “one ousia, three hypostaseis.” For a helpful analysis of all these terms in the early history of Eastern and Western trinitarian theology, see LaCugna, God For Us, 66ff. [vii] Schlink did not provide a source for this definition, but cf. LaCugna, God For Us, 66. [viii] With respect to these “outgoings,” to use Schlink’s term, the Cappadocians made a distinction between the “generation” (or the “begottenness”) of the Son and the “procession” (or “sending forth”) of the Holy Spirit. See Seeberg, Textbook of the History of Doctrines, 1.229–230; and Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 1.215–225. [ix] For recent examples of the influence of John of Damascus on Western understandings of perichoresis, see Eberhard Jüngel, The Doctrine of the Trinity: God’s Being Is in Becoming, trans. Horton Harris (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976); idem, “Perichoreses,” in RGG4 , 6.1110–1111; LaCugna, God For Us, 270ff.; Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: SCM Press, 1981), 174ff.; and Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 1.259ff. [x] “Notiones personales” refer to the personal characteristics or “notions” of the three Persons of the Trinity that define the personal character of each of the Persons. As Schlink indicated, they are identical with the four personal relations in addition to the unbegottenness of the Father. The “notiones” are the personal relations and the personal properties (idiomata) of the Trinity. “A notion is the proper idea whereby we know a divine Person” (Aquinas, ST, I.32.3). See Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 204. [xi] See Aquinas, ST I.45.7. For this understanding among the classic sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant dogmaticians, see Baier-Walther, Compendium theologiae positivae, 2.143–155, and Schmid, 101–103 (ET: 136–137).

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[xii] [xiii]

[xiv]

[xv]

[xvi] [xvii]

See, e. g., Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 325; idem, LPR, 3.251ff. For the original Greek text, see BSELK, 50; Denzinger, 150 (which also displays the Western Latin recension); and Tanner, 1.24. For the historical background and development of this creed, including the introduction of the Latin word filioque to the Western version, see Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 296–367. For the Profession of Faith that was adopted at the Third Council of Toledo in 589, see Denzinger, 470. For the Profession of Faith that was adopted at the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633, see Denzinger, 485. Tensions between the patriarch of Constantinople and the bishop of Rome had been periodically strained since the early middle ages, but the excommunication of Patriarch Michael Cerularius (ca. 1000–1059, patriarch after 1043) by Pope Leo IX (1002–1054, pope after 1048) in July 1054 is generally regarded as the final step in the separation of Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) Christianity. See Gregory Palamas, the Triads, 93–111. For the identification of the Father as the principium sine principio and the Son as the principium ex principio, see, e. g., Augustine, De fide et symbolo, IX.18–19 (CSEL, 41.21ff.; Faith and the Creed, WSA, I/8.167–170).

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Introduction to Chapters XXVII–XXIX The Holy God and the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes

At the center of the churches’ praise in the worship service is the Sanctus: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty! Heaven and earth are full of his glory.” This adoring praise has its origin in the vision and call of the prophet Isaiah (Isa. 6.3). Here it was reported as being offered to God by the seraphim in heavenly worship. In the kiddush it was also intoned in the earthly worship of the Jewish community. The Sanctus is found again in the New Testament doxology of the heavenly liturgy (Rev. 4.8), and it was included in the church’s worship services at an early stage. Since the middle of the third century, it found its place in the eucharistic prayer, initially with the interpretation that the two seraphs refer to Christ and the Holy Spirit, through which the earthly congregation is given access to the heavenly worship, and later with the interpretation that the triple “holy” refers to the threefold name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This trinitarian interpretation then found widespread use. By offering the Sanctus to God in the Lord’s Supper, the church confesses the unity of the Father of Jesus Christ with the God of the Old Testament covenant, and it confesses the communion between those worshiping on earth and those doing so in heaven. Let us inquire about the meaning of this term of praise, “Holy!” Here, too, as in all statements of the doctrine of God, we proceed on the basis of the historical revelation of the divine holiness. Three different aspects are to be particularly emphasized: (a) God is holy as the one who is different from everything. The Hebrew term qādoš [‫]ָקדוֹשׁ‬, holy, stands opposite to hakôl, the general, the created universe (cf., e. g., Hos. 11.9: “I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst”). The holy God cannot be compared to any human being or to anything existing outside of him. He is the Wholly Other. God maintains this limit against all human attempts to cross it arbitrarily and to make God’s own purposes serviceable for themselves. Again and again he willingly and actively asserts his uniqueness in ever-new selfdifferentiation. “I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols” (Isa. 42.8 [S] et passim). God wants all creatures to acknowledge him as the one who is totally different. They are to honor him as the Creator and Redeemer and to subordinate their own desires to his commandments. (b) When God is revealed in his holiness, the human cannot persist in God’s presence; the person’s life-force escapes, and the individual collapses. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am… of unclean lips… yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isa. 6.5). God is holy as the one who reveals and the one who consumes.

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The holy God destroys the sham security of the religious and legal frameworks that humans construct and in which they believe themselves to be secure, and God opens up the abyss of emptiness and nothingness in which people find themselves when they try to live on their own. (c) But the holy God also acts as the one who elects, the one who draws to himself, the one who creates community—the one who brings salvation, the one who gives himself. He not only exposes sin but covers it and removes the guilt. In this way, Yahweh acted as the Holy One, who elected and saved Israel, who made Israel his people, and who promised to be steadfast for them. The total otherness of the divine holiness is most clearly expressed in the fact that community with him was possible only because he freely accepted the enslaved Israelite tribes in perfect love. Israel, for its part, could not have established the covenant with God. The same is even more true of God’s holying action in the new covenant. Here, too, the unveiling and removal of sin belong together in God’s work. To be sure, it is initially striking that, in comparison to the Old Testament, only a relatively few places in the New Testament Scriptures (apart from the Gospel of John) speak of the holy God and of Jesus as the holy God. But in the term “Holy Spirit,” holy has taken on almost the meaning of a divine name. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the fulfillment of one of the most central promises of the old covenant. Through the outpouring and indwelling of this Spirit, through the renewal and vivification brought about by him, through his spiritual gifts and guidance, the holy God has become manifest in a way that differs from his selecting the Old Testament covenant people, just as the fulfillment differs from the promise. Through the bold witness of the New Testament to the actions of the Holy Spirit, the holiness of God is proclaimed as present. These three aspects belong together, even though this observation does not yet clarify the way in which they belong together. It is, however, already clear that the adoration of the holiness of God cannot take place without the petitionary prayer that his name be holy, for although God is the Holy One, he is still not honored as the Holy One by the world. Keeping the divine name holy is not possible for those who oppose it unless God first equips them to do it. This is how the first petition in the Lord’s Prayer has been interpreted in the Western tradition from Tertullian through Cyprian and Augustine to Luther’s Small Catechism, but also by some Greek fathers: “God’s name is by nature holy, whether we call it so or not; … we pray that the name of God be hallowed in us, too.”1

1 Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Lectures, V. [FOTC, 64.199 (trans. modified). Cf. Luther’s explanation: “It is true that God’s name is holy in itself, but we ask in this prayer that it may also become holy in and among us” (SC 3, The First Petition [BSELK, 874; BC, 356]). –Ed.]

The Holy God and the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes

Since the statements about the divine attributes are concentrated in a special way in the acknowledgment of God’s holiness, the three aspects that have been identified should determine the structure of the following chapters (chaps. 27–29): God the Lord, the one who is consuming, and the one who gives himself.

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Chapter XXVII: The Lord

1. God’s Omnipotence The adoration of God especially emphasizes God’s omnipotence. It is particularly praised in the biblical writings and is expressly mentioned in the Constantinopolitan Creed and the Apostles’ Creed as the only attribute of God: We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty (παντοκράτορα [pantokratora], omnipotentem).[i] This attribute comes to the forefront in the ancient church’s confessions as the epitome of the divine perfections. Early on, it was used as an address to God and thus acquired the meaning of a divine name. God’s omnipotence is not restricted to a single function of the divine work; rather, it encompasses his knowing, willing, and doing, his decisions, and their implementation. Knowing, willing, and doing, as well as deciding and implementing, do not differ more or less significantly with God as they do with humans, but they correspond to one another, take place together, and are intertwined. Attempts have been made again and again to proceed from knowledge of innerworldly processes and relationships of power to the concept of divine omnipotence (cf. chap. 25.3 above), whether by looking at the causal relationships of this world to conclude that there was a First Cause, or by ascending from the worldly differences between power and powerlessness, between a higher order and a lower order, and thus from the limitations of our power, to arrive at the idea of God’s omnipotence. However, the finiteness of the inner-worldly causal series cannot be proven with certainty. Finally, the personal nature of the cause underlying all inner-worldly relationships of power cannot be proven. So we begin instead with the acts of God by which he has made and continues to make himself known as the Lord of the universe. Without going into the question again regarding how humans arrive at knowledge of the Creator (cf. above 173ff. and 275ff.), it should first be pointed out that in the above creeds and many other confessions of the faith, the Almighty is praised as the “Creator of heaven and earth,” “of what is seen and unseen.” “Everything” that arose at the beginning and in the course of history—what is inanimate, what is living, and spiritual creatures—has its origin in the free decision of the divine omnipotence. God’s creative work is not restricted to the creation of what is new. The Almighty preserves and governs the universe. There is nothing in it that can have constancy and power in itself, not even for a moment. If God’s omnipotence were to be withdrawn, then what is created would disintegrate into nothing. For this reason, all churches have rejected the deistic conception, according to which God indeed created the universe at the

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beginning but then left everything else to the self-functioning of the created forces. All churches confess God’s omnipotence in creating, preserving, and guiding the universe, and in his acts of redemption and creating anew. In his omnipotence, however, God works in very different ways, not merely in those that correspond to the different possibilities of the self-functioning of what is inanimate, of what is living, and of spiritual creatures. (a) The action of divine omnipotence is often understood to be God’s one-sided effective working (efficere) to create, preserve, and guide. However, this also includes God’s knowing, in its original, Old Testament meaning, which is still also maintained by Paul, namely, as choosing, setting apart, loving, creating community, and thus as bringing into life what does not exist. So “foreknowing” implies not just a “knowing in advance” but also an intention, a predetermining, and the actualization of a predetermination that is inseparable from God’s intention (cf., e. g., Jer. 1.5 and Rom. 8.29). (b) An effect of divine omnipotence, however, is also divine permission for human beings to act on their own, to turn against their intended purpose by disregarding God, tormenting people, and disfiguring the environment. This permitting (permittere) of injustice, oppression, and destruction seems to be the opposite of God’s effective action, and God’s knowledge of all such happenings seems to be the opposite of God’s active, determinative knowing. In this permissive viewing, God’s inaction and powerlessness seem to have taken the place of omnipotence. But even the restraint of his active knowing and of his obstructive intervention is an action of the Almighty, namely, the action of suffering the abuse that people make of the freedom granted to them (cf. above 345ff.). One cannot restrict God’s omnipotence to his work of implementation. He is no less God when he does not hinder, refrains from intervening, and endures suffering, just as he did not merely create and preserve the universe through his omnipotent Word but also pleads for people to return to him, the Giver of life. (c) Divine omnipotence is called into question most radically by the fate of Jesus Christ. In the incarnation of his Son, the Almighty entered the powerlessness of a human being who, without protection, was exposed to the violence of this world and who, according to one Gospel tradition, was himself without omniscience (Mk. 13.32 par. Mt. 24.36). He was misunderstood, arrested, sentenced, and executed. God could have prevented these sufferings, but he imposed them on Jesus in order to suffer them himself in his Son and to take on human contradiction. The Christian faith does not regard this suffering and death as a refutation of divine omnipotence, but rather, precisely in this powerlessness, God demonstrates the power of his love. “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor. 1.25b). So God’s omnipotence is more than the immeasurable increase of worldly power. It is different from created power in that, in its action, it is independent from the

God’s Omnipresence

opposition between power and powerlessness. It exists beyond this opposition and is active both in strength and in weakness. However, God’s omnipotence is not based on the creation of the universe and his working in the universe. He did not first become omnipotent through his act of creation; rather, because he is omnipotent [Allmächtig], he created the universe [das All]. If one speaks of what is created as the “all,” then this concept of “all” is narrower than that “all” referred to in the adoration of God’s “all”-powerfulness [“All”-Macht]. That God’s omnipotence transcends the creation, preservation, and guidance of this world is also attested to by the announcement of a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth. Indeed, every prayer of supplication is based on trust in God’s omnipotence to change what is existing: “Father, for you all things are possible” (Mk. 14.36). A fundamental distinction must be made between God’s omnipotence and that which is brought into reality by him. In this sense, medieval scholasticism differentiated between God’s unconditional, immeasurable power (potentia absoluta) and the created sphere of power that is called into existence and ordered by God’s will (potentia ordinata), despite the impossibility of making statements about what all God could have done apart from what he has done and is doing. In other words, a distinction must be made between God’s omnipotence, on the one hand, and his creation, preservation, and governance of the universe, on the other. Everything depends on whether God is recognized to be the Almighty in himself, and therefore everything depends on the fact that his omnipotence is indeed recognized in his omnicausality as Creator, Reconciler, and Redeemer on the basis of his revelation, but recognized precisely as his omnipotence. Everything depends on whether his omnipotence is also distinguished from his omnicausality: not to the glory of an unknown omnipotent being who is beyond and behind his work; but to the glory of the omnipotent God who is present to us in his work and is known to us to be the omnipotent God by means of his revelation.1

God is the Almighty prior to the world and independent of it; out of his freedom he created the universe.

2. God’s Omnipresence As the Almighty, God is present in space and time. In the biblical witness, space and time are not understood as a given housing into which God would have placed

1 Barth, KD, II/1.594f. [CD, II/1.528f. (trans. modified). –Ed.]

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the created reality. Rather, space and time are given through God’s act of creation and are determined by what happens in created reality. Thus, in the structure and history of the universe, a distinction is made between different types of spaces (e. g., heaven and earth) and of times (e. g., this aeon and that one). In any case, in the biblical understanding, space and time are not only forms of human perception, by which humans perceive, organize, and interpret the reality around them, but they are structures of the reality itself that is created by God. This understanding of the determination of space and time by what happens in them is in some respects similar to the understanding of modern theoretical physics, according to which different forces affect differences in space and time. Here, as in the biblical understanding, space and time belong tightly together. No created thing would have its continuing existence without God’s constant creative action and thus without his effective presence. If space and time are to be understood as structures of created reality, then God is present in space and time at the same time, in every place and in every moment. This must be said first, before speaking of the different ways in which he is present in the spaces and times of the various creatures. God’s omnipotence is not exhausted in his work as Creator and Preserver, nor in his work of redemption and creating anew. God is still more powerful than his acts. So, too, his presence in space and time does not mean that he is enclosed by space and time. Rather, he encloses and permeates all space and time. He is the Lord of space and time. Although he is immanent in his present working in creation, he does not cease to be transcendent to it, and indeed in the radical sense that he does not first become the Lord only by being juxtaposed to created space and created time, but he is the Lord independently of them. If church doctrine speaks of the divine attributes of omnipresence and eternity in a kind of parallel manner, one cannot overlook the fact that the concept of omnipresence already presupposes the created universe and thus the spatiality of what is created, while God’s eternity does not presuppose time, which is given with creation. Instead, God is spoken of here as “the first and the last,” the one who was “before” the creation of the universe. Then, too, with respect to the doctrine of God’s spatial omnipresence, one must inquire about God himself, who does not need this space of creation, but, as the Almighty, has created space with the universe. In this sense, God’s boundlessness and God’s omnipresence are to be distinguished. Clearly, God is boundless in relation to both space and time, just as the concept of omnipresence denotes both his spatial and his temporal presence. In this and the following section, too, let us begin with a sideways glance at various attempts, on the basis of the inner-worldly experience of space and time, to recognize God’s transcendence beyond space and time, and then, on the basis of God’s action in revelation, let us take into consideration God’s perfection in his relationship to space and time. Here, too, the differences are important regarding

God’s Omnipresence

how God makes himself present spatially and how he also makes himself present temporally. If the multiplicity within the universe is again and again summarized in the biblical statements about creation in terms of the distinction between “heaven and earth,” then God’s omnipresence is again and again attested to as a presence in heaven and on earth—cf., e. g., Deut. 4.39: “So acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth beneath; there is no other.” He surrounds people in every place: “If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast…” (Ps. 139.8–10). This passage is not just about God knowing every person and knowing all of that person’s thoughts (v. 1–4), but about being held and embraced by God from all sides (v. 5). Even the difference between God’s nearness and remoteness is encompassed by his omnipresence: “Am I a God nearby, says the Lord, and not a God far off? … Do I not fill heaven and earth?” (Jer. 23.23f.). God is not encompassed by space; rather, he encompasses space and is present in it. There is no space beyond God’s power. Within this divine presence that permeates all spaces, some places are to be emphasized where God is present in a special way. (a) God is enthroned in heaven, surrounded by seraphs (Isa. 6.2f.), by the “host of heaven” (1 Kings 22.19), by the elders, the four mysterious living creatures representing the cosmos, and many angels (Rev. 4 and 5). There, praise is offered to God and divine decisions are made (cf., e. g., Job 1.6ff.). “God looks down from heaven” (Ps. 14.2 [S] et passim) on the goings-on of people and governs by blessing and judging them. We who live here in space can only speak in spatial terms about God’s governing in heaven. Without going into the history of the representations of heaven in the Old and New Testaments, it is important to note that numerous biblical statements go beyond the spatial representation of a heaven above the earth. This took place not only through the differentiation of several ascending spheres of heaven but even more so because Israel has known that the same God who dwells in heaven is the one whom “heaven and the highest heaven” “cannot contain” (1 Kings 8.27). This should be kept in mind when referring to Jesus’ statement in the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who is in heaven…” God is so completely the Lord above heaven that even the prophetic and apocalyptic announcement of heaven’s passing away does not imply that God stops being “in heaven.” (b) Israel knew about the presence of God in certain earthly places. But such places where God was worshiped were emphasized in the stories of the patriarchs not as places of residence, but as places where an appearance of God took place. Even Mount Sinai did not have the significance of being a divine abode, but was a place of revelation: “The Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai” (Exod. 19.11) to

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make the covenant with Israel. Even the tent that Israel carried with them on their wandering in the desert was not the abode of Yahweh, but the place of his encounter with Moses. Here the divine instructions were given to him. The understanding of God’s local presence underwent a transformation after the Israelites settled down in Canaan and especially after the temple was built in Jerusalem. It is likely to have corresponded to a widespread understanding handed down in Solomon’s word of prayer at the dedication of the temple: “I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell forever” (1 Kings 8.13). Corresponding to this was the certainty that now and forever “the glory of the Lord filled the temple” (v. 11 [NIV]). The fact that Yahweh’s presence is not tied to the temple, however, was not merely the content of Ezekiel’s vision, who saw how God’s glory had departed the temple even before it was destroyed, nor was that fact merely the reason earlier prophets had warned not to rely on God’s assistance as if it was guaranteed by the existence of the temple. Rather, even during the time of the temple cultus, the idea remained alive that God has his abode in heaven. For this reason, Deuteronomistic theology differentiated between the temple, which is built as a house for the name of Yahweh, and Yahweh himself, enthroned in heaven, who hears there the prayers offered to him in the temple (1 Kings 8.14–53). (c) Beyond all of God’s special, local manifestations and encounters, God became spatially present in the incarnation of his Son. Here the indwelling of God took place within the spatial limits of the human body of Jesus and in his spatially limited work in Palestine. This indwelling is permanent, complete, and final. (d) Through Jesus’ exaltation and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, God created a new space for his presence: the community of believers. In it the gap between the believers on earth and the exalted Christ, between the people of God sojourning on earth and those who are glorified, is overcome. The spatial gaps between the congregations scattered across the earth and between individual believers have also been overcome. Christ is present wherever he is proclaimed. To be sure, this new space for God’s presence is now only certain by faith, but it will be revealed to all when Jesus Christ appears in glory. Precisely through God’s varied presence in the universe, it becomes clear that his omnipresence cannot be understood as an infinitely extended space. Rather, he is the Lord of all space. “God is spirit” (Jn. 4.24). The lordship of God over space is expressed in the fact that he is both over all created spaces and in them, indeed, in both the whole of the created universe and in each individual creature. God is present both in the greatness of the universe and in the tiniest occurrence. “Nothing

God’s Eternity

is so small that God is still smaller, nothing so large that God is still larger… It is an inexpressible nature above and beyond all that one can name or think.”2 Just as God’s omni-efficacy [Allwirksamkeit] and omnipotence [Allmacht] are to be distinguished, so too are his omnipresence and his power to create space. Just as God did not first become omnipotent by acting in all that was created, so also, he did not first become omnipresent when he created space with the universe. Here, too, there is the possibility of speaking of the universe in a different sense than of the whole of creation. This happens, e. g., in the confession, “Lord, you are everything!”3 The living God is already in himself one and all.

3. God’s Eternity If one proceeds from our worldly experience of time, it makes sense to understand God’s eternity as a beginning-less and endless time, within which the time of world history would be contained as a limited period. This understanding seems all the more obvious given that the Septuagint and the New Testament use the same word aeon to denote both a long time and a period that soon passes, as well as God’s eternity. If, however, God’s eternity were understood to be merely an endless duration of time, one would fail to see that God stands over all times as Lord. Plato, on the other hand, understood eternity (αἰών [aiōn]) as timelessness in contrast to time (χρόνος [chronos]).[ii] He distinguished eternity from time in the same way that he distinguished ideas from this world. Because of its changeability he held world history to be mere appearance, while the timeless, unchangeable idea is truth. This understanding had a lasting effect on Christian theology through middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. Christian doctrine, however, cannot ignore the fact that God has revealed himself as the Eternal One by being committed to time and acting in it, indeed having entered into it in his Son. If the expression eternal God (el olam) virtually had the meaning of a name of God among the Old Testament people of God, and God is also praised prominently as the “Eternal One” by the church, one cannot disregard that this has its basis in his historical work. With the creation, God gave time to the universe. As the Eternal One, he encompasses the time of what has been created and permeates it. He is present in every moment of history. Thus he not only gave the whole universe its beginning, its becoming, and its continuation, but he gives every creature time to fulfill its purpose—both non-human creatures and every individual human being in the 2 Luther, Vom Abendmahl Christi, Bekenntnis (1528), WA, 26.339.39ff. [Confession concerning Christ’s Supper, LW 1 , 37.228 [trans. modified]). –Ed.] 3 [Cf. 1 Cor. 15.28, but also those biblical texts that confess the Lord to be everything to the believer, or that all belongs to the Lord, e. g., Deut. 10.14ff.; 1 Chron. 29.10ff.; Ps. 73.25–26 et passim. –Ed.]

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midst of them, as well as all nations and empires of the world. He opens up time to his creatures and afflicts them with the consequences of their past. If in pre-Christian Judaism and then also in Christianity there was talk of many aeons and thus of different times, this plural form could mean different epochs in world history that replaced one another, e. g., the successive world empires in the book of Daniel. The most important distinction among the times, however, is the one between “this aeon” and “the coming aeon.” “This aeon” is the time of this world and thereby the kingdom of the world, while “the coming aeon” is the inbreaking kingdom of God, which will bring the time of this world to an end. The distinction between this aeon and that one is not merely about the successive epochs within world history. In Jesus Christ, the coming kingdom of God has already dawned in the midst of the inner-worldly relationships of power. Because of this inbreaking, not only are these power relationships changed, but so too are the structures of time. The distinction between these two aeons plays an important role in the Synoptic Gospels and in Paul, and it is presupposed where—as in several places in Paul—there is mention only of “this aeon.” (a) “This aeon” is the time of the world in the sense of the Pauline and Johannine concept of the world: the divine creation, which, however, has turned against the Creator, which has come under the dominion of the world’s powers of corruption and has fallen into God’s judgment. It persists in its contradiction to God and cannot free itself from the dominion of sin and corruption by its own strength. But despite its contradiction and having fallen into judgment, God preserves the world and grants it “this time.” (b) Within this aeon, God called Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, and through his acts of salvation and promises to Israel he ruptured the entrapment of humankind in this time. If the promise was initially only about liberation from earthly bondage, if it merely meant having offspring and land ownership, then these earthly gifts were transcended from the outset in that God had promised the people all this with his covenant. Within the expanse of world history, a very narrow sequence of times was thus emphasized by God’s presence. Although Israel broke this covenant and had to endure the most severe divine judgments, God made new promises to it by means of which he surpassed the old and prepared Israel for service to the other nations. (c) In his Son, the eternal God who encompasses all times entered time. The Lord of all becoming is the one who was born in time; the Lord of the future is the one who is waiting for the future in time; the Lord of all perishing has become the one who perishes. In the few years of Jesus’ earthly activity, God’s eternity became present in a unique way, and through the “once and for all” of his death and resurrection he has allowed the coming aeon to begin. (d) The coming aeon is still hidden under the old one. But because the exalted Christ, like God, is Lord over time, the community of believers already shares in the

God’s Glory

victory of Jesus Christ over the transience of this world. Just as spatial distances are overcome in Jesus Christ, so too are temporal distances. Present in the gospel, in baptism, and in the Lord’s Supper are the death he once died and his resurrection through the Holy Spirit. Present too are his future coming and our future resurrection. Already now, believers “taste” “the powers of the age to come” (Heb. 6.5b). With the “today” in the call to repentance, the temporal distance between us and the coming aeon disappears, the temporal structure of which will be profoundly different from this aeon because of the absence of death. Just as God’s omnipotence and his omni-efficacy must be distinguished, so too must his eternity and his governing over time. Just as God did not first become omnipotent through the creation and his guiding of the universe, neither did he first become eternal through the creation of time and his governing over all times. As the Eternal One, he created time. Hence, God’s eternity cannot be grasped through the measurement of time. So similar quandaries arise in our statements about God’s eternity as in those about God’s transcendence to space [Raumüberlegenheit], for we live in time, and our ideas and words are shaped by time. The word of God, “I am the first and the last” (Isa. 44.6; cf. 41.4 and 48.12), does not say that God is the first and the last in a temporal series of other persons and events, but that he encompasses and determines and permeates them all without being encompassed and determined by them. The saying, “I am the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22.13), does not mean that God is a temporal beginning or a temporal ending; rather, he establishes the beginning and the end. Both sets of terms are transcended in their temporal meaning. If the phrase, “in the beginning” (Gen. 1.1), means the beginning which God established with his act of creation, then the same word (Jn. 1.1) has a different meaning, namely that already before the creation “the Word” was always “with God.” Statements about God’s “pre-” and “post-existence” become metaphors for his eternal existence independent of the before and after of historical time. The formula, “from eternity to eternity,” does not merely mean that God is present in all times, but also that every period of time, and thus time in general, is transcended in a plerophoric way. God is to be praised as the one who is not becoming, who is not passing away, as the one who does not receive his life from something else. He alone “has life in himself ” (Jn. 5.26) and is able to grant a lifetime from himself.

4. God’s Glory God is Lord in a completely different sense from how we are accustomed to speaking of rulers in this world. He is the Superior and the Highest not only in the sense of an unending enhancement in what is again and again claimed as a superiority in the relationships of people to one another and in their relationship to the non-human creation. Earthly rulership presupposes respect for the difference between rulers

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and ruled, superior and inferior, high and low. Earthly rulership is always about the spatial and temporal expansion of power at the expense of others, whose power is reduced. But God is the Lord beyond this difference of ruling and being ruled, of being high and low, as well as of being powerful and powerlessness. He is almighty even in powerlessness, and the Highest even in lowliness. In his lordship, God is free from the contrasts that define lordship in this world. He is giving and commanding at the same time. God is also different from the rulers of this world in that, in order to be ruler, he does not need an extra-divine counterpart over whom he rules and commands. He did not first become the Lord when he created the universe, nor merely when creatures acknowledge him to be the Lord. While his lordship is a presupposition for the creation of the universe, the universe is not a presupposition for his lordship. God is the Lord regardless of whether he has accomplished the works of creation and given commands to his creatures or not, for “before” he created this universe he had the power to call creatures into existence. His power is not restricted to this world in which we live, nor to its spatial and temporal structures. For this reason, the promise of “the new heaven and the new earth” heralds a new creation that will replace the first one and leave it behind. As the God of glory, God is immeasurably free in his knowing, willing, and doing. This freedom of God is not arbitrary, for it is the freedom of the triune God. Out of it he created the universe, and he wants human beings to be the “image” of his life. Consequently, the creation of the universe is not directed toward servants but toward free people, toward brothers and sisters of the eternal Son, to the children and friends of the eternal Father. With the creation of the universe, God opens up for creatures an inexhaustible space and an inexhaustible time, inexhaustible possibilities. By thanking God and glorifying him, creatures proceed toward their glorification through God, their participation in the eternal communion of the life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. By praising God’s freedom in its omnipotence, omnipresence, and eternity, we praise God’s glory. It is the perfection of his eternal majesty, power, honor, splendor, and beauty. Its revelation to humans comes upon them as an overwhelming brightness of light. This experience is often attested to in the Old and New Testament Scriptures. The element of the fullness of light is essential to God’s glory. God created light with the first word of creation. The Psalms are full of praise for God’s glory. Even in the fallen creation, it still shines. “O Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment” (Ps. 104.1–2). The Psalms exclaim, “Praise God according to his surpassing greatness!” (Ps. 150.2). On the basis of his works of creation and his acts for Israel, God is praised as the God of glory. There is also something terrifying about this glory that is inaccessible to humans. In the decisive encounter of Israel with Yahweh, when the Ten Commandments were received, this glory encamped on the mountain of God “like a devouring fire”

God’s Glory

(Exod. 24.17), as a threat to the people. Only those who were called were allowed to approach it, and only by means of special sanctification could one endure the overwhelming glory that was manifested in lightning and fire. But even in the Old Testament, the light of God is recognized as something salutary, something that bestows itself. The psalmists pray for the light of his countenance, for his word to be a “light on our path,” and the Aaronic blessing prays for God to let his face shine upon the people. The announcement of the coming God as a helper speaks of the light that will arise and shine in the darkness (Isa. 9.2). But not only will “a great light” appear and shine upon the people; the people themselves will shine brightly because of this light. “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Isa. 60.1). God’s glory wants to be imparted. If, after his encounter with God, a reflection of the divine glory could already be seen on Moses’ face, then, in the New Testament, God’s full glory for believers appears completely in the person of Jesus. “We saw his glory” confesses the prologue to the Gospel of John. And the story of the Transfiguration reports a revelation of the glory of the Son of God that the disciples received before the suffering of Jesus (Mk. 9.2ff. par.). The church is permitted to share in this glory. The ministry that preaches reconciliation “abounds in glory” in relation to the glory on the face of Moses (2 Cor. 3.9). But the future kingdom of God will in many ways make the glory of God even more resplendent, since the darkness of this world will have been removed. In the revelation of the end of time, in the vision of the seer, images of the splendor and beauty of God dominate. Spiritual beings and the glorified extol his glory with praise and honor. Unveiled, God’s radiance will then fill everything. By no means have these statements about God’s omnipotence, omnipresence, eternity, and freedom said everything about God’s glory that is to be praised. No perfection of God can be separated from the others, for its one immeasurable perfection encounters us in a variety of perfections, which we can only bear witness to in a succession of statements about the individual perfections. For this reason, God’s glory is not yet praised in its perfection apart from his love. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 27 [i]

[ii]

Cf. the original Greek text of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (Denzinger, 150; Tanner, 1.24; and BSELK, 50). For early Latin creedal traditions that contributed to the development of the Apostles’ Creed, see Denzinger, 10–30. For the traditional final form of the Apostles’ Creed, see BSELK, 42–43 (cf. BC 21–22). See Plato, the Parmenides, 141ff. (Plato: The Collected Dialogues, 934ff.); and the Timaeus, 37ff. (Plato: The Collected Dialogues, 1166ff.).

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Chapter XXVIII: The All-Consuming God

1. The Inescapable God For people who have turned away from God, who have closed themselves off to the fullness of life that he provides, and who have decided to live entirely on their own, God’s omnipresence becomes inescapable, for even if they reject God’s lordship or indeed deny his existence, they cannot get rid of him or withdraw from his omnipotence. God’s omnipotence now affects them as a burdensome affliction because of their decision. The spatial and temporal expanse given by the Creator becomes the narrowness of individuals curved in on themselves. For this reason, to a devout person in the Old Testament the knowledge of God’s omnipresence not only provided consolation but was also a threat: “Where can I flee from your presence?” (Ps. 139.7). So, too, the Christian knows that “no creature can remain invisible before him, but all lie naked and are uncovered before his eyes. We must render an account to him” (Heb. 4.13 [S]). That all attempts to hide from God are in vain will be revealed no later than in the final judgment. In turning away from God, the source of life, the body-soul unity of the human being disintegrates, as do the community between human beings and their dominion over non-human creatures. Either way, the human succumbs to death, for God is the only Thou from whom and toward whom the human has life. This disintegration is not only an immanent historical consequence of turning away from God, but it is at the same time the act of God himself, through which he responds to the human’s turning away. Nobody can escape this response from God, not even by suicide, for just as people cannot get rid of the Creator’s omnipotence, so too they cannot eliminate or cancel their own creatureliness, even if it then only persists by being in the nothingness of death. There is no escape into an area that is hidden from God or beyond his activity. The biblical statements about God’s reaction to the human’s turning away speak not only of an action but also of God’s attributes that come to light in this action: his “zeal,” his “fury,” his “terribleness,” and his “wrath,” to mention only the most important of them. In the Old Testament Scriptures, God’s wrath is especially frequent. It is spoken of in a variety of Hebrew words, and it is demonstrated in its historical effects. But such statements also carry great weight in the New Testament. These biblical statements about God’s wrath cannot be ignored when individuals ask how God feels about them. Such statements are of great existential importance.

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2. The Wrathful God The biblical writings bear witness to God’s wrath as an eerily penetrating force which, in contrast to God’s goodness and patience, overtakes the sinner in the form of God’s indignation. God’s wrath is aimed at ending human rebellion. It is announced in the biblical images of a consuming fire, a raining down of sulfur and fire, and as a devastating storm and a torrential flood, as well as a cup of wrath that brings death—images that are by no means restricted to Old Testament proclamation. It results in the destruction of religious security and in deadly catastrophes. With unheard-of force, it overtakes individual people and groups, even entire nations, and finally the entire world that is hostile to God. In the New Testament witnesses, God’s wrath is announced above all as the future final judgment: “But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (Rom. 2.5). At the same time, however, the New Testament proclaims that Jews and Gentiles are already under God’s wrath. Knowledge about God’s wrath is propagated in many religions. Indeed, through the commandment of the Preserver, all people are given into their hearts a knowledge of the difference between good and evil and of the expectation of a divine retribution, even if this knowledge is in fact more or less downplayed. The unheardof sharpness of the biblical statements about God’s wrath is determined by the particularity of the benefits that God has bestowed on the people of Israel and then, through Jesus Christ, on the world. This wrath overcomes people like a foreign power that is overtaking them between the origin and destiny of creation. It is true that there is a certain timidity in the Old Testament and even in Paul to speak directly of the wrathful God. And yet it is quite clear that the judgment of wrath comes from God himself. God’s wrath can come upon people in two contrasting ways. The goal of each, however, is the same: (a) God lets people live out the decisions they have made against him, and he delivers them over to their anti-godly passions. He encloses them in the resolutions they have determined and hardens them in their hardening of themselves. Thus the Exodus traditions tell of the divine hardening of Pharaoh who refused to release Israel upon God’s command. Also handed down in the tradition is a hardening action of Yahweh upon Israel and Judah who had fallen away from him and had hardened themselves against him. Indeed, Isaiah was given the divine commission: “Harden the heart of this people; make their ears hard of hearing and their eyes blind” (Isa. 6.10 [L]). This delivering over [Dahingeben] has its most radical expression in the divine prohibition that was issued to Jeremiah about praying for grace for his people (Jer. 14.11). In Rom. 1.18–32 Paul spoke in detail about delivering the Gentiles over to their depravity by means of God’s wrath. But God can also

The Wrathful God

deliver Christians over to the misuse of the freedom bestowed upon them in Christ, a misuse in their dealings with other human beings and with non-human creatures. God can let a spirit of security and drunkenness come upon them, making them blind to the reality in which they live and deaf to God’s call. This is an even greater danger for post-Christian and anti-Christian people than it was before Christ’s coming to Israel, which had fallen away from Yahweh. (b) According to the biblical witnesses, God does not merely deliver over, but he executes his judgment of wrath through historical catastrophes: through famine and epidemics, through defeat and devastation, through displacements and violent death. It is true that the judgment began already with the handing over to sin, but it is carried out in such catastrophes. God thus destroys unrepentant peoples, just as the potter smashes spoiled vessels (Jer. 18.1–10). Such judgments are attested to with horrific vividness in the Old Testament traditions about the conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and in the New Testament announcements about the destruction of Jerusalem that would happen again and about other end-time catastrophes. There is an increasing radicalization in the biblical statements. While the judgments against the Gentile nations involved defeat, hunger, and other miseries, the judgment against Israel also involved the refutation of the promise of land and the Davidic kingship that had been given to it by God. However, the judgment against those Christians who have become indolent and apostate goes beyond all that to include the loss of eternal life. Wherever God’s judgment of wrath falls, the meaningful relationships in which people previously felt secure are shattered—their self-understanding in the context of their world and in view of their future, but especially their conviction that they either believed themselves to be in harmony with God or thought they had no need for God. God’s wrath comes upon people as a horror. This horror is more than merely a matter of having one’s thoughts called into question. According to the Old Testament witnesses, God’s wrath overcomes people like a paralyzing power that robs them of their strength, makes them incapable of undertaking any further planning, decision-making, or action, and leaves them defenseless to the doom of death. The “terror of Yahweh” was not merely a subjective human phenomenon, but was from Yahweh himself, who disturbs and destroys people. Israel was once promised that this terror would come as Yahweh’s aid in the fight against their enemy on the way to the conquest of the land: “I will send my terror in front of you, and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come…” (Exod. 23.27; cf. 15.11). In the same way, Yahweh had disturbed his own people when they fell away from him. Even after the coming of Christ, this saying is true: “It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10.31 [L]). When that happens, individuals can no longer muster the mindset by which to overcome their paralyzing angst, for God, whom they deny, takes their breath away as well

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as their control over their own powers. Thus there is an irrational element in the wrath of God that does not allow our rational, conceptual frameworks to stand. That God’s wrath comes upon people in hardening and blindness is not knowable as such on the basis of these events. The people who are given up to their desires by him and who are confirmed in their decisions, do not usually know anything of God’s wrath, for they feel unchallenged in their hubris and self-chosen freedom. For them, the restlessness of inquiring about God has usually ceased. Whether they boast, “God is with us,” or whether they scoff, “There is no God,” ultimately makes no difference here. The voice of conscience is suppressed by adapting the divine commandments to one’s own desires and by shaping them to one’s personal habits and social customs. But even the catastrophes that disrupt this security are not recognized as God’s judgment of wrath by those who are affected by them. Some become petrified in mute horror. Others blame other human beings, who bear responsibility politically, militarily, and technologically. Still others think of God, but they accuse and revile him for permitting such catastrophes. In desperation, some also realize that they did not live as God would want, but they deny that such catastrophes are appropriate. All these people fail to recognize God’s wrath, since to recognize God’s wrath means to recognize the catastrophes that are about to come as the judgment that is appropriate for us, and to humble ourselves before it. Here, too, it is true that God’s action in history is hidden (cf. above, chap. 9.2). Historical suffering can mean very different things. It can be the judgments by which God delivers sinners over to their decisions. But it can also have an entirely different meaning, namely, that God chastises people through such suffering in order to induce them to repent and to draw them back again to himself. Yes, it can also mean that God lets his own people share in the suffering of Christ through their suffering, making them to be like the suffering Christ and to serve as witnesses to the cross of Christ. The reality of God’s delivering up and judging only becomes revealed through this prophetic word, which announces God’s coming wrath and points to the wrath that is breaking forth. This word is God’s last call to repent while there is still time. It is the final great invitation. At the beginning of Romans, in successive passages, Paul has attested to the revelation of the divine righteousness that saves (1.17; cf. 3.21) and the revelation of the wrath of God (1.18). Both are not knowable from historical events but only on the basis of divine revelation. The final revelation, however, will take place on the coming “day of wrath.” Then the coming Christ will reveal the works of every human being, and God’s judgment will come upon everyone. Then he will call the one to him and turn the other away. Knowledge of the threat posed by the wrath of God is largely downplayed in contemporary Christendom. But that is precisely why it is so perplexed and helpless, and why it fails to understand the salvation that is opened up to humanity in Jesus Christ.

Chapter XXIX: The Self-Giving God

1. The Love of God If the attributes of the consuming God are attested to in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments by a variety of expressions, this is true to an even greater extent with respect to the attributes of the God who gives himself: his love, goodness, patience, mercy, grace, righteousness, wisdom, faithfulness, truth, and steadfastness, to name just a few. These attributes cannot be precisely delimited from one another, but rather they merge into one another and overlap each other more than they lie next to one another. Their abundance is greater than what can be described and systematized with any claim to completeness. So, too, in this chapter we must restrict ourselves to only a few of these attributes. God’s consuming and his self-giving action are opposed to one another. And yet both do not take place next to each other in an unrelated manner, for God’s giving to the sinner takes place in view of the fact that the sinner has succumbed to a self-chosen nothingness. This is true of all people, for “all” are “under sin,” “all have turned aside…” (Rom. 3.9ff.; cf. Ps. 14.1–3). All have fallen into God’s judgment. Only by grace does God give his love to people who are hostile to him. In Jesus Christ, the self-giving God became incarnate among us. Jesus forgave sins by the authority of God, he ate with tax collectors and sinners, and in many parables he made present God’s kingdom of undeserved love. God’s action in Jesus is always a bending down, a self-humiliation, a self-bestowing, a going down into the depths for us in order to lift us up from those depths. The deepest and most extreme self-giving of God took place in the death of Jesus. “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom. 5.8). When in the following we thus deal first with adoration of the divine love, then with righteousness and wisdom, we always begin with the historical act of salvation in which these perfections are at the same time most profoundly hidden and most gloriously revealed for faith, namely, with the cross of Christ. The arrest, condemnation, and execution of Jesus were not only the work of humans, but God delivered up his Son to them, and let them treat him as an enemy. It is true that the passion story does not explicitly speak of the wrath of God against Jesus, and it is not certain whether the Gethsemane tradition concerning Jesus’ prayer to remove the cup meant the cup of God’s wrath known from the Old Testament Scriptures (Isa. 51.17 and so on). However, one can indeed conclude that this is the case from the cry of the dying one that has been handed down, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” On this basis one may infer that he was not spared the

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experience of God’s inescapability and wrath. Corresponding to this is the fact that Paul understood the death of Jesus as his being given up to God’s curse (Gal. 3.13). Through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, God revealed that Jesus died as the innocent one on the cross and that he suffered a God-forsakenness that belonged not to him but to sinners. He suffered the death of a criminal vicariously for their sake. He was forsaken by God so that we might be accepted by God. He was treated as an enemy by God so that we, who are enemies of God, might become children and friends of God. In this event of the cross, God delivered himself over to sinners, for God the Father gave up his Son, with whom he is one from all eternity. But because of the appearing of the risen one and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we recognize in Jesus’ suffering of enmity the love of God for us. With Jesus’ death, God ended the enmity between the world and himself. This love of God for the world differs from the love that generally takes place between people: With humans, lovers turn toward those who are lovable, toward those from whom they expect an enrichment and a fulfillment of their own life. In this setting, love arises from the neediness of the lover and the longing to eliminate this neediness and to expand one’s own life through the other. God’s love, however, has turned to the unlovable, and not merely to individual people but to the whole of humanity. He loved us when we were his enemies. “God loves us as such, as we shall be, not as we are.”1 “The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of people comes into being through that which is pleasing to them.”2 God’s love does not have its basis in his neediness, for even without creatures he is the fullness of life. Without being coerced from the outside or the inside, he loves creatures in the freedom of his self-giving. This love of God for the world is revealed once and for all in Christ. It is always at work; it is to be proclaimed to everyone. There is no power that can override this message and separate believers in Christ from God’s love. It is understandable that in its witness to the divine love, the Greek New Testament uses the term agape, which had rarely been used before, in contrast to the common word eros. The revelation of the love of God in Jesus Christ sheds light on the previous acts of God. It becomes clear that, from the beginning, they were based on God’s love: (a) Out of love, God created the universe, and, in the midst of the creation, God created humankind to be his representative. We do not know when, where, or how humankind was addressed by God as his Thou, but the revelation of God’s love

1 Augustine, De Trinitate, I.10.21. [CCSL, 50.59; The Trinity, WSA, I/5.81 (trans. modified). –Ed.] 2 Luther, Thesis 28, Disputatio Heidelbergae habita. (1518), WA, 1.354. [Heidelberg Disputation, LW 1 , 31.57. –Ed.]

The Love of God

in Christ makes it impossible for faith to imagine the origin of humankind apart from the divine love or separate from their being addressed by the loving God. God created human beings out of love so that they might respond in love to him and to other human beings. God not only gave love as the purpose for humankind, but he also gave humans the precondition for fulfilling that purpose. He loved humans first and created them “good” so that they might attain blessedness. (b) By turning away from God, people have lost access to life and are subject to death. That all people are subject to the divine wrath is announced most explicitly in the Old and New Testament Scriptures. The astonishing thing is not that humankind, by turning away from God, has fallen into misery and death, but that God, in his patience, has held back from destroying humankind and preserves humanity, despite its having fallen into judgment. Again and again God lets life arise, and in the midst of the atrocities of humans he has again and again awakened love between husband and wife, and parents and children, and he lets friendships arise among families, tribes, and nations. Through his self-witness as Creator, he has again and again raised the question about himself and about the togetherness of all people. That God leaves room for rebellion against him, that he tolerates and endures it, is what is astounding. This patience is the work of his love; this patience already has the structure of God’s voluntary suffering for the world. (c) The Israelite tribes that God brought out of Egypt, and with whom he made his covenant, were no better than other tribes. By his mercy Yahweh freely chose to liberate those tribes from their bondage, to choose Israel for his “bride,” and to make a “marriage covenant” with Israel (Hos. 2.21f.; Isa. 62.5, etc.), which he carried out with his “oath.” When Israel did not remain faithful to Yahweh and engaged in “fornication” with foreign gods (Hos. 2.4ff.; Jer. 3.1–5; Ezek. 23, etc.), God indeed afflicted the people with catastrophes, including the loss of the Promised Land, the kingship, and the temple. But he remained faithful to Israel despite its unfaithfulness; he did not let it perish but gave it a new future with new promises. What is surprising is not the wrath that came upon ancient Israel, but Yahweh’s compassion for Israel. (d) The message about the love of God that has appeared in the crucified and risen Jesus cannot be separated from the Holy Spirit, who was poured out on Pentecost and is working through this message. Through the gospel, God’s love is not only proclaimed but is bestowed as a gift of the Spirit. The love of God does not remain an external object but enters believers. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom. 5.5). This is why the commandment about love is not encountered as a strict and unattainable demand but as an encouraging, comforting exhortation to live now as those who have been renewed by God’s love for the sake of loving. On the basis of this bringing of believers into God’s love, one is to understand that the statements about love in 1 Cor. 13 are valid simultaneously as statements about Christ and as statements

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about the Spirit’s working of love in the congregation, and that the exhortations about love in 1 John have more the character of a description than of a demand. God’s love is contrary to the sublime and coarse selfishness by which people misuse love, but it uncovers the love that was originally given by God the Creator. God’s love transforms the love between husband and wife, and parents and children, as well as the relationships between friends and enemies, and it takes them into its sway. Even if the love of God is obscured before the eyes of the world because of Christendom’s manifold divisions, it still comes to light again and again. It will abide (cf. 1 Cor. 13.13). On the basis of his acts of love, God is to be praised as the one who is himself love. God did not first become a lover by offering up his Son. Rather, his eternal love appeared in Christ. Nor did he first become a lover through his covenant with Israel or through his preservation of the world. Not even through his act of creation did he become a lover. Instead, his love is the basis for all these acts. “God is love” (1 Jn. 4.8, 16). This eternal love is not the self-love of a lonely one but the eternal communion of the mutual love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the unity of God. In the richness of these living relationships, the eternal love of God is the eternal fullness of love. It is the love with which the Father loved the Son “before the foundation of the world” (Jn. 17.24) and—to continue accordingly—the love with which the Son, as the Beloved, loves the Father in return, and it is the love of the Holy Spirit, who glorifies the love of the Father and of the Son. Out of this fullness of life God created the universe in freedom so that it could share in his love, and he called believers to bear witness to his love for the world. This fullness of God’s love is so overwhelming and so gladdening that adoring praise can never fully express it.

2. The Righteousness of God[i] “But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has appeared, and is attested to by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ” (Rom. 3.21f. [S]). Jesus “became for us righteousness from God” (1 Cor. 1.30). As with God’s love, so also God’s righteousness is revealed in Christ crucified. God’s righteousness appeared in the unrighteousness that befell Jesus. Jewish leaders wronged him by using their interpretation of the law against him and by refusing to recognize him as greater than Moses. Roman leaders wronged him by nailing him to the cross as a political rebel. Jesus’ arrest, condemnation, and execution would not have been possible if God had not handed him over into the hands of Jews and Romans. It is precisely in the unrighteousness that befell Jesus that God’s righteousness has come to sinners, for through his resurrection it was revealed that God laid our

The Righteousness of God

guilt on his Son and that he, this innocent one, took our guilt upon himself. He suffered vicariously the judgment that was due to us. The center of the message of God’s righteousness is thus the message of the redemptive exchange that God has accomplished through the death of Jesus. God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5.21). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal. 3.13). One might question why righteousness, out of all the perfections of the self-giving God, needs to be brought up here in a special section, given that it has already been discussed above in the doctrine of justification. But since the righteousness of God has been so often misunderstood in church history, as if it is the opposite of divine mercy, and since this misunderstanding has played such a disastrous role in the alienation between Eastern theology and Augustinian theology, as well as in the schism between the churches of the Reformation and the Roman Church, it cannot be ignored in the ecumenical doctrine of God. For the righteousness revealed by God in Christ is profoundly different from what is customarily referred to as justice in human life. If a person has violated the applicable legal norm by acting contrary to it, justice requires that a punishment be imposed on the person, the amount of which, according to the applicable law, is proportionate to the action. The execution of this justice is thus determined by the principle of retribution. Retribution not only means punishing the lawbreaker, but it can also mean praising and rewarding a person for doing the right thing. But in general, the concept of retribution is understood primarily in terms of the correspondence between crime and punishment. If we examine ourselves against the standard of God’s commandments, we can clearly see that we have not only violated them through individual acts, but that we are sinners. The difference between good and evil deeds is not thereby removed, but we recognize that even through our good works we cannot undo our bad ones. Those who think they do not need God’s mercy are blind to their real situation. Thus, through the righteousness of God revealed in Christ, it was the “righteous” who were declared guilty, and the guilty ones, those who know they are “in need of the doctor,” were acquitted. Indeed, God’s righteousness is more likely to be bestowed on the sinner than on the “righteous” who think they have fulfilled God’s commandments, for it is received only by trusting in God’s mercy in Jesus Christ. The way in which divine righteousness is executed is contrary to retribution. It is a free act of divine grace. This freedom, however, is not arbitrary, for the judgment against sin is executed not against the transgressors but against Jesus Christ. Both faith in the righteousness of God in Christ and the usual understanding of justice are a matter of establishing a correspondence between a person and an overarching norm. In the world, however, this correspondence is established on the basis of human works, whereas God promises it to those who believe in Jesus Christ.

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The revelation of God’s righteousness in Jesus Christ sheds light also on God’s righteousness in his previous acts: (a) All churches teach that God created humankind as originally righteous, indeed, not only as intended for righteousness but so created that humans were prepared for the fulfillment of this intended purpose. It is true that the biblical accounts of creation do not speak directly of the righteousness of the original human being, but they do express quite clearly a parallel to it that is contained in the concept of righteousness. God has addressed humans so that they may respond to him. He has made promises to them so that they will trust them. He has given them commandments so that they should obey them. He has made humans in his own image. (b) By turning away from God, people have chosen unrighteousness, and they are unable to free themselves from it. The incomprehensible thing is not that they have thus fallen into judgment but that God has again and again postponed the judgment of the world that he announced with the flood, through the Old Testament prophets, and through Jesus, and has given individuals and peoples a lease on life. In this way, he has not ceased to preserve them through his self-witnessing that leads them to inquire about him and to be responsible before him. He has not given them up to chaos, but rather he preserves and governs them by awakening in them knowledge about the distinction between good and evil and by giving them the civic office to protect the good and to punish evil. As important as the punishment of evil deeds is for the preservation of humanity, in light of God’s righteousness revealed in Christ the real weight of civic righteousness rests not on punishment but on the preservation and promotion of life. It is true that through this righteousness the sinner is not justified before God, and the dominion of sin is merely constrained, not eliminated, and yet this civic righteousness is God’s blessing and protection for the life of sinners who have fallen into judgment. (c) Israel’s witness to God’s righteousness is based on Yahweh’s saving act of redeeming the enslaved tribes from Egypt and the enforcement of his covenant. God’s righteousness was proclaimed by Israel and praised as Yahweh’s faithfulness to his covenant, faithfulness to the community, as his grace, his mercy, salvation, forgiveness, help, and protection. His commandments and righteousness were based on Yahweh’s act of salvation. God required Israel to judge those who violated the law, and by means of foreign nations he executed his judgments also upon Israel. But because the understanding of Yahweh’s righteousness was determined so much by his merciful and helpful actions, his judgment was not described as an effect of this righteousness but of his wrath. When Yahweh was called upon to judge according to his righteousness, that was not primarily a petition about the correspondence between offense and punishment but about the help that God would give to the members of his people by punishing evildoers. It was only because of the influence of the great catastrophes of judgment that came upon Israel, which

The Righteousness of God

resulted in exile, that the law became somewhat independent, and a shift took place from trusting God’s gracious righteousness to implementing the principle of retribution. (d) The proclamation of the righteousness that God made manifest in Jesus Christ cannot be separated from the certainty that the Holy Spirit is active through this proclamation. The justification that the believer receives through the gospel is not merely a judgment that declares sinners righteous for Christ’s sake and acquits them. It is at the same time an active, effective word by means of which God makes sinners righteous and renews them. That is why the commandments to strive for righteousness are not demands of the external law but exhortations to live the life that God has already brought about for the believer through the gospel. The message of God’s righteousness in Christ thus unveiled the inadequacy of civic righteousness, an inadequacy that is due not only to the fact that humans misuse the civic office but also because that office is fundamentally unable to restrain evil or eliminate it. The gospel, moreover, also reveals the provisional nature of the righteousness in the Old Testament, for although it indeed delivered people from their earthly troubles and brought God’s support, the Old Testament law was unable to renew humans or open eternal life to them. The message of God’s righteousness in Jesus Christ also reveals that God preserves humanity through civic righteousness on the way toward salvation through Jesus Christ. At the same time, the New Testament message of God’s righteousness reveals that God prepared the people of Israel through his commandments for the righteousness that creates anew and that was to appear in Jesus Christ. In place of the Old Testament law there is now Jesus Christ and “the law of the Spirit” (Rom. 8.2). In the course of church history—especially under the influence of the Aristotelian teaching about iustitia distributiva—the righteousness of God has largely been understood solely as retributive justice and in distinction from his mercy.[ii] This corresponded to the prayer that God should act toward the sinner according to his mercy and not according to his righteousness. But even if theologians differentiated between God’s judging action and his merciful action within the divine righteousness, his merciful action has often been understood in terms of the encompassing framework of retribution. The idea of merit, which was further developed in Western high- and late-scholasticism, deepened the division between Western and Eastern theology and contributed to the one between the Roman Church and the churches of the Reformation. On the basis of his righteous acts, God’s eternal righteousness is to be praised. If God has revealed his righteousness in Jesus Christ, this does not mean that it first arose through the offering up of Jesus. Rather, God’s righteousness was reflected in the fact that he treated his Son as a sinner. The same holds true for all the acts of God. “His righteousness endures forever” (Ps. 111.3 et passim). This sentence refers not only

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to his past and future actions but also to the praise of God who is the Righteous One forever and ever. And yet his eternal righteousness is not a self-righteousness. As with the praise of God’s eternal love, so it must be remembered here also that God is not a solitary God, even apart from creation, but is the communion of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the divine unity. To be sure, in the New Testament Scriptures there are no direct statements about the righteousness that the Father has with the Son or the Son with the Father in the communion of the Holy Spirit—in contrast to the witness to the love with which the Father loved the Son already before the creation of the world (Jn. 17.24). But this correspondence between the Father and the Son, contained in the concept of God’s righteousness, is by no means missing in the New Testament statements about the eternal relationship between God the Father and the Son. It is contained, e. g., in the praise of the Son as the eternal “image of God” (Col. 1.15), as the eternal “reflection of God’s glory,” and as the eternal “imprint of God’s very being” (Heb. 1.3), as well as the one who, even before his incarnation, lived “in the form of God” (Phil. 2.6). Having come forth from the Father as his image, the Son remains at the same time turned toward the Father. In the sense of this eternal correspondence between the Father and the Son in the communion of the Holy Spirit, God’s eternal righteousness is to be praised, which, in contrast to the poverty of human self-righteousness, is the fullness of righteousness in God’s unity.

3. The Wisdom of God Jesus Christ “became for us wisdom from God” (1 Cor. 1.30), namely Jesus Christ, the crucified one (2.2). Through the word of the cross comes the revelation of “God’s mysterious wisdom” (2.7). The wisdom of God appeared in the crucified Christ as “foolishness” (1 Cor. 1.18ff.). Jesus’ opponents had already rejected his proclamation as “foolishness,” and their mocking of him who was arrested and crucified, as presented in the Gospels, bears witness that they saw in his impotence the confirmation of their judgment. But even for his followers Jesus’ death on the cross was a senseless event, for the expectations that had arisen in them by means of his preaching and healing were shattered by his death. Even those who had not beheld Jesus’ crucifixion themselves but had heard “the word of the cross” only subsequently, were confronted with “nonsense,” for this message was in irreconcilable contradiction to what Jews and Greeks understood by wisdom. Paul did not expressly proclaim that Jesus, as our vicarious representative, took on and suffered the senselessness in which we humans find ourselves when the horror of the divine judgment comes upon us and destroys our self-made meaningful connections. However, the apostle strongly emphasizes that the wise do not recognize

The Wisdom of God

the wisdom of God in the foolishness of the message about the cross. He refers to the Corinthian congregation: “Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor. 1.26ff.). Even of himself Paul says that he did not come to them with superior wisdom (2.1). While the word of the cross is to be proclaimed to all people, the recognition of his “foolishness” as God’s wisdom is only given to those who do not boast of any wisdom of their own, but rather let what they have be shattered by the gospel. With the utmost severity Paul turned against the wise. Fundamentally, and without exception, he dismissed all the wisdom of the world as wisdom of the flesh, and by naming Jews and Gentiles (1 Cor. 1.22), he referred not only to some but to all the wise as fools. What form of Greek wisdom he had in mind here is not said in this context of his letter. More precise information can be found about the representatives of Jewish wisdom: wise men, biblical scholars, disputants (1.20). They demand wonderful confirmation of their teaching of the law and their future expectations. The wisdom of the Corinthians, which Paul specifically rejected, is likely to have been a Hellenistic-Jewish enthusiasm, which jumped over the eschatological event of judgment and the resurrection, which is still to come, and boasted that it was already in possession of the wisdom of the glorified saints. These various conceptions of wisdom share the fact that they were all about interpretations that failed to remain open to the freedom and otherness of the historical and eschatological action of God and that misunderstood the incomprehensibility of the divine engagement with the world that had fallen into judgment. But in what sense is the word of the cross the proclamation of the wisdom of God? One notes that Paul does not initially speak of God’s wisdom, but of “God’s power,” which is manifested through the word of the cross (1 Cor. 1.18; cf. the order in v. 24). Salvation is brought to believers through the word of the cross (1.21; cf. v. 18). Through the Holy Spirit believers know “the gifts bestowed on us by God” (2.12). Knowledge of the mystery of the divine wisdom hidden in the event of the cross is therefore not primarily the attainment of knowledge but the reception of salvation (1.30). This reception then of course also includes knowledge of the goal of God’s saving act on the cross, namely, the eternal decree of his wisdom to give us a share in glory (2.7). In the letter to the Colossians, it is further stated that through the message about Christ “the mystery of God, which has been hidden throughout the ages and generations, has now been revealed to his saints,” namely, “how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1.26f. [S]). In Christ “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden” (2.3 [E]). This knowledge of the divine wisdom is not a knowledge that we have at our disposal and with which we could explain God’s work. Knowledge of divine wisdom is the certainty of faith that God preserves us above the abyss of senselessness, that he encompasses the beginning and future

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of human history in his love. Knowledge of the wisdom of God thus merges into worship (Rom. 11.36). The revelation of the wisdom of the cross not only refutes worldly wisdom, but it also illuminates earlier acts of divine wisdom, even if they were misunderstood by humans. As in the observations about the history of the acts of divine love and righteousness, we must limit ourselves here as well to just a few remarks: (a) God created the universe in his wisdom. To be sure, God’s wisdom is not spoken of directly in the accounts of creation and only rarely in the psalms of creation, but they do clearly express the following points, which are particularly emphasized in statements of later-Jewish wisdom literature in connection with creation: creation is a planned, ordered, and future-oriented work of God, in which human beings are given the purpose of acknowledging the Creator and knowing the creation. The prohibition against eating from the tree of knowledge, which is mentioned in the second account of creation, would be misinterpreted if it were understood to prohibit knowledge of the divine wisdom.3 After all, with the authority to give animals their names, humans are made to collaborate in God’s organizing work. The “knowledge of good and evil” stolen by the human means rather the “self-determination of the human, freed from God, with respect to what is beneficial or detrimental to his life.”4 (b) Even if by refusing to worship God (who witnesses to himself through the works of creation), humans “have become senseless in their thinking”—“claiming to be wise, they have become fools” (Rom. 1.21f. [S])—nevertheless, they perceive their environment and themselves, draw conclusions from such observations, and formulate them in propositions of wisdom that stand the test of time and are handed down from generation to generation. This is how proverbs have arisen among all peoples. Above all, such proverbs had as their subject matter certain rules for governing social behavior and for succinctly organizing human observations of nature (the so-called “Listenwissenschaft” [the scholarly formation of lists]).[iii] Although this wisdom did not unfold independently of the prevailing myths about the gods, it had such a solid empirical and rational basis that it could have an influence beyond its respective geographical and cultural region. (c) Just as with the law and even the architecture of the Jerusalem temple, Israel had also adopted its wisdom to a considerable extent from its surrounding world—especially from the highly developed wisdom of Mesopotamia and Egypt. But this was by no means an uncritical borrowing. In its witness, Israel underscored that the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom. What remains striking, however, 3 For the history of the interpretation of this second account, cf. Westermann, Genesis, 1.328–333. [ET: 240–245. –Ed.] 4 Odil Hannes Steck, Die Paradieserzählung [The Story of Paradise] (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1970), 37.

The Wisdom of God

is that ancient Israelite wisdom made almost no reference to the historical, salvific act of redemption from Egypt or to the Sinai Covenant, nor did it derive its insights from the regulations in the Old Testament law. The sayings are based on experience, especially on the relationship between human activity and its consequences. Only after the exile did these proverbs, which had originally been independent and only loosely connected, become more closely tied to the law, and knowledge about the relationship between human activity and consequence became more firmly linked to the principle of divine retribution. In addition, the pre-existence of wisdom and of the law became the subject of wisdom literature, and the temporal interconnection between late-Jewish wisdom and apocalyptic made it possible for world-historical and cosmological systems to be formed. (d) The word of the cross refutes the wisdom of the Jews and the Gentiles. But at the same time, in light of the wisdom revealed in Jesus Christ, it becomes clear that God had already made wisdom possible for humans. Out of its misuse and the distortion that human beings had caused it, now it was being brought into the light. From this perspective, one can understand why the New Testament Scriptures also contain thoroughly positive references to ancient wisdom, and why Paul and Luke adopted ideas and words of Greek wisdom, namely from popular Stoic philosophy. Even rules from Hellenistic ethics are included in the household codes of the New Testament. The wisdom that arises from the observation of the world is corrected and restored by faith in Christ, but not eliminated. The word of the cross destroys the systems of human wisdom, but at the same time it opens our eyes to reality. The Pauline struggle against worldly wisdom has an enduring, fundamental significance beyond the historical figures whose opposing views were at issue at the time. One can describe ancient oriental wisdom, in the form of “Listenwissenschaft,” as a preliminary stage of the development of the natural sciences, and, in its rules regarding the relationship between action and consequence, as a preliminary stage in the development of the behavioral sciences. Old Testament and Pauline criticism of wisdom did not oppose the findings of such observations about humans and the world, but rather it criticized the overall mythological and legal contexts in which they were interpreted. Traditional proverbs were not thereby set aside, but rather their provisional and piecemeal character was unveiled. Thus, with his rejection of the wisdom of the world, Paul did not oppose the use of reason, but he criticized boasting on the basis of such knowledge, and he opposed those who viewed human knowledge as an all-encompassing wisdom. The destruction of worldly wisdom by the word of the cross did not imply the end of observation and knowledge. The myths of that time correspond today, in some respects, to dogmatic claims about scientific hypotheses, worldviews, and ideologies. The word of the cross also destroys the boasting of wisdom in these modern forms, and it can thereby liberate the sciences to be aware of the particularity of their results and to be radically open for ever-new questioning and researching (cf. the remarks above about “believing

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and knowing,” 96ff.). The word of the cross also liberates the sciences so that they are responsible for using their results in service to the preservation of God’s creation, not its destruction. The rejection of the word of the cross, however, cannot endure apart from the misuse of human knowledge. Paul bore witness to the revelation of God’s righteousness and wisdom in parallel lines of thought. Just as God’s judgment was issued upon the righteousness of humans, so also will it be issued upon their wisdom. Just as God’s righteousness appeared under its opposite, so also will his wisdom, namely, in the Christ who was condemned as a criminal and made into a fool. Just as God’s righteousness is received by faith, so also is his wisdom. Righteousness is not based on human action, and wisdom is not based on human knowing. But this faith does indeed lead to a new way of acting and knowing. Just as the righteousness received by faith will be perfected in the future glorification, so the wisdom received by faith will have its perfection in the future beatific vision of God. On the basis of his acts, Christendom extols God’s eternal wisdom. Just as his love and righteousness are not exhausted by his deeds of lovingkindness for the world, so also this wisdom is not bounded by his wise deeds. Rather, as the eternal wisdom, God has accomplished his wise deeds and will accomplish them. If wisdom is referred to in the post-exilic texts as the master craftsman of God’s creation (Prov. 8.22–31), then it is both differentiated from God and identical with God, in a way that is similar to his name and his word, which is then praised in the prologue of John’s Gospel as having always been with God and as being God (Jn. 1.1). But what did God’s wisdom refer to, which already existed prior to a creaturely counterpart of its knowing and doing? If one refers to the eternal wisdom of God as a selfknowledge, then also here one must think of the inner-trinitarian event that takes place in the Son’s knowing through the Father, in the Father’s re-knowing through the Son, and in the knowing of the unity of the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit. The wisdom of God also consists of the richness of the relationships among the three different Persons in God’s unity.

4. The Steadfastness of God If we consider the acts of divine love, justice, and wisdom, we cannot overlook the steadfastness with which God has upheld the intended purpose given to humanity. (a) Despite people turning away from him, God has not abandoned them to destruction, but rather he has not ceased to preserve them through his love, justice, and wisdom, to turn toward them, and to bestow upon them his gifts. This steadfastness has demonstrated itself in God’s free acts that are ever new, none of which we can compellingly infer from what has gone before. The creation

The Steadfastness of God

in the beginning does not necessarily result in the preservation of humanity that is revolting against God. It is quite paradoxical that both the coming of the flood and the Noahide covenant at the end of the flood are justified in the same way: “the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth” (Gen. 8.21; cf. 6.5). It does not necessarily follow from the preservation of sinful humanity that God has elected Israel out of all the peoples through a special covenant of grace and made it uniquely his people. Again, it does not follow from Israel’s apostasy that God became a human being in Israel and that in Christ crucified he put into effect the new covenant for Jews and Gentiles. The consummation that is still to come is to be expected also as the free act of God, the timing of which no one knows and the occurrence of which will exceed our imagination. But in these different acts the same God is working toward the same end, namely, the eternal life of human beings in a new creation. This steadfastness of the divine action amid the unsteadiness of world history is praised by all churches as God’s faithfulness. (b) The steadfastness of God’s action is not to be separated from the steadfastness of his word. Without God’s word, God’s work would remain hidden in history. Through his word, God is active in history, and that which happens is announced as judgment or salvation. Through his word, God put the old covenant into effect. Through his word, Jesus proclaimed the new covenant in his blood, according to the traditions of the Last Supper, and lets people participate in it. Such words are valid beyond the moment they are spoken. God stands by his covenant as by an oath. “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isa. 40.8). Jesus, too, made the same claim of an abiding validity for his words: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mk. 13.31 par.). However, the steadfastness of the divine word contains the element of freedom. There are such considerable differences between the Old Testament promises of the coming messianic king and the figure of the powerless Jesus dying on the cross—between the earthly Davidic kingdom promised by the prophets and the kingdom of God announced by Jesus—that it is not surprising that many Jewish scribes did not recognize Jesus as the promised one. Yet these differences do not refute the prophetic promises, for God did not do away with them but surpassed them through their fulfillment, and he did so by establishing Jesus as King and Savior of the world. It is just as impossible to calculate the timing of the parousia of Jesus Christ on the basis of the promises of the New Testament, or to depict ahead of time his judgment and the new creation. The fulfillment of this promise will also surpass our expectations. The same applies to the reliability of the numerous Old and New Testament promises that God answers all prayers. There are seemingly unanswered prayers, which in truth are answered prayers, namely, ones that go far beyond what we of little faith expect in our prayers. So all churches praise God as

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the one who is truthful, who stands by his word and whose word does not deceive. He does not let anyone go astray who trusts his word. (c) All words of God have their center in Jesus Christ. Through the pre-existing Christ, the eternal Son, the eternal Word, God created the universe. In view of his coming incarnation and his passion, God preserved the sinful world and faithless Israel. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, he blotted out sins and opened the new life. With his return he will fulfill the new creation. “The Son of God, Jesus Christ… did not show himself to be ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ at the same time; but in him the ‘Yes’ is realized, for all the promises of God are always ‘Yes’ in him” (2 Cor. 1.19f. [S]). Of course, God’s steadfastness does not seem to have been called into question by any event as radically as by Jesus’ death on the cross. Since God offered up his Son here, the unity between the Father and the Son seems to have been abolished, and the “Yes” that appeared in him seems to have been swallowed up by the “No.” However, through Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, the “Yes” that God spoke to the world in union with his Son on the cross has been revealed. In the apparent fracturing of the unity between the Father and the Son in Jesus’ God-forsakenness on the cross, sinful humanity has been accepted by God, and believers have been brought into the abiding communion of the Father and the Son. In this way, all churches praise God’s steadfastness, faithfulness, and truthfulness when, in view of the cross, they praise the unity between God and the “Yes” of his promise. The adoration of God’s steadfastness applies not only to the steadfastness of his historical speaking and acting but to his eternal steadfastness. As with his love, justice, and wisdom, so also his faithfulness and truth did not first come about by having creation serve as their counterpart. Rather, his eternal steadfastness brings about his creative, redeeming, and re-creating speaking and acting. It has its lasting existence in the eternal unity and communion of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. In praising this steadfastness, we are also praising God’s immutability. God is “the Father of light, in whom there is no variation or change between light and darkness” (James 1.17 [S]). In the history of theology, God’s immutability has not usually been based on God’s historical speaking and acting. Rather, it was derived from the metaphysical differences between the world and God. Statements about God’s immutability were obtained by a process of negating the mutability of the world in space and time, and by enhancing what seems to be steadfast within the world. We are dealing here with the same process of a natural knowledge of God, which has also played such a major role in the history of statements about God’s omnipotence, omnipresence, and eternity. From such an understanding of divine immutability, obtained from contemplating the world through a process of negation and enhancement, difficulties must arise in understand-

The Steadfastness of God

ing God’s speaking and acting in history, which have taken place and continue to take place in such a great variety of divine initiatives and actions to human speaking and acting: in deeds of lovingkindness and judgments, in judgments upon those who disregard his deeds of lovingkindness, in deeds of lovingkindness for those who repent of this misuse, but beyond that, even in deeds of lovingkindness for those who have not recognized their offense, to whom he however has granted a new beginning through new deeds of lovingkindness. The personal freedom in the steadfastness of the divine speaking and acting is particularly clearly expressed in Old Testament sentences about God’s repentance for the judgment that he has announced or that he has already begun. This personal vitality in the divine speaking and acting must appear inaccessible to the understanding of divine immutability that is obtained by negating worldly changes. Indeed, it must appear unworthy of God. On the other hand, this immutable God of metaphysics would be impersonal and lifeless compared to the biblical witness to God’s loving steadfastness. These difficulties were bound to increase in the face of the New Testament witness to the incarnation and passion of the Son of God, for the concept of immutability, which was developed in opposition to the mutability of human history, also included the rejection of a divine becoming, suffering, and dying. The christological disputes of the ancient church were largely determined by attempts to reconcile the incarnation and passion of the Son of God, as witnessed to in the creed, with the metaphysical axiom of divine immutability and incapacity for suffering. Only after a long period of disputes did the fifth ecumenical council, at Constantinople, adopt the Theopaschite Formula that one of the Holy Trinity suffered in the flesh.[iv] In other words, this sentence said nothing else than what the church had long confessed beforehand, namely that Jesus Christ, the eternal incarnate Son of God, died on the cross under Pontius Pilate.

If one proceeds from God’s historical speaking and acting, especially from the history of Jesus Christ, then it becomes clear that the concept of immutability, which is obtained through the negation of earthly changes, is not appropriate to God. God is immutable beyond the difference between the mutability of the world and its logical opposite. As the incarnation and the death of the Son of God make clear, he is the Lord over this difference that remains ultimately inner-worldly. As the one who is immutable, he has the freedom to commit himself to history, to be active in it, bestowing and demanding, judging and forgiving, destroying and creating anew. Indeed, he has the freedom to send his Son into history to become human without ceasing to be the immutable triune God. He is even free, in the suffering and death of his Son, to take upon himself the death of the humanity that has fallen into judgment, without ceasing to be the immutable living God. These statements about God’s unique immutability are not the result of abstract speculations about God’s freedom but follow from the historical revelation of his Son who became human and who died on the cross. From this historical revelation there arises the knowledge that God’s omnipotence includes the freedom to become powerless without ceasing

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to be the Almighty, just as his omnipresence and eternity entail the freedom to enter the spatial confinement of a human body and the temporal limitation of a few years, without ceasing to be the one who is omnipresent and eternal. The death of the Son of God on the cross is not an embarrassment for the adoring praise of God’s immutability; rather, the uniqueness of the divine immutability is revealed through the death of the incarnate Son of God. Editor’s Notes to Chapter 29 [i] [ii] [iii]

[iv]

For the following, cf. Schlink’s earlier essay, “Gerechtigkeit und Gnade,” Kerygma und Dogma 2 (1956): 256–288. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 5.1131ff. (Basic Works of Aristotle, 1006ff.); and Aquinas, ST, II/2.57–58. Such lists developed, for example, in the context of the practice of medicine in ancient Mesopotamia. See especially In the Wake of the Compendia, ed. J. Cale Johnson (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015). This type of “scholarly listing” and enumerating also appeared later within rabbinic Judaism. In that context, such lists were created to communicate ethical maxims, etiological explanations of Jewish rituals, and scholarly explanations for Jewish teachings. See Lennart Lehmhaus, “Listenwissenschaft and the Encyclopedic Hermeneutics of Knowledge in Talmud and Midrash,” in In the Wake of the Compendia, 59ff. This council is usually called the Second Council of Constantinople (Constantinople II), which met in May and June of the year 553. The formula that Schlink paraphrased here comes from the tenth anathema of that council: “If anyone does not confess his belief that our Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified in his human flesh, is truly God and the Lord of glory and one of the members of the Holy Trinity: let him be anathema” (Tanner, 1.118 [trans. modified]; cf. Denzinger, 432).

Summary of Chapters XXVII–XXIX

1. The All-Consuming and Self-Giving God God encounters us sinners as the wrathful God and as the loving God, as the one who judges and the one who makes righteous, as the one who destroys our meaningful connections and as the one who opens up divine wisdom. All churches have rejected Marcion’s conclusion that the loving God is different from the judging God of the law. But how are God’s wrath and God’s love to be united as expressions of one and the same God? Which of these statements about God’s actions and attributes apply to me? Through these contradictions does not God ultimately become an unknown and attribute-less God? Frequently, people have tried to settle the question of the relationship between God’s consuming and self-giving actions by ignoring the biblical statements about God’s wrath. This has been done through various arguments. One of them states that talk of God’s wrath, which is characteristic of the Old Testament, has now become obsolete and may be done away with because of Jesus’ proclamation of God’s fatherly love. For all that, however, Jesus also announced the coming judgment with great seriousness, and the apostolic message contains the explicit threat of God’s judgment as the consequence of his wrath. Another argument states that biblical talk of God’s wrath is so anthropomorphic that it cannot be considered accurate speaking about God. On this basis, Greek and Roman philosophy had already rejected ideas in their religious environment regarding the wrath of the gods. But one must remember that many biblical witnesses to God’s love (e. g., in Hosea and in John’s Gospel) are no less anthropomorphic. God has become so deeply involved with people that he, even if he is completely different, encounters us as one of us. A further argument goes like this: In the biblical statements about God’s inbreaking wrath there is an element of irrationality and arbitrariness that makes it impossible to reconcile them with God’s steadfastness. However, if one examines the biblical statements more closely, it becomes clear that precisely in this way reasons are given for why God’s wrath is announced and why it comes upon people. On the other hand, it is true that God’s love is not based on human behavior but on God’s freedom. But even where God’s wrath is not disputed, its significance has often been weakened so that the issue of the relationship between God’s consuming action and his self-giving action was no longer felt to be that important. This happened above all when these conflicting divine actions were equalized through a dialectic: through God’s word, both always happen at the same time, namely as judgment and

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grace, being brought low and being lifted up. As a matter of fact, Paul referred to the witnesses of Christ “as dying and, see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6.9f.), and he said of himself, “I die every day!” (1 Cor. 15.31). As certainly as this is true for believers, it cannot be inferred from it that the word of judgment is always at the same time the word of grace. In all seriousness Jesus announced a judgment in which some would be acquitted and others condemned, in which the word was addressed to some, “Come to me, you blessed ones of my Father, receive the kingdom as your inheritance” (Mt. 25.34 [S]), and to others, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire” (v. 41). Not every instance of being consumed is an instance of being given a gift, not every judgment is grace, and not every death is the reception of eternal life. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath” (Jn. 3.36). God’s love illumines, warms, and leads into the communion of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. It does not push anyone away who seeks God. God’s wrath, however, is his response to those who persistently withdraw from his love. Then God holds fast to the purpose that he has given humankind from the beginning, and he respects the decision that humans have made against this purpose and who hold fast to it. One must be careful not to utter the sentence, “God’s judgment is grace,” all too easily. We are all approaching a judgment that is heralded not only as the salvation of the one but also as a rejection of the other. The issue of the relationship between God’s love and God’s wrath cannot be solved by ignoring or weakening the biblical statements about God’s wrath. In the dogmatic discussion of this issue, one could avoid the concept of wrath and instead speak only of God’s judgment. But that would not change anything, for the real impetus in the question of the relationship between God’s wrath and love is the future judgment that is already breaking in now, in which the Lord will speak two opposing verdicts. No Church has dared to reduce this announcement—which is attested to throughout the New Testament and in the creed of the church—to a mere warning. Instead, the church places before each of its members the twofold possibility of the eschatological “Yes” and the eschatological “No.” In view of this twofold possibility, one must focus on the existential decision, not on general and theoretical reasons: (1) We must confess that we are guilty before God. Indeed, we deserve his wrath. We cannot free ourselves from our imprisonment in guilt or from the judgment into which we have fallen. (2) We need to believe that God’s Son took our guilt upon himself and suffered the judgment that we truly deserve. By trusting God’s mercy in Jesus Christ, we are removed from God’s wrath and embraced by God’s love. (3) We are to proclaim judgment and God’s love to all people, namely the judgment that was suffered by Jesus as the love of God that appeared in Jesus.

The All-Consuming and Self-Giving God

These three existential decisions of repentance, faith, and witness contain within them two insights into the relationship between God’s love and God’s wrath that are of paramount importance: (a) God acts in his love and in his wrath, but the real basis for his action is love. God’s love and not his wrath was the basis for creation. His action toward sinful humanity is also based on the immutability of his love, not on his wrath. In his love he preserved sinful humanity, elected Israel, and offered up his Son. In his love he turns toward humanity through the gospel to save humans from their enslavement. His wrath is merely his reaction to the contempt for this love of his. His wrath is grounded in the behavior of human beings, not in his love. His love, however, is given to human beings despite their behavior. The acts of divine wrath are thus ordained to serve his love. As long as earthly life lasts, these acts are God’s ultimate attempt to lead sinners to repentance and to the acceptance of his love. Thus one cannot ignore the expressions of divine pain and lamentation which are contained in some prophetic announcements of the divine judgment. God’s love is greater than God’s wrath. While God’s love abides, there is frequent mention of God’s venting of his wrath. As long as people are pilgrims in this world, the following statement is true: “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always accuse, nor will he keep his anger forever… As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him” (Ps. 103.8f. and v. 13). God’s judgments have to be understood in terms of his lovingkindness, but God’s righteousness must not be understood in terms of his judgments. It is all about the fulfillment of God’s kingdom and the new creation. In this sense, Luther described the acts of divine love as God’s “proper work,” and the acts of his wrath as God’s “alien work.”1 (b) The biblical texts speak of God’s love and God’s wrath, but both are not attributes of God in the same sense. God loves and is love. God is wrathful, but he is not wrath. God is eternal love, but not eternal wrath. The wrath is an historical reaction of God to the enmity of humans. But the love is the eternal communion of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the unity of God. Within the trinitarian fullness of life there is no conflict, no enmity, and no wrath. In this respect, wrath is not an essential attribute of God but an attribute of his judging action. It is true that Holy Scripture contains doxologies about judgment (e. g., Rev. 16.5–7 and 19.1–8), but they do not praise an eternal wrath of God; rather, they praise the judging acts by which God overcomes the powers of corruption and redeems his people. 1 [See, e. g., Luther, Genesisvorlesung (1535/1538), WA, 42.356 (Lectures on Genesis, LW 1 , 2.134); 2d Psalmenvorlesgung (1519), WA, 5.63–64 (Commentary on Ps. 2, LW 1 , 14.335). Luther derived the idea of the opus alienum of God from Isa. 28.21 (which he quoted here). God’s opus proprium was to comfort, while his alien work was to terrify. –Ed.]

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Summary of Chapters XXVII–XXIX

This means that the explanations about the consuming God are not superfluous, for the adoration of God arises from the depths—out of experiences of abandonment by God, of darkness and emptiness, which are familiar to the devout in all churches—from the desert monks of the ancient church to Luther and “little Thérèse of Lisieux” to the victims of the Holocaust.[i]

2. The Adoration of the Triune God in the Glory of His Love The triune God is thus to be worshiped in the adoration of his utterly superior lordship and his unconditional self-giving. If we summarize the perfections of his omnipotence, omnipresence, and eternity in the concept of his glory, and the perfection of his righteousness, wisdom, and constancy in the concept of his love, it follows that the triune God is to be praised in the glory of his love. Of course, in saying this, the difference between the doctrine of adoration and the practice of adoration has to be taken into account. The doctrine of adoration is not itself adoration; rather, its purpose is to serve adoration. Doctrine strives to gain conceptual clarity in formulaic sentences, whereas adoration takes place in a great variety of statements, even if they are not able completely to express the divine fullness of life. This difference was already evident when we compared the trinitarian formula with the adoring praise of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Finally, however, there is the need to unfold doxology in view of the doctrine of God’s perfection, for since God’s perfection makes itself evident to our knowing in an immeasurable multitude of perfections, there are quite a number of different ways in which these can be given conceptual-dogmatic clarity: (1) First, in the selection of those attributes of God that are presented doctrinally; (2) then, in the classification of these attributes; and (3) in connection with the selection of the overarching concepts under which the other attributes are summarized and from which they are then in turn derived. There are basically many possibilities with each of these decisions, and in fact very different possibilities have been realized in the course of church history. Not every attribute of God has been made prominent in the same way in the doctrine of God in every Church at all times. In these “basic features,” too, which are set forth in this dogmatics text, only one of the many possibilities for selecting and constructing the doctrine of God’s perfections could be chosen. Whichever possibility the doctrine follows, what is taught must be unfolded in the adoration itself. The doctrine of God’s perfections is never an end in itself, but always has to serve adoration. Compared to the latter, the doctrine remains poor and meager.

The Adoration of the Triune God in the Glory of His Love

It is important for mutual ecumenical understanding to become aware of the various existing possibilities for teaching God’s perfection, and to open oneself to the wealth of statements with which the perfection of the triune God is extolled in the various churches. This multiplicity is already expressed to a much greater extent in the Old Testament Psalter and in the hymns and spiritual songs of each individual Church than it is in the doctrine of God’s perfection. The multitude of ways in which the adoration of God takes place becomes even greater when we open our ears to the adoration offered especially by the “young churches” in foreign cultures, in which the joy of the newly arisen faith in Christ is often expressed in a more elemental freshness and diversity than is done by us in our own tradition. There are no obstacles in the way to this opening, since no Church has defined dogmatically a definite structure for the doctrine of God’s attributes. If we are open to the multitude of ways in which the churches praise the triune God in his perfection, then the walls between them become transparent and finally fall down. Not that doxology is the only response of faith. It is necessarily surrounded by preaching and teaching, by prayer and thanksgiving. But its power for unifying has often been underestimated in comparison to the differences regarding dogmatic teachings and church orders. It is only from the center of doxological confession that these differences receive their appropriate status in the life structure of the one church. If we open ourselves to the adoration of God in the whole of Christendom, then communion with the brothers and sisters in all places and with the ancestors from all times, communion with the prophets and the apostles, with the devout of the old covenant and the new, will open up to us. It will open us to the unity of the church militant and the church triumphant and, beyond that, to communion with the adoration by the angels and other creatures. In the self-sacrifice of the worshiping believers, the triune God makes himself present, and the joy that exists in heaven over one sinner who repents descends on earth and transforms the sufferings of those who had forsaken God into an eternal feast.

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Editor’s Note to the Summary of Chapters 27–29 [i]

See The Desert Fathers, trans. Helen Waddell (New York: Random House, 1998). Luther’s experiences of Anfechtungen are well known, but see especially Berndt Hamm, The Early Luther: Stages in a Reformation Orientation, trans. Martin J. Lohrmann (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017); and Paul Bühler, Die Anfechtung bei Martin Luther (Zürich: Zwingli, 1942). For Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897), one of the thirty-three doctors of the Roman Church, see Bernard McGinn, The Doctors of the Church, 2d ed. (New York: Crossroad, 2010), 227–233. “…Yes, we practiced religion even in a death camp. I said my prayers every day. On Saturday I hummed Shabbat songs at work, in part, no doubt, to please my father, to show him I was determined to remain a Jew even in the accursed kingdom. My doubts and my revolt gripped me only later” (Elie Wiesel, Memoirs: All Rivers Run to the Sea [New York: Schocken, 1995], 82).

CONCLUDING PART

Chapter XXX: God’s Decree of Love

1. Solely by Grace That we confess the triune God to be our Lord, that we praise his glory, love, righteousness, wisdom, and steadfastness, is based on God’s grace. By grace alone God sent his Son into the world and had the message of Christ proclaimed to it. By grace alone God poured out his Spirit on all flesh, and through the Spirit gave us faith. This certainty, however, would be misleading if believers were to base it solely on themselves. After all, they are not individuals but members of the community of faith, the people of God, the church. The adoration of grace is always at the same time a participation in the adoration voiced by the choir of all those who have received grace. This adoration is not restricted to the present moment of the divine action of grace since it also embraces the past at the same time. Freely by grace God created the people of Israel by making his covenant with them. Freely by grace he established the new covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ, and he builds up the church as the growing body of Christ. The adoration of grace also encompasses the future of God’s people. If God is known as the one who is gracious, then this certainty has a solid basis: God will preserve his church until the end of the world.

2. The Eternal Decree of the Triune God The adoration of grace is not content to focus merely on the acts of grace that God has done, is doing, and will do for humans in history, but it also extols God’s eternal decree of grace [ewigen Gnadenratschluß] which preceded these acts of his grace and is manifested in them. Even before Jeremiah was prepared in his mother’s womb, God had chosen him to be a prophet (Jer. 1.5). Even before human history began to take its course, God had prepared his kingdom for those whom the Son of Man will one day accept (Mt. 25.34). On the basis of the historical act of salvation by which God in Christ has bestowed his grace, the church praises the pre-temporal decree of grace: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace” (Eph. 1.3ff. [S]).

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What is praised here is a willful decision by God to choose and predestine his church “before the foundation of the world.” This decision is thus different from all the external acts of God. It even preceded his first act, the creation of the universe from nothing. It is a pre-temporal, eternal decree. At the same time, this decree is to be distinguished from God’s eternal being, for this decision was made by God in the freedom of his will, and it was already aimed toward his external actions, toward his creatures. There was no necessity for this decision, nor was it already predetermined by God’s eternal vitality. As the eternal fullness of life that God is, he has freely chosen and predestined his gracious external acts. Consequently, this adoring praise breaks through the limits established for our thinking by the temporality of our existence. What is praised is the gracious decision of God’s will that he made “before the foundation of the world,” which is therefore eternal and yet also directed toward his creatures. It is thus the pre-temporal beginning of the history of God’s external acts. The eternal electing God is praised as “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1.3). This takes place on the basis of the spiritual blessing that the church has received in Christ. Christ is not merely the grounds for the knowledge of this eternal election. God is praised as the Father who “chose us in him” (v. 4), in Christ, the eternal Son. God the Father and the Son together in unity, are the source of the eternal decree by which the church was chosen before all time. Statements about the doctrine of predestination must never deviate from this election in Christ if they are not to lapse into a philosophical determinism. In him, the eternal Son, who is one with the Father in the communion of the Holy Spirit, God has made the decision to demonstrate his love to those who are not. In the love with which the Father loved the Son before the foundation of the world (Jn. 17.24) and with which the Son loves him again forever, God loved the church even before the creation of the universe. But why has God chosen and destined these people from eternity? That they might be “holy and unblemished” before him (Eph. 1.4). But how are they holy before him, the Holy One? God destined them “for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ” (v. 5). God has chosen to call into existence those who are not, that they may be his children through the eternal Son, that they might be his image, the eternal image. As creatures, they are different from the eternal Son, and yet they are destined to be children of the same Father with him, the eternal Son. In this way, the eternal trinitarian love in God’s decree presses outward to let those who are not participate in this communion and glorify the eternal love in them. The purpose of God’s decree is to create the communion of the children of the eternal Father, the brothers and sisters of the eternal Son, who, through the Holy Spirit, are bound together with Father and Son in the same love with which the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father forever. So this people is destined “for the praise of his glorious grace” (v. 6).

The Issue of Double Predestination

3. The Issue of Double Predestination The statements of the New Testament about God’s election in Christ are statements that adore divine grace. They provide the greatest consolation and are an occasion for exuberant joy and confidence, for in the eternal plan believers are free amid all threats, and they are permitted to exclaim, “Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justified. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us…” (Rom. 8.33ff.). These same statements of Scripture about God’s eternal decree of love lead into the greatest misery, paralysis, and temptations if we step out of the act of faithfully receiving and adoring the divine grace and take up a position in our thinking from which we try to offset God’s eternal predestination and human decision against each other and to reconcile them to the separation that will occur in the coming judgment of the world. Such reflection that is detached from the act of receiving, thanking, and worshiping transforms God’s decree of love into the sinisterness of a formal predetermination, and the following conclusions arise: (a) If before the beginning of the world God freely chose and predestined the people who will be accepted and saved in Christ, then before the creation of the world he must have predestined those who will be rejected. But if one wants to avoid this conclusion, then God’s eternal election could not have been a predestining but at most a divine foreknowing of what a person will do. (b) If the one group of humans before their creation (and thus before they have done good or bad) is destined by God to eternal life and the other to eternal death, then human decision is meaningless. Then the individual person is just like a lump of clay that does not form itself but is formed, or like a stone that does not move itself but is thrown. Yet this conclusion contradicts the image of God, in which the human is created, namely, the free response of love that is the image of God and that is required of humans in response to God’s act of creation. It also contradicts the summons to repentance, faith, and obedience. But if humans are responsible for their actions, and if they are condemned by God on account of those actions and are handed over to eternal death, then the inevitable conclusion seems that humans will also be accepted and saved because of their actions. But this conclusion contradicts the message of grace, by which God accepts the sinner out of his divine free pleasure apart from the sinner’s own works and merits. (c) If before the foundation of the world God has destined the one group of humans to eternal life and the other to eternal death, then the inevitable conclusion appears that the gospel is the message of grace, the power of God, and salvation only for those whom God has chosen from eternity, but it is only a sham offer, an empty promise, and an ineffective word for those whose condemnation has been

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decided beforehand. Then Christ would have died only for the elect. But this notion contradicts the message that God in Christ has reconciled the world to himself, and it calls into question the truthfulness of the gospel, which calls all people to faith. If, however, the gospel is valid for all people, the obvious conclusion is that it is merely an offer of grace and a summons to make a decision to accept grace. But this conclusion also contradicts the gospel, for then the gospel would not be the power of God and the active word through which God saves the sinner. Each of the preceding conclusions can be substantiated from the history of theology. One cannot deny that each conclusion is a logical consequence that results from its respective premises. For the person who enters into these lines of thinking, who draws further conclusions that result from each of the given premises, and searches for a theoretical solution to these questions, the message about election by grace becomes an agonizing burden. It is like being crushed between two millstones up to the day of judgment, when it will be revealed whom God has chosen and whom he condemns. These lines of thinking not only call the gospel into question but God himself. If God has chosen one from eternity and rejected the other, then the question arises: Is not such a God a cruel tyrant? But in this way, the idea of election, which reveals the certainty of overcoming the world and shines forth the greatest joy, instead becomes an occasion for despair and hatred of God. From this experience one can understand why, after the serious disputes in the Western history of the doctrine of predestination, the church’s proclamation has been largely silent about God’s eternal’s decree. Theological thinking, however, cannot willfully take a position that avoids what takes place between God and humankind. It must turn away from the delusion that the divine decisions and actions, on the one hand, and those of human beings, on the other, can be proportionally offset against one another. God’s word directs us to another position, from which perspective we can speak of God. As those who are addressed and personally encountered by God’s word, we have to respond to God in prayer and adoration, and by witnessing to God’s address to our neighbors. We must start not with theoretical inferences that are drawn from divine election. Rather, we must start by listening to the witness about divine election, and then by asking whether, from this position, those inferences are permissible, which seem again and again to be so obvious.

4. Election The dogmatic concept of election by grace not only entails the dogmatic use of the biblical concept of the pre-temporal election (Eph. 1.4 et passim) but also provides a comprehensive summary of a variety of biblical terms and statements that bear witness to a divine purpose for salvation that precedes human decision and even human existence. The most important

Election

terms besides to choose and election (ἐκλέγεσθαι [eklegesthai] and ἐκλογή [eklogē])[i] are the verbs and the associated nouns: to know beforehand (‫[ ָי ַדע‬jd e ], Jer. 1.5—προγιγνώσκειν [progignōskein], Rom. 8.29; 11.2; cf. 1 Pet. 1.20)[ii] ; to predetermine (προορίζειν [prooridzein], Rom. 8.29f.; Eph. 1.5–11; cf. Acts 4.28; 1 Cor. 2.7)[iii] ; to have something in mind beforehand, to plan (προτίθημι [protithēmi], Eph. 1.9—πρόθεσις [prothesis], Rom. 8.28; 9.11; Eph. 1.11; cf. 3.11; 2 Tim. 1.9)[iv] ; to love (ἀγαπάν [agapāv], Rom. 9.13; Jn. 17.23f., etc.).[v] In addition, there are the New Testament statements about God’s preparation of the kingdom from the beginning of the world (Mt. 25.34); about God’s act of handing people over to Jesus, which preceded their obedience (Jn. 10.26ff.; 17.6ff. et passim); about the entering of names into the book of life, from the beginning of the world (Rev. 17.8 et passim); and numerous other statements. The dogmatic concept of election encompasses all these statements and transcends their original biblical meaning. Of course, like the concept of election, one of the others could also be used as a summative dogmatic concept. This has happened especially with the concept of predestination (πρόθεσις, praedestinatio). The concept of election by grace, however, has the advantage over that of predestination in that it already expresses in its wording the whence and the purpose of the divine decision, and thus it is less likely to be understood merely formalistically, or to be misused in a deterministic manner, than has been the case with the concept of predetermination in the history of the doctrine of predestination.

On the basis of the biblical statements, the divine election by grace is to be acknowledged as an independent divine resolution that preceded the decision and even the existence of humans; it was “not dependent on works but on the one who calls” (Rom. 9.12 [S]), and on him alone. All the biblical statements strongly emphasize the sovereignty of this divine decision, as well as its determinative power and validity. It is impossible to reduce the pre-temporal election by grace to the foreknowledge of God. The Old Testament “knowing” (Jer. 1.5) means more than merely our type of knowing; it refers to setting apart, grasping after, lovingly drawing another toward oneself, and relating another to oneself. This meaning of a gracious, divine grasping is also contained in the Pauline “fore-knowing.” Through this decree, God set apart some from the human race, but those who were separated out were not merely chosen individuals; they were members of God’s chosen people. The chosen individual cannot be separated from the people to whom that person is chosen to belong. But conversely, election cannot be reduced to the people (leaving out of consideration the individual who is chosen), nor can it be reduced to the call that goes out to all humans to join this people—as if only the people, but not each of its members, were predestined by God. The election of the people of God means the predestination of a numerus praedestinatorum [number of the predestined]. The purpose of the predestination through election is attested to by the biblical statements in quite manifold ways: to be a prophet, to be the Son of God, to be the

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image of the Son, to be a co-heir with Christ, for righteousness, for glory, etc. The election by grace embraces the whole life of the elect up to the consummation; it destines them to eternal life with Christ in glory, to obedience and service in love, to adoration and witness. God’s election of people by grace does not abolish human freedom but destines humans to freedom and grants them freedom—freedom to love in return the one who first loved them. It is not possible to play election against freedom, for it aims to liberate those who are enslaved to guilt through the misuse of their freedom. The eternal decree of election encounters the elected in their callings. The close connection between the pre-temporal election and the calling that takes place in time is already expressed in the fact that in many New Testament texts this divine calling of people away from their previous commitments in life is referred to as election. It is, however, impossible to dissolve God’s pre-temporal decree of election into the historical calling or even into the general offer of grace which is given to all people through the gospel. God’s pre-temporal decree of election precedes the historical act of calling through election and is carried out in it. At the same time, however, God’s historical electing precedes human knowledge of the pre-temporal election by grace. The eternal election by grace is only known on the basis of being called through the word of grace.

5. Rejection The divine election by grace is opposed to a divine rejection. The concept of rejection is also a dogmatic concept that systematically coordinates a large number of biblical terms and statements. In addition to ἀποβαλή [apobalē],[vi] the most important are the following verbs: “harden” (‫[ ָח ַזק‬hasaq],[vii] Exod. 4.21; 7.13; 8.15; 10.20; 11.10; 14.4ff. etc.; ‫[ ָקָשׁה‬qaŝah],[viii] Exod. 7.3; Deut. 2.30; ‫[ ָכֵּבד‬kabad],[ix] Exod. 10.1; Isa. 6.10, etc.; ‫[ ָשֵׁמן‬ŝamen],[x] Isa. 6.10; σκληρύνειν [sklērunein],[xi] Rom. 9.18); “to make blind” and “to make deaf ” (Isa. 6.9f.; Mk. 4.12 par.; Jn. 12.37ff.; Rom. 11.7ff.); “to hand over” (παραδιδόναι [paradidonai],[xii] Rom. 1.24, 26, 28; Acts 7.42); “to hate” (Rom. 9.13). In addition there are statements such as: “…an evil spirit from God rushed upon Saul” (1 Sam. 18.10; cf. 16.14); “The Lord has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep; he has closed your eyes, you prophets, and covered your heads, you seers” (Isa. 29.10); “…God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false so that all who have not believed the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned” (2 Thess. 2.11f.); and the like.

In these biblical statements, too, it is not merely a matter of divine foreknowing or a matter of God’s passive acceptance of human activity or a matter of God simply overriding the non-elect, but rather it is a matter of a divine decision that determines

The Incommensurability between God’s Electing and Rejecting

human behavior. All the biblical statements cited above about God’s hardening, blinding, handing over, etc., bear witness to a sovereign, deliberate divine action. Even in rejection, God carries out a separation. It, too, does not affect humanity as a whole, but only a few, albeit not only individual persons but also nations, or at least part of the nation (Isa. 6.9ff.; Rom. 11.25). It is impossible to reduce the rejection to a mere threat of future rejection or to Jesus Christ as the only one who is rejected. The rejection also determines the human for a subsequent work of God on that person, namely, for that person’s judgment. The background for the historical judgments that come upon the rejected is the eschatological judgment of God, eternal damnation. This determination for judgment is at the same time an individual’s determination for that person’s own decision against God. For example, Pharaoh’s hardening by God led to Pharoah’s refusal to carry out the divine command proclaimed to him by Moses, namely, to release the Israelites. God’s handing people over, in the sense of rejecting them, has the effect “that they do what should not be done” (Rom. 1.28 [S]). God’s sending of “a powerful delusion” has the consequence “that they believe the lie so that they will all be judged…” (2 Thess. 2.11 [L]). And yet, the rejection does not negate human responsibility and guilt. By their own conduct they are guilty of the judgment for which they are destined. Pharaoh’s hardening by God thus took place through Pharoah’s own self-hardening against God’s command (Exod. 8.15, 19, 32; 9.34). The hardening by God and the self-hardening of the person are intertwined. The decree of rejection also encounters the person in God’s historical action. For this reason, we should think not only about the proclamation of the law and the threat of judgment, and not only about the anathema of the church, whereby some are moved to repentance, while others are hardened in their impenitence. The rejection strikes the rejected also through the gospel of God’s grace. Even though the individual hears it, the person still does not understand it and thus becomes completely guilty by rejecting the faith. In this way, the saving word of grace becomes a judgment against the person (Jn. 12.48); it becomes a “fragrance from death to death” (2 Cor. 2.16). Therefore, the decree of rejection is also to be distinguished from the historical and eschatological event of the divine rejection. Of course, it comes to fruition not only through God’s word but also through God’s removal of his word, through the handing over of the person to the silence of God’s wrath.

6. The Incommensurability between God’s Electing and Rejecting The doctrine of eternal double predestination—of some to blessedness and others to damnation, indeed, of some to obedience and others to disobedience—seems

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to be the necessary consequence of these elementary biblical observations. This doctrine appears to be a necessary, logical inference from the biblical statements about God’s pre-temporal election by grace. It appears to have additional support from the biblical statements about God’s rejecting. Such a parallelism between the statements about God’s electing and rejecting are of course opposed by the following biblical facts: (a) In comparison with the numerous statements about God’s election by grace, in the Bible there are strikingly few places where the rejection is spoken of as a divine decision that predetermines human activity—far fewer than would be expected, based on the logical inferences from the biblical statements about election. Even in the very rare statements, which are so often quoted in the history of the doctrine of predestination, in which there are parallel references that speak of God’s pretemporal love and hate (Rom. 9.13), of his preparing some people for glory and others for dishonor, of his preparing some for mercy and others for damnation (Rom. 9.21ff.), it is at the same time clear that, in view of the total scope of these statements, mercy and condemnation are not presented in the same way; instead, what is extolled in an exuberant way is the revelation of the divine glory in the demonstration of his “mercy” (Rom. 9.23; cf. 11.11, 15, 32). (b) In the biblical statements, the others are by no means generally opposed to the elect as those who are rejected. Sometimes the others are not even mentioned in the passages that deal with God’s election by grace, sometimes they are only spoken of as not being elected, without saying what this “not being elected” means for their ultimate relationship with God. In some cases, however, the elect are related to the non-elect for salvation. For example, the name of Abraham is intended by God as a blessing for all the families of the earth (Gen. 12.3). (c) In the biblical statements that were grouped under the dogmatic concept of rejection, there is by no means a consistent mention of a determination for eternal damnation, even as it is certainly in the eschatological background of God’s decisions to reject. Some of the biblical statements are silent about the ultimate outcome of those hardened by God. In addition, however, Paul expressly speaks of the rejection of Israel as a transient divine action, as an inner-historical judgment leading to conversion and salvation. He proclaims the rejection of Israel as the reconciliation of the world, as the riches for the nations (Rom. 11.12, 15), and as only a temporary blindness of Israel in relation to its coming salvation (11.25f.). It should be noted that the word rejection only occurs in this context in the New Testament (11.15), but it has taken on the meaning of a comprehensive, overarching concept in the history of theology. (d) In contrast to the manifold witness to the divine decree of election before the beginning of the world, there is virtually no biblical evidence which speaks of God’s decree of rejection existing before the beginning or since the beginning of the world. Even those biblical texts that largely follow this parallel construction

The Incommensurability between God’s Electing and Rejecting

lack its exact parallel. In the pericope of Mt. 25.31–46 there is no information about a pre-temporal preparation of the eternal fire, which would correspond to the preparation of the kingdom for the blessed “from the beginning of the world” (cf. vv. 34 and 41). Even though the rejection is a divine decision that determines human activity, nevertheless, in contrast to the election by grace, this decision is not presupposed to have preceded the creation of the world or to have existed since the beginning of creation. This passage truly seems to contradict the fact that Rev. 17.8 speaks of those “whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world.” But it still needs to be noted that here the book of life is not opposite a book of death; the entries in the one book are not opposite the entries in the other, but merely a non-entry. (e) While the election took place solely by God’s free grace, and not on the basis of human works—indeed, it took place even before the creation of humankind—the rejection is God’s response to human activity. Through his rejection, God does not make a person a sinner, but gives up that person to the sins that the person has decided to commit. Through the hardening, God shuts sinners in their sins and makes them blind to the judgment that is coming. In this way, the rejection is the beginning of the divine judgment. Through the hardening, God did not first make Pharaoh the oppressor of the Israelites, but rather by hardening him, he blinded the oppressor to the threat of judgment and thus handed him over to judgment. God did not make Israel a rebellious people through Isaiah’s preaching about their stubbornness, but rather through this sermon the rebellious people that Israel was became deaf and blind to the call to repentance until the judgment was carried out (Isa. 6.11ff.). The same holds true for the other biblical statements. One will certainly also have to think not only of the previous individual actions as the reason for the rejection but also of the sinful condition of the fallen human race, as a member of which the individual sins. Augustine rightly pointed this out.[xiii] Election thus comes to a person apart from works, namely, despite the person’s sin; but rejection comes to a person because of the person’s sin. The election is by free grace; in the rejection, however, God executes his judgment. These biblical-theological statements about election by grace and about rejection must not be overlooked in the dogmatic development of the doctrine of predestination. On the one hand, they warn against developing—on the basis of logical inferences drawn from the biblical statements about the pre-temporal election of God’s people—a parallel doctrine of a divine decree of rejection that already determines the other people before the creation of the world. Since Augustine, such conclusions have not stopped being made in the history of Western theology, and they have probably been systematized most consistently in Theodore Beza’s

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diagram “ordo rerum decretarum.”1 On the other hand, the biblical and theological statements warn against developing—on the basis of logical inferences drawn from the biblical statements about rejection—a parallel doctrine of election as a reward for good works that God foresees. By relinquishing these two opposing possibilities for drawing obvious conclusions, dogmatics must respect the logical imbalance that exists between God’s election by grace and God’s rejection. The biblical statements about rejection are by no means simply the opposite of the biblical statements about the election by grace, and vice versa. To be sure, eternal life and eternal death are so opposed to one another that the one is the complete negation of the other, but the difference between God’s election and his rejection goes much deeper than merely that the one decision of God is already truly recognized to be a negation of his other decision. Both decisions of God are so different in their origin, their motivation, and their execution, that the parallelism in a doctrine of double predestination is not possible. This difference can be formulated in dogmatics in different ways, whether as merely a single predestination, i. e., predestination is solely the decision of the divine election by grace that was made before the creation of the world, or as a doctrine of double predestination, wherein the profound difference between the two divine predestinings is clearly shown. Whether only a single or a double predestination is taught is not the decisive issue. What is in fact decisive is that the election by grace, in contrast to rejection, is maintained as a pre-temporal effective decree. Thus the Second Synod of Orange (529) taught that divine grace is working prior to human works, but it rejected a divine predestination “ad malum.”2 So, too, the Synod of Quiercy (853) taught the predestination to life, but it rejected an eternal predestination to perdition. By limiting itself here to statements about God’s foreknowledge of sins, his handing over of the lost, and his surrendering them to the predetermined punishment, it confessed “only one predestination of God, which pertains either to the gift of grace or to the retribution of justice.”3 And if the Third Synod of Valence (855) explicitly confessed a double predestination, namely “the predestination of the elect to life and the predestination of the impious to death,” there clearly is no parallelism here: in election God’s mercy precedes human merit; in rejection human sin precedes God’s righteous judgment. Since God “only foreknew” sin… “but did not predestine it,” predestination does not mean the same thing

1 Theodore Beza, “Diagram ordo rerum decretarum” [Diagram of the Order of Things], in Opera, 3 vols. (Geneva, 1583), I.170. [This tabula praedestinationis first appeared in Beza’s Summa totius Christianismi [Summary of the Whole of Christianity] (Geneva: n. p., 1555). A reproduction of the table in English appears in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, 147–148. –Ed.] 2 Denzinger, 397. [One of the conclusions that Bishop Caesarius of Arles drew up in connection with this synod rejects the notion that some are predestined “ad malum” (“to evil”). –Ed.] 3 Denzinger, 621. [Emphasis added by Schlink. –Ed.]

Excursus: On the Issue of the Theological Syllogism

if the predestination of the one to life and of the other to death was taught here.4 This relinquishing of a logical parallelism can also be found in the eleventh article of the Formula of Concord (1580), the only doctrinal section within the Lutheran confessional writings in which the doctrine of election is expressly addressed.[xiv] Here only the eternal election by grace is taught as predestination; the rejection is taught as the punishment for sins that God foreknew. Alongside the inferences drawn from the statements about the election by grace as causa salutis [cause of salvation], there are no parallel conclusions drawn for the rejection as the cause of sin. Nor has it been taught that, parallel to the statements about God’s foreknowledge of sin as the basis for rejection, the divine foreknowledge of faith and good works is the basis for election. God elects some in Christ despite their sin, and he rejects others because of their sin.

Ecumenical dialogue will have to pay particular attention to whether the logical parallelism in the statements about election and rejection is consistently implemented. When looked at more closely, such consistency is far less the case than has been asserted in controversial theological discussion. For example, not only did Augustine disrupt the parallelism but so too did Luther and even Calvin.

Excursus: On the Issue of the Theological Syllogism[xv] We are faced with the disturbing fact that in the doctrine of predestination, apparently inescapable logical inferences drawn from theologically indisputable premises lead to erroneous statements, namely, on the one hand, inferences for the doctrine of rejection that are drawn from the biblical statements about God’s election by grace and his omnipotence; and, on the other hand, inferences for the doctrine of election by grace that are drawn from the biblical statements about God’s rejection and his omniscience. The former statements about divine grace and omnipotence contradict the biblical statements about rejection, while the latter statements about divine rejection and omniscience contradict those about election by grace. Each of the two conclusions call God’s grace into question in completely opposite ways, and it is no coincidence that precisely through such conclusions the doctrine of predestination has largely become a nightmare or at least a “noli me tangere” among Christians.[xvi] (a) This state of affairs is all the more disturbing given that the justification for these theological conclusions is generally acknowledged in principle. To be sure, what is still disputed is the type of premises that may be used, from which further theological statements may be advanced through logical inferences, especially the question of whether only biblical statements may be used as premises for theological conclusions, or if dogmatic or even

4 Denzinger, 628f.

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philosophical statements may also be used. What remains undisputed, however, is that further theological insights that are true can be obtained from theologically undisputed statements by means of logical inferences. (b) Despite the facts outlined above in the doctrine of predestination, one cannot demand that theological conclusions be avoided and that one should stick strictly to reproducing biblical statements, for it is impossible to summarize them systematically without making inferences. But the rejection of theological conclusions in favor of irrationalism comes even less into consideration, for this would also be the end of faith, since believing is always at the same time knowing. (c) It is, however, necessary that in theological conclusions not only the content but also the structure of the biblical (as well as the dogmatic) statements be taken into account, which are then considered to be premises. The structure of all theological statements is originally determined by the fact that God encounters human beings in the personal freedom of his historical action. That is why human beings are barred from making statements about God as they do about other objects of their thinking. Rather, human beings have to bow down in faith before the God who encounters them, and to respond to his address by praying to him and by bearing witness to others. The statements about God’s attributes and about God’s eternal decree are based on statements about God’s historical action, and they grow out of them, especially as statements of adoration and worship. (d) The various structures of faith-responses to God’s act of salvation—in prayer and doxology, in witness and doctrinal teaching as well as in confession of faith—cannot be arbitrarily interchanged or even reduced to a single structure. Rather, all of them together form an edifice [Gefüge] in which each structure has its specific, irreplaceable function. Each of these structures has its own particular shape for the further development of the statements made in that type of structure. This also applies to theological conclusions. Even if they seem to be formally and logically correct, the statements that are made in the various structures must not be arbitrarily combined; instead, they must retain the unique orientation of the various basic structures of faith-response, which is determined both by their unique personal reference (whether it be God or human beings) and by their unique function that is related to their content. (e) Like the statements about the divine Trinity, those about God’s eternal decree of love are ultimate statements, although they are statements about a decision made by God before his act of creation. That is also why theological thinking here has to begin with the historical address by God.

7. The Warning to the Church and the Invitation to the World With the knowledge of the profound difference between divine election and rejection, we have indeed become unsettled with respect to the certainty of our theoretical considerations and inferences. Our self-confidence, however, is only

The Warning to the Church and the Invitation to the World

destroyed when we inquire further, in an existential way, how we can be certain of our election. Election encounters the person in the divine calling. This calling comes through the proclamation of the word of Holy Scripture. But wherever this word is heard, individuals see themselves confronted by a twofold witness. They hear of God’s opposing actions toward Jacob and Esau, toward Moses and Pharaoh, toward Israel and Egypt, toward Peter and Judas. They hear of God’s electing and rejecting. But which of these witnesses applies to the hearer? The issue of the doctrine of predestination only becomes really burning when, while hearing about God’s opposing actions, we ask: What has God decided about me? This question is aggravated further in that Holy Scripture bears witness to the following: although the Old Testament covenantal people were elected, God hardened them through the preaching of Isaiah, and apart from a remnant, he rejected them. Although the chosen people had heard the message of Jesus, they nailed him to the cross, and the majority were hardened (Rom. 11.7ff.). Although Judas was chosen as an apostle by Jesus, he was lost. The same congregation that the Lord has gathered through his electing word, he can “blot out of the book of life” (Rev. 3.5), “spit out” from his mouth (v. 16). The elected can become the discarded. By contrast, however, non-elected people can be called by God and saved: “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved’” (Rom. 9.25; cf. Hos. 2.23). Those who were hardened can then be accepted by God for the sake of his purpose (Rom. 11.15f.). Are not all fronts reversed? The witness to election thus becomes the most intense shaking of all Christian security, and at the same time it is an occasion for hope for those who are far away. From the biblical statements about election and rejection the warning goes out to the church: “Do not be arrogant, but be afraid” (Rom. 11.20 [NIV]). Thus, through the twofold biblical witness about God’s actions of electing and rejecting, every person is radically confronted with basic questions: Which of these witnesses applies to me? What has God decided about me? Does not this twofold action of God, to which Holy Scripture bears witness, ultimately turn all witness into judgment? Can anyone be certain of one’s election? It is quite clear that the New Testament texts bear witness that believers are certain of their election. For example, Paul not only taught in principle that the people whom God had foreknown were also called and glorified by God (Rom. 8.29f.), but Paul also praised God in the certainty that he belonged to the elect and that nothing can separate one from God’s love (v. 31ff.). Even the beginning of the letter to the Ephesians does not set forth an abstract teaching about election, but God is praised in the certainty that “he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world” (1.4 [S]). “As the predestined ones, we have obtained an inheritance” (1.11 [S]). This certainty is made available to the whole congregation. Every member of the congregation should join in this adoring praise.

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But how is this certainty about divine election by grace possible? This question must be asked with respect to ourselves and with respect to others. (a) Without reservation or exception, all people have to confess that God judges justly when he rejects them. In humility we have to bow before the demands and threats of his law, and we have to agree that God is justified in his wrath, which he reveals against all sinful flesh. If we were to look for signs in ourselves that we belong to the elect, we would immediately be lost. We would either end up deceiving ourselves or sinking into despair, for none of us can stand before God with our works. Here each person can only confess: “I have sinned before you; I am guilty of condemnation. I am not worthy of being called your child.” But in acknowledging the divine judgment, we are expected to cling to the gospel. As those who have fallen into judgment, we are expected to hold before God Jesus Christ, who was judged for us. As those who deserve rejection, we are expected to flee to Christ, whom God rejected in our place. By believing in Christ, we can be certain that we are graciously accepted by God. In Christ, God has embraced our sinful past, present, and future with his grace. Faith can be certain that God’s promise in the gospel is not deceptive, that his calling is serious, and that his faithfulness is unchangeable. Even if rejection is what is properly due to the human being, and election is what is utterly undeserved and surprising, faith recognizes that electing, pardoning, saving, and glorifying is God’s proper work, but rejecting, hardening, judging, condemning is God’s alien and improper work. The certainty of our election does not arise as a consequence of God’s metaphysical nature, nor as a consequence of what human beings discover by observing themselves. Nor does it arise as a consequence of having even the most correct doctrine of election. Rather, this certainly comes solely by faith in the gospel promised to us, and thus in Christ who died for us. As unambiguous as the New Testament witness to the certainty of election is, it is by no means to be confused with a human certainty. It is true that this certainty embraces the whole life of the believer, and its foundation remains in force, even if the person fails, but it is true certainty only when God is acknowledged again and again to be correct in his rejection of us, and when, by faith, we grasp Jesus Christ again and again as the reason for our election: in word and in the sacraments. We have this certainty not because we have it, but because we let this be told to us again and again, namely, that God has reached out to us. He has accepted us as his own in Christ. The certainty of election is the strongest consolation in that it is at the same time the most profound loss of the person’s security [die stärkste Entsicherung des Menschen]. In this loss of security, the person is dependent solely on grace. It is not the person who lives, but Christ who lives in the person. (b) But how can I be confident that God has chosen me if I cannot also be certain about the election of other human beings? Is certainty even possible?

The Warning to the Church and the Invitation to the World

Here, too, it would be wrong to try to arrive at an answer by means of inferences from God’s eternal being or on the basis of the condition of other human beings. It is no coincidence that the search for identifiable signs of the elect has repeatedly led to divisions within Christendom. Is that not to be expected with regard to the elect, who are now enemies of Christ and who will only convert to him in the future? And conversely, is that not to be expected with the rejected, who are now still members of the church and whose apostasy will only become visible in the future? Whenever, as an onlooker, one has tried to answer the question of the election of other human beings, one has already deviated from the path to which the gospel calls us. If we can only be certain of our election when we, in acknowledging the rejection we deserve, believe in the Christ who was rejected for us, then the response to the question about the election of other human beings can only be to bear witness to them about this very Christ, call them to repentance and to faith, and praise the grace of God together with them. If God’s election has been accomplished for us through the gospel, we now have to serve divine election by sharing the same gospel with others. When we ask how many people God has elected, God responds with the commission to proclaim the gospel to all people. God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2.4 [L]). Instead of trying to identify the elect and the rejected, we must be the servant of those who are still far away by bearing witness to them about Christ, through whom God elects the sinner. The answer to the question about the election of other human beings does not come from observations we make about them, but from our loving self-giving for them in the wake of God’s own prior sacrifice of his Son for all. The self-sacrifice of those who seek other humans as the elected, and who call them to faith, finds its extreme culmination in the willingness to be rejected oneself so that others may be saved (Rom. 9.3). Because God’s election takes place through the call of the gospel, by faith in the power of the gospel we may address all to whom we speak that gospel as those who are called and beloved by God and, with the New Testament letters, we may greet all who accept the gospel in faith as the elect of God. But where our message finds no faith, we must first critically ask ourselves whether we have really proclaimed the truth of the gospel, or whether we have obscured it and stood in the way of God’s work.

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Editor’s Notes to Chapter 30 [i] [ii] [iii] [iv] [v] [vi] [vii] [viii] [ix] [x] [xi] [xii] [xiii]

[xiv] [xv]

[xvi]

Cf. BDAG, 305–306. Cf. BDB, 393–395; BDAG, 866. Cf. BDAG, 873 (“to decide upon beforehand, predetermine”). Cf. BDAG, 889, 869. Cf. BDAG, 5–6. The term ἀποβαλή refers to “the (temporary) rejection of Israelites by God” (BDAG, 108; cf. Rom. 11.15). Cf. BDB, 304–305 (“grow stout, rigid, hard”; “make rigid, hard, i. e., perverse, obstinate, harden (the heart of anyone”). Cf. BDB, 904 (“make hard, stiff, stubborn”). Cf. BDB, 457–458 (“make heavy, dull, unresponsive”). Cf. BDB, 1031–1032 (“make fat, dull, unreceptive”). Cf. BDAG, 930 (“to cause to be unyielding in resisting information, harden”). Cf. BDAG, 761–762 (“to hand over, turn over, give up a person”). See, e. g., Augustine, De correptione et gratia (CSEL, 92.219–280; Rebuke and Grace, WSA, I/26.109–145); De praedestinatione sanctorum (PL, 44.959–992; The Predestination of the Saints, WSA, I/26.149–187). See FC Ep. XI (BSELK, 1287–1292 [BC, 517–520]); FC SD XI (BSELK, 1560–1596 [BC, 640–656]). The following excursus is based on Schlink’s earlier essay, “Theologischer Syllogismus als Problem der Prädesinationslehre,” in Einsicht und Glaube [Insight and Faith], Festschrift für Prof. D. Dr. Gottlieb Söhngen, 2d ed., ed. Joseph Ratzinger and Heinrich Fries (Freiburg: Herder, 1963), 299–320. A teaching Christians would prefer “not to touch.” Cf. the Vulgate’s Latin rendering of the risen Jesus’ statement to Mary in Jn. 20.17.

Afterword The Gospel—The Basis of an Ecumenical Dogmatics Remarks on the Influence of Edmund Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics: Basic Features Ecumenical Dogmatics: Basic Features summarizes the life’s work of the researcher and teacher of theological dogmatics as well as the pioneering ecumenist Edmund Schlink. Lectures, addresses, sermons, and publications from earlier creative periods have been incorporated into this opus. It was originally intended to be published with the title The Mighty Deeds of God. Edmund Schlink was unable to experience the lasting effect of his Ecumenical Dogmatics. But the previous oeuvre of this ecumenical dogmatician had a formative, marked effect on the life of the churches and the ecumenical movement. In the various contributions that were made at the commemoration of his 100th birthday, he was aptly called “teacher of the church,” “ecumenical pioneer,” “trailblazer of ecumenism,” and the “Nestor of ecumenical theology.”1

1. The Ecumenical Dogmatics The Ecumenical Dogmatics unfolds the trinitarian doctrine of the mighty deeds of God in creation, redemption, and the new creation, and it has its center in the doctrine of the triune God. In this way, “the gospel shows itself to be the presupposition of church doctrine”; “the beginning can only be with that which is a given for all parts of Christendom and which is foundational for the church of every time

1 Günther Gassmann, “Edmund Schlink—An Ecumenical Pioneer of the 20th Century,” Ecumenical Trends 33 (2004): 6–10; Michael Plathow, “Edmund Schlink—Lehrer der Kirche: Doxologische und poetische Theologie,” Badische Pfarrerblätter (March 2003): 61–65; Christoph Schwöbel, “Ökumenische Dogmatik,” Ökumenische Rundschau 52 (2003): 244–258; Klaus Engelhardt, “Biographische Reminiszenzen zu Edmund Schlink,” Ökumenische Rundschau 52 (2003): 242–244; Notger Slenczka, “Grund und Norm der Vielfalt,” Kerygma und Dogma 49 (2003): 24–51; Jaroslav Vokoun, “Edmund Schlinks ökumenische Methode und ihr bleibender Beitrag zur Lösung der ökumenischen Probleme,” Catholica 57 (2003): 309–324. [Homer presents Nestor as a highly respected elder statesman, the archetypal wise old man, one who is always ready with advice, e. g., he tries to make peace between Agamemnon and Achilles (see the Iliad, 1.254ff, 11.635ff.) –Ed.]

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and in every place, namely, with the gospel of Jesus Christ.”2 This epistemological presupposition refers both to the dogmatic foundation and to the ecumenical horizon of theological developments and their ethical implications. The doxological conclusion of the dogmatics is formed by “God’s decree of love.” The table of contents identifies the initial excursus, on the “relationship between theological and philosophical linguistics,” which receives its methodological presuppositions through reflections on the structures of theological statements (48ff. [134ff.]), on the principles of biblical hermeneutics (637ff. [943ff.]), on the principles of dogmatic hermeneutics (655ff. [964ff.]), and on the hermeneutics of church law (669ff. [982ff.]). Following that excursus are two more, one on the issue of theological analogy, which has an immediate significance for speaking of and to God (733ff. [1071ff.]), and another on the issue of the theological syllogism, which receives its noetic intensification in the “incommensurability between God’s electing and rejecting” (798ff. [1165ff.]). Edmund Schlink took up impulses from Karl Barth’s theology, but in fact he was shaped by the Lutheran tradition. His Theology of the Lutheran Confessions made him known worldwide.3 Indicative of a Lutheran origin are the ordering of “law and gospel,” “gospel and commandment” (211ff. [363ff.], 416ff. [639ff.], 518ff. [779ff.]), the doctrine of the power of sin (122ff. [243ff.], 281ff. [456ff.]), of repentance and renewal (310ff. [490ff.], 463ff. [695ff.]), of judgment and grace (401ff. [606ff.], 778ff. [1138ff.]), as well as the structure of paradox (shaped by the theology of the cross)4 in the doctrine of the preservation and governance of humankind and the world by means of God’s forbearance, despite human sin (146ff. [275ff.], 175ff. [315ff.], 201ff. [348ff.]). That Lutheran origin is related to an ecumenical expansiveness, which knows about the differences in such ecumenically controversial topics as “Scripture and tradition,” “the image of God in the human being,” the “justification of the sinner by grace alone,” “grace and free will,” the understanding of the church, mariology, church office, ordination, and apostolic succession—but, like the World Conference in Lund (1952), it grasps the differences from the perspective of what is held in common. Understanding the other church tradition leads to a feeling 2 Schlink, ÖD, SÖB 2.2. [71]. [All subsequent citations of the Ecumenical Dogmatics will be cited parenthetically in the text. The German page number from SÖB 2 will be given first, while the reference to the American Edition (ESW 2) will follow in brackets. –Ed.] 3 Schlink, Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1940; 2d. ed. 1946; 3rd ed. 1948; 4th ed. 1954). 4 Schlink, “Weisheit und Torheit” [Wisdom and Foolishness], Kerygma und Dogma 1, no. 1 (1955): 1–22. [This essay originally served as Schlink’s rector’s address, which he delivered at the annual celebration of the University of Heidelberg on 21 Nov. 1953. During that academic year, he served as the university’s rector. In this address, he utilized Luther’s “theology of the cross” and the paradoxical character of Luther’s 1518 Heidelberg Disputation to explore the distinction between wisdom and folly. –Ed.]

The Ecumenical Dogmatics

of being understood and to knowing that one is acknowledged, despite ongoing differences. “We are not to compare the others against ourselves, but rather to compare ourselves, together with them, against the apostolic witness to Christ, and only in this way, on the basis of Christ, recognize our own reality as well as that of the unfamiliar” (696 [1020ff.]). No Church can be the church of Jesus Christ without the other churches. The forewords by the Roman Catholic theologian Heinrich Fries (xvii [22]) and the Greek Orthodox theologian Nikos A. Nissiotis (xix [25]) are examples of this.5 As early as 1965, Edmund Schlink identified the “tasks of an ecumenical dogmatics”: Every dogmatics that takes its task seriously claims to be an ecumenical dogmatics, regardless of which Church in which it was written. It also then makes this claim even when it is entirely denominational [konfessionalistisch] and monological. After all, it is the concern of every dogmatics—which presupposes Holy Scripture and the historical dogmatic decisions, and which seeks to be accountable to the questions that have newly come forth in the contemporary situation—to teach what the church of all times and places has to proclaim and do if it wants to be and remain “the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.”6

At the academic commemoration on the occasion of Edmund Schlink’s 100th birthday, Christoph Schwöbel concluded by summarizing the task of an ecumenical dogmatics, i. e., a dogmatics that is based on the truth of the Christian faith in the horizon of the community of believers: There should be no dogmatics that is not ecumenical; but also, there should be no ecumenism that is not anchored in the faith that dogmatics tries to express. Such an ecumenical dogmatics, in its respective historical situation, inquires first about what God’s command is, and it is dependent on unveiling the church anew again and again through God’s grace. Second, it sees its basis in the bestowing action of Christ, and it sees itself set

5 See Schlink, “Die Bedeutung der östlichen und westlichen Traditionen für die Christenheit,” KC, 232–240; reprint, SÖB, 1/1.232–240. [“The Significance of the Eastern and Western Traditions for Christendom,” ESW, 1.288–297. –Ed.]; Schlink, “Das Ringen um einen römisch-katholischen Ökumenismus im II. Vatikanischen Konzil” [The Struggle over Roman Catholic Ecumenism at the Second Vatican Council], in Die Ökumene in Theologie und Recht [The Ecumene in Theology and Law], ed. Theodor Heckel (München: Evangelischer Presseverband für Bayern, 1965), 16–42; and Schlink, “Die Bedeutung der orthodoxen Kirche für die ökumenische Bewegung” [The Significance of the Orthodox Church for the Ecumenical Movement], Ökumenische Rundschau 22 (1973): 430–441. 6 Schlink, “Die Aufgabe einer ökumenischen Dogmatik,” 84–93. [For a revised version of this paragraph, see the opening sentences in chap. 3.3 above. –Ed.]

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on its way by the reality of Christ, arising from his coming and moving toward his coming. Third, it knows that it is directed to the mercy of Christ, who already now bestows his presence upon the many churches, and it enables and calls them to witness to the unity that is in the community. Fourth, such a dogmatics is the work of thinking faith, which draws its strength from prayer and proclamation and, strengthened by the knowledge of the truth granted to it by God, joins in praising God.7

The last aspect of the task presupposes the “three basic relationships between believing and knowing,” which are accounted for in the teaching of an ecumenical dogmatics in view of the truth that is coming true in Jesus Christ.8 The question about the tasks of an ecumenical dogmatics implies the question about the ecumenical methodology in connection with a biblical, dogmatic, and church-law hermeneutic.9 Biblically and theologically, Edmund Schlink analyzes the manifold contexts and conditioned situations of the biblical witnesses, the variety of conditioned content within those witnesses, their “life setting” [Sitz im Leben], and the structure of their statements, as well as the structure of dogmatic statements in the history of dogma. At the same time, using the distinction between the content of a statement and the form of a statement, he reconstructs the principles and basic features that are held in common within the variety, as they are disclosed by the gospel as the “active word of God” in Holy Scripture and in connection with the ancient church’s and the Reformation’s confessions as “norma normata”—and through structural analysis of theological speech and dogmatic thinking in responses [Ant-Worten] to the address [An-Rede] of the word of God, including those in other denominational [konfessionellen] and church traditions. Of course, there arose differences in dogmatic statements when Augustine spoke about the human will against a self-assured voluntarism and ethical activism, and when at the same time Eastern theologians defended the freedom of the will over against a natural and deterministic misunderstanding of freedom on the part of Gnosticism; and when Thomas Aquinas taught about God’s being and nature principally in Aristotelian concepts, while Gregory of Palamas did so principally in neo-Platonic concepts; and when the Chalcedonian Definition was interpreted in the structure of doxology or in terms of a

7 Schwöbel, “Ökumenische Dogmatik,” 254f. 8 Schlink, “Die drei Grundbeziehungen zwischen Glauben und Erkennen,” 172–187 (cf. ÖD, SÖB, 2.21ff. [ESW, 2.96ff.]); cf. also Michael Plathow, “Glauben, Erkennen, Bekennen: Grundzüge einer Ökumenischen Dogmatik” [Believing, Knowing, Confessing: Basic Features of an Ecumenical Dogmatics] Ruperto-Carola 36 (1984): 166–168; and Dietrich Ritschl, “Theologie als Erkenntnis” [Theology as Knowledge], Ökumenische Rundschau 34 (1985): 287–298. 9 Schlink, “Die Methode des dogmatischen ökumenischen Dialogs,” 205–211. [Cf. Schlink, “Hermeneutik, Denkformen, Verstehen,” 14–22. –Ed.]

The Ecumenical Dogmatics

theoretical definition of the relationship between the divine and human natures; or when the Protestant Reformers set forth the doctrine of justification in the form of a personal encounter of the divine word with the hearer, or when the Council of Trent set forth its statements on the same topic in the form of a description of the process of justification, and so on.10

In view of the dogmatic plurality and the differences in doctrine—and by keeping in mind the “remembrance” (Jn. 14.26; cf. 645 [952]) of the self-revelation of the triune God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit for the salvation of humankind—the ecumenical dogmatician has to provide a methodologically responsible “translation” from one structure of the theological statement into another. This translation takes place in reflection on the “elementary structures in which faith makes its statements.”11 In doing so, he has to consider such dogmatic statements “that have not yet been actualized in the history of dogma.”12 The theologian begins in faith by recognizing prayer as the basic form of theological statement in response to the divine address given by the gospel. “Prayer is the response to the gospel in the address of the divine Thou” (33 [115]). Among the various forms of prayer doxology assumes a special place in view of its pronominal structure: “In doxology believers do not ask God anything for themselves, nor do they ask God to act for other people, but they only worship God” (34 [116]). “Witness is the response to the gospel in addressing the other human Thou, both the individual Thou and the collective Thou” (35 [118]). Among the various forms of address that bear witness to other human beings, doctrinal teaching [Lehre] assumes a special position in view of its pronominal structure: both teaching [lehren] and proclaiming [verkündigen] are often used synonymously; such doctrinal teaching designates the “indirect” address, namely, the listener’s thoughtful, responsive address, “in that it passes on and interprets what God has done in history for and through human beings” (37 [121]). The I of the person who is making these statements and the concrete historical situation in which that person is making them remain in the background. As in doxology, such speaking about God takes place in the third person. While doctrinal teaching is addressed to humans, doxology is addressed solely to God. In confession all the responses of faith are concentrated in

10 Schlink, “Die Aufgabe einer ökumenischen Dogmatik,” 90–91; cf. Schlink, ÖD, SÖB, 2.352, 423, 478, etc. [ESW, 2.547, 647, 718. –Ed.] 11 Schlink, “Die Aufgabe einer ökumenischen Dogmatik,” 91; cf. Schlink, ÖD, SÖB, 2.45ff., 57ff. [ESW, 2.131ff., 147ff.] –Ed.] 12 Schlink, “Die Aufgabe einer ökumenischen Dogmatik,” 89.

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a unique way; confession “uniquely combines prayer and witness, doxology and teaching” (39 [123]).13 If the ecumenical dogmatician simply compares the various theological statements of the separated churches in connection with the whole range of faith statements found in these churches, that person will discover a greater level of agreement between the separated churches. “Consequently, it will become clear that some dogmatic statements were not originally and essentially statements of doctrine but statements of prayer and proclamation that were transposed into statements of doctrine and, as such, must be interpreted anew.”14 It will also become clear that their elementary structure is unique to each of them in the apostolicity and catholicity of the confession of truth in the crucified and risen Christ and in the doxological praise of the triune God: the confession and praise of the mighty deeds of God as the source from which the church, as God’s people, lives on its way toward the Lord who is coming to meet it in judgment and grace. The basic features of Edmund Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics are thus structured confessionally and doxologically with respect to their content, construction, and intention. It is a doxological dogmatics of the living Christ, in which the triune God reveals himself today through the Holy Spirit as the eschatological Savior and epicenter of salvation. In other words, to use Edmund Schlink’s planetary model that called for a “Copernican Revolution” (695ff. [1019ff.]) in ecumenical methodology, the various churches, like planets, revolve around Jesus Christ, their sun, from whom they receive light, warmth, and vitality.

2. The Impact of the Ecumenical Dogmatics It was not only on the occasion of his 100th birthday that the lasting impact of the ecumenical dogmatician Edmund Schlink became clear. Various dissertations about his ecumenical methodology and his understanding of the church had been written.15 Edmund Schlink’s biblical and theological distinctions and his dogmatic-

13 For the material quoted in this paragraph, see also Schlink, “Die Struktur,” KC, 24ff. (SÖB, 1/1.25ff.). [ESW, 1.68ff. –Ed.] 14 Schlink, “Die Struktur,” KC, 79. [SÖB, 1/1.79 (ESW, 1.123). –Ed.] 15 See Gerhard Schwenzer, Die grossen Taten Gottes und die Kirche: Zur Ekklesiologie Edmund Schlinks [The Mighty Deeds of God and the Church: On the Ecclesiology of Edmund Schlink], Konfessionskundliche und Kontroverstheologische Studien 22 (Paderborn: Bonifacius, 1969); Joachim Drumm, Doxologie und Dogma: Die Bedeutung der Doxologie für die Wiedergewinnung theologischer Rede in der evangelischen Theologie [Doxology and Dogma: The Significance of Doxology for the Recovery of Theological Speech in Protestant Theology], Beiträge zur ökumenische Theologie 22 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1991); Eber, Einheit der Kirche; and Skibbe, A Quiet Reformer.

The Impact of the Ecumenical Dogmatics

doctrinal statements convey new insights and impulses in articles on the understanding of baptism, the sacrifice of the Lord’s Supper, ordination and ministerial office, apostolic succession, and the Petrine ministry.16 Basic insights into the structure of theological statements, especially “confession” and “doxology,” have been included in the systematic-theological proposals of other theologians.17 For the ecumenical dogmatician Edmund Schlink, ecumenical research, teaching, and life belong together. This is characterized not only by the Ecumenical Institute and its adjoining study house for students that he founded at Heidelberg University.18 His many years of collaboration and mutually enriching cooperation in the following organizations also demonstrate the breadth of his ecumenical engagement: in the “Working Group of University Ecumenical Institutes,”19 which has found its continuation in the “Societas Oecumenica”; in the “German Ecumenical Study Committee (DÖSTA)”; on the board of trustees of the “Ecumenical Institute at Bossey” and of the “Ecumenical Institute at Tantur”; but especially in the “Faith and Order Commission” of the WCC,20 at several plenary assemblies of the WCC, in the “Ecumenical Working Group of Protestant and Roman Catholic Theologians” (the so-called Stählin-Jäger Group),21 as the official observer of the EKD at the

16 Among others, see Wolfram Kerner, “Gläubigentaufe und Säuglingstaufe” [Believers’ Baptism and Infant Baptism] (Ph.D. diss., University of Heidelberg, 2004). 17 Wainwright, Doxology; Dietrich Ritschl, “Theologie und Doxologie,” in Zur Logik der Theologie [On the Logic of Theology] (München: Kaiser, 1984), 336f.; Friedrich Mildenberger, Biblische Dogmatik, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1992–1993), 1.192ff.; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, 3 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988–1993), 3.288ff., 418f., 447f. et passim [ET: 3.169ff., 258ff., 450f. et passim]; Reinhard Slenczka, Neues und Altes, 2 vols. (Neuendettelsau: Neuendettelsau Gesellschaft fur Mission, 2000), 1.211 et passim; Peter Zimmerling, Evangelische Spiritualität: Wurzeln und Zugänge [Protestant Spirituality: Roots and Approaches] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 203ff.; in addition to the works cited in footnote 1: Johannes Brosseder, Ökumenische Theologie: Geschichte—Probleme (München: Max Hueber, 1967); Peter Neuner, Ökumenische Theologie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997); and Siegfried Wiedenhofer, “Ökumenische Theologie (1930–1965): Versuch einer wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Rekonstruktion” [Ecumenical Theology (1930–1965): An Attempt at an Historical Reconstruction], Catholica 34 (1980): 219ff., esp. 222 (footnote 8). 18 Michael Plathow, “Das Ökumenische Institut/Studentenwohnheim der Universität Heidelberg: Eine Einheit von Lehre, Forschung und Leben,” Heidelberger Jahrbücher 22 (1978): 115–123. 19 Hans-Heinrich Wolf et al., eds., Reform und Anerkennung kirchlicher Ämter: Ein Memorandum des Arbeitsgemeinschaft ökumenischer Universitätsinstitute [Reform and Recognition of Ministerial Offices: A Memorandum of the Working Group of University Ecumenical Institutes] (München: Kaiser, 1973); Arbeitsgemeinschaft Ökumenischer Universitätsinstitute, ed., Papsttum als ökumenische Frage [The Papacy as an Ecumenical Issue] (München: Kaiser, 1979); and Michael Plathow, “Papsttum als ökumenische Frage,” OECUMENICA 15 (2003): 34–41. 20 See Eber, Einheit der Kirche; Gassmann, “Edmund Schlink,” 6ff. 21 Karl Lehmann and Edmund Schlink, eds., Evangelium—Sakramente—Amt und die Einheit der Kirche [Gospel—Sacraments—Ministerial Office and the Unity of the Church], Dialog der Kirchen

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Second Vatican Council,22 and as a member of the dialogue between the EKD and the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow.23 In terms of content, the starting point of the Ecumenical Dogmatics, “the gospel of Jesus Christ,” is of significant importance; that gospel “is a given for all parts of Christendom and… is foundational for the church of every time and in every place” (2 [71]). The gospel is not only the report about the story of Jesus, “but it is at the same time the word through which Jesus Christ acts today as the living one.”

2 (Freiburg: Herder; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982); Lehmann and Schlink, eds., Das Opfer Jesu Christi und seine Gegenwart in der Kirche; and Barbara Schwahn, Der Ökumenische Arbeitskreis. 22 Schlink, NK (SÖB, 1/2). [ESW, 1.339ff. –Ed.] 23 The range of topics in these discussions—which were so important also from the point of view of reconciliation between Germany and Russia after the Second World War—is impressive, as they unfolded from the list of questions drawn up by Prof. L. N. Parijski and given to Prof. Dr. HansJoachim Iwand with the consent of the Moscow Patriarchate (cf. Tradition und Glaubensgerechtigkeit [Tradition and the Righteousness of Faith], Studienheft 3, ed. Aussenamt der EKD [Witten: Luther, 1961], 76ff.). The meeting places, years, and topics are as follows: Arnoldshain (1959): Tradition und Glaubensgerechtigkeit, Studienheft 3 (Witten: Luther, 1961); Sagorsk (1963): Vom Wirken des Heiligen Geistes [On the Working of the Holy Spirit], Studienheft 4, ed. Aussenamt der EKD (Witten: Luther, 1964); Höchst/Odenwald (1967): Versöhnung [Reconciliation] Studienheft 5, ed. Aussenamt der EKD (Witten: Luther, 1964); Leningrad (1969): Taufe—Neues Leben—Dienst [Baptism—New Life—Service], Studienheft 6, ed. Aussenamt der EKD (Witten: Luther, 1970); Kirchberg (1971): Der auferstandene Christus und das Heil der Welt [The Risen Christ and the Salvation of the World], Studienheft 7, ed. Aussenamt der EKD (Witten: Luther, 1972); Sagorsk (1973): Die Eucharistie. Studienheft 8, ed. Aussenamt der EKD (Bielefeld: Luther, 1974); Arnoldshain (1976): Das Opfer Christi und das Opfer der Christen [The Sacrifice of Christ and the Sacrifice of Christians], Studienheft 10, ed. Aussenamt der EKD (Frankfurt/Main: Otto Lembeck, 1979); Odessa (1979): Die Hoffnung auf die Zukunft der Menschheit unter der Verheissung Gottes [Hope toward the Future of Humanity under the Promise of God], Studienheft 12, ed. Aussenamt der EKD (Frankfurt/Main: Otto Lembeck, 1981); Schloss Schwanberg (1981): Das kirchliche Amt und die apostolische Sukzession [Church Office and Apostolic Succession], Studienheft 16, ed. Aussenamt der EKD (Frankfurt/Main: Otto Lembeck, 1984); Kiev (1984): Der Bischhöfliche Dienst in der Kirche [Episcopal Ministry in the Church], Studienheft 18, ed. Aussenamt der EKD (Frankfurt/Main: Otto Lembeck, 1992); Mülheim/Ruhr (1987): Das königliche Priestertum der Getauften und das apostolische Amt in der heiligen Kirche [The Royal Priesthood of the Baptized and the Apostolic Office in the Holy Church. These papers were not published. –Ed.]; Minsk (1990): Das Leben der Kirche und ihr Zeugnis als Ausdruck ihrer Heiligkeit und Katholizität [The Life of the Church and Its Witness as the Expression of Its Holiness and Catholicity. These papers were not published. –Ed.]; Sagorsk (1990 = Sagorsk VII): Die Rolle der Kirche in der sich erneuernden Gemeinschaft [The Role of the Church in the Renewing Community. These papers were not published. –Ed.]; and Bad Urach (1992): Die Kirche als Gemeinschaft der Heiligen und ihr Zeugnis in der Welt [The Church as a Communion of Saints and Their Witness in the World], in Bilaterale theologische Dialoge mit der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche, Studienheft 22, ed. Klaus Schwarz on behalf of the Aussenamt der EKD (Hermannsburg: Hermannsburg Missionshandlung, 1996). Edmund Schlink participated in these bilateral dialogues up to and including the ninth conference at Schloss Schwanenberg (12–17 December 1981).

The Impact of the Ecumenical Dogmatics

Clearly, there is a compatibility between this starting point in the gospel and the “Leuenberg Agreement” (16 March 1973), which declares that church unity—as pulpit and altar fellowship—is based in the common understanding of the gospel, i. e., in the understanding of the “living word of God in Jesus Christ” as a “new experience… to liberate and assure,”24 as it unfolds in paragraphs 6–12 and is explained in paragraphs 14–15 as agreement in the understanding of the Lord’s Supper. The gospel, in which the triune God now grants forgiveness and salvation in the present Christ through the Holy Spirit, has constitutive significance for the Reformation contribution to the ecumenical dialogue regarding the unity of the church in “The Church of Jesus Christ” (1994) and regarding the “Fellowship of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE),” with their distinction, but not separation, between the essence and form of the church. The parallels between the Leuenberg Agreement and the theological insights of Edmund Schlink are clear; Schlink played a decisive role in developing the “Arnoldshain Theses on the Lord’s Supper” (1–2 November 1957), which served as a basis for the understanding of the Lord’s Supper in the “Leuenberg Agreement.” The same is true for the conformity between the trinitarian unfolding of the Ecumenical Dogmatics and the understanding of the church by means of the trinitarian ecclesiology that developed in the doctrinal discussion that led to “The Church of Jesus Christ” (1994). This should be mentioned precisely because of Edmund Schlink’s roots in the Lutheran tradition.25 The careful reader of the Ecumenical Dogmatics is again and again struck by the meticulousness with which the diversity of biblical and dogmatic statements—with their different contexts and opposing modes of thought—are elaborated and traced back to their basic structures in the morphological whole of a church tradition. This is done in order to evaluate them as various responses and witnesses to the gospel in light of their ecumenical intention to translate apostolic teaching. Variations and differences are not to be leveled out or standardized; rather, they complement and enrich one another (440 [667]): unity in diversity, but also diversity in unity, for it is a matter of the various responses to the word of the triune God and also of the different witnesses to the one gospel in their theological hierarchy. And unity “lets each of the unifying churches maintain a high degree of their individuality that has developed on the apostolic foundation” (706 [1032]). The Protestant churches,

24 “Leuenberg Agreement” in The Ecumenical Movement, ed. Kinnamon and Cope, 150. 25 Schlink, “Die Weite der Kirche nach lutherischen Bekenntnis,” KC, 106–115 (SÖB, 1/1.106–115). [ESW, 1.155–165. –Ed.]; Schlink, “Der ökumenische Charakter und Anspruch des Augsburger Bekenntnisses,” Augsburger Konfession im ökumenischen Kontext, ed. Harding Meyer. LWB 6/7 (Geneva: LWF, 1979), 1–28. [ET: “The Ecumenical Character and Claim of the Augsburg Confession,” in The Augsburg Confession in Ecumenical Perspective, 1–28, LWF Report 6/7, ed. Harding Meyer, trans. Donata Coleman (Geneva: LWF, 1979), 1–28. –Ed.]

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like the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, are part of the divided body of Christ; they are local churches of the universal church of Jesus Christ.26 The planetary model of Jesus Christ as the sun—around which the various Christian churches revolve, experience warmth, life, and strength—aims toward the mutual recognition of the different churches in “reconciled diversity,” in view of the present Christ, by jointly confessing and witnessing to the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” as a gift and a task. This ecumenical methodology is furthered in the method of “differentiated consensus.” Different doctrinal positions, yes, even opposing ones, are examined for an underlying common concern, and then, in light of the fundamental concern that they share, it becomes a question of whether these differing positions can be recognized as legitimate representations of the same concern or must continue to be church-divisive. In this connection, chap. 22 (“The Unity of the Church and the Disunity of Christendom”) has received special attention. Edmund Schlink makes a distinction between “church” and “Christendom.” “Recognizing the one church in disunited Christendom” (694ff. [1017ff.] and “representing the one church in the unification of the separated churches” (700ff. [1026ff.]) are related to one another like ecumenical doctrine and ecumenical life, like consensus or convergence and koinonia [community/communion]. The Ecumenical Dogmatics develops methodical steps in ecumenical dialogue for representing and visualizing the unity that is recognized: (a) the necessary consensus in the confession of faith; (b) consensus in the mutual recognition of the statements of confession; (c) recognition of church ministry determined by God’s commission; (d) the abolishment of mutual anathemas; (e) the necessity of self-correction; (f) reception of communion in the worship service; (g) growing together in unity. These are the steps taken by the “Joint Ecumenical Commission,” which—in view of lifting the mutual anathemas—had been created by Pope John Paul II during his 1980 visit to Mainz. These steps also correspond to those in the book, The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide? 27 After many years of offering opinions and making decisions in congregations, regional church synods, commissions of the United Evangelical-Lutheran Church, and the Arnoldshain Conference, the EKD council chairman, regional bishop Dr. Klaus Engelhardt, when he visited Rome in December 1994, presented the pope with “The

26 Edmund Schlink, Die Vision des Papstes, Neuausgabe (Karlsruhe: Hans Thoma, 1997. [The Vision of the Pope: A Narrative, trans. Eugene Skibbe (Minneapolis: Kirk House, 2001). –Ed.] 27 Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg, eds., Lehrverurteilungen—Kirchen trennend? Dialog der Kirchen 4 (Freiburg in Breslau: Herder, 1988). [ET: The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide?, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990). –Ed.]

The Impact of the Ecumenical Dogmatics

Joint Protestant Statement on the Document, The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide?,” which still awaits a corresponding response. From the beginning and up to and including the conference at Schwanenberg Castle (12–17 October 1981), Edmund Schlink took part in the bilateral theological dialogues between the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow and the Protestant Church in Germany through his sermons and dogmatic and methodological contributions. Reinhard Slenczka has written an impressive report on “25 years of theological talks between the EKD and the Moscow Patriarchate.”28 On 11 November 1995, a “Joint Report to the Leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church and the EKD on the Status of the Bilateral Theological Dialogues” was published.29 It sums up the theological outcomes. Both reports set forth the background to Heinz Joachim Held’s essay, “Kirchen im Gespräch,” in the bilingual volume, Hinhören und Hinsehen, jointly published by the church office of the EKD and the church office of the Moscow Patriarchate.30 Contrary to short-term ecumenical memory, what is remembered here, in a future-orienting way, is the joint theological work in which Edmund Schlink was decisively involved and which is explicated in a scholarly manner in the Ecumenical Dogmatics. The bilateral dialogues between the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the “Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity,” e. g., Das Herrenmahl (1978)31 and Das geistliche Amt in der Kirche (1981),32 but also the multilateral discussions of the WCC and its consultation processes—for example, with respect to the so-called “Lima Document,” Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982),33 and the document, The Nature and Mission of the Church (1998)34 —were the inspiration for the deliberations about the method and content of the Ecumenical Dogmatics. However, 28 Reinhard Slenczka, “25 Jahre theologische Gespräche zwischen EKD und Moskauer Patriarchat,” Ökumensche Rundschau 34 (1985): 446–467. 29 “Gemeinsamer Bericht an die Leitung der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche und der EKD über den Stand der bilateralen theologischen Dialoge,” Bilaterale theologische Dialog emit der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche, 387ff. 30 Heinz Joachim Held, “Kirchen im Gespräch” [Churches in Dialogue], in Hinhören und Hinsehen: Beziehungen zwischen der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche und der EKD [Listening and Looking: Relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Protestant Church in Germany], 134ff., ed. Kirchenamt der EKD in Hannover and the Kirchlichen Aussenamt des Moskauer Patriarchats (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2003). 31 Das Herrenmahl [The Lord’s Supper], ed. Joint Roman Catholic and Evangelical-Lutheran Commission (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1978). 32 Das geistliche Amt in der Kirche [The Spiritual Office in the Church], ed. Joint Roman Catholic and Evangelical-Lutheran Commission (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1981). 33 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper no. 111 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982). 34 The Nature and Mission of the Church: A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement, Faith and Order Paper no. 181 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1998).

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these ecumenical documents have not yet been officially received, a matter that can only be ascertained with sober ecumenical realism. The reception of Schlink’s ecumenical approach may be briefly illustrated on the basis of those subjects that are still controversial, e. g., the Lord’s Supper, the ministry, and apostolic succession. It should be emphasized that Edmund Schlink wants to take the ecclesial-integral path on the way toward a partial ecumenical consensus. Consistent with the trinitarian foundation of the “nature” [“Wesen”] of the church as presented in The Church of Jesus Christ (1994)35 by the “Communion of Protestant Churches in Europe” and in the WCC’s stimulus paper on The Nature and Mission of the Church (1998),36 the self-disclosure of the triune God in Jesus Christ for the salvation of those in need of redemption constitutes the church of Jesus Christ in word and sacrament, in that the Holy Spirit creates the faith of the individual and the congregation at the same time (578ff. [862ff.]). The Ecumenical Dogmatics explains this as the salvation-historical, basic structure of the church, the basic ecclesiological structure of the ministry, and the basic structure of the church’s universal unity (558f. [836f.]). The universal “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” is comprised of various diverse “local churches” (611 [907]),37 whereby the controversy that remains dominant in the ecumene even today is set forth, namely, the one between the model of universal churches/local churches and the model of the totality of churches/particular churches. In the understanding of the Lord’s Supper, in which the Christus praesens really and personally bestows himself and grants the forgiveness of sins, i. e., in the salvation of the triune God in Christ’s cross and resurrection that bestows life and blessing, the Ecumenical Dogmatics unfolds theological points that are found in the so-called “Lima Document” (Eucharist II.2) and in Das Herrenmahl (no. 23–43): thanksgiving, anamnesis, epiclesis, communio, eschatological feast. Edmund Schlink emphasizes God’s justifying and saving action in the forgiveness of sins. Especially with the unfolding of the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice in Das Herrenmahl (no. 36f., p. 56ff.)—which, by the way, the Ecumenical Dogmatics understands as only one possible form of expression for this sacrament (513 [767])—agreement with the convergences in the “Ecumenical Working Group of Protestant and Catholic Theologians,”38 which Edmund Schlink helped to shape, is evident: the congregation is “accepted into his sacrifice through the power of Christ”

35 The Church of Jesus Christ: The Contribution of the Churches of the Reformation to the Ecumenical Dialogue on Church Unity, Leuenberg Texts 1, ed. Wilhelm Hüffmeier (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1994). 36 See The Church of Jesus Christ, no. 9ff. 37 See The Nature and Mission of the Church, no. 61, 67. 38 See Das Opfer Jesu Christi, 237.

The Impact of the Ecumenical Dogmatics

as a “spiritual sacrifice” and a “sacrifice of praise.”39 “Our sacrifice as members of his body that is given is the sacrifice of the self with Jesus Christ that is offered to the Father…. Thus, the sacrifice of the church does not mean offering to God a holy gift that is facing us on the altar and is offered by the hand of a human priest; rather, it means the church’s entering into the surrender of Jesus Christ, i. e., offering ourselves through, with, and in Jesus Christ as living sacrifices” (513 [767]).40 Despite convergences and consensus in the Evangelical-Lutheran and Roman Catholic understanding of the Lord’s Supper, the Roman Catholic side—apart from a few exceptions in individual cases—has not yet declared reciprocal eucharistic hospitality, due to differences in the understanding of the ministry. Edmund Schlink’s formative influence on Das geistliche Amt in der Kirche is clear, particularly with respect to the unfolding of the power or authority of the ministry, the functions and relations of the pastoral office “in,” “in the midst of,” and “in relation to” the charismata of the congregation on the basis of the empowering special commission and common submission to apostolic authority (612f. [908f.]. In Das geistliche Amt,41 the ordained office exercises its ministry “within” the charismata and also “in relation to” the congregation, empowered not by the delegation of the congregation, but by the special commission and “as making Jesus Christ present” through the ministries of preaching of the word and administering the sacraments. In addition, Edmund Schlink’s distinction, but not separation, between the apostolicity of the whole church in faith and life (i. e., in the substantive sense of that term), and the apostolic succession of bishops and presbyters (i. e., in the episcopal and presbyteral form through the laying on of hands for ministry in personal, collegial, and synodical responsibility before God and before the people of God, as explicated in his early essay, “Apostolic Succession,”42 and as repeated in the Ecumenical Dogmatics (615ff. [912ff.]), has found its way into the dialogue document, Das geistliche Amt der Kirche43 : episcopal and presbyteral succession, to be understood diachronically and synchronously, are various historical forms “within” the apostolicity of the whole church (619 [918]), which is precisely the “subject matter” [Sache] of the apostolic faith, life, and teaching; the apostolic laying on of hands in episcopal or presbyteral form is to be recognized as a “help,” as a “sign,” but

39 See Das Herrenmahl, no. 18, 36, 37. 40 [These are direct quotations from Das Opfer Jesu Christi, 237, which Schlink included on SÖB, 2.513. –Ed.] 41 See Das geistliche Amt, no. 23f, 45; similar to the first thesis from Tampere (1986) and the first series of theses of agreement in Sakramente, Amt und Ordination [Sacraments, Ministry and Ordination], Leuenberg Texts 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Lembeck, 1995), 104f. 42 Schlink, “Die apostolische Sukzession,” KC, 160ff. (SÖB, 1/1.160ff.). [ESW, 1.211–248. –Ed.] 43 Das geistliche Amt, no. 61.

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not—in agreement with the Lima document44 —as a “guarantee” [of apostolicity] (620 [919]). According to the hierarchy of theological and ecumenical statements of faith and doctrine, the Ecumenical Dogmatics recognizes the revealed and utterly binding faith in the triune God, who discloses himself to us in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit for salvation in the justification of sinners by faith today, a matter of an incomparably higher dignity and relevance than questions of form in the understanding of ministries and the church. The Ecumenical Dogmatics aptly outlines the ecumenical issues in the doctrine of justification in view of the Council of Trent: “(a) God’s justifying action upon the sinner; (b) the understanding of faith; (c) the validity of God’s commandments for the justified; (d) the understanding of repentance; (e) the assurance of salvation; (f) the relationship between God’s grace and human action in preparing for justification and after receiving it; (g) God’s justifying action through the proclamation of the gospel and through the administration of the sacraments” (432 [658]). In the Ecumenical Dogmatics, the event of justification and the structures of the statements about it prove to be an organizing principle (cf. 422ff. [646ff.], 473 [712], 649 [958], 664 [976] et passim). The ecumenical issues in the doctrine of justification are indirectly included in the process of doctrinal discussions and in the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” between the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (31 October 1999). The Ecumenical Dogmatics concentrates on the “basic features” of inner-Christian ecumenism; therein lies its strength and its lasting impact. Certainly the “theology of religions” is mentioned in connection with God’s action in creation, preservation, and governance. God the Creator, the Preserver, and the Governor acts covertly in the religions toward the final consummation, when the question of salvation in the religions will receive its answer (149ff. [279ff.]). On this topic, there is need for further research in dogmatics, religious studies, and ecumenism.45 In the confessionally, eschatologically, and doxologically explicated Ecumenical Dogmatics, inner-Christian ecumenism—as Schlink helped to shape it—is at the center. Especially in times that are characterized by ecumenical exhaustion, in periods that are determined by the tension between ecumenical openness and denominational

44 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, “Ministry,” no. 38. 45 The journalist Katrin Busse titled the commemorative article about Edmund Schlink’s 100th birthday, “Impulse für den Dialog der Religionen,” Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung (March 5, 2003), 7. In his book review (“Kopernikanische Wende in der Christenheit?” [Copernican Turn in Christianity?],” Lutherische Monatschrift 24 [1985]: 215ff.), Hans-Martin Barth missed this aspect of the Ecumenical Dogmatics. He later published his book, Dogmatik: Evangelischer Glaube im Kontext der Weltreligionen—Ein Lehrbuch [Dogmatics: Protestant Faith in the Context of World Religions—A Textbook] (Gütersloh: Gütersloher, 2001).

The Impact of the Ecumenical Dogmatics

delimitations, in epochs when indifference to the question of truth threatens to overshadow both inner-Christian ecumenism and multi-religious coexistence, the Ecumenical Dogmatics is worth reading and studying again and again to the glory of the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If we are open to the multitude of ways in which the churches praise the triune God in his perfection, then the walls between them become transparent… If we open ourselves to the adoration of God in the whole of Christendom, then communion with the brothers and sisters in all places and with the ancestors from all times… will open up to us. (791 [1155]).

Michael Plathow

1189

Bibliography

I.

Selected Works by Edmund Schlink1

“Anselm und Luther: Eine Studie über den Glaubensbegriff in Anselms Proslogion.” In Welt-Luthertum von Heute: Anders Nygren Gewidmet, edited by Yngve Brilioth, 269–293. Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyreles; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1950. “Die apostolische Sukzession.” In SÖB, 1/1.160–1195. English translation: “Apostolic Succession,” in ESW, 1.211–248. “Die apostolische Sukzession und die Gemeinschaft der Ämter.” In Reform und Anerkennung kirchlicher Ämter: Ein Memorandum der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Ökumenischer Institute, edited by Edmund Schlink et al., 123–162. Munich: Kaiser; Mainz: Grünewald, 1973. “Die Auferstehung des Gottesvolks.” In SÖB, 1/1.272–275. English translation: “The Resurrection of God’s People,” in ESW, 1.332–335. “Die Aufgabe einer ökumenischen Dogmatik.” In Zur Auferbauung des Leibes Christi: Festschrift für PeterBrunner, edited by Edmund Schlink and Albrecht Peters, 84–93. Kassel: Johannes Stauda, 1965. “Aufgabe und Gefahr des Ökumenischen Rates der Kirchen.” In SÖB, 1/1.13–23. English translation: “The Task and Danger of the World Council of Churches,” in ESW, 1.53–64. “Die Bedeutung der orthodoxen Kirche für die ökumenische Bewegung.” Ökumenische Rundschau 22 (1973): 430–441. “Die Bedeutung der östlichen und westlichen Traditionen für die Christenheit.” In SÖB, 1/1.232–240. English translation: “The Significance of the Eastern and Western Traditions for Christendom,” in ESW, 1.288–297. “Die biblische Lehre vom Ebenbilde Gottes.” In Pro Veritate: Ein theologischer Dialog, Festschrift für Erzbischof Dr. h. c. Lorenz Jaeger und Bischof Prof. D. Dr. Wilhelm Stählin DD, 1–23, Münster: Aschendorff; Kassel: Stauda, 1963. Later published in Der Mensch als Bild Gottes, edited by Leo Scheffczyk, 88–113. Wege der Forschung 124. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969. “Die Christologie von Chalcedon im ökumenischen Gespräch.” In SÖB, 1/1.80–87. English translation: “The Christology of Chalcedon in Ecumenical Dialogue,” in ESW, 1.127–134. “Christus—die Hoffnung für die Welt.” In SÖB, 1/1.211–220. English translation: “Christ—The Hope of the World,” in ESW, 1.266–275.

1 For a complete list of the works by Edmund Schlink, see Jochen Eber, Einheit der Kirche als dogmatisches Problem bei Edmund Schlink, Forschungen zur systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie 67, ed. Wolfhart Pannenberg and Reinhard Slenczka (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), 255–264, 274–294.

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Bibliography

“Christus und die Kirche.” In SÖB, 1/1.88–105. English translation: “Christ and the Church,” in ESW, 1.135–154. “The Distinction between Law and Gospel.” Translated by Matthew L. Becker. Lutheran Quarterly 36 (Spring 2022): 27–38. “Die drei Grundbeziehungen zwischen Glauben und Erkennen.” Kerygma und Dogma 23 (1977): 172–187. “Die Einheit der Kirche und die uneinige Christenheit.” In Basileia: Walter Freytag zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by J. Hermelink and H. J. Margul, 403–408. Stuttgart: Ev. Missionsverlag, 1959. “Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit der Kirche (ein Entwurf).” In Christliche Einheit: Forderungen und Folgerungen nach Uppsala, edited by Reinhard Groscurth, 34–54. Studien des Ökumenischen Rates 7. Geneva: WCC, 1969. English translation: “The Unity and Diversity of the Church: Preliminary Treatise.” In What Unity Implies, 33–51. Geneva: WCC, 1969. Emotionale Gotteserlebnisse: Ein empirisch-psychologischer Beitrag zum Problem der natürlichen Religion. Ph.d. diss. University of Münster, 1930; reprint, Abhandlungen und Monographien zur Philosophie des Wirklichen 5, Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1931. Der Ertrag des Kirchenkampfes. 2d ed. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1947. In SÖB, 5.69–121. “Die Frage der Erkennbarkeit göttlichen Handelns in der Geschichte.” Evangelische Theologie 1 (1934): 257–277. “Gerechtigkeit und Gnade.” Kerygma und Dogma 2 (1956): 256–288. Gesetz und Evangelium: Ein Beitrag zum lutherischen Verständnis der 2. Barmer These. Theologische Existenz Heute 53, edited by Eduard Thurneysen, Munich: Kaiser, 1937. “Gesetz und Evangelium als Kontroverstheologisches Problem.” In SÖB, 1/1.126–159. English translation: “Law and Gospel as a Controversial Issue in Theology,” in ESW, 1.176–210. “Gesetz und Paraklese.” In Antwort: Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag Karl Barths am 10. Mai 1956, edited by Ernst Wolf et al., 323–335. Zollikon-Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1956. Reprinted in Gesetz und Evangelium: Beiträge zur gegenwärtigen theologischen Diskussion. 2d ed., edited by Ernst Kinder and Klaus Haendler, 239–259. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1986. “Gott VI. Dogmatisch.” In RGG3 , 2.1732–1741. “Gottes Ebenbild als Gesetz und Evangelium.” In Der alte und der neue Mensch: Aufsätze zur theologischen Anthropologie, Beiträge zur evangelischen Theologie 8, 68–87. Munich: Lempp, 1942. “Gottes Handeln durch die Taufe als ökumenisches Problem.” Kerygma und Dogma 24 (1978): 164–180 “Helmut Fischer, ‘Glaubensaussage und Sprachstruktur.’” Ökumenische Rundschau 23 (1974): 258–260. “Hermeneutik—Denkformen—Verstehen.” In Neue Grenzen: Ökumenisches Christentum Morgen, edited by Klaus von Bismarck and Walter Dirks, 14–22. Stuttgart: Kreuz; Freiburg i. Br.: Walter, 1966. “Herrenmahl oder Kirchenmahl.” Der christliche Student. No. 24 (1950): 10–20.

Selected Works by Edmund Schlink

“Die ‘Hierarchie der Wahrheiten’ und die Einigung der Kirchen.” Yearbook of the Ecumenical Institute for Advanced Theological Studies 2 (1972–73): 27–42. Reprinted under the same title: Kerygma und Dogma 21 (1975): 1–12. “John May, ‘Sprache der Ökumene Sprache der Einheit. Die Einheit der Menschheit: Zukünftige Grundlage der theologischen Ethik der Katholischen Kirche und des Ökumenischen Rats der Kirchen?’” Ökumenische Rundschau 29 (1980): 121–123. Der kommende Christus und die kirchlichen Traditionen: Beiträge zum Gespräch zwischen den getrennten Kirchen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961. Reprint, with a foreword by Klaus Engelhardt and an introduction by Jochen Eber, in SÖB, 1/1.3–276. English translation: The Coming Christ and Church Traditions: Essays for the Dialogue among the Separated Churches, in ESW, 1.53–335. “Kult—Opfer—Abendmahl: Theologische Überlegungen über ihren Zusammenhang.” Zeitwende 46, no. 2 (1975): 86–98. “Der Kult in der Sicht evangelischer Theologie.” In SÖB, 1/1.116–125. English translation: “The Cultus in the Perspective of Evangelical-Lutheran Theology,” in ESW, 1.166–175. Die Lehre von der Taufe. Kassel: Johannes Stauda, 1969. Reprint, with an introduction by Peter Zimmerling, in SÖB, 3.5–171. “Der Mensch als Sünder.” Evangelische Theologie 11 (1951): 324–331. Der Mensch in der Verkündigung der Kirche: Eine dogmatische Untersuchung. Hab. diss. University of Giessen, 1934; rev. ed., Munich: Kaiser, 1936. “Die Methode des dogmatischen ökumenischen Dialogs.” Kerygma und Dogma 12 (1966): 205–211. Nach dem Konzil. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966. Reprint, with a foreword by Klaus Engelhardt and an introduction by Jochen Eber, in SÖB, 1/2.3–253. English translation: After the Council, in ESW, 1.337–536. “Der Neubau des Ökumenischen Instituts und Studentenwohnheims der Universität Heidelberg.” Ruperto-Carola 10, no. 23 (1958): 197–200. “Der ökumenische Charakter und Anspruch des Augsburger Bekenntnisses.” In Augsburger Konfession im ökumenischen Kontext, edited by Harding Meyer, 1–28. LWB 6/7. Geneva: LWF, 1979. English translation:“The Ecumenical Character and Claim of the Augsburg Confession,” in The Augsburg Confession in Ecumenical Perspective, edited by Harding Meyer and translated by Donata Coleman, 1–28. LWF Report 6/7. Geneva: LWF, 1979. Ökumenische Dogmatik: Grundzüge. 2d ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983. Reprint, with a foreword by Wolfhart Pannenberg and an afterword by Michael Plathow, in SÖB, 2.vii–804. “Ökumenische Konzilien einst und heute.” In SÖB, 1/1.241–271. English translation: “Ecumenical Councils Then And Now,” in ESW, 1.298–331. “Persönlicher Beitrag.” In Männer der Ev. Kirche in Deutschland: Festschrift für Kurt Scharf zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Heinrich Vogel, 206–207. Berlin/Stuttgart: Lettner, 1962. “Persönlichkeitsänderung in Bekehrungen und Depressionen: Eine empirisch-religionspsychologische Untersuchung nebst kasuistischen Beiträgen zur Psychologie des Gotte-

1193

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Bibliography

serlebens als Anhang.” Ph.D. diss. University of Marburg, 1927; rev. ed., with a new introduction, Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 70 (1929): 81–118. “Das Problem der Abendmahlsgemeinschaft zwischen der evangelisch-lutherischen und der römisch-katholischen Kirche.” In Evangelisch-katholische Abendmahlsgemeinshaft? Veröff. des Ökumensichen Arbeitskreiss Evangelischer und Katholischer Theologen, foreword by Lorenz Jaeger and Hermann Kunst, edited by Gerhard Krems and Reinhard Mumm, 143–187. Regensburg: F. Pustet; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971. “Das Ringen um einen römisch-katholischen Ökumenismus im II. Vatikanischen Konzil.” In Die Ökumene in Theologie und Recht, edited by Theodor Heckel, 16–42. Munich: Evangelischer Presseverband fur Bayern, 1965. “Die Struktur der dogmatischen Aussagen als ökumenisches Problem.” In SÖB, 1/1.24–79. English translation: “The Structure of the Dogmatic Statement as an Ecumenical Issue,” in ESW, 1.67–125. “Struktur und Rangordnung der dogmatischen Aussagen über das Herrenmahl.” In Das Opfer Jesu Christi und seine Gegenwart in der Kirche, Dialog der Kirchen 3, 2d ed., edited by Karl Lehmann and Edmund Schlink, 138–175. Freiburg i. Br.: Herder; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986. “Das Szepter der Universität Heidelberg: Christus und die Fakultäten.” In SÖB, 5.125–146. “Theodizee als fundamentaltheologisches Problem.” In SÖB, 5.171–199. “The Theological Problem of Natural Law.” In Contributions to a Christian Social Ethic, Papers of the Ecumenical Institute 4, 54–66. Geneva: WCC, 1949. German translation: “Das theologische Problem des Naturrechts.” In Viva Vox Evangelii: Festschrift für Hans Meiser zum 70. Geburtstag am 16.2.1951, ed. Lutherischen Kirchenamt in Hannover, 246–258. Munich: Claudius, 1951. Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften. 4th ed. Munich: Kaiser, 1954. Reprint, with an introduction by Günther Gassmann, in SÖB, 4.3–272. “Theologische Sprachanalytik im Vorfeld der ökumenischen Fragestellung.” Ökumenische Rundschau 26 (1977): 63–73. “Theologischer Syllogismus als Problem der Prädesinationslehre.” In Einsicht und Glaube: Festschrift für Prof. D. Dr. Gottlieb Söhngen, 2d ed., edited by Joseph Ratzinger and Heinrich Fries, 299–320. Freiburg: Herder, 1963. “Thesen über Theologie und Naturwissenschaften.” Evangelische Theologie 7 (1947): 93–94. “Thesen zur Methodik einer kontextuellen Theologie: Wilfried Joest zum 60. Geburtstag.” Kerygma und Dogma 20 (1974): 87–90. “Trinität—IV. Dogmatisch.” In RGG3 , 6.1032–1038. “Die Verborgenheit Gottes des Schöpfers nach lutherischer Lehre: Ein Beitrag zum lutherischen Verständnis der ersten Barmer These.” In Theologische Aufsätze Karl Barth zum 50. Geburtstag, edited by Ernst Wolf, 202–221. Munich: Kaiser, 1936. “Das Verhältnis von Taufe, Glaube, und christlicher Kindererziehung.” Zeitschrift für evangelisches Kirchenrecht 21 (1976): 114–118.

Literature Cited by Schlink

Die Vision des Papstes. Neuausgabe. Karlsruhe: Hans Thoma, 1997. English translation: The Vision of the Pope: A Narrative. Translated by Eugene Skibbe. Minneapolis: Kirk House, 2001. “Das wandernde Gottesvolk.” In SÖB, 1/1.202–210. English translation: “The Sojourning People of God,” in ESW, 1.257–265. “Wandlungen im protestantischen Verständnis der Ostkirche.” In SÖB, 1/1.221–231. English translation: “Transformations in the Protestant Understanding of the Eastern Church,” in ESW, 1.276–287. “Weisheit und Torheit.” Kerygma und Dogma 1, no. 1 (1955): 1–22. “Die Weite der Kirche nach dem lutherischen Bekenntnis.” In SÖB, 1/1.106–115. English translation: “The Expanse of the Church according to the Lutheran Confession,” in ESW, 1.155–165. “Zum Begriff des Teleologischen und seiner augenblicklichen Bedeutung für die Theologie.” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 10 (1933): 94–125. “Zum Gespräch des christlichen Glaubens mit der Naturwissenschaft.” In Medicus Viator: Fragen und Gedanken am Wege Richard Siebecks, Eine Festgabe seiner Freunde und Schüler zum 75. Geburtstag, 273–295. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck); Stuttgart: Georg Thieme, 1959. “Zur Frage der Kindertaufe.” Ökumenische Rundschau 18 (1969): 460–468.

II. Literature Cited by Schlink2 Ambrose of Milan. Letters. Translated by Sister Mary Melchior Beyenka, in FOTC, 26. Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler). Aus dem Cherubinischen Wandersmann. Leipzig: Inselverlag, n.d. Anselm of Canterbury. Cur Deus homo. In PL, 158.359–432. English translation: Cur Deus homo [Why God Became a Human Being]. In St. Anselm: Basic Writings, 2d ed., translated by S. N. Deane, 191–302. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1962. ——. Monologium. PL 158.141–224. English translation: Monologium, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, 2d ed.,translated by S. N. Deane, 81–190. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1962. ——. Proslogium. In PL, 158.223–248. English translation: Proslogium, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, 2d ed.,translated by S. N. Deane, 47–80. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1962. Arens, Hans. Sprachwissenschaft: Der Gang ihrer Entwicklung von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Freiburg: Alber, 1955. Aristotle. Ethica Nicomachea. English translation: Nicomachean Ethics. In Basic Writings of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon, 935–1112. New York: Random House, 1941.

2 Wherever possible, I have provided the English translation(s) that I have cited in the notes.

1195

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Bibliography

Athanasius of Alexandria. De incarnatione Verbi. In PG, 25.95–198. English translation: Incarnation of the Word. Translated by Penelope Lawson. New York: Macmillan, 1946. ——. Letter V. Translated by Jsarie Payne-Smith, in NPNF 2 , 4.517–519. Augustine of Hippo. De civitate Dei. In CCSL, 47–48. English translation: The City of God. Translated by William Babcock, in WSA, I/6–7. ——. Confessiones libri XIII. In CCSL, 27. English translation: The Confessions of Saint Augustine. Translated by Maria Boulding, in WSA, I/1. ——. In Ioannis Evangelium tractatus. In CCSL, 36. English translation: Homilies on the Gospel of John. Translated by Edmund Hill, in WSA, III/12–13. ——. De spiritu et littera. CSEL, 60.155–229. English translation: On the Spirit and the Letter. Translated by Edmund Hill, in WSA, I/23.150–197. ——. De Trinitate. In CCSL, 50 and 50a. English translation: On the Trinity. Translated by Edmund Hill, in WSA, I/5. Aulén, Gustaf. Den Kristna Försoningstanken. Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses, 1930. English translation: Christus Victor. Translated by A. G. Hebert. New York: Macmillan, 1966. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Karl Barth: Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie. Köln: Hegner, 1951. English translation: The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation. Translation by Edward T. Oakes, S.J. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992. Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry. WCC Commission on Faith and Order. Paper no. 111. Geneva: WCC, 1982. Barion, Hans. “Römisch-katholisches Kirchenrecht.” In Evangelisches Staatslexikon, edited by Roman Herzog et al., 1229–1233. 2d ed. Stuttgart: Kreuz, 1975. Barth, Karl. Kirchliche Dogmatik. 4 vols. in 13. Zürich: Zollikon, 1932–68. English translation: Church Dogmatics. 4 vols. in 13. Edited by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance. Translated by G. W. Bromiley et al. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1936–69. Beasley-Murray, George. Gesichtspunkte zum Taufgespräch heute. Kassel: Oncken, 1965. Ben-Chorin, Schalom. Bruder Jesus. Munich: List Paul, 1967. English translation: Brother Jesus. Translated by Jared S. Klein and Max Reinhart. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2001. Beza, Theodore. Opera. 3 vols. Geneva, 1583. Die Bibel: Einheitsübersetzung. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1980. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Die Bibel Martin Luthers mit Apokryphen. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1912. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Die Bibel: Schlachter Version. Geneva: Genfer Bibelgesellschaft, 1951. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Blinzler, Josef. Der Prozeß Jesu. 4th ed. Regensburg: Pustet, 1969. English translation of the second edition: The Trial of Jesus. Translated by Isabel and Florence McHugh. Cork: Mercier, 1959.

Literature Cited by Schlink

Bobrinskoy, Boris. “Das Filioque gestern und heute.” In Geist Gottes—Geist Christi: Ökumenische Überlegungen zur Filioque-Kontroverse, edited by Lukas Vischer, 107–120. English translation: “The Filioque Yesterday and Today.” In Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ: Ecumenical Reflections on the Filioque Controversy, Faith and Order Paper 103, edited by Lukas Vischer, 133–148. London: SPCK; Geneva: WCC, 1981. Bolotow, Vasilij Vasiljević. “Thesen über das filioque.” Revue internationale de Théologie 6 (1898): 681–712. Bonaventure. De cognitionis humanae ratione annecdota quaedam seraphici doctoris Sancti Bonaventurae et nonnullorum ipsius discipulorum. Edited by the Brothers of the College of St. Bonaventure. Quaracchi, Italy: College of St. Bonaventure, 1883. ——. Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonavenurae Opera Omnia. 10 vols. Edited by the Brothers of the College of St. Bonaventure. Quaracchi, Italy: College of St. Bonaventure, 1882–1902. Bornkamm, Günther. Das Ende des Gesetzes. 5th ed. Munich: Kaiser, 1966. English translation: The End of the Law. Translated by Paul L. Hammer. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. ——. “Die Verzögerung der Parusie: Exegetische Bemerkungen zu zwei synoptischen Texten.” In In Memoriam Ernst Lohmeyer, edited by W. Schmauch, 116–126. Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1951. Bousset, Wilhelm. Kyrios Christos. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913; 2d ed., 1921. English translation of the 2d ed.: Kyrios Christos: A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus. Translated by John E. Steely. Nashville: Abingdon, 1970. Brun, Lyder. Die Auferstehung Christi und die urchristliche Überlieferung. Oslo: H. Aschehoug, 1925. Brunner, Peter. Das Amt des Bishofs. Schriften d. Theol. Konvents Augsburger Bekenntnisse 9. Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1955. ——. Nikolaus von Amsdorf als Bischof von Naumburg. Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 179. Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1961. ——. Zum Lehre vom Gottesdienst der im Namen Jesu versammelten Gemeinde. In Leiturgia, vol. 1, edited by Karl Ferdinand Müller and Walter Blankenburg. Kassel: Stauda, 1954. English translation: Worship in the Name of Jesus. Translated by Martin H. Bertram. St. Louis: Concordia, 1968. Buber, Martin. Ich und Du. Leipzig: Insel, 1923. English translation: I and Thou. 2d ed. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970. Bühler, Karl. Sprachtheorie. Jena/Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer, 1934. English translation: Theory of Language. Translated by Donald Fraser Goodwin. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1990. Bulgakov, Sergius. Du verbe incarné. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1943. English translation: The Lamb of God. Translated by Boris Jakim. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. ——. “The Hierarchy and the Sacraments.” In The Ministry and the Sacraments, Report of the Theological Commission Appointed by the Continuation Committee of the Faith

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Bibliography

and Order Movement, edited by Roderic Dunkerley, 85–123. London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1937. Bultmann, Rudolf. Theologie des neuen Testaments. 2 vols. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1953. English translation: Theology of the New Testament. 2 vols. Translated by Kendrick Grobel. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951. ——. “Welchen Sinn hat es, von Gott zu reden?” In Glauben und Verstehen. 2d ed. Vol. 1, 26–37. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1954. English translation: “What Does it Mean to Speak of God.” In Faith and Understanding. Translated by Louise Pettibone Smith, 53–65. New York: Harper and Row, 1969. Calov, Abraham. Systema locorum theologicorum. 12 vols. Wittenberg: Andreae Hartmann, 1655–1677. Calvin, John. Catéchisme de l’Eglise de Genève (1545). English translation (selections): Catechism of the Church of Geneva. In John Calvin: Selections from His Writings, edited by John Dillenberger, 245–265. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975. ——. Institutio Christianae religionis (1559). English translation: Institutes of the Christian Religion. 2 vols. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Library of Christian Classics. Vols. 20–21. London: SCM; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960. Campenhausen, Hans Freiherr von. Die Begründung kirchlicher Entscheidungen beim Apostel Paulus: Zur Grundlegung des Kirchenrechts. Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Heidelberg: Winter, 1957. ——. “Jungfrauengeburt in der Theologie der alten Kirche.” Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Heidelberg: Winter, 1962. Reprinted in Urchristliches und Altkirchliches, 63–161. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1979. English translation: The Virgin Birth in the Theology of the Early Church. Translated by Frank Clarke. London: SCM, 1964. ——. Kirchliches Amt und geistliche Vollmacht in der ersten drei Jahrhunderten. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1953. English translation: Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries. Translated by J. A. Baker. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969. Chemnitz, Martin. Examen concilii tridentini (Frankfurt a. M.: Feierabend & Hvder, 1565–73). English translation: Examination of the Council of Trent. 4 vols. Edited and translated by Fred Kramer. St. Louis: Concordia, 1971. Cicero. Pro rabirio perduellionis reo. English translation: Cicero: Pro Lege Manilia, Pro Caecina, Pro Cluentio, Pro Rabirio Perduellionis. Translated by H. Grose Hodge. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927. Congar, Yves. Heilige Kirche. Stuttgart: Schwabenverlag, 1966. Constitutiones Apostolorum. English translation: Constitutions of the Apostles. Translated by William Whiston and A. Cleveland Coxe, in ANF, 7.391–505. See also the entry for Bradley et al. below.

Literature Cited by Schlink

Cullmann, Oscar. Die Christologie des Neuen Testamentes. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1957. English translation: The Christology of the New Testament. Translated by Shirley C. Guthrie and Charles A. M. Hall. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963. Cyril of Alexandria. Festal Letter X. Translated by Philip R. Amidon, S.J., in FOTC, 118.175–194. ——. See also the entry for Norman Russell below. Cyril of Jerusalem. Catechetical Lectures. Translated by Leo P. McCauley and Anthony A. Stephenson, in FOTC, 61.91–249 and 64.4–140. ——. Mystagogical Lectures. Translated by Leo P. McCauley and Anthony A. Stephenson, in FOTC, 64.153–203. Delitzsch, Franz. System der biblischen Psychologie. Leipzig: Dorffling & Franke, 1855. English translation of the second edition (1861): A System of Biblical Psychology. Translated by Robert Ernest Wallis. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1869. Denzinger, Henrich, ed. Enchiridion symbolorum: definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum/Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals. 43d ed. Edited by Peter Hünermann, Robert Fastiggi, and Anne Englund Nash. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012. Dibelius, Martin. Botschaft und Geschichte. Vol. 1 of Gesammelte Aufsätze, edited by Günther Bornkamm. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1953. The Didache. Greek with English translation in Holmes, 345–369. See also the entry for Niederwimmer below. Dombois, Hans. Das Recht der Gnade: Ökumenisches Kirchenrecht. Witten: Luther, 1961. Dörries, Hermann. Wort und Stunde. 3 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966–70. Ebeling, Gerhard. Die Geschichtlichkeit der Kirche und ihrer Verkündigung als theologisches Problem. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1950. English translation: The Problem of Historicity in the Church and Its Proclamation. Translated by Grover Foley. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967. ——. “Wort Gottes und Hermeneutik.” In Wort und Glaube, 2d ed., 319–348. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1960. English translation: “Word of God and Hermeneutics.“ In Word and Faith, translated by James W. Leitch, 305–332. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1963. Ebner, Ferdinand, Das Wort und die geistigen Realitäten: Pneumatologische Fragmente. Innsbruck: Brenner, 1921; Wien: Herder, 1952; Baden-Baden: Suhrkamp, 1980. English translation: The Word and the Spiritual Realities: a Translation of and Critical Introduction to Ferdinand Ebner´s “Das Wort und die geistigen Realitäten” and a Comparison with Martin Buber´s “Ich und Du.” Translated by Harold Johnson Green. Ph.D. diss. Northwestern University, 1980. Eichrodt, Walther. Theologie des Alten Testaments. 2d. ed. 2 vols. Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1948. English translation of the fifth edition: Theology of the Old Testament. 2 vols. Translated by J. A. Baker. Philadelphia; Westminster, 1967. Eusebius of Caesarea. Historia ecclesiastica. English translation: The Church History of Eusebius. Translated by Archur Cuschman McGiffert, in NPNF 2 , 1.73–387.

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Feine, Hans Erich. Kirchliche Rechtsgeschichte. 3d ed. Weimar: Bohlau, 1955. Feiner, Johannes, and Magnus Löhrer, eds. Mysterium Salutis: Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik. 5 vols. in 7. Einsiedeln/Zürich/Köln: Benziger, 1965–1976. Florensky, Pavel Alexandrovich. Der Pfeiler und die Grundfeste der Wahrheit. Vol. 2, Östliches Christentum: Dokumente, edited by Nikolai von Bubnoff and Hans Ehrenberg. Munich: Beck, 1925. English Translation: The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters. Translated by Boris Jakim. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Flusser, David, ed. The Letzten Tage Jesu in Jerusalem. Stuttgart: Calwer, 1982. Francis of Assisi. The Song of the Sun. Translated by Elizabeth Orton Jones and Matthew Arnold. New York: Macmillan, 1952. Fries, Heinrich, and Karl Rahner. Einigung der Kirchen—Reale Möglichkeit. Quaestiones Disputatae 18. Freiburg: Herder, 1983. English translation: Unity of the Churches: An Actual Possibility. Translated by Ruth C. L. Gritsch and Eric W. Gritsch. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985; New York: Paulist, 1985. Gabler, Johann Philipp. “De iusto discrimine theologiae biblicae et dogmaticae regundisque recte utriusque finibus.” In Kleinere theologische Schriften, vol. 2, edited by T. A. Gabler and J. G. Gabler, 179–198. Ulm: Verlag der Stettinischen Buchhandlung, 1831. English translation: John Sandys-Wunsch and Laurence Eldredge, “J. P. Gabler and the Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology: Translation, Commentary, and Discussion of His Originality.” Scottish Journal of Theology 33 (1980): 133–158. Geiselmann, Josef Rupert. Die Heilige Schrift und die Tradition: Zu den neueren Kontroversen über das Verhältnis der Heiligen Schrift zu den Nichtgeschriebenen Traditionen. Quaestiones Disputatae 18, edited by Karl Rahner and Heinrich Schlier. Freiburg: Herder, 1962. English translation of the first three chapters: The Meaning of Tradition. Translated by W. J. O’Hara. New York: Herder and Herder, 1966. ——. “Das Konzil von Trient über das Verhältnis der Heiligen Schrift und der nicht geschriebenen Traditionen.” In Die mündliche Überlieferung, edited by Michael Schmaus, 123–206. Munich: Hüber, 1957. Gerhard, Johann. Loci theologici (1610–22). 9 vols. Edited by Friedrich Reinhold Eduard Preuss. Berlin: Gustav Schlawitz, 1864. English translation: Theological Commonplaces. 17 vols. Edited by Benjamin T. G. Mayes and Joshua J. Hayes. Translated by Richard J. Dinda. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006–. Gräßer, Erich. Das Problem der Parusieverzögerung in den synoptischen Evangelien und in der Apostelgeschichte. 2d ed. Berlin: Töpelmann, 1960. Greeven, Heinrich. “Propheten, Lehrer, Vorsteher bei Paulus.” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 44 (1952/53): 1–43. Grillmeier, Alois. Mit Ihm und in Ihm: christologische Forschungen und Perspektiven. Freiburg: Herder, 1975. Gunkel, Hermann. Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung über Gen 1 und Ap Joh 12. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1895.

Literature Cited by Schlink

English translation: Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton: A ReligioHistorical Study of Genesis 1 and Revelation 12. Translated by K. William Whitney Jr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. ——. Die Wirkungen des Heiligen Geistes nach populären Anschauungen der apostolischen Zeit und die Lehre des Apostels Paulus. 3d ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1909. English translation: The Influence of the Holy Spirit: According to the Popular View of the Apostolic Age and the Teaching of the Apostle Paul. Translated by Roy A. Harrisville and Warren Quanbeck II. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Hahn, Ferdinand. Christologische Hoheitstitel. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963. English translation: The Titles of Jesus in Christology. Translated by Harold Knight and George Ogg. London: Lutterworth, 1969. Harnack, Adolf von. Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte. 4th ed. 3 vols. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1909–10. English translation: History of Dogma. 3 vols. in 7. Translated by Neil Buchanan. New York: Dover, 1961. Hayakawa, S. I. Language in Thought and Action. New York: Harcourt, 1941. Hegel, Georg W. F. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. 3 vols. Edited by Philipp Marheineke. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1832. New edition, edited by Walter Jaeschke. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983. English translation of the new edition: Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. 3 vols. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson. Translated by R. F. Brown et al., 3 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984–1987. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563). English translation: In Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century, edited by Arthur C. Cochrane, 305–331. Translated by Allen O. Miller and M. Eugene Osterhaven. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966. Hollaz, David. Examen theologicum acroamaticum (1707). 2 vols. Edited by D. Romanus Teller. Reprint, Leipzig: B. C. Breitkopf & Son, 1763. Ignatius of Antioch. Die Briefe des Ignatius von Antiochia. In Die Apostolischen Väter, vol. 2, edited by Walter Bauer. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1920. Greek with English translation: The Letters of Ignatius, in Holmes, 182–271. See also the entry for William R. Schoedel below. Irenaeus of Lyons. Adversus omnes haereses. In PG, 7. English translation: Against the Heresies. Translated by Dominic J. Unger, in ACW, 55, 64, 65. John of Damascus. Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Translated by Frederic H. Chase, in FOTC, 37.165–406. Jungmann, Joseph Andreas. Missarum Sollemnia. 2d ed. 2 vols. Vienna: Herder, 1949. English translation: The Mass of the Roman Rite. 2 vols. Translated by Francis A. Brunner. New York: Benzinger, 1951–1955. Justin Martyr. Dialogue mit Tryphon. In PG, 6.471–799. English translation: Dialogue with Trypho. Translated by Thomas B. Falls, in FOTC, 6.141–366. ——. 1 Apologia. In Die ältesten Apologeten, edited by E. J. Goodspeed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1914. English translation: First Apology. Translated by Leslie William Barnard, in ACW, 56.23–72.

1201

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Bibliography

Kähler, Martin. Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus. Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1892. 2d ed., 1896. English translation: The So-called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ. Edited and translated by Carl E. Braaten. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964. Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der Reinen Vernunft. Edited by Raymund Schmidt. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1993. English translation of the 2d ed. (1787): The Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s, 1965. Kelly, J. N. D. Altchristliche Glaubensbekenntnisse. 3d ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972. English original: Early Christian Creeds. 3d ed. New York: Longman, 1972. Kertelgeher, Karl, ed. Rückfrage nach Jesus: zur Methodik und Bedeutung der Frage nach dem historischen Jesus. 2d. ed. Quaestiones Disputate 63. Freiburg: Herder, 1974. Kierkegaard, Søren. Der Begriff der Angst, eine simple psychologisch-wegweisende Untersuchung in der Richtung auf das dogmatische Problem der Erbsünde von Vigilius Haufniensis (Copenhagen, 1844). Vols. 11 and 12, Gesammelte Werke, edited by Emanuel Hirsch and Hayo Gerdes, translated by Emanuel Hirsch. Düsseldorf: Diederichs, 1952. English translation from the Danish original: The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin (June 17, 1844) by Vigilius Haufniensis. Edited and translated with introduction and notes by Reidar Thomte, in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. ——. Einübung ins Christentum (Copenhagen, 1850; under the pseudonymn anti-Climacus). Vol. 26, Gesammelte Werke, edited by Emanuel Hirsch and Hayo Gerdes, translated by Emanuel Hirsch. Düsseldorf: Diederichs, 1951. English translation from the Danish original: Practice in Christianity. Vol. 20, Kierkegaard’s Writings, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Kittel, Gerhard, and Gerhard Friedrich, eds. Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neue Testament. 10 vols. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1933–73. English translation: Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. 10 vols. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–1976. Krusche, Werner. Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957. Lehmann, Karl, and Edmund Schlink, eds. Das Opfer Jesu Christi und seine Gegenwart in der Kirche. Dialog der Kirchen 3. Freiburg i. Br.: Herder; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983; 2d ed., 1986. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Essai de Théodicée. English translation: Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil. Edited by Austin Farrer. Translated by E. M. Huggard. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952. Lieberg, Hellmut. “Amt und Ordination bei Luther und Melanchthon.” Ph.D. diss., Erlangen, 1960. Linton, Olof. Das Problem der Urkirche in der westeuropäischen Forschung. Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksall, 1932.

Literature Cited by Schlink

Lossky, Vladimir. La procession du Saint Esprit dans la doctrine trinitaire orthodoxe. Paris: Setor, 1948. Luther, Martin. D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe. Weimar Ausgabe. 65 vols. in 127. Weimar: Hermann Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1883–1993. Martin, James A. The New Dialogue between Philosophy and Theology. New York: Seabury, 1966. Mbiti, John S. African Religions and Philosophy. New York/Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974. Mehedintu, Viorel. Offenbarung und Überlieferung: Neue Möglichkeiten eines Dialogs zwischen der orthodoxen und der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980. Metz, Johann Baptist. “Eucharistie als zentrales Mysterium.” In Mysterium Salutis: Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik, 5 vols. in 7, edited by Johannes Feiner and Magnus Löhrer, IV/2.184–313. Einsiedeln/Zürich/Köln: Benziger, 1965–1976. Minear, Paul. Images of the Church in the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960. Nesmelov, Viktor. Die Wissenschaft vom Menschen. In Vom Sinn des Lebens, Russische Religionsphilosophen 2, edited by Nicolai Bubnoff, 11ff. Köln: Hegner, 1968. Noth, Martin. Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament. Munich: Kaiser, 1957. English translation of the second edition (1960): The Laws in the Pentateuch and Other Studies. Translated by D. R. Ap-Thomas. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966. Das Opfer Christi und das Opfer der Christen. Studienheft 10. Edited by the Aussenamt of the EKD. Frankfurt/Main: Otto Lembeck, 1979. Origen. De Principii. English translation: On First Principles. Translated by G. W. Butterworth. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973. Overhage, Paul, and Karl Rahner. Das Problem der Hominisation. Über den biologischen Ursprung des Menschen. Quaestiones disputate 12/13. Freiburg: Herder, 1961. Pannenberg, Wolfhart. “Die Aufnahme des philosophischen Gottesbegriffs als dogmatisches Problem der frühchristlichen Theologie.” In Grundfagen der systematischen Theologie, 296–346. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967. English translation: “The Appropriation of the Philosophical Concept of God as a Dogmatic Problem of Early Christian Theology.” In Basic Questions in Theology, vol. 2, translated by George H. Kelm, 119–183. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1971. Persson, Per Erik. Glaube und Werke in der Ostkirche. Bensheim: Materialdienst des konfessionskundlichen Instituts, 1962. Peters, Albrecht. Gesetz und Evangelium. Handbuch der systematischer Theologie. Vol. 2 Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1981. The Philokalia. English translation: The Philokalia: The Complete Text. Edited by G. E. H. Palmer, Kallistos Ware, and Philip Sherrard. 4 vols. London: Faber and Faber, 1979–1999. Quenstedt, Johann. Theologia didactico-polemica. Wittenberg: Schumacher, 1691. Rad, Gerhard von. Gottes Wirken in Israel. Assen: Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1974). English translation: God at Work in Israel. Translated by John H. Marks. Nashville: Abingdon, 1980. Rahner, Hugo. Symbole der Kirche: Ekklesiologie der Väter. Salzburg: Müller, 1964.

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Rahner, Karl. “Der dreifaltige Gott als transzendenter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte.” In Mysterium Salutis: Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik. 5 vols. in 7. Edited by Johannes Feiner and Magnus Löhrer, II.317–397. Einsiedeln/Zürich/Köln: Benziger, 1965–76. English translation of this section by Rahner: The Trinity. Translated by Joseph Donceel with an introduction by Catherine Mowry LaCugna. New York: Crossroad, 1997. ——, Vorfragen zu einem ökumenischen Amtsverständnis. Quaestiones disputatae 65. Edited by Karl Rahner and Heinrich Schlier. Freiburg: Herder, 1974. Ratzinger, Joseph. “Prognosen für die Zukunft des Ökumenismus.” Bausteine für die Einheit der Christen 65 (1977): 6–14. Ricoeur, Paul. “Philosophical Hermeneutics and Theological Hermeneutics.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 5 (1976): 14–33. ——. “Philosophische und Theologische Hermeneutik.” In Metapher: Zur Hermeneutik religioser Sprache, special edition of Evangelische Theologie, edited by Paul Ricoeur, Pierre Gisel, and Eberhard Jüngel, 25–45. Munich: Kaiser, 1974. Ritschl, Albrecht. Theologie und Metaphysik. Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1881. English translation: Three Essays: Theology and Metaphysics; Prolegomena to the History of Pietism; Instruction in the Christian Religion. Translated by Philip Hefner. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2005. ——. Unterricht in der christlichen Religion. 3d ed. Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1886. English translation of the 4th ed. (1890): Instruction in the Christian Religion. Translated by Alice Mead Swing. In The Theology of Albrecht Ritschl, edited by Albert T. Swing, 171–286. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1901. Russell, Norman. Cyril of Alexandria. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Saussure, Ferdinand de. Grundfragen der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1931. Original: Cours de linguistique générale. Edited by C. Bally and A. Sechehaye, with the collaboration of A. Riedlinger. Lausanne/Paris: Payot, 1916. English translation of the original: Course in General Linguistics. Translated and annotated by Roy Harris. Chicago: Open Court, 1983. Scheeben, Matthias Josef. Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik. 2d ed. 7 parts. Edited by Carl Feckes. Freiburg: Herder, 1954. Schelling, Friedrich W. J. Philosophie und Religion (1804). In Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke. 14 vols. Edited by Karl Friedrich A. Schelling, 6.11–70. Stuttgart and Augsburg: Cotta, 1856–1861. English translation: Philosophy and Religion. Edited and translated by Klaus Ottmann. Putnam, Conn.: Spring, 2010. Schillebeeckx, Edward. Jesus. Bloemendaal: Uitgeverij H. Nelissen, 1974. English translation: Jesus. Translated by Hubert Hoskins. New York: Seabury, 1979. Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E. Der christliche Glaube, 7th ed. 2 vols. Edited by Martin Redeker. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter & Co., 1960. English translation: Christian Faith. 2 vols. Edited by Catherine L. Kelsey and Terrence N. Tice. Translated by Terrence N. Tice, Catherine L. Kelsey, and Edwina Lawler. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2016. ——. Predigten von Friedrich Schleiermacher. Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Sämmtliche Werke. Part 2. Vol. 2. New ed. Berlin: Reimer, 1843.

Literature Cited by Schlink

——. Über die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern. Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1958. English translation: On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. Edited and translated by Richard Crouter. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Schlier, Heinrich. “Vom Wesen der apostolischen Mahnung nach Röm 12,1–2.” In Die Zeit der Kirche, 74–89. Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1956. Schmaus, Michael. Katholische Dogmatik. Vol. 1. Munich: Hueber, 1948. Schniewind, Julius. Das Evangelium nach Markus. Vol. 1 of Das Neue Testament Deutsch. 3d ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1939; 6th ed., 1952. Schulte, Raphael, et al. “Die Selbsterschliessung des dreifaltigen Gottes.” In Mysterium Salutis: Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik. 5 vols. in 7. Edited by Johannes Feiner and Magnus Löhrer, II.47–397. Einsiedeln/Zürich/Köln: Benziger, 1965–1976. Schweitzer, Albert. Das Abendmahl—Das Messianitäts und Leidengeheimnis: Ein Skizze des Lebens Jesu. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1901. Only the second part of this treatise has been translated into English as The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus’ Messiahship and Passion. Translated by Walter Lowrie. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985. ——. Von Reimarus zu Wrede: Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1906; 2d ed., 1910. English translation of the ninth ed.: The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Edited by John Bowden. Translated by W. Montgomery et al. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2001. The Shepherd of Hermas (German title: Der Hirt des Hermas). 2d ed. Edited by Molly Whittaker. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1967. Greek with English translation: The Shepherd of Hermas, in Holmes, 454–685. Skydsgaard, Kristen Ejner. “Schrift und Tradition.” Kerygma und Dogma 1 (1955): 161–179. English translation: “Scripture and Tradition: Remarks on the Problem of Tradition in Theology Today.” Scottish Journal of Theology 9 (1956): 337–358. Slenczka, Reinhard. “Das filioque in der neueren ökumenischen Diskussion.” In Glaubensbekenntnis und Kirchengemeinschaft, edited by Alexandre Ganoczy, Karl Lehmann, and Wolfhart Pannenberg, 80–99. Freiburg i. Breisgau: Herder; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982. Sohm, Rudolph. Kirchenrecht. 2 vols. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1892–1923. Söhngen, Gottlieb. Gesetz und Evangelium: Ihre Analogie Einheit. Munich-Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1957. Solovyov, Vladimir. Vorlesungen über das Gottmenschentum. Vol. 1, part two of the German complete edition, edited by Wladimir Szylkarski, Wilhelm Lettenbauer, and Ludolf Müller. Freiberg i. Br.: Wewel, 1953–1979. English translation: Lectures on Divine Humanity. Edited by Boris Jakim. Translated by Peter Zouboff. Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1995. Spengler, Oswald. Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte. 2 vols. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1919, 1922. English translation: Decline of the West. 2 vols. Translated by Charles Atkinson. New York: Knopf, 1922.

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Bibliography

Staniloae, Dumitru. “The Ausgang des Heiligen Geistes vom Vater und seine Beziehung zum Sohn als Grundlage unserer Vergöttlichung und Kindschaft.” In Geist Gottes—Geist Christi: Ökumenische Überlegungen zur Filioque-Kontroverse, edited by Lukas Vischer, 153–163. Frankfurt am Main: Lembeck, 1981. English translation: “The Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and His Relation to the Son, as the Basis of our Deification and Adoption,” In God’s Spirit—Christ’s Spirit, Faith and Order Paper 103, edited by Lukas Vischer, 174–186. London: SPCK; Geneva: WCC, 1981. Steck, Odil Hannes. Die Paradieserzählung. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1970. Strindberg, August. “Coram Populo! De Creatione et Sententia Vera Mundi: Mystére.” English translation: “Coram Populo! De Creatione et Sententia Vera Mundi: A Mystery.” Translated by David Scanlan. Tulane Drama Review 6, no. 2 (November 1961): 128–131. Taylor, Vincent. The Names of Jesus. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1953. Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. Le Phénomène humain. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1955. German translation: Der Mensch im Kosmos. 7th ed. Munich: Beck, 1964. English translation: The Phenomenon of Man. Translated by Bernard Wall. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Tertullian. Adversus Praxeas. Latin with English translation: Tertullian’s Treatise against Praxeas. Edited and translated by Ernest Evans. London: SPCK, 1948. ——. De anima. Edited by J. H. Waszink. Amsterdam: J.M. Meulenhoff, 1947. English translation: On the Soul. Translated by Edwin A. Quain, in FOTC, 10.175–309. ——. De baptismo. Latin with English translation: Tertullian’s Homily on Baptism. Edited and translated by Ernest Evans. London: SPCK, 1964. Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologiae. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947. Tillich, Paul. Das Dämonische. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1926. ——. Systematische Theologie. 3 vols. Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1958. English original: Systematic Theology. 3 vols. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951–1963. Topitsch, Ernst. “Über Leerformeln: Zur Pragmatik des Sprachgebrauches in Philosophie und politischer Theorie.” In Probleme der Wissenschaftstheorie: Festschrift für Viktor Kraft, edited by Ernst Topitsch, 233–264. Vienna: Springer, 1960. Toynbee, Arnold. A Study of History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946. Trempela, Panagiotis. Dogmatike tes orthodoxu katholikes ekklesias. 3 vols. Athens: Adēlphotēs theologōnē hē “Zōē,” 1959–1968. Troeltsch, Ernst. “Historische und dogmatische Methode in der Theologie.” In Gesammelte Schriften, 4 vols., edited by Hans Baron, 2.729–753. Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1912–1925. English translation: “Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology.” In Religion in History, edited by James Luther Adams, 11–32. Translated by Ephraim Fischoff and Walter F. Bense. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1991. Trubetzkoy, Nikolai. Grundzüge der Phonologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1939. English translation: Principles of Phonology. Translated by Christiane A. M. Baltaxe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.

Literature Cited by the German and American Editors

Wainwright, Geoffrey. Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life: A Systematic Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Weizsäcker, Carl Friedrich von. Die Geschichte der Natur. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1948. English translation: History of Nature. Translated by Fred D. Wieck. London: Routledge, 1951. Westermann, Claus. “Bekenntnis II. Im AT und im Judentum.” In RGG3 , 1.990–991. ——. Das Buch Jesaja, 40–45. Das Alte Testament Deutsch. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966. English translation: Isaiah 40–66: A Commentary. Translated by David M. G. Stalker. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969. ——. Genesis 1–11. Biblischer Kommentar Altes Testament. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1974). English translation: Genesis 1–11: A Commentary. Translated by John J. Scullion S. J. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984. ——. Das Loben in den Psalmen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1953. English translation: The Praise of God in the Psalms. Translated by Keith Crim. Richmond: John Knox, 1965. Winter, Paul. On the Trial of Jesus. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1961. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan, 1953. ——. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Frankfurt a. Main: Suhrkamp, 1969. English translation: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by C. K. Ogden. Introduction by Bertrand Russell. London: Routledge, 1922. Wolf, Erik. Ordnung der Kirche: Lehrbuch und Handbuch des Kirchenrechts auf ökumenischer Basis. Frankfurt a. Main: Klostermann, 1961. Wolff, Hans Walter. Anthropologie des Alten Testaments. Munich: Kaiser, 1973. English translation: Anthropology of the Old Testament. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974. Wrede, William. Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901. English translation: The Messianic Secret. Translated by J. C. G. Greig. London: James Clarke & Co., 1971.

III. Literature Cited by the German and American Editors3 Abelard, Peter. “Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans (Excerpt from the Second Book).” In A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham, edited by Eugene R. Fairweather, 276–287. Translated by Gerald E. Moffatt. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956.

3 If a work cited by the editors was also cited by Schlink, that work is only listed in the second part of this bibliography.

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Bibliography

——. Sic et Non: A Critical Edition. Edited by Blanche B. Boyer and Richard McKeon. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977. English translation: Yes and No: Peter Abelard’s Sic et Non. 3d ed. Translated by Priscilla Throop. Charlotte, VT: MedievalMS, 2008. Alexander, Denis R. and Ronald L. Numbers, eds. Biology and Ideology: From Descartes to Dawkins. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010. Alexander of Hales. Summa universae theologiae. English translation of portions of it: A Reader in Early Franciscan Theology. Edited and translated by Lydia Schumacher and Oleg Bychkov. New York: Fordham University Press, 2022. Ambrose of Milan. Concerning Virgins. Translated by H. De Romestin. In NPNF 2 , 10.363–387. ——. On the Mysteries. Translated by H. De Romestin, in NPNF 2 , 10.317–325. Ancient Christian Writers. 70 vols. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978—. Anselm of Canterbury. “Letter to Pope Urban II on the Incarnation of the Word.” In A Scholastic Miscellany, edited by Eugene R. Fairweather, 97–99. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956. Aristotle. Aristotle’s Categories and Propositions. Edited and translated by Hippocrates G. Apostle. Grinnell, Iowa: The Peripatetic Press, 1980. ——. Basic Writings of Aristotle. Edited by Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941. Arnold, Matthieu. “Luther on Christ’s Person and Work.” In The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, edited by Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, and L’ubomír Batka, 274–293. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Athanasius of Alexandria. Orations against the Arians (Greek text). Edited by William Bright. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. English translation: Four Discourses against the Arians. Translated by John Henry Newman and Archibald Robertson, in NPNF 2 , 4.306–447. ——. Paschal Letter XXXIX. Translated by Jsarie Payne-Smith, in NPNF 2 , 4.551–552. Athenagoras. A Plea Regarding Christians. In Early Christian Fathers, edited and translated by Cyril C. Richardson, 300–340. New York: Macmillan, 1970. Der auferstandene Christus und das Heil der Welt. Studienheft 7, edited by the Aussenamt of the EKD, Witten: Luther, 1972. Augustine of Hippo. Contra Faustum Manichaeum. In PL, 42. English translation: Answer to Faustus the Manichaean. Translated by Roland Teske, S. J., in WSA, I/20.69–431. ——. De correptione et gratia. In CSEL, 92.219–280. English translation: Rebuke and Grace. Translated by Roland J. Teske, S. J., in WSA, I/26.109–145. ——. Enchiridion. In CCSL, 46.23–114. Translated by Bruce Harbert, in WSA, I/8.273–343. ——. De fide et symbolo. In CSEL, 41.3–32. English translation: Faith and the Creed. Edited by Michael Fiedrowicz and translated by Matthew O’Connell, in WSA, I/8.155–174. ——. Homily 26 (on John 6.41–59). In CCSL, 36.259–269. Translated by Edmund Hill, in WSA, III/12.449–465. ——. Homily 29 (on John 7.14–18). In CCSL, 36.284–288. Translated by Edmund Hill, in WSA, III/12.489–495.

Literature Cited by the German and American Editors

——. De magistro. In CCSL, 29:157–203. English translation: The Teacher. Translated by Robert P. Russell, in FOTC, 59.7–61. ——. De natura boni. In CSEL, 25/2.855–889. English translation: The Nature of the Good. Translated by Roland Teske, S. J., in WSA, I/19.325–345. ——. De natura et gratia. In CSEL, 60.233–299. English translation: Nature and Grace. Translated by Roland J. Teske, S. J., in WSA, I/23.225–275. ——. De praedestinatione sanctorum. In PL, 44.959–992. English translation: The Predestination of the Saints. Translated by Roland J. Teske, S. J., in WSA, I/26.149–187. ——. Sermon 43 (on 2 Pet. 1.17–18, but with significant attention to Isa. 7.9). In CCSL, 41.508–512. Translated by Edmund Hill, in WSA, III/2.238–243. ——. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. 41 vols. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1990—. Ayer, A. J. Language, Truth, and Logic. London: Gollancz, 1936. Baier, Johann, and C. F. W. Walther. Compendium theologiae positivae. 3 vols. St. Louis: Concordia, 1879. Die Barmer Theologische Erklärung: Einführung und Dokumentation. 7th ed. Edited by Martin Heimbucher and Rudolf Weth. Foreword by Wolfgang Huber. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2009. Barnett, Victoria. For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Barth, Hans-Martin. Dogmatik: Evangelischer Glaube im Kontext der Weltreligionen—Ein Lehrbuch. Gütersloh: Gütersloher, 2001. ——. “Gesetz und Evangelium I.” In TRE, 13.126–142. Barth, Karl. Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf: Die Lehre vom Worte Gottes - Prolegomena zur christlichen Dogmatik. Vol. 1. Munich: Kaiser, 1927. Reprint, vol. 14 of Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, ed. Gerhard Sauter, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1982. ——. The Epistle to the Romans. 6th ed. Translated by Edwyn C. Hoskyns. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933. ——. Ethik I: Vorlesung Münster Sommersemester 1928. Vol. 5, Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, edited by D. Braun. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1973. ——. Ethik II: Vorlesung Münster Wintersemester 1928/1929. Vol. 6, Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, edited by D. Braun. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1978. ——. Evangelium und Gesetz. Theologische Existenz Heute 32. Munich: Kaiser, 1935. Reprinted in Gesetz und Evangelium, edited by Ernst Kinder and Klaus Haendler, 1–29. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968. English translation: “Gospel and Law.” In Karl Barth, Community, State, and Church: Three Essays, edited by David Haddorff, 71–100. Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2004. ——. Die Theologie und die Kirche: Gesammelte Vorträge 2. Zollikon-Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1928. English translation: Theology and the Church: Shorter Writings 1920–1928. Translated by Louise Pettibone Smith. New York: Harper and Row, 1962.

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Bibliography

——. The Word of God and the Word of Man. Translated by Douglas Horton. New York: Harper and Row, 1957. Bartmann, Bernard. Précis de Théologie Dogmatique. 2 vols. Mulhouse: Salvator, 1935, 1941. Bartsch, Hans-Werner, ed. Kerygma and Myth. Translated by Reginald H. Fuller. London: SPCK, 1954. Basil the Great. On the Spirit. Translated by Blomfield Jackson, in NPNF 2 , 8.1–50. Beasley-Murray, George. Baptism Today and Tomorrow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966. Becker, Matthew L. “Christ in the University: Edmund Schlink’s Vision.” The Cresset 80 (Easter 2017): 12–21. ——. “Edmund Schlink (1903–1984).” In Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians, edited by Mark Mattes, 195–222. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. ——. “Edmund Schlink (1903–1984): An Ecumenical Life.” In ESW, 1.15–41. ——. “Edmund Schlink: Ecumenical Theology.” In Generous Orthodoxies: Essays on the History and Future of Ecumenical Theology, edited by Paul Silas Peterson, 23–41. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2020. ——. “Edmund Schlink on Theological Anthropology, the Law and the Gospel.” Lutheran Quarterly 24 (Summer 2010): 151–82. ——. “Edmund Schlink’s Ecumenical Dogmatics.” Lutheran Quarterly 36 (Spring 2022): 1–22. ——. Fundamental Theology: A Protestant Perspective. New York: T&R Clark, 2015. ——, ed. Nineteenth-Century Lutheran Theologians. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016. ——. “Schweitzer’s Quests for Jesus and Paul.” Concordia Journal 28 (October 2002): 409–430. ——. The Self-Giving God and Salvation History: The Trinitarian Theology of Johannes von Hofmann. New York: T&T Clark, 2004. ——. “Werner Elert in Retrospect.” Lutheran Quarterly 20 (2006): 249–302. Bellarmine, Robert. De controversiis Christianae fidei. 4 vols. (Ingolstadt, 1601). English translation of Books 2 and 3 (based on the 1721 Prague edition): De controversiis. Translated by Ryan Grant. Post Falls, ID: Mediatrix Press, 2018, 2020. Bergen, Doris. Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich. 2d ed. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Berkson, William. Fields of Force: The Development of a Worldview from Faraday to Einstein. London: Routledge, 2014. Bettenson, Henry, and Chris Maunder, eds. Documents of the Christian Church. 3d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 Betz, Hans Dieter, et al., eds. Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 4th ed. 9 vols. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998–2007. Bilaterale theologische Dialoge mit der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche. Studienheft 22, edited by Klaus Schwarz on behalf of the Aussenamt of the EKD, Hermannsburg: Hermannsburg Missionshandlung, 1996. Der Bischhöfliche Dienst in der Kirche. Studienheft 18, edited by the Aussenamt of the EKD, Frankfurt/Main: Otto Lembeck, 1992.

Literature Cited by the German and American Editors

Bismarck, K. von and W. Dirks, eds. Neue Grenzen: Ökumenisches Christentum morgen. Stuttgart: Kreuz, 1966. Blenkinsopp, Joseph. “The Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis Revisited and the Origins of Judah.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 33, no. 2 (2008): 131–153. Bode, Gerhard. “Strigel, Viktorin.” In Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions, edited by Timothy Wengert, 706–707. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017. Boersma, Hans and Matthew Levering, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. ——. Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018. Bonaventure. Breviloquium. Edited and translated by Dominic Monti. In Works of Saint Bonaventure, edited by Robert J. Karris. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University, 2005. ——. Commentaria in Librum Quartum Sententiarum. Vol. 4 of Opera Omnia. Edited by the Brothers of the College of St. Bonaventure. Quaracchi, Italy: College of St. Bonaventure, 1889. ——. What Manner of Man? Sermons on Christ by St. Bonaventure. Translated and Edited by Zachary Hayes. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1974. Bonner, Gerald. God’s Decree and Man’s Destiny. London: Variorum, 1987. Bornkamm, Günther. Jesus of Nazareth. Translated by Irene and Fraser McLuskey with James M. Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1960. Boyer, C. B. A. A History of Mathematics. 2d. ed. New York: Wiley, 1968. Bradshaw, Paul F., Maxwell E. Johnson, and L. Edward Phillips. The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Edited by Harold W. Attridge. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002. Brosseder, Johannes. Ökumenische Theologie: Geschichte—Probleme. Munich: Max Hueber, 1967. Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, eds. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Based on the Lexicon of William Gesenius. Translated by Edward Robinson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959. Brown, Raymond. The Birth of the Messiah. New edition. New York: Doubleday, 1993. ——. “The History and Development of the Theory of a Sensus Plenior.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 15 (1953): 141–162. ——. “The Sensus Plenior of Sacred Scripture.” S.T.D. diss., St. Mary’s University, 1955. Brown, Robert F. The Later Philosophy of Schelling: The Influence of Böhme on the Works of 1809–1815. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1977. Bruce, F. F. The Acts of the Apostles. London: Tyndale, 1951. Brunner, Emil. The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption. Translated by Olive Wyon. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1952. ——. The Divine-Human Encounter. Translated by Amandus W. Loos. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1943. ——. Eternal Hope. Translated by Harold Knight. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1954.

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Bibliography

——. Der Mittler. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1927. English translation of the 3d ed.: The Mediator. Translated by Olive Wyon. London: Lutterworth, 1934. Brunner, Peter. “Gesetz und Evangelium: Versuch einer dogmatischen Paraphrase.” In Bemühungen um die einigende Wahrheit: Aufsätze, 74–96. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977. Bühler, Paul. Die Anfechtung bei Martin Luther. Zürich: Zwingli, 1942. Bultmann, Rudolf. Die Geschichte der Synoptischen Tradition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1921. 2d ed., 1931. 3d ed., 1958, 5th ed, 1961. English translation of the 3d ed.: History of the Synoptic Tradition. Translated by John Marsh. New York: Harper & Row, 1963. ——. Jesus. Berlin: Deutsche Bibliothek, 1926. English translation: Jesus and the Word. Translated by Louise Pettibone Smith and Erminie Huntress Lantero. New York: Scribner’s, 1934. ——. “The Problem of Hermeneutics.” In Rudolf Bultmann: New Testament & Mythology and Other Basic Writings, edited and translated by Schubert M. Ogden, 69–93. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984. Burch, George. Early Medieval Philosophy. New York: Kings Crown Press, 1951. Burns, J. Patout. “Grace.” In Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, O.S.A., 391–398. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Bury, J. B. History of the Later Roman Empire: From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian. New York: Macmillan, 1923. Busse, Katrin. “Impulse für den Dialog der Religionen.” Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung (March 5, 2003), 7. Cano, Melchor. De locis theologicis. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Christianos, 2006. Charlesworth, Brian, and Deborah Charlesworth. Evolution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Chemnitz, Martin. Loci theologici. 2 vols. Translated by J. A. O. Preus. St. Louis: Concordia, 1989. Chladenius, Johann Martin. Allgemeine Geschichtswissenschaft. Leipzig: Lanck, 1752. Chrysostom. Homily 44 (Sermon on Mt. 12.46–49). Translated by George Prevost, in NPNF 1 , 10.278–284. ——. Homily against Marcionists and Manichaeans. Translated by W. R. Stephens, in NPNF 1 , 9.201–207. The Church of Jesus Christ: The Contribution of the Churches of the Reformation to the Ecumenical Dialogue on Church Unity. Leuenberg Texts 1. Edited by Wilhelm Hüffmeier. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1994. Concilium Tridentinum, Diariorum, Actorum, Epistularum, Tractatuum Nova Collectio. 13 vols. Edited by the Görres-Gesellschaft. Freiburg: Herder, 1901–2001. Conzelmann, Hans. First Corinthians. Translated by James W. Leitch. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975. Corpus Christianorum. Series latina. 228 vols. Turnhout: Brepols, 1953—.

Literature Cited by the German and American Editors

Corpus Iuris Canonici. 2 vols. in 1 Graz: Akad. Publisher, 1959. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1866–-. Cross, F. L., and E. A. Livingstone, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 3d rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Cullmann, Oscar. Immortality of the Soul or the Resurrection of the Dead?: The Witness of the New Testament. London: Epworth, 1964. Danker, Frederick W., ed. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3d ed. Based on Walter Bauer’s Greichischdeutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur. 6th ed. Translated by Frederick W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Darwin, Charles. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters. Edited by Francis Darwin. New York: Dover, 1958. The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English. Edited by Florentino García Martínez. Translated by Wilfred G. E. Watson. New York: Brill, 1994. The Desert Fathers. Translated by Helen Waddell. New York: Random House, 1998. Dibelius, Martin. Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums. 2d ed. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1933. English translation: From Tradition to Gospel. Translated by Bertram Lee Woolf. New York: Scribner’s, 1935. Dilthey, Wilhelm. “The Rise of Hermeneutics.” In The Hermeneutic Tradition, edited by Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, 101–114. Albany, NY: State University Press of New York, 1990. Dingel, Irene, ed. Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche. Vollständige neuedition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. Edited by Paul Rorem. Translated by Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem. New York: Paulist, 1987. ——. The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology. Edited and translated by John D. Jones. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980. Dodd, C. H. The Parables of the Kingdom. London: Nisbet & Co., 1935. Dombois, Hans. Ordnung und Unordnung der Kirche. Kassel: Staude, 1957. Drumm, Joachim. Doxologie und Dogma: Die Bedeutung der Doxologie für die Wiedergewinnung theologischer Rede in der evangelischen Theologie. Beiträge zur ökumenische Theologie 22. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1991. Ebeling, Gerhard. “On the Doctrine of the Triplex Usus Legis in the Theology of the Reformation.” In Word and Faith, translated by James W. Leitch, 62–78. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1963. Eber, Jochen. “Edmund Schlink—1903–1984: Ein Leben für die Einheit der Kirche.” In SÖB, 1/1.xi–xxii.

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Bibliography

——. Einheit der Kirche als dogmatisches Problem bei Edmund Schlink. Forschungen zur systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie 67, edited by Wolfhart Pannenberg and Reinhard Slenczka. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990. Ehrman, Bart D., ed. After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Elert, Werner. Eucharist and Church Fellowship in the First Four Centuries. Translated by Norman E. Nagel. St. Louis: Concordia, 1966. Engelhardt, Klaus. “Biographische Reminiszenzen zu Edmund Schlink.” Ökumenische Rundschau 52 (2003): 242–244. Ephrem the Syrian. Selected Prose Works. Translated by Edward G. Mathews and Joseph P. Amar, in FOTC, 91. Epiphaneus. Ancoratus. Translated by Young Richard Kim, in FOTC, 128. Die Eucharistie. Studienheft 8, edited by the Aussenamt of the EKD. Bielefeld: Luther, 1974. Eusebius. Life of Constantine the Great. Translated by Ernest Cushing Richardson, in NPNF 2 , 1.481–559. Evangelical Lutheran Worship. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2006. Evangelische Gutachten zur Dogmatisierung der leiblichen Himmelfahrt Mariens. 3d ed. Munich: Kaiser, 1951. The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. 118 vols. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1947—. Fitzgerald, Allan D., ed. Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Translated by James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1961. ——. The Ego and the Id. Rev. ed. Edited and translated by James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1962. ——. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Rev. ed. Edited and translated by James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1990. Fuller, Reginald H. The Foundations of New Testament Christology. New York: Scribner’s, 1965. Galling, Kurt Galling, ed. Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 3d ed. 7 vols. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1957–1965. Gassmann, Günther. “Edmund Schlink—An Ecumenical Pioneer of the 20th Century.” Ecumenical Trends 33 (2004): 6–10. Das geistliche Amt in der Kirche. Edited by the Joint Roman Catholic and Evangelical-Lutheran Commission. Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1981. Gerrish, Brian. Christian Faith: Dogmatics in Outline. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2015. ——. Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther. Oxford: Clarendon, 1962. Gildemeister, Karl Hermann, ed. Johann Georg Hamann’s Briefwechsel mit Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Gotha: Perthes, 1868.

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Slenczka, Reinhard. “25 Jahre theologische Gespräche zwischen EKD und Moskauer Patriarchat.” Ökumensche Rundschau 34 (1985): 446–467. ——. Neues und Altes. 2 vols. Neuendettelsau: Neuendettelsau Gesellschaft fur Mission, 2000. Smit, D. J. “Confessional and Ecumenical? Revisiting Edmund Schlink on the Hermeneutics of Doctrine.” Verbum et Ecclesia 29 (2008): 446–474. Söhngen, Gottlieb. “Gesetz und Evangelium.” Catholica: Jahrbuch für Kontroverstheologie 14 (1960): 81–105. ——. Grundfragen einer Rechtstheologie. Munich: Karl Alber, 1962. Solomon, Norman, ed. The Talmud: A Selection. Translated by Norman Solomon. New York: Penguin, 2009. Spranger, Eduard. Die Grundlagen der Geschichtswissenschaft: Eine erkenntnistheoretisch psychologische Untersuchung. Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1905. Sproul, Barbara. Primal Myths: Creating the World. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1979. Strohl, Jane E. “Luther’s Eschatology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, edited by Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, and L’ubomír Batka, 353–362. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Suárez, Francisco. De sacramentis. Paris: Vives, 1877. Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 1990. Taufe—Neues Leben—Dienst. Studienheft 6, edited by the Aussenamt of the EKD. Witten: Luther, 1970. Taylor, Vincent. The Life and Ministry of Jesus. Nashville: Abingdon, 1954. Theobald, Michael. “Der Epheserbrief.” In Einleitung in das Neue Testament, edited by Martin Ebner and Stefan Schreiber, 408–424. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008. Theodore of Mopsuestia. Commentary on the Nicene Creed. Translated by Alphonse Mingana. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1932. Thomas Aquinas. Commentary on the Book of Causes. Translated by Vincent A. Guagliardo et al. Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996. ——. On the Power of God. Translated by the English Dominican Fathers. Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1952. ——. Opera Omnia. 25 vols. New York: Musurgia, 1948–1950. ——. Summa contra gentiles. Translated by Laurence Shapcote, O.P. Green Bay, Wisconsin: Aquinas Institute, 2018. Tödt, Heinz Eduard. The Son of Man in the Synoptic Tradition. Translated by Dorothea M. Barton. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965. Tomkins, Oliver S. The Church in the Purpose of God. New York: World Council of Churches, 1951. Torrance, T. F. Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology, 1910–1931. London: SCM, 1962. ——. Space, Time, and Incarnation. New York: T&T Clark, 1979.

Literature Cited by the German and American Editors

Tradition und Glaubensgerechtigkeit. Studienheft 3, edited by the Aussenamt of the EKD, Witten: Luther, 1961. Versöhnung. Studienheft 5, edited by the Aussenamt of the EKD. Witten: Luther, 1964. Vogel, Heinrich. Christ und das Schone. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1947. ——. Nicaenische Glaubensbekenntnis: eine Doxologie. Berlin: Lettner, 1963. Vokoun, Jaroslav. “Edmund Schlinks ökumenische Methode und ihr bleibender Beitrag zur Lösung der ökumenischen Probleme.” Catholica 57 (2003): 309–324. Vom Wirken des Heiligen Geistes. Studienheft 4, edited by the Aussenamt of the EKD. Witten: Luther, 1964. Vos, Antonie, et al., eds. Duns Scotus on Divine Love: Texts and Commentary on Goodness and Freedom, God and Humans. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Walker, Williston et al. A History of the Christian Church. 4th ed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985. Weiner, E. S. C., and J. A. Simpson, eds. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary. 2d ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. Weintraub, David A. How Old Is the Universe? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. Weiss, Johannes. Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Edited and translated by Richard Hyde Hiers and David Larrimore Holland. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971. Welch, Claude. God and Incarnation in Mid-Nineteenth Century German Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. Welker, Klaus Eberhard. Die grundsätzliche Beurteilung der Religionsgeschichte durch Schleiermacher. Leiden: Brill, 1965. Wellhausen, Julius. Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien. 2d ed. Berlin: Reimer, 1911. ——. Skizzen und Vorarbeiten. Vol. 6. Berlin: Reimer, 1899. Wengert, Timothy J., ed. Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017. Wenz, Gunther. Introduction to Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology. Translated by Philip Stewart. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. Westermann, Claus. Handbook to the Old Testament. Translated by Robert H. Boyd. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1967. Wiedenhofer, Siegfried. “Ökumenische Theologie (1930–1965): Versuch einer wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Rekonstruktion.” Catholica 34 (1980): 219–248. Wiesel, Elie. Memoirs: All Rivers Run to the Sea. New York: Schocken, 1995. Williams, Rowan. “De Trinitate.” In Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 845–851. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. Edited by Cyril Barrett. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966. Wolf, Hans-Heinrich et al., eds. Reform und Anerkennung kirchlicher Ämter: Ein Memorandum des Arbeitsgemeinschaft ökumenischer Universitätsinstitute. Munich: Kaiser, 1973.

1225

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Bibliography

Wolgast, Eike. “Luther’s Treatment of Political and Societal Life.” In The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology. Edited by Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, and L’Ubomír Batka, 397–413. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Wort und Mysterium. Edited by the Aussenamt of the EKD. Witten: Luther-Verlag, 1958. Zimmerling, Peter. Evangelische Spiritualität: Wurzeln und Zugänge. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003.

Index of Scripture References

Old Testament Genesis (Gen.) 1–11 337 1–2.4a 173ff. 1 151, 174, 188f., 214f. 1.1 188, 1127 1.2 181, 186, 208n, 1057 1.5 191n 1.11f. 182 1.26ff. 183, 214, 216f., 221, 225, 227, 307 1.27 568 1.28ff. 227 1.28 152, 183, 499 1.31 195, 233 2 173, 215, 267, 270 2.4bff. 173ff., 189, 233 2.7 221, 568, 1057 2.15 228 2.17 275 2.18ff. 221 2.18 499 2.19f. 227 3 264f., 267, 270 3.1ff. 244 3.5 265, 665 3.9 83 3.16 499 3.17b 315 4.1 79 5 238 5.1ff. 267 5.1 215 6ff. 329 6.2 317n 6.5ff. 328

6.5 331, 401, 1147 6.8 1067n 8.21 331, 377f., 401, 1147 9.1ff. 989n 9.6 215, 298 11.10ff. 238 12–50 364 12.1ff. 364 12.3 152, 1166 14.18f. 279, 1085n 15.5 570 17.1 570 18.1ff. 411n 21.33 1085n 22.18 570 28.14 570 49.9ff. 383 Exodus (Exod.) 3.2ff. 319 3.7f. 151 3.13ff. 365 3.14 365, 1076 3.15 364 4.12 366 4.21 1164 6.2ff. 365 7.3 1164 7.13 1164 8.15ff. 1164f. 8.32 1165 9.34 1165 10.1 1164 10.20 1164

1228

Index of Scripture References

11.10 1164 13.16 1067n 14.4ff. 1164 15.11 1134 19.5ff. 843 19.11ff. 378, 1123 19.12 363 19.18ff. 378 20.2ff. 366, 390f. 20.2 363, 1067 20.5f. 399 20.8 407 21.12 393 21.24 498 22.21 394 23.17 1085n 23.27 1133 24 407, 745 24.3 367 24.5ff. 743 24.10f. 364 24.17 1129 32 401 33.12f. 79 34.10ff. 390 Leviticus (Lev.) 4.3ff. 377 4.26b 377 4.31 377 4.35 377 5.6 377 5.10 377 11–15 721 11.44 395 16.10 378 16.11ff. 377 19 390 19.2 216, 662 19.9f. 393 19.18 394

24.16

391

Numbers (Num.) 11.23 1067n 16 400 19 721 23.10 261 24.17 383 Deuteronomy (Deut.) 2.30 1164 4.37 369 4.39 1123 5.6ff. 366, 390f. 5.12 407 5.15 391 6.5 392 6.13ff. 399 6.17ff. 399 7.7 151, 369, 1062 7.9f. 399 9.5f. 369 9.6ff. 151 9.6 1062 9.13 369 10.14ff. 1125n 11.12 1067n 12–16 391 13.1ff. 516 17.12 516 17.14ff. 374 18.15ff. 387 18.18f. 387 18.18 570 26.5ff. 150 27.15ff. 390 27.15 391 30.15ff. 399 30.19 339 32.3 1083n

Index of Scripture References

Joshua (Josh.) 3.11ff. 1085n 7 400 7.19 1083n 24.15ff. 367 24.24 367 Judges (Judg.) 8.23 374 9.1ff. 1085n 16.30 261 First Samuel (1 Sam.) 1.9ff. 375 3.1ff. 379 6.5 1083n 8 375 8.5 375 8.11ff. 375 9–10 374 9.10f. 385 10.5ff. 379 10.9ff. 372 10.17ff. 375 11 374 12 375 12.12 374 16.14 1164 18.10 1164 19.20 379 Second Samuel (2 Sam.) 4.4 1085n 6.2 1085n 6.17 372 7.4ff. 378 7.12f. 371, 570 7.14 371, 562, 573 11f. 400 15.25 1067n

First Kings 1–2 1085n 5.15ff. 375 6.13 371 7.15ff. 375 7.27ff. 375 8.5 372 8.11 1124 8.13 1124 8.14ff. 1124 8.14 372 8.27 1123 19.5ff. 319 21 400 22.19 1123 Second Kings 15.9 400 23.1ff. 374 First Chronicles 8.34 1085n 9.40 1085n 16.28f. 1083n 28.5 543n 29.10ff. 1125n 29.11 543n Second Chronicles 13.8 543n Nehemiah (Neh.) 10.29 367 Job 1 322 1.6ff. 1123 1.6 317n 2.1 317n 5.1 317n 10.11 174

1229

1230

Index of Scripture References

14.4 253 26.12 174 33.4 1057 34.14f. 200, 1057 36.14 261 38ff. 188 38.4ff. 174 38.7 317n 40f. 197 Psalms (Ps./Pss.) 1 405n 2.6f. 562 2.7 373, 465 6.5 262 8 220, 575 8.4 192 8.5ff. 192 8.6f. 220 8.6ff. 197 8.7 227 11.4 1067n 14.1ff. 303, 1135 14.2 1123 19.1ff. 277 19.2 199 19.9ff. 405n 22 514 22.1ff. 526f., 1135 22.23 570, 1083n 22.28 543n 24 377 24.1f. 173 29.1f. 1083n 29.9 1083n 31.14 514 33.6 186, 1057 33.9 184 34.15 1067n 40.6 1065 49.12 306

51.5 253 57.5ff. 1083n 68.4 1085n 69.1ff. 357n 73.23ff. 262, 1125n 88.11ff. 262 89.5 317n 89.10 1067n 90.2 155, 183 90.8 260 90.11 260 96.10 543n 97.5 1085n 102.26 792 103.3 697 103.8ff. 400 103.8f. 1153 103.8 195 103.10 697 103.13 1153 103.19 543n 103.20 317n, 319 104 188 104.1f. 1128 104.29f. 200, 1057 104.30 814 110 387, 584 110.4 413 111.3 1141 115.17 262 119 398, 405n 130.1 1071 139.1ff. 1123 139.5f. 1065 139.7 1131 139.8ff. 1123 139.13 174 145.13 543n 148 193, 859 148.10 277 150.2 1128

Index of Scripture References

Proverbs (Prov.) 8.22ff. 185, 1146 Ecclesiastes (Eccles.) 1ff. 408, 410 1.9 340, 410 Song of Solomon (Song of Sol.) 8.11 1085n Isaiah (Isa.) 1.3 195, 306 1.11ff. 381 1.16 721 1.24 1085n 2 389 2.2f. 389 2.4b 389 4.4 722 6.1ff. 318, 379, 859 6.2f. 1123 6.3 878n, 1115 6.5 84, 253, 1115 6.9ff. 1165 6.9f. 402, 1164 6.10 1132, 1164 6.11ff. 1167 7.1ff. 943 7.9 112n, 381 7.14 459f. 8.17 570 9.2 1129 9.6f. 385f. 11 673 11.1ff. 384f. 11.2 413 11.5 386 11.6ff. 384, 386 11.8 315 25.6 738 28.16 570

28.21 1153n 29.10 1164 29.18f. 474 34.11 208n 35.5f. 474 38.18 262 40.1ff. 384 40.2 383, 1067n 40.3ff. 379, 384 40.3 403 40.7f. 231 40.8 1147 41.4 1127 41.8f. 368n, 465 42.1 368n 42.8 1115 43 208n, 368n 43.1 383 43.5 383 43.24f. 383 44.1f. 368n 44.6 183, 1102, 1127 44.24 181 45.4 368n 45.14 389 48.6f. 384 48.8 383 48.11 383 48.12 1127 48.13 174 49.5 1067n 49.7 368n 49.8 652 49.15 356 50.6 514 51.9f. 174 51.17 1135 52–53 745 52.13ff. 387, 570, 618n 52.14f. 745 53 514, 618n, 738, 745

1231

1232

Index of Scripture References

53.4f. 339 53.5 534 53.11f. 745 55.10ff. 382 55.11 184, 382 59.1 1067n 60.1 389, 1129 60.3 389 60.6f. 389 61.1 413, 474 61.5f. 389 61.6 387 62.5 1137 63.16 356 65.13 738 65.17 194, 358, 384, 1049 65.25 384 66.13 356 66.22 358 Jeremiah (Jer.) 1 379 1.5 79, 1120, 1159, 1163 3.1ff. 1137 4.23 208n 5.3 401 5.14 185 5.21 401 7.3ff. 381 7.9 397 13.23 401 14.11 382, 1132 15.16 184 17.1 401 18.1ff. 1133 23.4ff. 385f. 23.5f. 385f. 23.23f. 1123 23.29 382 31 745 31.3b 84

31.31ff. 384, 388, 639, 738, 743 31.32 384, 388 31.33 388, 641, 691 31.34 388, 812 31.38ff. 384 32.40 639 38.14ff. 943 38.14 381 Lamentations (Lam.) 3.22 275 Ezekiel (Ezek.) 1–3 379 1 317f., 859 3.12 1083n 10 317f. 11.19 306, 401 20.25ff. 401 23 1137 34.12ff. 383 34.23ff. 385 34.23f. 384 34.25ff. 386 34.25 384, 388 36.25ff. 722 36.25 388 36.26f. 388 36.26 306, 401 36.27 809 37 814, 841, 1057 37.14 809 37.26 388 40–47 384 45.16ff. 387 47 384 47.1 722 47.12 722 Daniel (Dan.) 4.3ff. 543n

Index of Scripture References

7.12f. 7.13f. 7.13 7.14 7.18 7.27

489 387, 483, 570 481 543n, 554, 721 543n, 570 387, 483, 543n

Hosea (Hos.) 2.4ff. 1137 2.21f. 1137 2.23 1171 4.1f. 397 11.8f. 383 11.9 1115 13.5 79 Joel 2 601 2.28ff. 809 2.28f. 387f., 812, 1057 Amos (Am.) 1–2 401, 407 3.2 79 5.21ff. 381 7–9 379 7.8 382 8.2 382 9.4 382

Micah (Mic.) 4.1ff. 389 4.3 386 5.1 385 5.2ff. 385 Zephaniah (Zeph.) 1.14ff. 329 1.18 329 2.2f. 329 Haggai (Hag.) 1.1ff. 387 2.1ff. 387 2.7ff. 389 Zechariah (Zech.) 1.7ff. 379 3.1 322 4.14 387, 413 9.9f. 385f. 11.12 514 13.1 722 13.7 514 Malachi (Mal.) 3.2 387

1233

1234

Index of Scripture References

Apocryphal Books Wisdom of Solomon 10.10 543n

7.28f.

182

Fourth Ezra (Second Esdras) 1ff. 387, 401 13 483

First Enoch 1ff. 387 37–71 483 62.14f. 738

Second Maccabees (2 Macc.) 7.22ff. 182

Apocalypse of Baruch (Second Baruch) 29.3ff. 738

Index of Scripture References

New Testament Matthew (Mt.) 1.1ff. 238, 454 1.18 458 1.20 458 1.23 459 3.7 465 3.10 464 3.12 465 4.17 491, 703 5.3 410 5.5 473, 851 5.8 472 1047 5.10 472 5.13f. 93n, 597, 849 5.17 496, 500 5.21f. 500f. 5.21 496 5.23ff. 495 5.27f. 500 5.27 496 5.32 498, 690 5.33 496 5.38ff. 498 5.38 496 5.39f. 495, 688 5.39 537 5.42 688 5.43 496, 498 5.44 494 5.45 88, 276, 357, 496, 498 5.46 494 5.48 216, 496 6.1ff. 499 6.9ff. 493 6.10b 470 6.13 322, 585 6.15 496 6.25ff. 498 6.26ff. 202, 357

6.26 195 6.28 195 7.2 501 7.3ff. 495 7.7ff. 493 7.7 681 7.12 285, 686 7.14 490 7.21ff. 93n, 473 7.22f. 610, 1006 8.5ff. 468 8.11 472f. 8.20 486 8.21f. 479, 490 9.2ff. 474 9.8 487 9.15 474 10.5ff. 503 10.19b 684 10.20 588 10.20b 684 10.23 481 10.28 219 10.29 357 10.32f. 486 10.32 488 10.34 537 10.37 491 10.40 457 11.2f. 467 11.5 474 11.9ff. 467 11.11 467 11.12 467 11.14 482 11.17ff. 466 11.19 486 11.21ff. 473 11.23ff. 466

1235

1236

Index of Scripture References

11.27 482 11.30 500 12.28 476 12.31 822 12.38ff. 476 13.24ff. 478, 610 13.33 478 13.35 508 13.36ff. 610 13.44ff. 466 15.1ff. 497 15.21ff. 468, 493 15.24 467 16.1ff. 476 16.16 414 16.17 482, 503 16.18 785, 841f., 867, 884, 886f., 929 16.19 882, 884 16.21ff. 503 16.23 324, 455, 522 16.25 491 16.28 481 17.9 503 18.6 492, 503 18.15ff. 974 18.17 842 18.18 882 18.21f. 495 18.23ff. 496 19.3ff. 498 19.6 498 19.8 498 19.9 498 19.12 499 19.28 485, 881, 1049, 1052n 20.1ff. 501 20.22 520 20.28 487, 521, 523, 531 21.22 493 22.2ff. 472, 1047 23.10 101n, 482

24.22 929 24.36 482, 1120 24.37ff. 485 24.43 605 25 24 25.1f. 472, 605 25.31ff. 485f., 494, 1167 25.34 610, 783, 1006, 1152, 1159, 1163 25.41 610, 783, 1006, 1152 25.46 263, 485 26.26ff. 737ff., 743ff. 26.28 522, 529 26.29 523, 1047 26.29b 746 26.56 512 26.61 573, 866 27.25 519 27.40 573, 866 27.45f. 527n 27.46 73, 525, 526n 27.62ff. 559 28.8f. 550 28.10 556 28.11ff. 559 28.17f. 552, 554f. 28.18ff. 554 28.18 554f., 563 28.19f. 721 28.19 550, 555, 1055, 1068, 1084n, 1089 28.20 548, 555, 583 Mark (Mk.) 1.1 564 1.4 465 1.7 722 1.8 722 1.9ff. 1089 1.10ff. 465 1.11 482, 723 1.15 469, 471, 491, 1087n 1.24 324, 503

Index of Scripture References

1.44 503 2.10 486f. 2.17 467 2.18f. 466 2.19 738 2.20 520 2.23ff. 497 2.28 486f. 2.50 463 3.1ff. 497 3.4 497 3.11 324, 503 3.16 884 3.21f. 825 3.21 463, 511 3.22 511, 825 3.24ff. 476 3.27 537 3.29 699 3.34f. 463 4.11ff. 504, 508 4.12 1164 4.26ff. 470 4.31f. 478 5.7 324 5.36 492 5.43 503 6.7ff. 555 6.13 772 7.1ff. 497 7.7ff. 497 7.9ff. 497 7.18ff. 497 7.24ff. 468 7.36 503 8.11ff. 503 8.26 503 8.29 414, 503, 884 8.30 482, 503 8.31ff. 503 8.31 419, 1042

8.32ff. 455 8.33 504, 522 8.38 485 9.1 479f. 9.2ff. 1129 9.7 482 9.9 503f. 9.13 482, 520 9.17 324 9.23f. 494 9.25 324 9.29 326 9.31 520, 522 9.41 482 9.42 492 9.43ff. 490 9.43 263 10.2ff. 498 10.11f. 498 10.17ff. 491 10.18 509, 554 10.33f. 521 10.38 520 10.40 509 10.45 487, 521, 523, 531, 563 10.52 494 11.13 475 11.20f. 475 11.24 493, 681 11.27ff. 467 12.25 499 12.29ff. 492 13 486 13.2 500 13.11 1053 13.24f. 329 13.24 486 13.26 486, 570, 603 13.27 485 13.28f. 598, 1041 13.30 479f.

1237

1238

Index of Scripture References

13.31 329, 1147 13.32 478, 482, 509, 1120 14.24 522, 523, 529, 563, 640 14.25 472, 522f., 746 14.36 522, 1121 14.50 512 14.58 866 14.61f. 512 15.12 518 15.26 524 15.29 866 15.34 73, 525 15.40f. 524 16.15ff. 721 16.15f. 555 16.16 550 16.18 721 16.19 556 Luke (Lk.) 1.1 445n 1.32f. 570 1.35 458 1.38 463 1.46ff. 853 1.68ff. 853 1.78 458 2.7 459 2.13f. 318 2.14 116, 859, 1083n 2.25 410 2.50 463 3.3 465 3.9 464 3.23ff. 238, 454 4.6 337 4.17ff. 491f. 4.18 1054 4.41 503 5.8 84 6.20 471

6.21f. 472 6.24.ff. 473 6.27f. 494 6.29f. 498 6.29 495 6.32ff. 494 6.36 496 6.37 496 6.41f. 495 7.1ff. 468 7.18f. 467 7.22 474 7.26ff. 467 7.28 467 7.32ff. 466 7.34 486 7.36ff. 474 7.37ff. 491 8.50 492 9.55 475 9.58 486 9.59ff. 479, 490 9.60 262 10.12 466 10.13ff. 473 10.16 457, 588, 649, 908 10.22 482 10.33ff. 468 10.36 495 11.2f. 493 11.9ff. 493 11.13 1053 11.20 476 12.8f. 485f., 488, 955, 962 12.22ff. 498 12.49f. 723 12.51f. 476 12.51 537 12.53 476 13.3ff. 466 13.5 466

Index of Scripture References

13.20f. 478 13.26f. 1006 13.28f. 473 13.29 472 13.31 520 13.33 520f., 522 14.7ff. 509 14.15 1047 14.26 491 15 474 15.7ff. 466, 491 15.10 466 16.16 467 17.4 495 17.10 501 17.16 468 17.20f. 477f. 17.24 481 17.26ff. 485 17.33 1044 18.1ff. 493 19.8 491 19.10 487 19.38 1083n 21.36 481 22.15 746 22.16 523 22.18 523, 746 22.19ff. 521, 768n 22.20 529 22.25f. 851 22.30 485, 746, 881 22.32 884 22.33 884 22.69 516 23.6ff. 513 23.15 513 23.34 519 24.7 419 24.9f. 550 24.13ff. 548, 550, 552

24.24 419 24.26f. 569 24.27 571 24.30 551 24.31 556 24.33f. 552 24.34 550, 884 24.35 556 24.37 552 24.39f. 552 24.41f. 551 24.41 554 24.44ff. 569 24.45 571 24.46 419 24.47f. 555 24.49 818 24.51 556 John (Jn.) 1.1ff. 209n, 281, 450, 455, 853 1.1 239, 575, 626, 792ff., 1127, 1146 1.3 151, 185, 277, 792 1.4 175, 277 1.5 277, 279 1.9 217, 277 1.10 277, 279 1.12 461 1.13 461 1.14 74, 423, 449f., 453, 458, 1067 1.17 639 1.29 88, 529, 573 1.36 529 2.4 463 2.19ff. 573 2.19 866 2.21 869 3.1 519 3.5ff. 816 3.5 725, 728 3.6 453

1239

1240

Index of Scripture References

3.8 817, 821, 1053 3.13 561 3.16 449, 452 3.17f. 74f., 476, 527, 613, 784 3.18 476, 656 3.19 74 3.22 724 3.26 724 3.31ff. 455 3.31 564 3.36 1152 4.1f. 724 4.24 1055, 1124 4.25f. 482 4.46ff. 468 5.21 216, 790, 1055 5.24 264, 613 5.26f. 790 5.26 217, 1127 5.30 74 6.26ff. 744 6.32 640 6.38 510 6.46ff. 745 6.48 745 6.51 528, 745 6.53ff. 744ff. 6.54 85 6.58 745 6.63 745, 816 6.68f. 884 7.14f. 112n 7.16 510 7.20 825 7.38 814 7.39 810, 814 8.15 74 8.23 455, 564 8.31 930 8.34 250 8.41 324

8.44 322, 324 8.48 825 8.58 792 10.11ff. 510 10.11 905 10.26ff. 1163 10.27f. 79 10.28f. 929 10.30 791, 793 10.38 791 11.33ff. 423 11.50 514 12.25 680 12.31 323 12.37ff. 1164 12.42 519 12.45 791 12.48 1165 12.49 510 13.3ff. 510 13.34f. 677 13.34 496, 500 14–16 1089 14.9 72, 510, 791 14.10f. 791 14.10 510, 789 14.13f. 116 14.16 809 14.18 583 14.21 217 14.26 581, 828, 857, 952, 1179 14.30 323 15.1ff. 510 15.4 930 15.6 931 15.9f. 930 15.9 216 15.12ff. 528 15.12 217 15.13 680 15.22 252

Index of Scripture References

15.24 252 15.26f. 820 15.26 809, 952 16.8 822 16.11 323 16.12 829 16.13ff. 828f. 16.13 78f., 821, 857, 963 16.14 828, 952 16.20 747 16.21f. 1041 16.23ff. 116 16.33 537 17.1ff. 510 17.2 563 17.3 482 17.4 509 17.5 793 17.6ff. 1163 17.11 848 17.14 848 17.19 662 17.21ff. 1101 17.21 217, 1032 17.22 216 17.23 70, 1032, 1163 17.24 563, 793, 1138, 1142, 1160, 1163 17.26 1101 18.3 512 18.6 537 18.33ff. 513 18.36 513 18.37 537 19.8ff. 513 19.11 513, 537 19.15f. 514 19.25ff. 524 19.30 537 19.34 723 19.38ff. 519 20.14ff. 550, 552

20.17ff. 508, 557f. 20.17 1174n 20.18 556 20.19 552 20.20 552 20.21 216 20.22f. 555 20.22 809, 881 20.23 555 20.24ff. 548 20.26 552, 1046 20.27 552 20.28 441, 554, 791 20.30 549 20.31 414 21.12f. 551 21.15ff. 555, 884 21.25 549 Acts 1.3ff. 554 1.3f. 548 1.3 549 1.8 555, 818 1.9ff. 556 1.13f. 852 1.14 463 1.15f. 884 1.21ff. 548 1.21ff. 893 2 852, 881 2.1 809 2.11 153, 812 2.13 825 2.14ff. 812, 884 2.16ff. 850 2.17ff. 812 2.17 812f. 2.22f. 418f. 2.24 527 2.32ff. 548

1241

1242

Index of Scripture References

2.36 418, 563 2.38 725f., 810 2.40 725 2.41 729 2.42ff. 831 2.42 853 2.46 853 2.47 725 3.2ff. 884 3.13f. 513 3.13 418 3.15 418f. 3.22 570 3.25 570 4.8ff. 812, 884 4.12 653, 845 4.28 1163 4.31 810, 812 4.32ff. 831 5.1ff. 884, 971 5.3 822 5.29ff. 884 5.29 300, 312n 5.30 418 5.32 820f. 6.1ff. 885 6.3 894 6.6 895 6.13f. 866 7.38 843 7.42 1164 7.51 822 7.53 311n 7.55 481 7.56ff. 515 7.56 561 8.14ff. 884f. 8.14 926n 8.16 726 8.17 817 8.29 821

8.37 958 9.3ff. 548, 1046 9.4 84 9.5 552 9.8 84 9.17f. 810 9.17 818 9.31 818, 863 10.1ff. 574n 10.19 821 10.37 419 10.39f. 418 10.41 419, 548, 551 10.42 419 10.43 725 10.45 810 10.48 726 11.22 926n 13.1ff. 890, 893, 896 13.1 119 13.2ff. 821 13.2 829, 894 13.3f. 926n 13.4 821 13.28ff. 418f. 13.28 513 13.31 548 13.52 810, 812 14.14 882 14.17 277 14.23 893, 895 15 838n, 887 15.1 885 15.20 971, 978 15.22ff. 926n 15.22 885, 975 15.28 821, 941, 981 15.29 971, 978 16.6 819, 821 16.9ff. 943 17.23 280

Index of Scripture References

17.26 277 17.27 278 17.28 1051 17.30 280 19.5 726 19.6 810 20.7ff. 853 20.22 819 20.28 894, 900 21.27 513 22.6ff. 548 24.2 349 26.12ff. 548 26.16ff. 555 26.18 322 26.24 825 26.32 513 Romans (Rom.) 1–7 322 1.3f. 420, 563f. 1.3 449, 454, 457 1.4 564, 1171 1.5 669 1.11 1171 1.16 649, 652 1.17f. 1071, 1134 1.18ff. 291, 317, 1132 1.18 530, 1071, 1134 1.19ff. 604, 1074 1.20f. 72, 276f., 290, 406 1.21f. 72, 277, 280ff., 1080, 1144 1.22 281 1.23 279, 281 1.24ff. 1164 1.25 279, 282, 290 1.26f. 687 1.26 1164 1.28 1164f. 2.4 610 2.5ff. 610

2.5 1071, 1132 2.9 296 2.10 290 2.12 577 2.14f. 285, 289, 296, 303 2.15 251, 292, 686 2.16 668 3.9f. 92, 281, 1135 3.10ff. 291, 303 3.11 279 3.12 291 3.15f. 291 3.18 281 3.21 353, 577, 639, 645, 654, 1134, 1138 3.22 654 3.25 332f., 528, 530, 532, 537, 654 3.27 641 3.28 650, 654 4.5 654f. 4.9ff. 655 4.11 842 4.17 178, 182, 655 4.22ff. 655 4.25 418, 528, 655 5.1ff. 655, 706n 5.5 655, 678, 707n, 818, 1073, 1137 5.8 528, 1135 5.9 530, 652 5.10 530f., 654 5.12ff. 262, 264, 267f., 864 5.13 251 5.17ff. 727 5.18 646, 650 5.19 568 5.20 251, 577 6 723 6.1 676 6.3ff. 418, 650, 674, 724ff., 864 6.4f. 55, 559, 661, 725ff., 1043 6.6 675, 725ff. 6.8 727, 876, 1043

1243

1244

Index of Scripture References

6.9f. 557, 810 6.11 656 6.13 674 6.16f. 250 6.19 250, 674, 780 6.20 250 6.23 262 7.4 864 7.7f. 251 7.9 251, 577 7.10ff. 577 7.12ff. 576f. 7.14 250, 576, 782f. 7.18 250 7.25 116 8.1 656 8.2f. 576, 641, 677, 691, 1141 8.3 419, 449, 453, 529, 568 8.4 529, 728 8.7 252 8.9 728, 816, 818, 820 8.11 816, 818, 1042, 1047 8.14 815, 818 8.15ff. 1089 8.15 664, 691, 815, 819f., 1054 8.16 816 8.17f. 352, 876 8.19f. 315, 317, 582 8.21 1050 8.22 616 8.23 665, 674, 729, 816 8.24ff. 653 8.26f. 683, 816, 826, 1054 8.28 206, 352, 1163 8.29f. 215, 1120, 1163, 1171 8.30 352, 653 8.31ff. 709, 1171 8.32 528 8.33f. 656, 701, 1161 8.34 116, 419, 538, 614, 655 8.35 352

8.37 538 8.38 208n, 224n, 322, 352 9–11 154, 345 9.1ff. 844 9.3 693, 1173 9.4f. 844 9.6f. 843 9.8 844 9.11ff. 1163f. 9.13 1164, 1166 9.18 1164 9.20 353 9.21ff. 1166 9.25 1171 9.27 844 9.31ff. 844 10.4 534, 577, 672, 936 10.5 577 10.9 420 11.1ff. 844 11.2 1163 11.5f. 844, 1164, 1171 11.11ff. 844, 1166 11.15f. 844, 1166, 1171, 1174n 11.17ff. 843ff. 11.20 1171 11.23f. 844 11.25f. 581, 844, 1042, 1165f. 11.28f. 844 11.30ff. 844 11.32 76, 1166 11.33 77, 97, 154 11.36 116, 194, 200, 1083n, 1144 12 890 12.1 663, 675, 677n, 764 12.2 667 12.4f. 864 12.6ff. 119, 890, 978, 1024 12.8 890, 897, 901 12.9 890 12.10 980

Index of Scripture References

12.14ff. 679 13.1ff. 295, 297, 302ff., 591, 687 13.2 295, 311n 13.3ff. 285, 289, 295, 302 13.5 297 13.7 304 13.8ff. 709 13.9 673 13.11 652 13.14 349 14.1ff. 1001 14.9 418 14.17f. 728 14.23 291 15.6 1068n 15.16 663 16.7 882 16.27 1083n First Corinthians (1 Cor.) 1.2 663 1.9 876 1.10ff. 1001 1.12 885 1.13ff. 726 1.18 694, 951, 1142f. 1.19 98 1.20f. 1143 1.22 1143 1.24 77, 645, 1143 1.25 1120 1.26f. 98, 1143 1.28f. 179 1.30 84, 645, 1138, 1142f. 2.1f. 77, 1143 2.2 1142 2.4 77 2.7 76, 1142f., 1163 2.9f. 74 2.10ff. 951 2.11 78

2.12 1143 3.11 840, 866 3.13 609, 709 3.15 650, 652 3.16 813, 818, 866 3.21f. 99, 227 3.22 344, 818 4.1 901 4.4 86, 695, 709 4.16 914 5.1ff. 693, 971 5.4 887 5.5 652 5.7 529, 739 5.11 694 6.1ff. 971 6.2 613, 663, 851, 1048 6.3 227, 851 6.9f. 693 6.11 663, 725f., 728 6.19 663, 813, 866f. 6.20 531, 867 7.1ff. 971 7.10 973, 978 7.12ff. 690 7.22 531 7.23 531 7.29f. 848 7.31 328 7.40 820 8.1 867 8.6 151, 185, 194, 200, 357, 575, 792 9.1 549 9.4ff. 971 9.14 978 9.15 885 9.20ff. 953 10.1ff. 581 10.4 574, 792 10.14ff. 971 10.16 16, 744, 864, 876

1245

1246

Index of Scripture References

11–14 853 11.7 216, 307 11.17ff. 1001 11.20ff. 971 11.23ff. 563, 739 11.24f. 528, 768n 11.25 385, 521, 529, 640, 743 11.26 642, 740, 746f., 750 11.27 744 12–13 890 12–14 679, 707n 12 829 12.3 956, 1053f. 12.4ff. 812, 823, 865, 868, 890, 1024 12.6 818 12.7 813, 817, 820, 889 12.8f. 119, 853, 890, 893 12.10 581, 829, 899 12.11 659, 817, 821, 868, 889, 1054 12.13 729, 864 12.14ff. 864 12.21 864 12.24f. 865 12.28 890, 897, 901f., 940 12.29 119, 817 12.31 677, 821, 889, 891 13.1ff. 677f., 1137 13.2 709 13.4ff. 678 13.12 78f., 1047 13.13 1138 14.1ff. 971 14.1 817, 829, 889 14.16 959 14.24 822 14.26ff. 853 14.26 119 14.29ff. 899 15.2 72, 652 15.3ff. 71, 418f., 528, 549, 569, 727 15.4 559

15.5ff. 548ff., 555, 881, 884 15.7 555 15.8 556, 926n 15.9 926n 15.10 612, 717 15.13ff. 1044 15.16 1044 15.17 615 15.20ff. 582, 1051 15.21ff. 864 15.22ff. 606, 613, 618n 15.25ff. 585, 603, 616 15.28 230, 616, 1050, 1125n 15.31 1152 15.35ff. 231, 1047f. 15.42ff. 231, 552, 567, 1044 15.44ff. 582, 665, 754, 817, 1045 15.45ff. 235, 267 15.45 816, 979, 1055, 1055 15.46 568 15.49 215, 232, 582, 665, 1047 15.51ff. 232 15.56 661 16.15f. 897, 899 16.22 618n, 693, 1053 Second Corinthians (2 Cor.) 1.1 267 1.3 116, 267, 1068n 1.19 97, 1148 1.21f. 728 1.22 817f., 820 2.15f. 694 2.16 74, 1165 3.3ff. 576, 810 3.4ff. 1009 3.6ff. 639, 810, 816, 991 3.9 1129 3.10 639, 814 3.14ff. 571 3.16 160

Index of Scripture References

3.17 728, 752, 819, 1055 3.18 215, 665 4.4 215, 323, 649, 665 4.10 826 4.13 820 4.16 667 4.19ff. 654 5.4f. 729, 816 5.10 607, 610, 652, 782, 1006 5.14f. 528, 646, 650 5.15 418 5.17 152, 175, 343, 582, 661, 816 5.18ff. 530ff., 857 5.19 646, 791 5.20 75, 533, 646, 649, 762, 857, 886, 908 5.21 73, 84, 528ff., 530, 534, 655, 1139 6.2 652 6.4 826 6.9 86, 672, 826, 1042, 1152 6.10 826, 1042 6.14 674 6.16 813, 866 8.9 449, 534, 666 8.19 892, 895f. 11.14 324 11.23ff. 926n 11.31 1068n 12.7ff. 683, 825 12.9f. 717 13.13 876, 1089 Galatians (Gal.) 1.5 1083n 1.8f. 693, 999, 1011n 1.9 888, 999 1.12ff. 549 1.16 549, 555 1.18 884 1.19 882 2.7ff. 885 2.11ff. 871, 885

2.19f. 86 2.20 221, 528, 717, 763, 820, 826, 886 3.7 842 3.12 577 3.13 529, 531, 654, 1136, 1139 3.16 570 3.19 577 3.21 576 3.24 577 3.26 815, 848, 878n 3.27 724ff. 3.28 848 3.29 842 4.4 449, 451, 454, 458, 461, 809, 1087n 4.5 531f. 4.6 691, 705n, 728, 815, 818, 820, 822, 1054 4.8 280 4.9 79 4.12 953 5.16 692 5.19ff. 610, 693, 872 5.22ff. 641, 691f., 709, 817, 890 5.23 783 6.2 55, 677 6.7ff. 610, 820 6.16 843 Ephesians (Eph.) 1.3ff. 1159f. 1.3 1068n, 1160 1.4ff. 573, 846f., 1160, 1162, 1171 1.5ff. 1163 1.9f. 76, 1163 1.10 153, 1087n 1.11 1163, 1171 1.12f. 728, 1083n 1.14 729, 816, 1083n 1.17 1068n 1.20 728 1.21 188f., 208n, 224n, 584f.

1247

1248

Index of Scripture References

1.22f. 865 2.2 585 2.3ff. 652 2.5f. 728 2.8 652 2.10 612, 676 2.14f. 848 2.20ff. 570, 841, 866, 882, 887f. 2.21 867 3.4f. 76 3.9 76 3.10 208n, 224n, 1041n 3.11 1163 3.14f. 357 3.21 1083n 4.4f. 868, 1089 4.11 119, 890, 901, 940, 978 4.12 59, 869 4.15f. 864f. 4.16 865, 867, 869 4.23 667 4.24 665 4.30 728 5.2 530 5.5 590 5.9 817 5.14 262 5.21 980 5.22ff. 864 5.23 864 5.25ff. 871 5.26 725 6.12 585, 1041n Philippians (Phil.) 1.1 900 1.5 876 1.23 661 2.2ff. 679 2.6ff. 420, 449, 455, 457, 563, 853 2.6 215, 422, 449f., 793, 1142

2.7 439 2.9 208n 2.10f. 419 2.12 132, 205, 674, 717 2.13 612, 676 3.12 78, 676 3.20 594, 848 3.21 216, 231, 552, 582, 816 3.30f. 652 4.20 1083n Colossians (Col.) 1.1ff. 81n 1.3 1068n 1.13 322, 590 1.15 215, 450, 530, 665, 793, 1142 1.16 174, 185, 188f., 194, 196, 208n, 224n, 419, 530, 584, 792, 1041n 1.17 200, 575 1.18 866 1.19f. 530, 791 1.26f. 1143 2.2 769n 2.3 1143 2.9 791 2.10 864 2.12 585, 661, 725, 727, 1043 2.13 85, 674 2.14f. 538 2.15 208n, 224n, 585, 864, 1041n 2.17 575 2.18 320 3.1 674, 727, 1043 3.3 86, 661, 675, 727, 816 3.4 87 3.5 216, 665 3.6 329 3.10 215f. 3.12 216 3.17 860

Index of Scripture References

First Thessalonians (1 Thess.) 1.5 649, 769n 1.6 914 1.10 329 2.14 862 4.14 418 4.15ff. 232 4.16 613 5.12 901 5.19 829 5.23 219 Second Thessalonians (2 Thess.) 2.11f. 1164f. 2.15 1010 3.6 971 First Timothy (1 Tim.) 1.15 926n 1.17 117, 1083n 1.18 893 2.1f. 297, 302 2.4 646, 1173 2.6 528, 531 2.14 267 3.7 289 3.15 867 3.16 77, 449, 1070 4.14 893, 896 5.6 262 5.22 895 6.11 674 6.15 584 6.16 1083n Second Timothy (2 Tim.) 1.6 895f., 909 1.9 1163 2.2 897f. 2.9 650 2.11f. 1048

2.19 79 3.16 940 4.18 652, 1083n Titus 1.5 895 1.7 901 2.13 791 3.1 297, 302 3.5 725, 728, 1052n Hebrews (Heb.) 1.1f. 72, 185, 792 1.3 200, 450, 575, 793, 1142 1.5 570, 573 1.10 792 2.6ff. 570, 575 2.8 585 2.9 528 2.10f. 662 2.12f. 570, 574 2.13 574 2.17 530 4.13 1131 4.15 455 5.6 749 6.4ff. 699 6.5b 1127 6.11 769n 7–10 573 7.18f. 576 7.22 639 8.6f. 639 9.14 662 9.25f. 576 10.1 575f. 10.10 662 10.12f. 586 10.14 663 10.22 725, 769n 10.26ff. 700

1249

1250

Index of Scripture References

10.29 822 10.31 1133 11.3 182 12.6 344 12.14 674 12.16ff. 674, 700 12.22ff. 859, 877 13.8 109 13.14 848 13.21 1083n James 1.17 195, 1148 1.18 641 2.1ff. 679 3.9 216, 307 5.14 772 First Peter (1 Pet.) 1.3 661, 1068n 1.11 574, 792, 940 1.18f. 532 1.19 573 1.20 420, 1163 1.23 641 2.4f. 867 2.5ff. 813, 866 2.6 570 2.7 866 2.9 684, 843, 850 2.11 848 2.13ff. 302 2.17 304 2.21ff. 303, 528 3.13ff. 303 3.18ff. 419, 528 3.20f. 650 3.21 725 3.22 208n, 224n, 585 4.10ff. 889, 891, 901 4.11 1083n

5.2 901 5.8 585 5.11 1083n Second Peter (2 Pet.) 1.1 791 1.17f. 112n 2.4 323 3.7 329 3.10 1050 3.13 1049 3.18 1083n First John (1 Jn.) 1.1ff. 24, 549 1.2 74 1.3f. 876 1.4 876 1.5 217 1.8f. 695 2.7f. 673 2.15 848 2.17 328 2.20ff. 728, 810, 812 2.22f. 999 2.27 728, 810, 812 3.1 815 3.2 87, 215, 664f., 816 3.7 675 3.16 528 3.23 679 4.1ff. 581, 828 4.2f. 449f., 453, 565, 798, 828, 999 4.8 1138 4.9 645 4.10 679 4.16 1138 4.20 847 5.3 677 5.4 538, 852 5.6 723

Index of Scripture References

5.16 5.20

694, 700 791

Second John (2 Jn.) 10 971 Jude 6 323 25 1083n Revelation (Rev.) 1.1 1041 1.6 1083n 1.8 564 1.13 481, 561 1.17f. 564, 1102 2 1054 2.5 1007 2.7ff. 822, 1007 2.10 675n, 851 2.11 822 2.16 1007 2.17 822 3 1054 3.5 1171 3.11 851 3.12 868 3.16 1007, 1171 3.19 1007 3.20 583 4 318, 859, 1123 4.6 317 4.8 1115 4.9f. 1063 4.11 117

5 318, 591, 1123 5.6ff. 573, 589, 749 5.9 532 5.11 538 5.12f. 1083n 7.9ff. 663 7.12 117, 1083n 12 930 13 300, 302f. 14.14 481, 561 15.3ff. 538 16.5ff. 1153 17.8 1163, 1167 19.1f. 117f., 1153 19.7 1047 19.13 417 19.16 413 20 1049 20.4ff. 606 20.6 851, 1048 20.11 606, 1050 20.14 263 21.1ff. 358, 1049f. 21.1 1049f. 21.4 606 21.5 194, 1049 21.8 263 21.10 868 21.14 841, 888 21.22 868, 1048 22.9 320 22.13 1127 22.17 605, 1054 23.20 1053

1251

1252

Index of Scripture References

Apostolic Fathers First Clement 1.1ff. 885, 905, 974 21ff. 926n Second Clement 14.1ff. 845n The Letter of Ignatius to the Ephesians 3.1f. 926n 7.2 457 20.2 567n The Letter of Ignatius to the Magnesians 3.1f. 926n 6.1f. 926n The Letter of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans 8.1f. 926n

8.2

871, 873n

The Letter of Ignatius to the Trallians 3.1f. 926n The Martyrdom of Polycarp Salutation 871n 8.1 871n The Didache 1.1ff. 972 10.6 909 10.7 993 15.1ff. 909, 993 The Shepherd of Hermas Vision 1.1f. 182 Vision 2.4 845n

Index of Persons

A Abelard, Peter 536, 545, 1036 Abraham, OT patriarch 152, 182, 279, 364ff., 395, 472f., 570ff., 580, 841ff., 943, 1061, 1085f., 1126, 1166 Acacius, bishop 796n Alexander of Hales 1080, 1085 Alexander, Denis 208 Althaus, Paul 41n, 618 Ambrose of Milan 463, 539, 656, 703, 756, 761 Ambrosiaster 918, 976, 989 Amsdorf, Nikolaus von 895 Andreae, Jakob 166, 705 Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler) 1067 Anselm of Canterbury 100, 112, 154, 246, 535ff., 545, 622, 1011, 1037, 1096, 1109 Apollinaris of Laodicaea 451, 798, 805 Arens, Hans 134n, 135n Aristotle 135, 281ff., 294, 298n, 338, 680n, 769, 1066n, 1075, 1150 Arius 451, 794 Athanasius of Alexandria 165, 246, 525, 623n, 705, 756, 796, 798, 805, 937, 999, 1074, 1094, 1103 Athenagoras 941 Attila 924, 927 Augustine of Hippo – on the atonement 539, 623n – and baptism 730ff. – on the beatific vision 1052 – and the church 832 – on death 232 – and the Eastern fathers 57, 254ff., 1016, 1095

– and election/predestination 714, 1167, 1169 – and ethics 285, 291 – on faith and understanding 85, 112 – on God 1066n, 1091, 1095ff., 1107ff. – on human will 147, 158, 254ff., 264, 272, 710ff., 718, 1178 – on justification 656, 659, 707, 711ff., 779 – and the Lord’s Prayer 1116 – and the Lord’s Supper 756ff. – on the procession of the Spirit 1088, 1107f. – and repentance 703 – and the resurrection 1045 – and the sacraments 642ff., 731, 756ff. – on sin 234f., 254ff., 264ff., 306, 463, 710ff., 1045, 1167 – on the Trinity see “on God” above Aulén, Gustaf 541n, 546 Ayer, A. J. 136n B Bach, J. S. 52n, 81 Baier, Johann 1066n, 1112 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 281 Barion, Hans 975n Barnabas, apostle 821, 829, 882, 890, 894ff. Barnett, Victoria 40n Barth, Hans-Martin 708, 1188n Barth, Karl – and the Barmen Declaration 40ff. – and biblical interpretation 950, 988 – on christology 439, 447

1254

Index of Persons

– and church law 972, 989 – on creation 174 – and dialectical theology 167f., 477, 543, 615 – on eschatology 615, 619 – on gospel and law 55, 651n – on the kingdom of God 477, 480 – and natural theology 40n – and Nissiotis 29 – and predestination 163 – and Schlink 38ff., 787, 1176 – and the theology of sojourners 166 – on the Trinity 1077, 1081, 1098ff., 1106, 1108, 1121 – and the Word of God 136, 950 Bartmann, Bernard 760n Basil, St. 57, 703, 732, 735, 796, 961, 1016, 1095f., 1100, 1107f., 1111f. Baur, Ferdinand C. 446 Beasley-Murray, George 734n Becker, Matthew 17, 37n, 113, 170, 207, 273, 446f., 546, 617, 705 Bellarmine, Robert 766, 769, 1008, 1013, 1036 Ben-Chorin, Schalom 519 Benedict VIII, pope 1105 Benedict XIV, pope 1106 Benedict XVI, pope 45, 787; see also Ratzinger Berengar of Tours 760 Bergen, Doris 40n Berkson, William 209 Beza, Theodore 1167f. Blenkinsopp, Joseph 411 Blinzler, Josef 515n Bobrinskoy, Boris 1109n Bode, Gerhard 719 Bodelschwingh, Friedrich von 38 Boersma, Hans 1052 Bogomil 334 Böhme, Jakob 265

Bolotow, Vasilij Vasiljević 1106 Bonaventure 101f., 113, 186, 280, 311, 711f., 718, 731, 1047, 1052, 1080 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 927 Boniface VIII, pope 834, 878 Bonner, Gerald 718 Bornkamm, Günther 488, 543, 591n, 600n, 896n Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne 141, 168 Bousset, Wilhelm 484, 488, 543, 566n, 618 Boyer, C. B. A. 210 Braaten, Carl 444 Bradshaw, Paul 735, 926, 1035 Brilioth, Yngve 168 Brosseder, Johannes 1181n Brown, Raymond 542, 618 Brown, Robert 265n Bruce, F. F. 1051n Brun, Lyder 551n Brunner, Emil 136, 167, 439, 447, 477, 615, 619 Brunner, Peter 168, 708, 751, 895 Buber, Martin 103n, 111, 1097n Bubnoff, Nikolai von 102f.n Budde, Karl 411 Bühler, Karl 134, 136, 167 Bühler, Paul 1156 Bulgakov, Sergius 540n, 900 Bultmann, Rudolf – and biblical interpretation 950, 988f. – and christology 432, 488, 618f. – criterion of dissimilarity 429, 445 – and eschatology 619 – existential theology of 166, 169, 446 – and form criticism 445f., 474ff., 543f. – on the Holy Spirit 822 – on the kingdom of God 477 – on the messianic secret 504 – and sōma 220n – on talking about God 1078

Index of Persons

– and the Word of God Burch, George 311 Burns, Patout 707 Bury, J. B. 927 Busse, Katrin 1188n

619, 950

C Caelestius 710 Cajetan 938, 987 Calixt, Georg 141, 168 Calov, Abraham 205, 211, 1066n Calvin, John 110, 170 – on baptism 731 – on the biblical canon 1035 – and biblical interpretation 1011f. – and christology 625, 753f. – and confession of sins 702 – on civil obedience 301 – on election/predestination 714, 1169 – on the Holy Spirit 186, 820 – on the image of God 313 – and justification 659 – on the natural knowledge of God 280 – and the new obedience 709 – on the resurrection of the body 274 – on sin 266 – and the third use of the law 677 Campenhausen, Hans Freiherr von 461, 462n, 897n, 978 Cano, Melchor 765, 769 Carnap, Rudolf 167 Casel, Odo 751, 769 Celestine, pope 80 Cerularius, Michael, patriarch 1113 Charlemagne 1105 Charles V, emperor 128, 165, 301, 312, 657 Charlesworth, Brian 210 Charlesworth, Deborah 210 Chemnitz, Martin 166, 1012, 1066n

Chladenius, Johann Martin 988 Chytraeus, David 166 Clement of Alexandria 81, 104, 113, 280, 700, 1074, 1085 Clement of Rome 16, 845n, 900, 905, 926, 974, 1035 Cicero 511 Cocceius, Johannes 153, 169 Comte, August 446 Congar, Yves 918 Constantine the Great 795, 924, 927, 960 Conzelmann, Hans 1052 Cope, Brian 28, 769, 1183n Crusius, Martin 705 Cullmann, Oscar 274, 488, 544, 566 Cyprian of Carthage 730, 735, 916, 1116 Cyril of Alexandria 542, 756, 769, 798, 803, 806, 1104 Cyril of Jerusalem 129, 160, 166, 170, 273, 873, 1116n Cyrus of Persia 299, 345, 403 D Darwin, Charles 200, 211, 988 David, OT king 370ff., 380ff., 400ff., 454, 457f., 473, 481f., 507, 563, 570, 572f., 580, 626, 952 Delitzsch, Franz 219, 273 Dibelius, Martin 460n, 475, 543, 566n Dilthey, Wilhelm 950, 988 Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite 170, 318, 320, 333, 1066, 1084 Dodd, C. H 477, 543 Dombois, Hans 972, 975n, 989 Dörries, Hermann 961n Dostoevsky, Fyodor 103n Drumm, Joachim 1180n Dunkerley, Roderic 900n E Ebeling, Gerhard

708, 944n, 1014n

1255

1256

Index of Persons

Eber, Jochen 17n, 37n, 44n, 1180n, 1181n Ebner, Ferdinand 103, 1097n Ebrard, Johannes 447 Ehrenberg, Hans 103n Ehrman, Bart 617 Eichorn, Albert 566n Eichrodt, Walther 214n Einstein, Albert 183 Elert, Werner 41n, 875n Elijah, OT prophet 232, 379, 387, 482 Engelhardt, Klaus 17, 30, 42n, 241, 1175n, 1184 Ephrem the Syrian 169 Epiphanius 169, 1104 Erasmus 258 Eusebius of Caesarea 624n, 925, 927 Eutyches 798 Evagrius 707 Ezekiel, OT prophet 379, 388, 472, 483, 859 F Faustus of Riez 875 Feine, Hans Erich 976n Feiner, Johannes 751n Firmilian, bishop 735 Fischer, Helmut 137n Fitzgerald, Allan 707 Flacius, Matthias Illyricus 309, 713, 719 Flavian, patriarch of Constantinople 798n, 801n Florensky, Pavel Alexandrovich 102f. Florovsky, Georges 29, 1014n Flusser, David 519 Forsyth, Peter 447 Francis I, pope 58 Francis of Assisi 860 Frank, Franz H. R. von 273, 439, 447 Freud, Sigmund 208, 244 Fries, Heinrich 20, 22ff., 28, 45, 311, 618, 1034, 1174, 1177

Fuller, Reginald H.

444, 544

G Gabler, Johann Philipp 571 Gaiseric, king of the Vandals 924, 927 Gassmann, Günther 30, 42n, 1175n, 1181n Geiselmann, Josef Rupert 1013 Gerhard, Johann 205, 211, 544, 625, 1066n Gerlach, Stephen 705 Gerrish, Brian 51n, 311 Gess, Wolfgang 439, 447 Gideon, OT judge 374, 1056 Goethe, Johann W. 111 Gogarten, Friedrich 167 Goppelt, Leonard 488, 544 Gore, Charles 447 Graf, K. H. 207 Gräßer, Erich 599n Gratian 972, 974, 988 Greeven, Heinrich 120 Gregorios, Paulos 806 Gregory of Cyprus 1109 Gregory of Nazianzus 57, 539, 546, 703, 732, 735, 796, 805, 1016, 1095f., 1100, 1107f., 1111f. Gregory of Nyssa – and apophatic theology 1084 – on the atonement 539, 623n – on baptism 732 – as a Cappadocian 735, 1111 – catechism of 546 – on prayer 707 – on repentance 703 – on the Trinity 57, 796, 805, 1016, 1095f., 1100, 1107f., 1111f. Gregory of Palamas 147, 169, 707, 824f., 1084, 1106, 1109, 1113, 1178 Griesbach, Johann J. 571n Grillmeier, Alois 447, 801n, 803n, 806

Index of Persons

Grotius, Hugo 536, 545 Gunkel, Hermann 214, 241, 566n, 811, 827n H Haendler, Klaus 55n Haggai, OT prophet 403 Hahn, Ferdinand 429n, 488, 543, 566 Hahn, Hans 167 Hamann, Johann Georg 103f., 135 Hamm, Berndt 1156 Harless, Adolf von 273 Harnack, Adolf von 167, 438, 446, 623n, 794, 976, 989, 1074, 1078, 1085 Haviland, William 242 Hayakawa, S. I. 136f. Hayes, Zachary 101n Heberer, Gerhard 269n Heermann, Johann 520n Hegel, Georg W. F. 65, 167, 169, 265f., 274, 345, 438f., 988, 1078, 1083, 1103, 1113 Heidegger, Martin 112 Heimbucher, Martin 40n Heitmüller, Wilhelm 566n Held, Heinz Joachim 46n, 1185 Hengel, Martin 618 Henning, Gerhard 987 Henrich, Stefan 45n Henry II, emperor 1105 Herder, Johann Gottfried 948, 988 Herrfahrdt, Rolf 30 Herrmann, Wilhelm 167 Hesse, Mary 209 Hezekiah, OT king 339 Hillary of Poitiers 1104n Hippolytus 81, 732, 735, 902, 993 Hitler, Adolf 1039 Höfling, J. W. F. 273 Hofmann, Johannes C. K. von 170, 273, 447, 546 Hollaz, David 820n, 1037, 1066n

Homer 1175n Hopf, Margarethe 46n Hormisdas, pope 802n Humbert, cardinal 760 Hurtado, Larry W. 618 I Ignatius of Antioch 450, 457, 459, 461, 542, 567n, 756, 769, 871ff., 905, 918, 926, 1074, 1085 Innocent X, pope 273 Irenaeus of Lyons – as an anti-Gnostic 81, 169, 274, 542, 735 – on the atonement 153, 623n – on baptism 732 – on Eve 464n – on the image of God 158, 213, 241, 306 – on the incarnation 459 – and Tertullian 1016 – on tradition 937, 1010 Isaiah, OT prophet 195, 306, 379, 380f., 389, 402, 472, 859, 943, 1115, 1132, 1171 Deutero-Isaiah, OT prophet 174, 181, 196, 279, 368, 379, 387ff., 403, 618, 662 J Jaensch, Erich 38n, 40n James, the brother of Jesus 518, 549, 555, 838, 882, 885f. James, William 40n Jammer, Max 209 Jansen, Cornelius 255, 273, 713 Jeremiah, OT prophet 196, 379, 381f., 743, 943, 1132, 1159 Jeremias, patriarch 705 Jeremias, Joachim 429, 445, 488, 544, 768 Jerome 794n, 918, 944 Job, OT character 196f., 280, 339f.

1257

1258

Index of Persons

Johannes Duns Scotus 254, 272, 536, 545, 711, 1011, 1037, 1047, 1052 Johannes Scotus Eriugena 160, 170, 280, 311 John the Baptizer 419, 465ff., 474, 482, 488, 491, 520, 544, 722ff. John II, patriarch of Constantinople 802n John II, pope 802n John XIII, pope 927 John Chrysostom 169, 463, 542, 761 John of Damascus 160, 170, 218, 273, 539, 546, 774, 834, 1067n, 1096, 1112 Johnson, J. Cale 1150 Johnson, Maxwell 735 Joshua, OT leader 367, 371 Josiah, OT king 339, 374 Julian (disciple of Pelagius) 710 Jung, Carl G. 244, 271 Junge, Martin 58 Jüngel, Eberhard 139n, 1112 Jungmann, Joseph Andreas 737 Justin Martyr 235, 242, 261, 273, 461f., 673, 708, 854, 902, 926, 993 Justinian, emperor 802n K Kähler, Martin 433f., 444 Kant, Immanuel – on analytic/synthetic distinction 706 – on antimonies 187, 209 – on the categorical imperative 287, 311 – on the critique of metaphysics 167 – on faith 112 – on formation of planets 194, 200, 210 – on the historical Jesus 446 – on history 345, 470, 988 – on the kingdom of God 615, 619 – on space and time 183, 208 Käsemann, Ernst 429, 445

Kasper, Walter 28, 45 Kaufmann, Walter 344n, 1097n Kelly, J. N. D. 417n, 421n, 546, 794n, 795f., 875n, 958n, 960n, 1056n, 1104n, 1113 Kertelgeher, Karl 429n Kierkegaard, Søren 103f., 132, 134, 452n, 624, 627 Kinder, Ernst 55n Kinnamon, Michael 28, 769, 1183n Kittel, Gerhard 215n Klages, Ludwig 244, 271 Krusche, Werner 186n Kuhlemann, Frank-Michael 38n Kuhn, Johann 1013 Kümmel, Werner Georg 445f. Küng, Hans 28, 45n Kunst, Hermann 20 L LaCugna, Catherine Mowry 1098n, 1111ff. Laplace, Pierre-Simon 194, 200, 210 Lazareth, William 806 Lehmann, Karl 45, 768, 1106n, 1181n, 1182n, 1184n Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 141, 168, 347 Lentzen-Deis, Fritzleo 429n Leo I, pope 539, 546, 798n, 801n, 803, 806, 924, 927 Leo III, pope 1105 Leo IX, pope 1113 Leontius of Byzantium 802, 805 Lessing, Gotthold 154, 169 Lieberg, Hellmut 895 Liebhold 81 Lilla, Salvatore 1085 Lindemann, Andreas 38n Linnaeus, Carl 200, 211 Linton, Olof 840n Livingston, James 167 Löhrer, Magnus 751n

Index of Persons

Loofs, Friedrich 1111 Lossky, Vladimir 1106 Lubac, Henri de 823, 830 Luther, Martin – and Anfechtung 31, 1156 – and Anselm 112 – on the antilegomena 938, 987, 1035 – on the Apostles’ Creed 152, 333, 531, 670, 709, 799, 805, 958, 1037 – on articles of faith 1022, 1037 – on the atonement 539, 541, 546, 791 – on baptism 674, 731 – on biblical interpretation 944 – on confession and absolution 702f. – on creation/creatures 152, 191 – on the death of Jesus 526f. – on election/predestination 714, 1169 – and the “enthusiasts,” 120n – on eternal life 232 – on exhortation 677, 708 – on faith in Jesus 574n – on the gospel 31, 534, 779, 1009 – on the Holy Spirit 110, 815 – on the human will 258, 273 – on the immeasurability of God 1124f. – and the “joyous exchange,” 545 – on justification 657ff., 1022 – on the kingdom of God 477 – and language 135 – on the Lord’s Prayer 1116 – on the Lord’s Supper 144, 753, 757 – on love 891, 1153 – on the natural knowledge of God 280, 311 – on ordination 895, 901 – on the preservation of the world 592 – on reason 311 – on the resurrection 274, 1046 – on sanctification 162  

– on secular authority 298, 301, 312 – on sin 244n, 266 – on the Ten Commandments 673, 709 – on the “theology from below,” 440, 1176n – on the Word of God 209, 1011 M Macrobius 1052 Malachi, OT prophet 387, 403 Mani 254, 269, 272, 334 Marcion of Sinope 270, 274, 364, 936f., 999, 1151 Marion, Jean-Luc 1067n Martin, James A. 137n Marx, Karl 345, 988 Mary, the mother of Jesus 80, 421, 449, 457ff., 524, 542, 564, 798ff., 1014n Mary Magdalene 550, 558, 1174 Mastranotonis, George 705 Mattes, Mark 37n Maximus Confessor 272 May, John 137n Mbiti, John S. 948n McCormack, Bruce 39n, 619 McGinn, Bernard 1156 Mehedintu, Viorel 1014n Melanchthon, Philip 144, 165f., 309n, 657, 659, 708, 719, 895, 958, 1012, 1066n Metz, Johann Baptist 751 Metzger, Bruce 706 Meyendorff, John 169, 705 Meyer, Harding 28, 748n, 919n, 1183n Michaelis, Gottfried 38n Mildenberger, Friedrich 1181n Minear, Paul 831n Molanus, Gerhard 141, 168 Molina, Luis de 204, 211, 255, 273, 713 Moltmann, Jürgen 1112  

1259

1260

Index of Persons

Moses – call of 151, 372, 472, 569, 626, 812, 943, 1126 – contrasted with Jesus 160, 496ff., 569ff., 639ff., 780, 935, 1138 – divine inspiration of 940 – as law-giver 251, 295, 363ff., 370ff., 395ff., 587, 1124 – as liberator of Israel 372, 673, 1165, 1171 – and the name of God 411 – as revealer of God 395, 1067f., 1129 – as a threatening figure 785 – and the Holy Spirit 812 Muhammad 1039 Muller, Richard 211, 706, 708, 1112 Mussner, Franz 429n

on baptism 732, 735 on christology 435, 794f. on confession and absolution 700 and dogmatics 160, 170 and the doctrine of the church 834 and gnosis 81 on the immortality of the human being 237, 242, 261, 274 – on the Lord’s Supper 761, 769 – on the resurrection 1045 – on the sacraments 756 – on the Trinity 1093f., 1096, 1111 Osiander, Andreas 659, 707 Osiek, Carolyn 182n, 845n Otto, Rudolf 112, 490, 544 Overbeck, Franz 619 Overhage, Paul 204n

N Napoleon I 167, 210, 1039 Nathan, OT prophet 371, 379ff., 570 Nero 1039 Nesmelov, Viktor 102f. Nestorius 80, 436, 710, 798, 801ff. Neuner, Peter 1181n Neurath, Otto 167 Neuser, Wilhelm 39n Nicetas of Remesiana 875 Niederwimmer, Kurt 909n, 993n, 1084 Nietzsche, Friedrich 111, 344n Nissiotis, Nikos A. 20, 25ff., 29, 311, 618, 806, 1177 Noth, Martin 405n, 406n, 411 Novatian 700, 708 Numbers, Ronald 208

P Pannenberg, Wolfhart 15ff., 28, 37, 209, 1075n, 1106n, 1112, 1181n, 1184n, 1191n Papias of Hierapolis 937 Pascal, Blaise 112 Paul VI, pope 149n, 879, 911n, 1003, 1036 Paul of Samosata 617, 794 Paul of Tarsus, apostle – on Adam 267, 567ff. – apostleship of 881ff. – on the atonement 418, 528, 529f., 534ff. – on baptism 723, 726ff., 864 – and charismata 119, 684ff., 817, 823, 853, 889ff., 979ff., 993 – on christology 422, 451, 453, 457, 461, 529, 568, 792ff., 864 – on the church 594, 729ff., 831ff., 864f., 978ff. – and civic authority 295, 297, 303ff., 591, 595 – commissioning of 829, 890, 894ff. – on creation 315ff., 326, 594, 1126

O O’Meara Thomas 40n Origen – on the atonement 539, 546 – on autobasileia 790n

– – – – – – –

Index of Persons

– and eschatology 585, 589ff., 599, 602, 876, 1049ff. – on eternal life 232, 1049ff. – and exhortation 672ff., 693ff., 709, 973f. – on faith 668ff., 678ff. – on the gospel 71ff., 607, 646ff., 654ff., 780ff., 888 – on the Holy Spirit 691f., 809ff., 819ff., 866ff., 978ff., 1055 – on the image of God 215, 227, 231 – and Israel 345, 571, 574, 577, 844ff., 1042, 1166 – on the judgment/wrath of God 608ff., 693ff., 782, 1071, 1132ff. – and the knowledge of God 237, 279ff., 289 – on law 236, 251, 285, 289, 370, 398, 401, 529, 571, 577, 686, 780ff. – letters of 424, 563, 566, 888, 892, 935ff. – and the Lord’s Supper 563, 642, 739ff., 831, 853, 876 – and the church’s ministerial office 897ff. – and Greek philosophy 194, 277, 281, 1143ff. – on the resurrection of Jesus 420, 432, 547ff., 1044ff. – on sin 92, 250f., 268, 279, 290f., 315, 322, 333, 693ff. – suffering of 683 Pelagius 254, 256f., 269, 272, 643, 704, 710, 712, 718, 732 Pelikan, Jaroslav 51n, 272, 1111f. Perrin, Norman 445 Persson, Per Erik 718n Peter, St., apostle – apostleship of 24, 838, 882, 884f., 920, 926, 1034 – arrest of 518

– – – – – – –

confession of Jesus by 482, 504f., 845 denial of Jesus by 512, 1171 and the Holy Spirit 821 as missionary 885 and Pentecost 563 rebuked by Jesus 324, 455, 503, 522 and the resurrection of Jesus 550, 552, 555 – as rock of the church 24, 867, 886 – as a word of God 191n Peter Damian 280, 311 Peter Lombard 101n, 170, 644, 774, 823, 830, 1036, 1080, 1085 Peters, Albrecht 52n, 780n Peters, F. E. 1112 Petrak, Marko 288n Philip IV, king 834, 878 Phillips, L. Edward 735 Philo of Alexandria 390, 618, 1085 Photius, patriarch of Constantinople 1105f., 1109 Pilate, Pontius 302, 413, 419, 421, 511ff., 514, 517ff., 521, 524, 1149 Pius XII, pope 944, 1014n Plathow, Michael 17, 30, 37, 1175ff., 1189 Plato 100f., 179, 182, 208, 281ff., 294, 356, 521, 756, 1066n, 1074f., 1085, 1125, 1129 Plotinus 1066n, 1075, 1085 Polycarp of Smyrna 871 Przywara, Erich J. 40 Q Quasten, Johannes 1111 Quenstedt, Johann 820n R Rad, Gerhard von 169, 174, 207f., 394n, 411 Rahner, Hugo 833n Rahner, Karl 28, 45, 170, 203f., 439, 447, 706, 918, 1011n, 1034, 1098, 1103n

1261

1262

Index of Persons

Ratzinger, Joseph 45, 787, 1030, 1174 Reimarus, Samuel 426f., 446 Reinhard, Paul 21 Rey, Georges 706 Rhabanus Maurus 110, 186n Richard of St. Victor 1080, 1085 Rickert, Heinrich 950, 988 Ricoeur, Paul 139 Ritschl, Albrecht 167, 438, 470, 537, 619, 1078 Ritschl, Dietrich 1178n, 1181n Robinson, James 543, 987 Rowley, Harold 411 Rufinus 794n, 832 Ruprecht, Arndt 20 Russell, Bertrand 136, 167 Russell, Norman 769, 1104n S Safronov, Viktor 210 Samson, OT judge 1056 Samuel, OT judge/prophet 374, 379f. Sanders, E. P. 542 Sartorius 439, 447 Saul, OT king 372, 374, 380, 1056, 1164 Saussure, Ferdinand de 134, 136, 167 Scheeben, Matthias Josef 625 Schelling, Friedrich W. J. 265, 446, 1078 Schillebeeckx, Edward 566 Schiller, Friedrich 265, 274 Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E. – on angels 319f. – on christology 438f., 446, 505 – on the death of Jesus 526, 537 – on the devil 323 – on dogmatics 155, 170 – on eschatology 619 – on faith 112 – on the feeling of absolute dependence 112, 1077

– on the formation of the Gospels 425, 445 – hermeneutics of 945, 950f., 987 – and liberal Protestantism 167 – on natural theology 279 – on the Trinity 55f., 1077 Schlier, Heinrich 677n, 918n, 1011n Schmaus, Michael 281n, 1013n Schmid, Heinrich 170, 211, 704, 820n, 1037, 1110, 1111f. Schmidt, Karl Ludwig 865n Schnell, Ursula 21, 30 Schniewind, Julius 488, 505n Schoedel, William 457n, 542, 567n, 769, 871n, 873n, 926, 1085 Scholder, Klaus 40n, 927 Schulte, Raphael 1081n Schwahn, Barbara 45n, 1182n Schweitzer, Albert 426ff., 445f., 543f., 619 Schweizer, Eduard 864n Schwenzer, Gerhard 1180n Schwöbel, Christoph 1175n, 1177f. Seeberg, Reinhold 798n, 1112 Selnecker, Nikolaus 166 Senn, Frank C. 333, 768 Sergius III, pope 927 Skibbe, Eugene 38n, 44n, 58n, 1180n, 1184n Skydsgaard, Kristen Ejner 1014n Slenczka, Notger 1175n Slenczka, Reinhard 37n, 44n, 45n, 1106n, 1175n, 1181, 1185n Smit, D. J. 58n Sohm, Rudolph 894, 977 Söhngen, Gottlieb 779, 787, 1174 Solomon, OT king 371f., 375, 383f., 400, 570, 573, 626, 952, 1124 Solovyov, Vladimir 102, 103n Sozzini, Fausto 545 Sozzini, Lelio 545 Spengler, Oswald 111, 343, 354

Index of Persons

Spinola, Cristoval Royas de 141, 168 Spranger, Eduard 950, 988 Sproul, Barbara 187n, 208 Stählin, Wilhelm 38f., 45n, 1181 Staniloae, Dumitru 1098n, 1109n Steck, Odil Hannes 1144n Stephen, NT deacon 481, 515, 518, 561 Stephen I, pope 730, 735 Strigel, Viktorin 713, 719 Strindberg, August 270 Strohl, Jane 274 Stutz, Ulrich 976n Suárez, Francisco 765, 769 T Taylor, Vincent 414, 544 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 347 Telemann, Georg P. 81 Teller, D. Romanus 820 Tertullian – on baptism 732, 735, 773 – and confessional formulas 960, 1016 – and Gnosticism 81, 274 – on the Lord’s Prayer 1116 – and Montanism 708 – and philosophy 104, 113, 280 – on the procession of the Holy Spirit 1104 – on sacraments 774, 777 – on Scripture and tradition 937, 1010 – on sin 264 – on the soul 157, 170, 261, 273 – on the Trinity 774, 777, 1093f., 1104 Theobald, Michael 446 Theodore of Mopsuestia 80, 235, 242 Theodotus 617 Therese of Lisieux 1154, 1156 Thomas Aquinas – on angels 318 – on baptism 731 – Barth’s seminar on 39f.

– – – – –

on the beatific vision 1047, 1052 on civic authority 294, 298, 301, 312 on creation 186, 209 on the death of Jesus 525, 536, 544f. on distinction between the OT and the NT 779 – on election/predestination 163, 170, 348f. – on grace 711, 718 – on hermeneutics 944 – on Holy Scripture 1010f. – on the Lord’s Supper 760n – and the Molinists 211 – on names for God 1072 – on natural law 286, 298n – on the nature of God 1066n, 1074, 1080, 1084f., 1178 – on ordination 918 – on philosophical truth 102, 113, 280, 311 – on the priesthood of Christ 625 – on providence 348f. – on the resurrection 1045f. – on the sacraments 774, 777 – on sin 254, 272, 298 – on the soul 261, 274 – use of Aristotle by 147, 286, 1074, 1178 – the summaries of theology by 28, 160, 169, 834, 1037, 1074 – on the Trinity 1080, 1084f., 1100, 1112, 1150 – on tyrannicide 312 Thomasius, Gottfried 273, 439, 447 Tillich, Paul 269, 323n, 1081f. Tödt, Heinz Eduard 488, 543 Tolstoy, Leo 103n Tomkins, Oliver S. 168 Topitsch, Ernst 136n Torrance, T. F. 39n, 209 Toynbee, Arnold 343, 354

1263

1264

Index of Persons

Trempela, Panagiotis 625n Troeltsch, Ernst 167, 430, 566n, 617, 947 Trubetzkoy, Nikolai 135n V Vischer, Lukas 28, 748n, 919n, 1098n Vogel, Heinrich 44n, 439, 447 Vokoun, Jaroslav 1175n Vorgrimler, Herbert 170, 706 Vos, Antonie 1052 W Wainwright, Geoffrey 124n, 1181n Walker, Williston 735, 802n, 878, 927 Walther, C. F. W. 1066n, 1112 Weintraub, David A. 209 Weiss, Johannes 426n, 476, 490, 543f., 618 Weisse, Christian H. 425, 445 Weizsäcker, Carl Friedrich von 192n, 210 Welch, Claude 447 Welker, Klaus 279n Wellhausen, Julius 207, 484, 488, 543 Wengert, Timothy 719n Wenz, Gunther 17 Wernle, Paul 566n, 618

Westermann, Claus 117, 187n, 207f., 214f., 392n, 954n, 1144n Weth, Rudolf 40n Wiedenhofer Siegfried 1181n Wiesel, Elie 1156 William of Ockham 254, 272 Williams, Rowan 1095n Winter, Paul 519 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 136f., 167 Wolf, Erik 972, 984n, 989 Wolf, Ernst 41, 787 Wolf, Hans-Heinrich 1181n Wolff, Hans Walter 219n Wolfrum, Rüdiger 288n Wolgast, Eike 312 Wrede, William 426, 504f., 566 Wundt, Wilhelm 40n Y Younan, Munib

58

Z Zechariah, OT prophet 379, 386f., 403 Zimmerling, Peter 30, 1181n Zizioulas, John 29 Zwingli, Ulrich 757

Index of Subjects

Preliminary note: Because the most important dogmatic concepts and topics of this book can be found easily through the table of contents, this index is limited to directing the reader toward further places in the text where these terms and concepts are also found, as well as to introducing other concepts and topics that are not explicitly mentioned in the table of contents. Therefore, the table of contents should be used as the primary subject index, while the following index will merely serve as a supplement. A absolution 135, 648, 698ff., 772ff., 837, 981 Adoptionism 429, 564, 617, 794 adoration (see also doxology) 56, 117, 156, 193, 228, 318ff., 358f., 388ff., 440ff., 856ff., 1060ff., 1099ff., 1154ff. aeon(s) (cf. space and time; world history) 91, 183, 241, 333, 479, 591, 598, 608, 1122, 1125ff. analogia entis (analogy of being) 40n, 135, 1071ff., 1084, 1176 analogia fidei (analogy of faith) 1072f. analogy in history see historical criticism anathema 74, 140, 658, 693ff., 709, 782, 955, 999, 1029f., 1150, 1165 Anfechtung 31, 780, 785 angels 317ff., 617, 859f., 875, 877f., 1123, 1155 anonymous Christians 24, 28, 596, 618 anti-Christian person/powers, the 130, 140, 616, 845, 925, 973, 982, 1041, 1133 (see also powers of corruption) Apology of the Augsburg Confession 128, 166, 169, 280, 291, 658f., 699, 757, 762, 774f., 958, 1008, 1011 apostasy (see also anti-Christian person and post-Christian person)

– of ancient Israel 195, 356, 394, 400, 738, 1147 – of Christians 15, 700, 715, 929, 999ff., 1039, 1041, 1173 – of Lucifer 323 apostle, concept of the 878ff., 887 Apostles’ Creed, the see also Old Roman Creed – as a baptismal creed 436 – and dogma 127, 1073ff., 1093f. – as an ecumenical norm 168, 1103 – First Article of 152, 355ff., 1119 – Latin designation for 35, 127, 165 – Luther’s exposition of 152, 333, 531n, 670, 709, 799, 805, 958, 1037 – origin of 355n, 420f., 834, 1129 – Second Article of 333, 417, 420ff., 443, 459, 518, 527, 538, 584, 614f., 624, 789ff. – Third Article of 670, 832, 840, 875ff. apostolic succession 16, 829, 888, 911ff., 1029f., 1034, 1176, 1181, 1187 apostolic tradition 126, 141, 147, 835, 854, 888, 916f., 967, 1008ff., 1020, 1024, 1034 apostolicity see church assurance and claim 121, 131, 159, 220ff., 259, 418, 455, 468, 640f., 648, 660, 670, 716, 780ff., 836, 874f., 883, 914, 936, 951,

1266

Index of Subjects

1072 (see also exhortation; faith; gospel; paraklesis) Athanasian Creed, the 127f., 165, 540, 956f., 1074 Augsburg Confession, the 42f., 128f., 657f., 702, 705, 757, 832, 1011f., 1183n. authority – of the apostles 886ff. – of church law 977ff. – of the church’s ministerial office 907ff. – of dogma 962ff. – of Holy Scripture see Scripture B baptism 77, 85ff., 128ff., 418, 442, 550, 587f., 641ff., 661ff., 675, 721ff., 771ff., 889ff., 958ff. – administration of 641, 730, 908, 972ff., 980, 1022ff., 1028ff. – of infants and children 731ff., 1010, 1012n – of Jesus see Jesus – by John the Baptizer 464ff., 722ff. – renunciation of the devil in 326, 333 Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (BEM) 23, 28f., 748, 769, 919n, 1185, 1188 Barmen, Theological Declaration of 40f., 54, 81, 878 bishops 289, 596, 700ff., 710, 885, 894, 896f., 899ff., 904ff., 909, 912, 916ff., 958ff., 961, 972, 975, 979, 982f., 993, 1030, 1033, 1187 body see church; human being C canon, biblical 49, 144, 163f., 564, 578f., 882, 887, 912, 932ff., 962f., 964, 982, 991ff., 1009f., 1035 – antilegomena writings 987

– deutero-canonical/apocryphal books 1035 canon law see church law Carthage, Fifteenth Synod of (418) 704 catechism – Geneva 625n, 709 – of Gregory of Nyssa 546 – Heidelberg 709, 757, 776 – Luther’s Large 673, 958, 1037 – Luther’s Small 152n, 670n, 673, 674n, 799n, 815n, 1116 categorical imperative 287, 311 Cathars, the 327, 334 catholicity see church Chalcedon, Council of (AD 451) 165, 435f., 796ff., 801n, 802f., 958 Chalcedonian Definition, the 35, 56, 127, 147, 165, 169, 436ff., 796, 799ff., 957, 1011, 1083, 1110, 1178 charismata 663, 707, 823, 834, 837, 853, 882ff., 889ff., 898ff., 907ff., 926, 975ff., 992ff., 1023 children of God 76, 85, 357, 416, 458, 508, 534, 588, 664ff., 672ff., 815f., 847f. christology (see also God, Word of ; Jesus; return of Christ; Son of God; Son of Man) – ancient and later church concepts used within 792ff. (cf. 435ff.) – from above or from below 439f. – hypostatic union (see also hypostasis) 623n, 802, 805, 1088, 1110 – ontological or historical 440f. – organization of 441ff. – two natures of Christ (see also Jesus, truly God and truly a human being; Son of God) 436ff., 442, 798n, 800, 803ff., 1076, 1110 church law 33, 579, 894, 907, 910f., 914f., 932ff., 971ff., 976ff., 982ff., 991ff., 994ff., 1016, 1030f., 1033 church order see church law

Index of Subjects

church, the (see also divisions) – apostolicity of 870, 874f., 912ff., 920, 932, 986, 1009, 1187f. – attributes of 870ff., 875, 930f., 1009 – basic structures of 148, 836ff., 852, 907f., 920, 972, 979, 996, 1000 – as the body of Christ 602, 704, 733, 766, 815, 831, 862ff., 889ff., 904, 906, 1004, 1008, 1024 – catholicity of 47, 51, 870, 872ff., 1002, 1025, 1035, 1042 – “Copernican Revolution” in the understanding of 22, 46f., 58, 1019ff., 1180 – criticism of 991ff., 1005ff. – as a community of charismata 817, 889ff., 897, 978, 1004 (see also charismata) – holiness of 699, 870ff., 1048 – indestructibility of 929ff., 996 – as instrument of the triune God 589, 697, 751f., 837, 868, 870, 893 – and Judaism 365, 373, 385, 497f., 815, 842, 896, 1069 – and the kingdom of Christ 588ff. – leadership of 881ff., 897ff., 907ff., 911ff., 921ff., 971ff., 1025ff. – and ministerial offices 312, 639, 684ff., 772ff., 817f., 833ff., 881ff., 895ff., 907ff., 921ff., 972, 975f., 992ff., 1004, 1027ff. – order of 971ff. – organization of the doctrine of 831ff. (cf. church, basic structures of ) – origin of 840ff., 933 – sacrifice of 763ff., 1187 – synodical structure of 910f., 914, 998, 1106 – as the temple of the Holy Spirit 143, 867ff., 904, 906 – terms for 831ff., 846ff., 861ff., 875

– threefold mission of 849ff. – unity of 69, 130, 142, 462, 761, 834f., 861ff., 870ff., 913f., 917ff., 975, 991ff., 1042f. – visible/invisible 1007f., 1036, 1042 – vital activities of 846ff. – and the world 586ff., 590ff., 846ff., 849ff., 931ff. communion see Lord’s Supper communion of saints 729, 875ff., 1008 community (see also charismata; church; image of God) – of believers 69, 89f., 93, 126, 217, 589ff., 669, 697, 733, 831ff., 837, 1124ff. – in Christ 588ff., 853ff., 875ff., 889ff. concursus divinus 203ff., 211, 350, 717, 957 (cf. synergism, problem of ) confession 115, 122ff., 145, 358, 416, 954ff., 963, 1170, 1179f. congregation(s) 116ff., 304, 595, 676, 682, 695ff., 722, 727, 757, 829ff., 851ff., 869ff., 878ff., 888ff., 892ff., 914ff., 955f., 966ff., 973f. (see also charismata; church; community) consensus 19, 22, 27, 42f., 50, 138, 141f., 146, 168, 651, 803, 840, 955ff., 959ff., 963, 975f., 1012, 1014ff., 1026ff., 1184ff. consistent eschatology 427n, 476, 488, 619, 624 Constantinople, Council of (AD 381) 35, 165, 436, 796, 805, 828, 963, 1056, 1094, 1104f. Constantinople, Second Council of (AD 553) 802n, 1149f. Constantinople, Third Council of (AD 680–681) 436 Constantinopolitan Creed (AD 381), the see Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed covenant, the

1267

1268

Index of Subjects

– old 72, 90, 174ff., 332, 345, 363ff., 574, 1061f., 1116, 1126, 1137ff. – new 71, 175, 454, 522ff., 639ff., 742ff., 1147 – Noahide 298, 977, 1147 – relationship between the old and the new 145, 151, 175, 193, 222, 257, 356, 364ff., 384ff., 574ff., 780ff., 809ff., 842ff. creation (see also universe; human being) – from nothing 181ff., 333, 548, 557, 1160 – governance of 201ff., 304, 335ff., 341, 345ff., 350f., 358, 363, 668, 690, 692, 1047, 1121 – order of 197ff. – origin of 179, 188ff., 194ff., 199, 201, 357, 1075 – preservation of 85ff., 93ff., 151, 201ff., 275ff., 315ff., 336ff., 346ff., 406f., 575, 590ff., 686ff., 849ff., 921ff., 1023, 1061ff., 1119ff., 1140ff. – purpose of 193ff., 206, 332 creatures – self-functioning of 95ff., 182ff., 192ff., 196ff., 239, 247, 275, 316, 327ff., 336ff., 346, 350ff., 453, 711, 717f., 1120 D deacons 875n, 891, 900f., 905f., 917, 981, 993 dead, state of the 237, 260ff., 661f., 1046f. death – of sinners 259ff., 275ff. – of Jesus see Jesus – eternal 606, 611ff., 693, 1161, 1168 Decalogue, the see Ten Commandments deification (θεοποίησις [theopoiēsis]) 233, 306, 647ff., 665ff., 671, 705, 718, 1049 descent into hell see Jesus dialectical theology 167f., 477, 615, 619

divisions, church 140ff., 148, 541, 643, 713, 731, 849, 975, 1016ff., 1034 Docetism 189, 209, 451, 457ff., 798 (see also Gnosticism) doctrine, structure of 48f., 119ff., 127ff., 149, 155, 157, 159ff., 414, 799, 957ff., 968f., 1170, 1179 dogma 49ff., 126ff., 149ff., 259, 424, 435ff., 930ff., 961ff., 991ff., 1073ff. (cf. confession) dogmatic concepts, formation of 53f., 145, 161, 419, 456, 666f., 903, 948, 967ff., 1022 dogmatic statements – basic structures of 115ff. – structural shifts in 125ff., 148, 414, 455, 715, 731, 740, 957f., 993ff. – uniformity/non-uniformity in 119, 146, 219, 882, 987, 995ff., 1027, 1032 dogmatics 48, 50f., 69, 109f., 130ff., 139ff., 153f., 159ff., 170, 199, 217, 364, 442ff., 1079 – organization of 69ff. Donatists 730, 735 doxology (see also adoration) 25f., 116ff., 122ff., 132f., 155ff., 359, 436, 797ff., 856, 955ff., 1061ff., 1102f., 1179ff. E Ebionites 429, 451, 617 ecclesiology see church ecumenical dialogue 18f., 224, 238, 247, 255, 267, 579, 713ff., 741, 758ff., 775, 888, 902, 944ff., 986f., 1014ff., 1020ff., 1169, 1183ff. ecumenical movement, the 18, 24, 29, 35, 80, 169, 1003ff., 1015, 1175ff. elders 885, 887, 895f., 899ff., 904, 909f., 917f., 926, 937 election – of ancient Israel 151, 160, 279, 363ff., 578ff., 846, 868, 1087

Index of Subjects

– doctrine of 1162ff. (see also God, providence of ; predestination) energies, divine 707, 824f., 1093, 1106 “enthusiasts” 120, 379, 708, 824, 827f., 902, 912, 979 Ephesus, Council of (AD 431) 80, 463, 710 epiclesis 762, 763, 765, 769, 1186 eschatology 233ff., 332, 345, 353, 427n, 442, 476ff., 554, 600f., 605ff., 621ff., 653, 667, 740f., 746ff., 1006ff., 1039ff., 1165ff. (see also consistent eschatology; consummation; creation, purpose of ; election; human being, purpose of ; image of God; new creation; return of Christ;) eternal life 178, 193, 198, 229ff., 260, 266, 305f., 310, 341, 567ff., 606ff., 1044ff., 1161ff. evolution of species 95, 153f., 177, 192ff., 200ff., 210, 238f., 241, 265, 337, 345ff., 430, 948, 988, 1040 Eucharist see Lord’s Supper exchange between Christ and sinners, the 458, 535f. exhortation 639ff., 674ff. (see also paraklesis) F faith (believing) – call to 492ff, 668ff., 695ff. – experiences of 815ff., 827ff. – and knowledge/knowing (cf. God, wisdom of ) 77ff., 85, 96ff., 104, 108, 138, 237 – as trust 79ff., 96ff., 152, 206f., 320, 352, 358, 494, 560, 583, 668ff., 712 federal theology 169 fides qua creditur/fides quae creditur 655, 706 field theories in science 183, 209 filioque 960, 1057ff., 1105ff., 1113

Formula of Concord, the 128, 144, 166, 280n, 309, 542, 659f., 677, 708, 719, 780, 787, 958, 1012, 1169, 1174 G Gnosticism 69, 81, 147, 157, 169, 173, 181ff., 191, 209, 218, 254ff., 264, 272, 327, 420ff., 449f., 459, 475, 565, 714, 754, 827, 882, 902, 936f., 945, 956, 999, 1010, 1045 God (see also love) – concepts of God in the ancient and later church 104, 109, 147, 156f., 349, 355ff., 792ff., 1058, 1061ff., 1065f., 1075ff., 1087ff., 1093ff. – continuous creative action of 199ff. – freedom of 178ff., 346, 409, 451, 480, 536, 541, 545, 682, 1082, 1128, 1149ff. – hiddenness of 40n, 41n, 73ff., 284, 338ff., 407, 826, 1055, 1081 – holiness of 84, 401f., 662f., 872, 1058, 1083, 1115f. – in himself and his acts 69ff., 79f., 150ff., 155ff., 160ff., 1062, 1065 – judgment of (eschatological) 326ff., 464ff., 483ff., 511, 605ff., 608ff., 1071, 1133ff., 1165 – judgment of (historical) 154, 260ff., 338ff., 381ff., 401ff., 451, 1126, 1134ff. – knowledge of 69ff., 83, 96ff., 115ff., 278ff., 281ff., 289ff., 392, 812, 1055, 1072, 1148 – name(s) of 356ff., 386, 469, 562ff., 721, 791, 1056, 1068ff., 1076, 1081, 1085, 1085, 1101, 1107, 1115f., 1124f. – organization of the doctrine of 1079ff. – paradoxes of 341ff., 346, 599 – patience of 89, 93f., 275, 305, 330ff., 338, 346ff., 351f., 402, 407, 451, 469, 498, 670, 1137

1269

1270

Index of Subjects

– perfections of (essential attributes) – means of 120n, 730ff., 771ff., 833, 794, 1058, 1069, 1082ff., 1084, 1092, 854ff., 1018 (see also sacraments) 1101, 1119ff., 1139ff., 1154 – providence of 348ff. (see also elecH tion; predestination) Halakah, the 497ff., 517, 544, 568, 971, – revelation of (see also natural reve(see also law) lation; revelation) 40n, 72ff., 96f., 110, hermeneutics 156, 186, 206, 278ff., 282f., 288, 317, – biblical 139n, 580, 943ff., 965 350, 363, 406, 438, 791, 826, 1075, – dogmatic 143ff., 964ff. 1079ff., 1090ff., 1100 – in the investigation of the historical – righteousness of 288, 353, 529, Jesus 423ff. 654ff., 686, 1101, 1138ff. – in the investigation of the traditions – as triune 79ff., 109f., 154, 162, 349, about the resurrection of Jesus 548ff. 442, 782, 868f., 963, 1004, 1022, 1077f., – of Old Testament interpretation 1081, 1087ff., 1128, 1149, 1154ff., 570ff. 1159ff. Hesychasm/hesychasts 707, 824 – unity of 270, 451, 525, 532, 664, “hierarchy of truths,” the 149, 1021 871, 1074ff., 1079, 1087, 1089ff., 1096, historical criticism, principles of 429ff., 1103, 1109, 1138, 1153 460, 550ff., 558ff., 615, 670, 946ff. (see – wisdom of 77, 645, 1142ff. also hermeneutics) – Word (Logos) of 175, 184, 193, 200, history-of-religions school 446, 460ff., 209, 225ff., 239f., 277, 281, 415ff., 422, 565ff., 740, 827 435, 451, 456, 525, 535, 565, 574, 622, holiness see church; God 666, 792ff., 891, 1094 (see also Son of Holy Communion see Lord’s Supper God) Holy Scripture see Scripture – word of 72ff., 83ff., 96ff., 151ff., Holy Spirit, the see also charismata; God; 174ff., 184ff., 193, 200, 237, 277, 280, Son of God, incarnation of ) 382f., 455, 477, 626, 640ff., 650, 776, – and baptism 723ff., 728ff., 732f., 773, 782ff., 843ff., 883, 940ff., 951ff., 1011ff. 776, 836 (see also baptism) (see also apostle; exhortation; gospel; – and the church see church law; prophets; sacraments; Scripture) – and confession 963f. (see also confes– wrath of 74, 260, 329, 368, 398ff., sion) 465ff., 532, 668, 1070f., 1082, 1131ff., – and creation 110, 185ff., 200, 240, 1151ff., 1165 1053ff., 1056ff. (see also new creation) gospel (see also law) 69ff., 342ff., 639ff., – criteria for recognizing the effects of 779ff., 1039ff., 1170ff. 825ff. – living voice of (viva vox) 1009f., – as the eternal Spirit of God 186, 1014, 1016 1049, 1056ff., 1063, 1087ff. grace 54, 74ff., 211, 256f., 272f., 291, 332f., – as gift 816f., 820, 889ff., 1053 346, 399f., 599ff., 643ff., 658ff., 666f., 706ff., 730ff., 823f., 891, 1159ff.

Index of Subjects

– gifts/fruit of 119, 158, 385, 589, 673, 676f., 782f., 821ff., 829, 836, 1142 (see also charismata) – and grace 643f., 647f., 769ff., 823 – hypostasis of see hypostasis; God, as triune – law of 691ff., 1141 (see also love) – as the Lord 821ff., 1053ff. – and the Lord’s Supper 747ff., 757, 759, 761ff., 769, 776, 836 (see also Lord’s Supper) – as New Creator see new creation – outpouring of 79, 151f., 387f., 553, 583, 601, 738ff., 809ff., 838, 840ff., 852, 930, 972, 1088f., 1136 – as power 55, 760, 814, 818ff., 822, 825ff., 850, 1054, 1057 – and prayer 186, 358, 645, 683, 820, 826, 847, 861 – procession of 1087ff., 1095ff., 1099ff., 1104ff., 1112 (see also filioque) – and sanctification 663f. (see also sanctification) – sending by 892ff., 898f. (see also laying on of hands) – as vicarious representative 810 – and vivification 664ff. (see also deification; human being, the vivification of ) – and the word of God see God, word of ; Son of God; Scripture human being, the – body of 219ff., 264, 1045 – bondage of (enslaved will) 100, 157f., 247ff., 256ff., 260, 263, 303, 401, 666, 673, 714, 956, 969, 1050 – death of (see also death) 259ff., 316, 329, 1044, 1149 – the failure of 195, 243ff., 308, 332, 338, 344, 1070

– freedom of 147, 157, 214, 218ff., 236ff., 247ff., 255ff., 258, 272f., 710, 713f., 956, 969, 1178 – the first and the last (“first Adam” and “second Adam”) 227, 231, 267, 415, 567f., 1055 – the judgment into which humans have fallen (see also misery; death) 251, 259ff., 341, 438, 465f., 469, 609ff., 622, 655, 666, 1023, 1054, 1152 – the justification of see justification – the misery of 245ff., 250, 307, 466, 472, 474ff., 485, 489, 496, 599, 1070 – the origin of (theological and scientific) 179, 239, 264ff., 582 – the purpose of (see also image of God) 98, 213ff., 307, 309, 332, 452, 818, 837 – the revelation of 87, 567ff. – the resurrection to eternal life of 611f., 614, 1044ff. – the salvation of see salvation – as vicarious representative of God and of creatures 228f., 243, 582 – the vivification of (see also deification) 143, 648, 652f., 658, 660ff., 663f., 715, 783f., 816, 847, 1055, 1116 hypostasis (see also christology) 794, 796, 800, 803, 805f., 824, 878, 1093ff., 1111 – anhypostasis/enhypostasis 805 hypostatic union see christology I image of God 103, 158, 192, 213ff., 221ff., 233ff., 248, 260, 287, 305ff., 415, 568, 686ff., 860, 1048, 1161 immortality 157f., 213, 229ff., 237, 260ff., 274, 307f., 568, 666, 1042ff. incarnation see God, Word of ; Son of God; see also christology

1271

1272

Index of Subjects

ius divinum and ius humanum 980f. (see also law) ius ecclesiasticum 976, 989 (see also church law) J Jesus see also christology – baptism of 465, 482, 508, 564, 617, 723, 1054 – burial of 418, 420, 527, 559, 569, 581 – death of 72, 124, 151, 270, 340ff., 353, 418ff., 521ff., 528ff., 573, 670, 723, 746, 750f., 882, 969, 976, 1002, 1135f., 1149f. – his descent into the realm of the dead 527, 538 – exaltation of 73, 175, 413ff., 547ff., 583ff., 621ff., 747, 755, 789ff., 812, 865ff., 1005, 1080, 1124 (see also Son of God, humiliation of ) – God-forsakenness of 73ff., 83, 423, 440, 524ff., 534, 602, 622, 785, 1092, 1133f., 1148 – historical 150, 417ff., 426ff., 440ff., 449ff., 504, 543f., 829ff. – mighty deeds (miracles) of 417, 430, 450, 474ff., 502ff., 684, 936 – names and titles for 143, 385f., 413ff., 443, 449f., 508, 562ff., 569, 832, 954f., 1069 (see also Son of Man; Son of God) – sacrifice of 418ff., 528ff., 743f., 763 – salvific significance of 143, 341, 414ff., 421ff., 442ff., 514, 521ff., 563, 621ff., 645ff., 745, 1022f. – threefold office of 621ff. – trial and condemnation of 413, 419f., 511ff., 516ff., 523ff., 1149 – truly God and truly a human being 436, 459, 798ff., 956

– vicarious representative action of 415, 529ff., 624, 1142f. judgment see God justification, doctrine of 147, 169, 648ff., 655ff., 707, 709ff., 957f., 1015, 1029, 1139f., 1188 K kenosis 438ff., 447 kingship 371ff., 387, 402ff., 454, 851ff., 1056, 1133, 1137 kingdom (see also reign) – of Christ 327, 590, 593ff., 602, 605, 866, 923, 965, 968, 981, 996, 1008 – of God 70, 73, 342, 427f., 465ff., 469ff., 481ff., 490ff., 499ff., 522ff., 554, 562, 584, 605f., 746ff., 841f., 972, 1126, 1129 – of the world (see also powers of corruption) 326f., 331ff., 337, 341f., 346, 352f., 584, 590ff., 597, 602ff., 923, 968, 1126 L law, the (see also Ten Commandments) 252, 286, 292, 304, 363ff., 390ff., 395ff., 400ff., 454ff., 470, 534, 654, 661ff., 779ff., 960, 971 – third use of 677, 708 laying on of hands (see also ordination) 737, 772ff., 821, 829, 889, 892ff., 890, 912ff., 975, 1187 liberal Protestantism 39, 167, 169 logical positivism 136, 167, 431, 946, 948, 964 Logos see God, Word of the Lord’s Supper 128ff., 641ff., 699ff., 737ff., 771ff., 789, 815, 828ff., 851ff., 879, 889, 971ff., 1031ff., 1183ff. – real presence of Christ in 751ff., 760f., 920

Index of Subjects

love – God’s 74f., 163, 230, 236, 271, 330, 342, 369, 500, 536f., 677ff., 690, 1071ff., 1135ff., 1151ff., 1159ff. – new commandment of 500, 672ff., 675ff., 686ff., 707 M Manichaeism 254, 272 messianic secret 502ff. Midianite-Kenite hypothesis 365, 411, 1068 miracles of Jesus see Jesus misery see human being “Monarchomachs,” 301f., 312 Monophysitism 436, 797f., 801ff. Montanism 113, 708, 827, 902, 936 mystery (mysterium) 74ff., 78, 341ff., 456ff., 539, 548, 602, 623, 749, 756, 760f., 774, 799f., 844, 961, 1046, 1070, 1097ff. N natural law 284ff. natural revelation (see also God, revelation of ; theology, natural) 282f., 1069 natural theology see theology Nestorianism 80, 437, 797, 801f. new creation 86, 110, 161ff., 328, 341ff., 353, 579ff., 605ff., 661ff., 809ff., 814ff., 862ff., 1039ff., 1053ff., 1087ff. Nicaea, Council of (AD 325) 35, 165, 708, 795, 828, 924, 960ff., 1104, 1111 Nicene Creed (AD 325), the 35, 318, 421, 435f., 446, 459, 518, 527, 795ff., 832, 956, 960, 1056, 1105 – Latin designation for 165 Niceno-Constantinopolian Creed (AD 381), the 31, 35, 56, 127, 185, 417, 421, 446, 643, 789, 870, 960, 1073, 1093ff., 1103ff., 1111, 1129 – Latin designation for 35, 127, 165

nothingness 138, 175, 178, 182, 186, 194, 198, 202, 208, 248, 260, 306, 317, 329f., 527, 538, 548, 557, 611, 1043, 1116, 1131, 1135 (see also creation) O Old Roman Creed, the 420f., 795, 875, 956, 1056 Orange, Second Synod of (AD 529) 254, 272, 291, 711, 1168 ordination (see also laying on of hands) 774f., 892ff., 894f., 902, 908f., 911ff., 962, 1028, 1187 original sin see sin P paradoxes, of divine action see God paraklesis 55, 641, 724, 781, 787, 973f. (see also exhortation) parousia (see also eschatology; return of Christ) 117, 152, 345f., 350, 352f., 421, 427, 479, 484f., 554, 591ff., 599ff., 604ff., 645, 661, 748ff., 754, 854f., 994, 1006, 1039f., 1147 Pastoral Letters, the 81, 829, 888, 892, 896, 892f., 900ff., 916ff., 945, 979 Pelagianism 169, 254ff., 267ff., 643, 657, 704, 710ff., 718, 957f. Pentateuch, formation of 207 people of God (see also church; election) 89, 92ff., 140, 143, 343, 353, 365, 596, 730, 813, 831ff., 841ff., 849ff., 858f., 862f., 867ff., 889ff., 1159 perichōrēsis 1058, 1096, 1112 Philokalia, the 255, 273 Platonism 101, 113, 1074, 1125 plerophoric 436, 446, 1127 pneumatology see Holy Spirit post-Christian person, the 343f., 616, 1040., 1133

1273

1274

Index of Subjects

powers of corruption 199, 322ff., 326ff., 330ff., 336ff., 451, 455, 473f., 531ff., 539ff., 582ff., 594ff., 785ff., 921ff. (see also kingdom, of the world) praise see adoration; doxology prayer (see also adoration; doxology; Holy Spirit; Lord’s Prayer; thanksgiving; worship service) 48f., 110, 115ff., 123ff., 130ff., 156, 320, 326, 416, 492f., 587, 681ff., 698, 707, 752, 764f., 815f., 854ff., 1147 predestination (see also election) 128, 132, 163, 238, 256, 349, 711f., 714, 1072, 1160ff. presbyters see elders priest(s) 279, 372ff., 377ff., 380, 387, 396f., 413, 416, 570, 576, 700, 895, 901, 918, 1187 promise and fulfillment 153ff., 371ff., 402ff., 468, 474, 479ff., 491, 499, 508, 569ff., 578ff., 601ff., 646, 747ff., 809, 842ff., 971, 1113, 1147 prophet(s) 120f., 184f., 252, 345, 372f., 379ff., 416, 450, 452, 454, 466ff., 482f., 496, 499f., 507, 570ff., 624ff., 708, 724, 849ff., 882, 883, 887f., 893f., 896, 901, 909, 914, 935f., 940ff., 978, 993f. providence see God psychagogy 108, 113 R real presence, the see Lord’s Supper reconciliation of the world 161, 530ff., 586, 646f., 789ff., 857, 1090ff., 1162, 1166 redemption 85, 131, 150, 160ff., 221, 357, 363ff., 390, 611ff., 623, 645ff., 789ff., 819, 1087ff. (see also salvation) – governmental theory of 545 – as a ransom through Jesus’ death 143, 521ff., 530ff., 539f., 623, 745 – as recapitulation 153

– as an overarching dogmatic concept 54, 161 reign (see also Jesus, exaltation of; kingdom) – of Christ 583ff., 590ff., 595f., 602, 726, 728, 815, 847, 851, 930 religions 24, 28, 93, 181, 186ff., 191ff., 279ff., 300, 322, 338, 353ff., 379, 408, 472, 578, 598, 818, 996ff., 1068f., 1080, 1132, 1188 repentance 78, 129, 157ff., 245, 381ff., 402, 464ff., 490ff., 544, 695ff., 1017ff., 1127, 1153 – church orders for 696ff., 1027 resurrection of Jesus – the identity of the earthly and the risen Jesus 433ff., 550ff., 605, 747, 1040 – the identity of the risen one in different traditions 546ff. resurrection of the dead 231, 310, 339, 567ff., 607ff., 1044ff., 1049ff. retribution 399, 405, 501, 611, 1132ff., 1139ff., 1168 (see also God, judgment of ; law) return of Christ 72, 604ff., 614f., 619, 1006, 1039, 1062 (see also parousia) revelation – of God see God – of the human being see human being – of the Son of God see Son of God S sacraments 641ff., 709ff., 771ff. (see also baptism; Lord’s Supper) – number of 771ff. sacrifice – of Christ (see Jesus) – of the church (see church) salvation (see also redemption; Jesus, salvific significance of ) 71f., 99f., 108,

Index of Subjects

115ff., 129f., 139, 143, 174ff., 270, 581, space and time (see also aeon; universe) 639ff., 646ff., 652ff., 1090ff. 93, 95, 183f., 198, 330, 353, 355, 563, sanctification 143, 162, 645ff., 652, 662ff., 591f., 606, 608, 836, 1064f., 1121ff., 1148 667f., 674f., 1055, 1129 speculative theology see theology Satan see apostasy; powers of corruption spiritual gifts see charismata satisfaction structural shifts see dogmatic statements – in penance 701f. structures see church; dogmatic statements – through Jesus’ death 535ff., 539ff., syllogism, theological 318ff., 323, 766, 967, 621, 623, 656f. 1169ff. Scripture synergism, the problem of 131, 643f., – authority of 139, 939ff. 713ff., 718ff. (cf. concursus divinus) – inspiration of 902f., 940ff. – and tradition 143f., 1008ff. T secular office 295ff., 921ff. temple, Jerusalem (see also church, as sensus plenior 581, 618 temple of the Holy Spirit) 366, 370ff., sin 376ff., 397, 402ff., 500, 573, 843f., 853, – dominion of 250ff., 264ff., 292ff., 866, 1124, 1137, 1144 307f., 327f., 332, 453, 457, 531f., 548, Ten Commandments, the (see also law) 579, 608, 656, 666, 726f. 251, 363ff., 390ff., 407, 497, 654, 672f., – inherited 264ff. 696, 708, 709, 1128 – original 103, 157f., 264ff., 272, 280, theological statements see dogmatic state307, 309n, 463, 711, 719 ments – urge to 248ff. theological understanding 950ff. (see also Smalcald Articles 540, 657, 659, 1011 faith, and knowledge; hermeneutics) Socinianism 536, 541, 545, 564, 624 theology Son of God (see also Jesus, names and ti– as doxology 155ff., 1060ff. tles for; God, Word of ) 185, 413ff., 421ff., – natural 40n, 278ff., 350, 1064, 1072, 435, 439ff., 449ff., 487, 561ff., 569, 578, 1080f., 1148f. 622, 624, 645, 664ff., 789ff., 795ff., 802, – as a scholarly discipline 96ff. 954, 1087ff., 1090ff., 1149f. – medieval-scholastic method of 1036 – humiliation of 54, 159f., 420, 442, – of sojourners 134, 166, 1070, 1102 449ff., 621f., 810 (see also Jesus, exalta– speculative 154, 169, 318, 323f., tion of ) 437ff., 451, 535ff., 1089, 1094f., 1116ff. – incarnation of 192, 422, 442, 449ff., – and other scholarly disciplines (see 510, 564f., 677, 753, 803, 1088 (see also historical criticism) 83ff., 96ff., also christology 101, 103, 106ff., 138, 153f., 187f., 223, – Son of Man 387, 415, 422, 429f., 237ff., 310, 939ff., 959ff., 976ff. 480ff., 502, 504ff., 520ff., 554, 561ff., – and philosophy 96ff., 104ff., 134ff., 566f., 570, 583ff., 598ff., 603, 645, 841f. 1967ff. Theopaschite formula 802, 804, 1149 Theotokos 80, 463

1275

1276

Index of Subjects

traditions of Christendom 1005ff., 1008ff. Trent, Council of 147, 255, 272, 291f., 657ff., 670f., 696, 709ff., 775ff., 779, 957, 1012ff., 1029, 1179, 1188 Trinity see God two kingdoms see kingdom U unification of the divided churches 18, 20, 24f., 47, 435f., 627, 798, 980, 986, 1002ff., 1017ff., 1025ff. universe, the 94ff., 151ff., 188ff., 201ff., 209, 221ff., 239f., 329, 352f., 355ff., 452f., 588f., 589ff., 727, 873f., 1050f., 1062, 1119ff. V Vatican I (First Vatican Council) 281, 1015, 1106 Vatican II (Second Vatican Council) 15, 19, 22n, 24, 29, 38f., 45ff., 149, 542, 625, 731, 776, 833f., 869, 875, 972, 1003f., 1013, 1015, 1017, 1021, 1036, 1182f.

via eminentiae 1065f., 1084 via negationis 1065f., 1084 virgin birth, the 420, 458ff., 542, 799f. W witness 72, 105ff., 115ff., 118ff., 129ff., 145, 150ff., 683ff. (see also gospel) Word, the see God, word of ; Scripture; Son of God, incarnation of world see kingdom, of the world World Council of Churches (WCC) 15, 18, 28f., 45, 168, 803, 1003 – Basis of 1021, 1110 world history 78, 183, 335ff., 338ff., 341ff., 347ff., 591ff., 605ff., 668ff., 786, 790, 852, 1039ff., 1047, 1083, 1128f. (see also God, providence of ) worship service, the 32f., 127f., 416, 566, 614, 853ff., 883, 902, 932ff., 956ff., 972ff., 992ff. worship see adoration and doxology wrath see God

Editor and Translators

Matthew L. Becker (M.Div., Concordia Seminary; M.A., Ph.D., University of Chicago) is a professor of historical and systematic theology at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana. He is the author of The Self-Giving God and Salvation History (T&T Clark, 2004) and Fundamental Theology: A Protestant Perspective (T&T Clark, 2015). He edited God Opens Doors (NW District of the LCMS, 2000) and Nineteenth-Century Lutheran Theologians (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016). He is the general editor and principal translator of Edmund Schlink Works. Ken Jones (M.Div., Luther Seminary; Ph.D., Luther Seminary) is a professor of theology and philosophy at Grand View University, Des Moines, Iowa. He is the author of A Lutheran Toolkit (1517 Publishing, 2021). He has also contributed to several books, including Who Am I? Exploring Your Identity Through Your Vocations (1517 Publishing, 2020), The Lutheran Handbook series (Augsburg Fortress), and By Heart: Conversations with Martin Luther’s Small Catechism (Augsburg Fortress, 2017). Robin Lutjohann (M.Div., Harvard Divinity School) is the pastor at Faith Lutheran Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and an adjunct instructor at Harvard Divinity School. Mark A. Seifrid (M.Div., M.A., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary) is a professor of exegetical theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. He is the author of Justification by Faith (Brill, 1992), Christ, Our Righteousness (IVP, 2001), and The Second Letter to the Corinthians (Eerdmans, 2014). Hans H. G. Spalteholz (M.Div., Concordia Seminary; M.A., Columbia University; M.A., University of Chicago) is an emeritus professor of theology and English at Concordia University, Portland, Oregon. He served as the principal editor of God Opens Doors (NW District of the LCMS, 2000). Eleanor Wegener (B.A., Christ College, Valparaiso University) is a research assistant at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana, and the recipient of a Fulbright Award to teach English in Germany.